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Geopolitics should be understood as a broader subject than the usual association ‘nation-states + international relations + military power + geographical conditions’ suggests. Actually, ‘geopolitics’ is nothing but an explicitly political approach to social–spatial analysis, even if we pragmatically reserve the term for situations in which we face state interventions and strategies aiming at socio-spatial control and/or expanding political influence. Similar to the Copenhagen School’s ‘wider agenda’ for security studies, I think it is useful to develop a ‘wider agenda’ for the critique of geopolitics—for instance, one that clearly incorporates some urban problems as relevant subjects. ‘Eco-geopolitics’ refers to the governmentalisation of ‘nature’ and the ‘environment’, using the ‘environmental protection’ and often even the ‘environmental security’ discourse as a tool for socio-spatial control. Within the framework of this governmentalisation, there are increasing connections between local-level expressions of socio-spatial control in the name of ‘environmental protection’ and national and global agents and agendas. More concretely, ‘urban eco-geopolitics’ is above all related to strategies of socio-spatial control apparently designed to prevent people from ‘degrading the environment’, though in fact they have several social and spatial implications. Rio de Janeiro is here nothing but an illustration of a very general phenomenon. Nonetheless, Rio is a ‘privileged laboratory’ due to an almost unique conjunction of factors: (a) a proverbial ‘abundance of nature’ (i.e. a huge national park inside the heart of the metropolis); (b) a similarly proverbial socio-spatial inequality (hundreds offavelascoexist with elite neighbourhoods in the context of a complex segregation pattern that also includes a huge periphery and an extreme socio-spatial stigmatisation); (c) a ‘modernising drive’ that has significantly changed Rio’s urban space several times since the beginning of the 20th century, being recently represented by the direct or indirect effects of the ‘sporting mega-events fever’ that has dominated Rio’s city marketing since the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities develop climate-change policies, they are likely to engage with and produce new science and information. What influences the choices cities make about this engagement? Our aim is to understand the differences in the ways city governments structure their relationship to climate-change science and expertise, and the extent to which these choices reflect broader governance orientations towards climate change as a policy area. The climate-change policy processes of Delhi and Mexico City are used as case studies. The two cities have made different choices about the structure and formality of the science–policy interface, and demonstrate that policymakers’ choices about engaging scientific expertise are embedded in broader administrative and political systems. Examining the science–policy dynamics in urban climate-change policy suggests ways forward for future research, as there are likely to be political and policy consequences and trade-offs with different approaches to structuring the science–policy interface. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents several news briefs about the environment as of October 1987. Community effort to reclaim land damaged by logging and mining in Sudbury, Ontario; A dragonfly sanctuary in Japan; Salmon net-pens spawn revolt in Washington State. More briefs.

The article discusses the concept of low-cost best practices for adapting to climate change in communities along the U.S. east coast following major storms. The article discusses information generation, prevention strategies, and the strategy known as retreat in communities such as Lewes, Delaware, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Hampton, New Hampshire. The article states that plans and land use regulations are cost-efficient methods that can be rapidly implemented following a storm.