The Kennet Geog Blog

  Amid the growing   local government bankruptcy crisis , as many as half of the local authorities in England and Wales might be forced to cut their green spaces budgets. The situation in Scotland and Northern Ireland is not much better. A survey by the Local Government Association in February 2024 found that   48%   of local authorities say they plan to defund, to varying degrees, the parks and other green spaces within their areas. England’s urban green spaces alone are estimated to provide up to  £6.6 billion  in benefits to the communities that use them each year. Yet using them isn’t open to everyone. There is significant social inequality in terms of access to urban green spaces. In December 2023, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs parliamentary committee heard  evidence  that the most affluent 20% of urban wards have as much as five times more publicly accessible green space that the most deprived wards. Urban green spaces have long been poorly funded and vulnerable to loca

  Carbon   catch-22 : the pollution in our soil Bad behaviour doesn’t usually have good consequences but our fossil fuel and fertiliser habits may have had some “good” environmental side-effects.  Our new research  suggests that the last 200 years of pollution have increased the carbon stored in soils across natural ecosystems in Britain. And this locking in of carbon in soils provides an offset for some of our carbon emissions. But the catch-22 is if we kick our polluting habits, this carbon is at risk of returning to our atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Read the rest of the article  here!

 Looking for a quick yet detailed overview of the water and carbon cycles? Look no more! A fantastic resource provided by the RGS to support your studies. It can be accessed  here!

This article retrospectively examines the factors which caused Guinea Worm Disease (Dracunculiasis) to spread to epidemic levels, so as to serve as the basis for formulating a national preventive agenda to reinforce the preventive measures which have been put in place to prevent the disease from re-emerging. The hybrid conceptual framework of disease diffusion and disease ecology was used. The mixed method research design was used to collect data from a total of 11 administrative districts. Primary data was obtained from a total of 860 respondents. To achieve a representative distribution of respondents, they were proportionately selected with respect to the populations of their respective districts. A key Informant interview was conducted. Download the full article for free  here!

  The US air force has taken the unusual step of holding joint drills   with Guyana   as the United Nations scheduled an   emergency meeting of the security council   to discuss Venezuela’s threat to annex more than two-thirds of the oil-rich South American country. Guyanese president, Irfaan Ali,  appealed to Washington and to the UN  after the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, announced that he had taken steps to formalise the incorporation of Essequibo – an oil-rich 160,000sq km region of neighbouring Guyana – as part of Venezuela. Maduro is a populist nationalist and a dictator, whose country is wracked by poverty. This has contributed to the exodus of  more than seven million citizens . Mindful of the fact that presidential elections are due in Venezuela in 2024, Maduro has turned to an issue that he hopes will lead to a rapid turn-around in his popularity. Venezuela’s territorial dispute with neighbouring Guyana is a  longstanding one . It is arguably made worse by the news t

  Getting to net zero emissions by mid-century is conventionally understood as humanity’s best hope for keeping Earth’s surface temperature (already 1.2°C above its pre-industrial level) from increasing well beyond 1.5°C – potentially reaching a point at which it could cause widespread societal breakdown. At least one prominent climate scientist, however, disagrees. James Hansen of Columbia University in the US published  a paper  with colleagues in November which claims temperatures are set to rise further and faster than the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  In his view , the 1.5°C target is dead. He also claims net zero is no longer sufficient to prevent warming of more than 2°C. To regain some control over Earth’s rising temperature, Hansen supports accelerating the retirement of fossil fuels, greater cooperation between major polluters that accommodates the needs of the developing world and, controversially, intervening in Earth’s “ radiation ba