Series:

King's SOAS Studies in Development Geography

2 total works

Cover of Environment and Resettlement Politics in China
The Three Gorges dam, currently being constructed on the Yantgze River in China, is controversial both inside and outside China, particularly because of the large number of people to be resettled (officially 1.2 million) and the environmental impacts. Using material previously unavailable in any Western language, it analyses the Chinese discussions over policy-making for the resettlement process and impacts. It concludes that the environment and resettlement policies have been linked in a new way in this project. However, despite these positive developments, it argues that the social impacts from resettlement have not yet reached a high level of political attention and that the Chinese authorities need to acknowledge that resettlement has social costs. The book provides an understanding of the social, political and economic factors of one of the largest and most controversial development projects currently being implemented. It also sheds light on China's policy-making procedures and political priorities over the past decade.

Cover of Urban Growth and Land Degradation in Developing Cities

The peri-urban interface in poor countries is frequently an area of great dynamism and a focus of competition for basic resources. In Nigeria, peri-urban livelihood strategies have become an increasingly important survival mechanism in the context of rapid urban growth. This book uses an innovative combination of methodologies from both the natural and social sciences to examine recent developments in and around the city of Kano in northern Nigeria, and in doing so, provides insights into the sustainability of these livelihood strategies. Identifying some of the most significant forces that are currently shaping the process of peri-urban change, it argues that, despite the adoption of creative and ingenious strategies by many farmers, urban growth is having a considerable effect on the livelihood resilience of individuals, households and communities.

The findings presented in this book have much wider relevance and are transferable to other burgeoning Third World cities where increased pressures on urban hinterlands have intensified contests amongst various actors, made access to resources much more difficult and made traditional smallholder mechanisms of adaptation and resilience increasingly challenging.