Geo-Geography and Environment最新文献

{"title":"Cultivating Scientific Authority: A Vegetal Geography of Chinese Rhododendrons at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh","authors":"Mingcan Rong","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70042","DOIUrl":"10.1002/geo2.70042","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper presents a vegetal geography of Chinese rhododendrons at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), examining the mechanisms through which RBGE's scientific authority is established in the field of <i>Rhododendron</i> research and conservation. Building on the geographical conceptualisation of relational plant agency, this paper extends it by illustrating that attending to the rhododendron–people–environment relationship sheds light on the ecological–political nature of the <i>Rhododendron</i> species at RBGE, the broader historical contexts that stimulate the accumulation, and the environmental conditions that encourage the maintenance. Drawing on interviews, observation and document analysis, I illustrate the contribution and labour of the underappreciated Chinese collectors in the historical botanical exploration, discuss rhododendron's ‘plantiness’ and examine RBGE's contemporary activities that aim to accumulate and sustain the ex situ rhododendrons both materially and epistemically. I argue that the scientific authority of RBGE has been shaped by the semi-colonial history of China after the First Opium War ending in 1842, the encounters between British botanists and local collectors, as well as RBGE's intentional accumulation and maintenance of rhododendrons and related knowledge, all of which are mediated by rhododendrons' agency and continue to influence today's conservation dynamics.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70042","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145572236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Literature Review on Climate Smart Strategies: Localising Climate Action and Advancing Some Possibilities for Artificial Intelligence in Resilience Building for Small-Scale Farmers in Zimbabwe","authors":"Siphephisiwe Dube,&nbsp;Sadhana Manik","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70038","DOIUrl":"10.1002/geo2.70038","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Small-scale farmers (SSFs) globally face numerous challenges, exacerbated by climate change, which severely affect their farming activities. This literature review paper reflects on poor, rural SSFs' climate-smart strategies (CSS) providing possibilities to infuse artificial intelligence (AI) for resilience building in Zimbabwe. Currently, Zimbabwe is a country where climate change, socio-economic and political challenges, along with power outages threaten rural livelihoods and food security. The research gaps are outlined on CSS, SSFs' challenges to respond proactively and using AI technologies for building resilience. The contribution of the article is thus to take stock of the current scholarship on CSS used by poor, rural SSFs. Recommendations deriving from this review can be used to intensify climate action for resilience building in Zimbabwe. A resilience framework guided the extraction of relevant literature. Using the AI tool ‘Ai2 paper finder’, we identified 64 relevant published articles and 13 publications of grey literature on CSS and SSFs' need to build resilience. The grey literature focused on identifying the common CSS being actioned elsewhere in Africa but relevant for Zimbabwe. Thematic content analysis was merged with storyline analysis and stories of successful resilience outcomes provide evidence on SSFs' resilience building. The findings revealed promising strategies: livelihood diversification, zero tillage, the adoption of weather-tolerant small grains, climate smart livestock strategies and irrigation farming. Thus, micro-, meso- and macro-scale initiatives are advanced for resilience. The existing socio-economic challenges hamper the use of CSS with advanced AI features. We argue that a combination of indigenous CSS and AI-based weather prediction models and crop recommendation systems could empower SSFs in Zimbabwe to better adapt to climate change. However, multiple stakeholders need to commit to provide resources for Zimbabwe's SSFs given the limited investment by the country which has been plagued by decades of political and socio-economic turmoil.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70038","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145572307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Operation Hurricane’: Narrating Climate Change as Imperial Mess","authors":"Charlotte Kate Weatherill","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70037","url":null,"abstract":"<p>How climate change is narrated matters. Every story that is told of climate change contains its own causes of the problem, its own solutions and its own vision of the future. This article juxtaposes two stories: the dominant story of climate change as represented by the IPCC and a counter-story of climate change as ‘imperial mess’. This language comes from Alice Te Punga Somerville and her book <i>Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay About Captain Cook</i> (2020). In this book, Te Punga Somerville writes about colonialism in Aotearoa and the Pacific as a story that can be told in endless different ways, with each story drawing out different elements. Number 223 of her project, ‘In Montebello Islands’, discusses the British nuclear weapons testing programme. The tests were called ‘Operation Hurricane’, and Te Punga Somerville writes that the whole imperial mess of the past five centuries could be called “Operation Hurricane”. This article takes this claim as a prompt, both methodologically and theoretically, in order to argue that climate change needs to be understood in a historically and geographically informed way, where the colonial history becomes the present, coloniality and resistance entwine and the ‘way out of the mess’ has to be found in a fight against the entirety of Operation Hurricane. The contribution of the article is twofold: First, this article contributes to literatures that understand climate change as a historical process of imperial violence, by directly addressing what this changes about an analysis of climate politics. Second, it contributes to critiques of the IPCC by showing how its approach depoliticises climate change through the way it narrates and communicates climate science as separate from historical and structural processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70037","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Epistemic Violence in Global Climate Governance: The Case of Climate Finance in Vanuatu","authors":"Johanna