UK cities need greener new builds

UK cities need greener new builds – and more of them

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 local government budget cuts. The question then is how to create more inclusive and sustainable green spaces in our cities.

Read the full article here!

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A Retrospective Overview of Factors that Influence Guinea Worm Epidemic in Northern Region of Ghana

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!

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!

Climate crisis could reverse progress in achieving gender equality

People who directly depend on the natural world for their livelihoods, like farmers and fishers, will be among the greatest victims of the climate crisis. In vulnerable hotspots, such as the arid lands of Kenya and Ethiopia, farming communities are already struggling with droughts and water scarcity that kill their cattle and threaten their very survival. The glacial-fed river basins of the Himalayan mountains, or the deltas of Bangladesh, India and Ghana, are increasingly prone to floods, landslides and powerful cyclones. As a result, men are often migrating further to keep their families going, looking for casual work in neighbouring towns or villages for a few days or weeks at a time, or to cities further away. Many try to return home when they can, with whatever they have earned. But during their absence, the entire burden of maintaining the family is on women. Read the full article here!

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