Fora, networks and public examinations: the role and significance of public participation in the new regional plan for South East England

This paper overviews the main conceptual frameworks for understanding participatory approaches to land use planning and explores their utility in analysing the experience of a recent regional planning exercise in South East England. In particular it examines the contribution of recent ‘New Institutionalist’ ideas to our understanding of participatory processes and the implications for practice of using them to build strategies of public involvement in policy-making and implementation.

Perspectives on community representation within the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative: experiences from south-east Madagascar

This article critically examines the nature and quality of governance in community representation and civil society engagement in the context of trans-national large-scale mining, drawing on experiences in the Anosy Region of south-east Madagascar. An exploration of functional relationships between government, mining business and civil society stakeholders reveals an equivocal legitimacy of certain civil society representatives, created by state manipulation, which contributes to community disempowerment. The appointment of local government officials, rather than election, creates a hierarchy of upward dependencies and a culture where the majority of officials express similar views and political alliances. As a consequence, community resistance is suppressed. Voluntary mechanisms such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) advocate community stakeholder engagement in decision making processes as a measure to achieve public accountability. In many developing countries, where there is a lack of transparency and high levels of corruption, the value of this engagement, however, is debatable. Findings from this study indicate that the power relationships which exist between stakeholders in the highly lucrative mining industry override efforts to achieve "good governance" through voluntary community engagement. The continuing challenge lies in identifying where the responsibility sits in order to address this power struggle to achieve fair representation.

Population estimates and habitat use by the critically endangered Taita Apalis Apalis fuscigularis in south-eastern Kenya

The Taita Apalis Apalis fuscigularis (IUCN category: Critically Endangered) is a species endemic to south-eastern Kenya. We assessed population size and habitat use in the three forest sites in which it is known to occur (Ngangao, Chawia and Vuria, totalling 257 ha). The estimate of total population size, derived from distance sampling at 412 sample points, ranged from 310 to 654 individuals, with the northern section of Ngangao fragment having 10-fold higher densities than Chawia (2.47-4.93 versus 0.22-0.41 birds ha(-1)). Ngangao north alone hosted 50% of the global population of the species. The highly degraded Vuria fragment also had moderately high densities (1.63-3.72 birds ha(-1)) suggesting that the species tolerates some human disturbance. Taita Apalis prefers vegetation with abundant climbers, but the predictive power of habitat use models was low, suggesting that habitat structure is not a primary cause for the low density of the species in Chawia. Protecting the subpopulation in the northern section of Ngangao is a priority, as is identifying factors responsible of the low abundance in Chawia, because ameliorating conditions in this large fragment could substantially increase the population of Taita Apalis.

Improving quality of mother-infant relationship and infant attachment in socioeconomically deprived community in South Africa: randomised controlled trail

Objective To assess the efficacy of an intervention designed to improve the mother-infant relationship and security of infant attachment in a South African peri-urban settlement with marked adverse socioeconomic circumstances. Design Randomised controlled trial. Setting Khayelitsha, a peri-urban settlement in South Africa. Participants 449 pregnant women. Interventions The intervention was delivered from late pregnancy and for six months postpartum. Women were visited in their homes by previously untrained lay community workers who provided support and guidance in parenting. The purpose of the intervention was to promote sensitive and responsive parenting and secure infant attachment to the mother. Women in the control group received no therapeutic input from the research team. Main outcome measures Primary outcomes: quality of mother-infant interactions at six and 12 months postpartum; infant attachment security at 18 months. Secondary outcome: maternal depression at six and 12 months. Results The intervention was associated with significant benefit to the mother-infant relationship. At both six and 12 months, compared with control mothers, mothers in the intervention group were significantly more sensitive (6 months: mean difference=0.77 (SD 0.37), t=2.10, P<0.05, d=0.24; 12 months: mean difference=0.42 (0.18), t=−2.04 , P<0.05, d=0.26) and less intrusive (6 months: mean difference=0.68 (0.36), t=2.28, P<0.05, d=0.26; 12 months: mean difference=−1.76 (0.86), t=2.28 , P<0.05, d=0.24) in their interactions with their infants. The intervention was also associated with a higher rate of secure infant attachments at 18 months (116/156 (74%) v 102/162 (63%); Wald=4.74, odds ratio=1.70, P<0.05). Although the prevalence of maternal depressive disorder was not significantly reduced, the intervention had a benefit in terms of maternal depressed mood at six months (z=2.05, P=0.04) on the Edinburgh postnatal depression scale). Conclusions The intervention, delivered by local lay women, had a significant positive impact on the quality of the mother-infant relationship and on security of infant attachment, factors known to predict favourable child development. If these effects persist, and if they are replicated, this intervention holds considerable promise for use in the developing world.

The effect of Arabian Sea optical properties on SST biases and the South Asian summer monsoon in a coupled GCM

This study examines the effect of seasonally varying chlorophyll on the climate of the Arabian Sea and South Asian monsoon. The effect of such seasonality on the radiative properties of the upper ocean is often a missing process in coupled general circulation models and its large amplitude in the region makes it a pertinent choice for study to determine any impact on systematic biases in the mean and seasonality of the Arabian Sea. In this study we examine the effects of incorporating a seasonal cycle in chlorophyll due to phytoplankton blooms in the UK Met Office coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM HadCM3. This is achieved by performing experiments in which the optical properties of water in the Arabian Sea - a key signal of the semi-annual cycle of phytoplankton blooms in the region - are calculated from a chlorophyll climatology derived from Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) data. The SeaWiFS chlorophyll is prescribed in annual mean and seasonally-varying experiments. In response to the chlorophyll bloom in late spring, biases in mixed layer depth are reduced by up to 50% and the surface is warmed, leading to increases in monsoon rainfall during the onset period. However when the monsoons are fully established in boreal winter and summer and there are strong surface winds and a deep mixed layer, biases in the mixed layer depth are reduced but the surface undergoes cooling. The seasonality of the response of SST to chlorophyll is found to depend on the relative depth of the mixed layer to that of the anomalous penetration depth of solar fluxes. Thus the inclusion of the effects of chlorophyll on radiative properties of the upper ocean acts to reduce biases in mixed layer depth and increase seasonality in SST.

