Search

The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) with an exclusively urban focus. SDG 11, as it became known, aims to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable through a range of metrics, indicators, and evaluation systems. It also became part of a post-Quito ‘New Urban Agenda’ that is still taking shape. This paper raises questions around the potential for reductionism in this new agenda, and argues for the reflexive need to be aware of the types of urban space that are potentially sidelined by the new trends in global urban policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the tensions between UN calls for private sector engagement in the post-2015 landscape and public health opposition to those 'harm industries' that are 'corporate vectors of disease' for the mounting global non-communicable disease burden. The UN's support for public-private partnership has provided industries with 'vested interests' in the propagation of unhealthy behaviours with new opportunities for the strategic alignment of their corporate social responsibility ( CSR) endeavours with the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. This has galvanised public health advocates to place pressure on the World Health Organisation to formalise their ambiguous stance towards private sector involvement in public policy formation and the resultant 'conflicts of interest'. This paper critically examines the 'gathering storm' between this 'anti-corporate movement' and the alcohol industry in the increasingly politicised domain of CSR. Drawing on the example of SABMiller's Tavern Intervention Program, the paper argues that CSR represents a profound threat to the sanctity and moral authority of the public health worldview. Questions therefore need to be asked about whether the public health-led path of industry non-association will necessarily result in health improvements or just a further retrenchment of the ideological faultlines explored in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary explores how household economic necessity and the public health aspirations set out in the WHO’s global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol might be reconciled in the context of alcohol control in developing countries. The ‘ambiguity’ of alcohol’s role in social and economic development is clear, but, as yet, little progress has been made on how best to integrate alcohol control within development policies in low- and middle-income countries. Without this holistic thinking, alcohol control efforts are likely to be thwarted by liquor’s allure as an accessible micro-enterprise opportunity. Similarly, developmental efforts will be undermined by the severity of alcohol-related harms that now disproportionately affect middle-income countries. Drawing on the example of South Africa, this short commentary explores the complexities of controlling the supply of alcohol when its sale represents a major livelihood strategy amid conditions of high unemployment and constrained access to formal employment markets. The policy preference for closing illegal bars or shebeens in South Africa does not address the ‘causes of the causes’ of why people drink, and therefore why its sale continues to be an attractive livelihood choice. It also does little to provide alternative leisure or employment opportunities, which ultimately threatens the longer term sustainability of policy. We need to better appreciate why selling alcohol is a seductive business opportunity and the potential consequences of this for realising public health aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines, on one hand, the current regulatory environment in relation to alcohol retailing and consumption in South Africa's Western Cape. On the other, it explores how stakeholders of such regulations formulate, comprehend and act upon the ‘problem’ of drinking. As a result, the paper aims to tease out the discrepancies between what issaid(of alcohol by policy-makers) and what isdone(about alcohol within policy) through the conceptual lens of alcohol as ‘nuisance’. It does this in order to: (1) deepen current empirical engagements with alcohol control policies in South Africa and the Global South; (2) explore what stakeholders ‘know’ or believe about the drinking practices that they seek to regulate and (3) highlight the dynamic tensions between what is said and what is done. In so doing, the paper contributes novel empirical data to the growing cannon of geographical engagements with drinking practices and policies by situating its analysis in the context of the Western Cape. As a result, the paper marks out an original contribution to the multidisciplinary field of critical alcohol studies, as well as South African geographical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media coverage of the "problems" associated with alcohol is widespread in countries of the global North and now, increasingly, in those of the global South. However, despite this mounting ubiquity, there have been very few analyses either of newspaper coverage of alcohol or of media coverage of alcohol policy, especially outside Europe and North America. This article argues that given international concern with the long-term health, economic, social, and developmental consequences of risky drinking in the global South, an exploration of newspaper coverage of nascent alcohol policy in such a context is both timely and valuable. Indeed, such analyses bring to the fore the deeply contextual and contingent nature of alcohol's problematization in politics, policy, and public life. To examine these assertions, we explore the "attention allocation" processes of two South African alcohol control policies-the Western Cape Liquor Bill and the city of Cape Town's liquor bylaws-in two regional English-language newspapers between 2007 and 2011. In so doing, the article highlights the particularities of the political valence of alcohol in the South African context. Furthermore, it also draws out the tensions between alcohol as a source of livelihoods in a context of endemic unemployment and chronic poverty and alcohol as a causal factor in poverty, crime, violence, and social disintegration. In contrast to media coverage of alcohol policy in Europe and North America, this analysis of the South African press suggests that liquor consumption is far less likely to be framed as an express health risk, forcing us to question how preventative policy efforts should best proceed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: While attention to the socio-ecological and political economic influences on health grows, there remains a paucity of political ecological analyses of health (King, 2010). At the same time, the growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the Global South demands new conceptual and pragmatic engagements with their modifiable risk factors. Drawing on the example of South Africa, this paper argues that alcohol consumption might usefully be theorised in political ecological lexicon as a “disaster”. To do so, it draws attention to the upstream causes of vulnerability, rather than just the downstream effects of risky drinking. This reorientation is needed for sustainable, publicly acceptable alcohol policies. To realise this, it draws on Blaikie et al.’s (1994, 2003) political ecological approach to risk, vulnerability and coping and, more specifically, applies their Pressure and Release model to explore liquor as a situated “disaster” in South Africa’s Western Cape province. In so doing, it aims to mark out an under-explored research agenda that considers alcohol as a pervasive governance dilemma. In addition, it also reflects on the model’s utility as a means of communicating findings that might reorient policy discussions on alcohol control in both South Africa and countries of the Global South. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The relationship between the built environment, physical activity, and well-being is currently attracting concerted government attention in the UK which has been formalized through new sets of urban planning and design guidelines. In light of this, the author argues that the domains of intersection between the physical environment and governmental health and social agendas need further exploration. Furthermore, she asserts that urban geographers are theoretically and empirically well placed to undertake valuable and much needed research agendas within these domains. To explore these assertions, the author first sets out the recent turn to physical activity as an explicit policy concern. She then critically interrogates two recent sets of design guidelines, Active Design (Sport England) and the 2008 NICE guidance within the context of current UK policy thinking, before exploring the problematic nature of the instrumental readings of space they present. It is argued that this instrumental rationale may sanction the neglect of the intrinsic value and importance of active lives themselves to urban spaces, which, it is asserted, can have marked impacts on wellbeing. An appreciation of this opens up new geographical research agendas with respect to the built form, public health, and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]