Tunn","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70036","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper explores mechanisms of epistemic violence enacted through the climate finance (access) industry in Vanuatu, shedding light on the colonial inflictions of multilateral green funds in global climate governance. While the climate crisis is a reality in Vanuatu, its access to direct climate finance remains constrained, as it is not an accredited entity to any of the major climate funds. This serves as a gateway for a growing climate finance (access) industry that has established itself across the Pacific and in Vanuatu. Using an action-theoretical perspective that centres <i>acts of doing</i> epistemic violence, this paper identifies four mechanisms of epistemic violence enacted through Vanuatu's climate finance (access) industry: <i>distortion</i> via the mistranslation of realities; <i>imposition</i> via rendering people and regions investable; <i>devaluation</i> via rendering people incapable and <i>exploitation</i> through the extraction of knowledges and exhaustion of resources. Rather than improving access and equity for frontline communities, this paper elaborates that epistemic violence remains the modus operandi of Vanuatu's climate finance (access) industry—and is thus complicit in the perpetration of physical violence in the form of losses and damages, ecocide and epistemicide. Dismantling this system would at least require the <i>islanding</i> of climate finance, emphasising local agency and self-determination over externally imposed, extractive models.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70036","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145521982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Electronic waste and environmental sustainability in Ghana: Aligning national policies with the sustainable development goals","authors":"Richard Kwame Adom,&nbsp;Mulala Danny Simatele","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70032","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Electronic waste (e-waste) can be defined as discarded or obsolete electronic and electrical equipment that is no longer functional or desired. Globally, e-waste poses significant problems and threats to the environment, society and health of the population. In Ghana, this problem is more acute due to rapid technological advancement, lack of infrastructure, free trade policies and lack of sufficient coping mechanisms to manage e-waste materials sustainably. While the government and other environmental organisations have instituted numerous policies, regulations and strategies, very little achievement has been attained in addressing these problems due to high levels of poverty, weak enforcement of regulations and pervasive corruption. Using the conventional data collection approach of qualitative, quantitative and extensive literature review, this paper explored the underlying causes of the expansion of e-waste trading in Ghana, the implications of these activities on the environment and well-being of the population and the pragmatic solutions to these menaces. This paper established a complex interplay between environmental degradation in the context of e-waste businesses in Ghana. Additional findings established that while e-waste activities posed significant environmental problems that require urgent action, they are also sources of livelihood for a significant portion of the population in the country. These contradictions impact directly several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). To address these menaces, the paper recommends a multifaceted strategy that includes stricter enforcement of environmental regulations, formalisation of recycling sectors to ensure safer working conditions (supporting SDG 8), investment in technological innovation and modern recycling infrastructure (SDG 9), public education and stronger commitment to international agreements regulating the cross-boundary movement of e-waste (SDG 17).</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70032","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145469670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between energy transition and industrial revival: Exploring hydrogen imaginaries in the United Kingdom and Teesside","authors":"Naima Kraushaar-Friesen,&nbsp;Gavin Bridge,&nbsp;Magdalena Kuchler","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70033","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Hydrogen is increasingly positioned as a key enabler of global net-zero transitions, hailed for its versatility and low-carbon emissions potential. Yet hydrogen's nascent future is contested, with divergent visions of its role across technological, political and geographical contexts. In this paper, we employ the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (STIs) to explore the emergence and interaction of two hydrogen STIs in the United Kingdom: a national imaginary promoted by the British state through energy policies and a regional vision centred on Teesside in Northeast England, shaped by the local industrial legacy, incumbent actors and existing industrial infrastructures. We do so by drawing on three strands within the STI literature—emerging imaginaries, national–regional dynamics and the role of materialities in shaping energy futures—to examine how these STIs co-produce hydrogen futures with political strategies, existing infrastructures and socio-economic agendas. We find that the national imaginary envisions hydrogen as a novel, flexible and frictionless decarbonisation solution—a scalable energy carrier enabling a smooth transition to net zero while sustaining current market norms and lifestyles. In contrast, Teesside's regional imaginary is grounded in place-based assets, legacy infrastructure and a broader strategy of industrial renewal. It prioritises rapid deployment and favours blue hydrogen as a cost-effective, near-term option. Our analysis reveals a tension between the national vision's speculative openness and Teesside's materially grounded trajectory. While the national STI embraces ambiguity to keep options open, the regional imaginary anchors hydrogen in fossil-based industrial infrastructures and economic realities. We argue that hydrogen imaginaries (and transitions) are shaped not just by technical potential but by power-laden materialities—such as infrastructure ownership and resource dependencies—that stabilise or contest competing energy futures.