Will the South Asian monsoon overturning circulation stabilize any further?

Understanding the response of the South Asian monsoon (SAM) system to global climate change is an interesting scientific problem that has enormous implications from the societal viewpoint. While the CMIP3 projections of future changes in monsoon precipitation used in the IPCC AR4 show major uncertainties, there is a growing recognition that the rapid increase of moisture in a warming climate can potentially enhance the stability of the large-scale tropical circulations. In this work, the authors have examined the stability of the SAM circulation based on diagnostic analysis of climate datasets over the past half century; and addressed the issue of likely future changes in the SAM in response to global warming using simulations from an ultrahigh resolution (20 km) global climate model. Additional sensitivity experiments using a simplified atmospheric model have been presented to supplement the overall findings. The results here suggest that the intensity of the boreal summer monsoon overturning circulation and the associated southwesterly monsoon flow have significantly weakened during the past 50-years. The weakening trend of the monsoon circulation is further corroborated by a significant decrease in the frequency of moderate-to-heavy monsoon rainfall days and upward vertical velocities particularly over the narrow mountain ranges of the Western Ghats. Based on simulations from the 20-km ultra high-resolution model, it is argued that a stabilization (weakening) of the summer monsoon Hadley-type circulation in response to global warming can potentially lead to a weakened large-scale monsoon flow thereby resulting in weaker vertical velocities and reduced orographic precipitation over the narrow Western Ghat mountains by the end of the twenty-first century. Supplementary experiments using a simplified atmospheric model indicate a high sensitivity of the large-scale monsoon circulation to atmospheric stability in comparison with the effects of condensational heating.

The key role of the western boundary in linking the AMOC strength to the north-south pressure gradient

A key idea in the study of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is that its strength is proportional to the meridional density gradient, or more precisely, to the strength of the meridional pressure gradient. A physical basis that would tell us how to estimate the relevant meridional pressure gradient locally from the density distribution in numerical ocean models to test such an idea, has been lacking however. Recently, studies of ocean energetics have suggested that the AMOC is driven by the release of available potential energy (APE) into kinetic energy (KE), and that such a conversion takes place primarily in the deep western boundary currents. In this paper, we develop an analytical description linking the western boundary current circulation below the interface separating the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW) to the shape of this interface. The simple analytical model also shows how available potential energy is converted into kinetic energy at each location, and that the strength of the transport within the western boundary current is proportional to the local meridional pressure gradient at low latitudes. The present results suggest, therefore, that the conversion rate of potential energy may provide the necessary physical basis for linking the strength of the AMOC to the meridional pressure gradient, and that this could be achieved by a detailed study of the APE to KE conversion in the western boundary current.

Upper-ocean heat budget and ocean eddy transport in the south-east Pacific in a high-resolution coupled model

We present an analysis of the oceanic heat advection and its variability in the upper 500 m in the southeastern tropical Pacific (100W–75W, 25S–10S) as simulated by the global coupled model HiGEM, which has one of the highest resolutions currently used in long-term integrations. The simulated climatology represents a temperature advection field arising from transient small-scale (<450 km) features, with structures and transport that appear consistent with estimates based on available observational data for the mooring at 20S, 85W. The transient structures are very persistent (>4 months), and in specific locations they generate an important contribution to the local upper-ocean heat budget, characterised by scales of a few hundred kilometres, and periods of over a year. The contribution from such structures to the local, long-term oceanic heat budget however can be of either sign, or vanishing, depending on the location; and, although there appears some organisation in preferential areas of activity, the average over the entire region is small. While several different mechanisms may be responsible for the temperature advection by transients, we find that a significant, and possibly dominant, component is associated with vortices embedded in the large-scale, climatological salinity gradient associated with the fresh intrusion of mid-latitude intermediate water which penetrates north-westward beneath the tropical thermocline

Large-scale and synoptic meteorology in the south-east Pacific during the observations campaign VOCALS-REx in austral Spring 2008

We present a descriptive overview of the meteorology in the south eastern subtropical Pacific (SEP) during the VOCALS-REx intensive observations campaign which was carried out between October and November 2008. Mainly based on data from operational analyses, forecasts, reanalysis, and satellite observations, we focus on spatio-temporal scales from synoptic to planetary. A climatological context is given within which the specific conditions observed during the campaign are placed, with particular reference to the relationships between the large-scale and the regional circulations. The mean circulations associated with the diurnal breeze systems are also discussed. We then provide a summary of the day-to-day synoptic-scale circulation, air-parcel trajectories, and cloud cover in the SEP during VOCALS-REx. Three meteorologically distinct periods of time are identified and the large-scale causes for their different character are discussed. The first period was characterised by significant variability associated with synoptic-scale systems interesting the SEP; while the two subsequent phases were affected by planetary-scale disturbances with a slower evolution. The changes between initial and later periods can be partly explained from the regular march of the annual cycle, but contributions from subseasonal variability and its teleconnections were important. Across the whole of the two months under consideration we find a significant correlation between the depth of the inversion-capped marine boundary layer (MBL) and the amount of low cloud in the area of study. We discuss this correlation and argue that at least as a crude approximation a typical scaling may be applied relating MBL and cloud properties with the large-scale parameters of SSTs and tropospheric temperatures. These results are consistent with previously found empirical relationships involving lower-tropospheric stability.