Members’ Publication

Access to land is very important for socially and economically disadvantaged people, from the countries where agriculture is the main source of employment to improve their livelihoods. It brings an opportunity for producing their livelihoods reducing extreme poverty. Land management is a tool being employed by governments around the world to contribute in this respect. In Bangladesh, guchchogram/ cluster village projects are done for rehabilitating rural land less people to reduce poverty. Successful implementation of such projects will help in reducing poverty, migration and improving socio-economic condition of the rural poor. This paper focuses on evaluating cluster village projects whether they are improving the socio-economic status of the people.

Background Cities are at the fore of sustainability challenges of the twenty-first century, and many, particularly in Asia and Africa, are predominantly youthful spaces. Understanding young people’s experiences in urban environments is therefore important as we strive to achieve both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. Two amenities identified in the urban Sustainable Development Goal 11, transport and public and green space, are specifically recognised as applying to youth. Yet, there is little analysis that explicitly considers how youth experience these amenities across the Global North and South, and no current measures for understanding progress in youth experiences of green space and transport. Results This paper provides a comparative analysis of young people’s experiences with local transport and green space in seven diverse urban communities (Christchurch, New Zealand; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Lambeth/London, UK; Makhanda, South Africa; New Delhi, India; São Paulo, Brazil; and Yokohama, Japan). Our study contributes to a growing body of literature that seeks to listen to child and youth perspectives to understand their environmental experiences. We examine the ‘affordances’ young residents aged 12 to 24 years currently associate with green space and transport amenities. Affordances are defined here as the inter-relationships between what a local environment offers young people and their perceptions and actions. Drawing on focus groups and interviews conducted with 332 young people, we identify five affordances young people associate in relation to transport and public space across these diverse urban settings: (1) social inclusion and belonging; (2) autonomy; (3) physical comfort and security; (4) relaxation and reflection; and (5) health and fitness. Conclusions The paper contributes to growing interdisciplinary research interest in measuring affordances as a way to advance the Sustainable Development Goals in an urban context. In providing a comparative account of young people’s experiences across diverse contexts, our discussion highlights how affordances in relation to transport or public and green space can help understand the multiple interconnections between the well-being of young people and sustainability. In particular, we argue that it is not merely the provision of transport or public and green space that matters, but the nuanced meaning of places and experiences as understood by local communities that needs to be recognised if we are to better support urban youth wellbeing and advance sustainable development goals.

Mapping the within-field variability of crop status is of great importance in precision agriculture, which seeks to balance agronomic inputs with spatial crop demands. Satellite imagery and the delineation of management zones based on remote sensing plays a key role. However, satellite imagery is dependent on a cloud-free view, which is especially challenging in temperate regions such as Northern Europe. This disadvantage can be overcome with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), which provide an alternative to satellites. An investigation was conducted to establish whether UAV imagery can generate similar crop heterogeneity maps to satellites (Sentinel 2) and the extent to which crop heterogeneity and management zones can be reproduced by repeated data collection within short time intervals. Three winter wheat fields were monitored during the growing season. Two vegetation indices (NDVI and MSAVI2) based on red and near-infrared (NIR) reflectance were calculated to delineate fields into five management zones based on NDVI raster maps using quintiles. The Pearson correlation coefficient, the Nash–Sutcliffe agreement coefficient and the smallest real difference coefficient (SRD), also called the reproducibility coefficient were used to evaluate the reproducibility. NDVI and MSAVI2 gave similar results, but NDVI was a slightly better descriptor of crop heterogeneity after canopy closure and NDVI was used for the remainder of the study. The results showed that substitution of satellite data with UAV data resulted in an average reclassification of 10 m by 10 m management zones corresponding to 58% of the total field area. Reclassification means that management pixels were classified differently according to origin of images. Repeated satellite and UAV imagery resulted in 39% and 47% reclassification, respectively. The results showed that the reproduction of remote sensing data with different sensor systems added more measurement error to measurements than was the case with repeated measurements using the same sensor systems. In this study, SRD averaged 2.5 management zones, which means that differences up to 2.5 management zones were within the measurement error. This paper discusses the practical aspects of these findings and clarifies that the reclassification of management zones is depending on the heterogeneity of the studied fields. Therefore, the achieved results may not be generalized but the presented methodology can be used in future studies.

This article explores how the asset-based community development approach has improved the living conditions of the urban slum communities and have also addressed the house level poverty through direct asset transfer that can have positive co-benefits for community resilience to climate change. A broader and less restrictive design, which is qualitative in nature, has been adopted to produce arguments using the experiences of the members of Community Development Committees (CDCs) of slums of Khulna city. Considering the great flexibility nature of open-ended interview data, thematic analysis has been applied to identify and interpret the patterns (themes) related to the activities of CDCs. The findings of the aggregated thematic data show that while community-driven actions might not be taken with climate change adaptation specifically in mind, local community-based actions initiated by the CDCs of slums such as community-driven slum upgrading and collective savings schemes to reduce asset erosion directly contribute to broader resilience to climate change, by reducing exposure to climatic risk and also addressing internal drivers of vulnerability. The findings of capacity-decision-making matrix show that the CDC members do not possess equal capacity while managing the vulnerability through transferring the asset both at household and community level.