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70033","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145407400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Repairing epistemic injustice and loss in the era of climate coloniality","authors":"Farhana Sultana","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70029","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate change intensifies existing inequities, disproportionately impacting marginalised populations, particularly in the Global South and Indigenous communities. This is maintained through inequitable global climate governance, policies and solutions. The paper argues that climate coloniality, the complex entanglements of colonial legacies with contemporary climate and ecological changes, operates through systemic knowledge-based marginalisation or epistemic injustice, serving as a key mechanism in the uneven production and distribution of climate harms. Beyond the more commonly discussed material dimensions of loss and damage, epistemic injustices arise from silencing critical voices and devaluing knowledge systems. The paper extends the scope of loss and damage debates by drawing attention to epistemic losses: the erasure of worldviews, ontologies and practices that are vital for just and sustainable climate futures. It critically examines the intersections of power, pedagogy and praxis in (re)producing epistemic injustices, while simultaneously revealing counter-narratives of refusal, resurgence and relationality. By engaging Indigenous and Global South scholarship, the paper underscores the need to decolonise knowledge systems that reproduce dominant climate narratives and heed the epistemological alternatives offered by land- and kinship-based knowledge systems. Advancing climate justice depends on confronting epistemic injustice as both a form of loss and a condition of possibility: centring Global South and Indigenous perspectives is essential for cultivating pluriversal, decolonial and just climate frameworks and futures.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145406911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Safewashing in the conspicuous commodification of the hazardous aesthetic","authors":"Geoff Main,&nbsp;Janet Speake","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70034","DOIUrl":"10.1002/geo2.70034","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this paper, we introduce the concept of safewashing within the context of the hazardous aesthetic and the attractive view as a new lens through which to research issues relating to widespread, continuing urban property development in unsafe, hazard-prone locations. Recognising that many aesthetically attractive views can be simultaneously hazardous, we suggest that in the process of property development and marketing, unsafe locations may be masked through ‘washing out’ (i.e. overlooking or covering up) actual and/or potential risk in favour of driving urban growth, capital investment and profit. Underpinned by the concept of aesthetic common sense, we explore the commodification of the aesthetically appealing view and the safewashing of the reality of hazard and potential disaster. Questions are raised about how the practice of safewashing within the context of increasing human impacts and the financial costs of disasters may be challenged and addressed.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70034","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145406910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Glocalisation of environmental challenges: The impact of the war in Ukraine on smog and heating practices in Polish local communities","authors":"Piotr Żuk,&nbsp;Paweł Żuk","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70031","DOIUrl":"10.1002/geo2.70031","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article analyses the impact of the war in Ukraine on air quality and heating practices in Polish cities. In this case, it does not focus on the direct impact of military activities, but on various social and political decisions, as well as changes in social behaviour undertaken under the influence of the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. The authors defend the thesis that it is worth analysing air quality and heating practices in local communities not only in the context of local and national policies but also by referring to global and transnational factors. Based on focus group interviews with the residents of Wrocław, they prove that global events may have an impact on local air quality and apartment heating methods and be a catalyst for processes in various spheres of local and national public life: legal–political, economic, environmental–spatial, health and socio-practical. The article proposes a glocalisation perspective as an approach that can integrate local social and environmental conditions with global ecological challenges, while also highlighting the impact of global factors—economic, political, energy-related and military—on local trends, behaviours and policies in the context of environmental protection.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70031","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145366992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unravelling the growth of small cities with entrepreneurial urbanism in transition China: A case study of Zouping","authors":"Zhe Cheng,&nbsp;Shuo Yan,&nbsp;Jialin He,&nbsp;Xinfa Zhou","doi":"10.1002/geo2.70030","DOIUrl":"10.1002/geo2.70030","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Small cities are the critical arena for urbanisation and economic growth around the world. The tailored and variegated approach is key to facilitating the development of small cities. Based on the theory of entrepreneurial urbanism, this study constructs a conceptual framework of ‘subject-economy-policy-culture-space’ and takes Zouping as a typical case to explore the potential path of development for small cities. This study finds that the development of Zouping is an unintentional approach of entrepreneurial urbanism; emphasising industrial development, urban marketing and technological innovation to drive economic transformation; shaping the regional cultural atmosphere of mercantilism; and reconstructing the urban space with industrial parks as a leading spatial driver. Further research shows that a multi-subject cooperative network between the local government, enterprises and society is the foundation, and the establishment of an entrepreneurial urban cultural atmosphere is a necessary condition for the development of small cities. The entrepreneurial actions of local governments are the decisive conditions for the development of small cities. This study provides a reference value for the development of small cities both in China and the Global South and contributes to enriching the theoretical system of global entrepreneurial urbanism through Chinese cases.</p>","PeriodicalId":44089,"journal":{"name":"Geo-Geography and Environment","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/geo2.70030","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145366389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}