Tagged / sustainable

SPARC Seminar: Cities of (physical) culture 25/09/23

Cities of (physical) culture

 “Green” Urban Infrastructures, Physical Activity Promotion, and their Margins

 

Amid a worldwide growth in urban populations and an increasing policy focus on creating “smart”, “sustainable” and “wellness” cities, the relationship between cities and physical activity has been changing from the end of the 20th century.

Previously confined in specific urban areas, the pursuit of active physicality has been progressively seen as contributing to a range of urban functions (from health promotion to social cohesion) in the city itself. This has been particularly relevant for urban leaderships facing the need to regenerate dismissed industrial areas and to promote urban diversity and citizenship in increasingly unequal cities.

Yet, as urban initiatives aim to build “the city of the future” including by changing how urban residents move within it, what forms of urban citizenship these interventions envision, and what hierarchies of belonging and deservingness do they (re)produce? How are these processes lived and negotiated by urban dwellers differently positioned at the social and spatial margins of the city?

This seminar draws on research conducted in Italy (Turin) and Brazil (Sao Paulo) to explore how “sustainable” urban policies and the urban spaces and infrastructures they create shape the ways in which urban inequalities are manifested and negotiated through leisure and physical activities in contemporary cities.

This seminar will be held on Monday 25th September

from 14:00-15:00 at F109 Fusion, Talbot Campus

For more information, please contact:

Sport and Physical Activity Centre (SPARC) futurestudents@bournemouth.ac.uk

Nicola De Martini Ugolotti, Senior Lecturer In Sport, ndemartiniugolotti@bournemouth.ac.uk

Alessandra Bueno, Visiting fellow BUBS abueno@bournemouth.ac.uk

Dig for…eco toilets!

Over the last week, the ‘Sustainable Green Toilet Project’ has begun in Kenya, where excavations have been completed and foundations are now being built. Bournemouth University Research Associate Katie Thompson from the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences (SciTech) is working alongside ACEF (Akamba Children’s Education Fund) charity volunteers and this plumber Sydney to build the new toilet facility for 800 school children who attend and live at the Brainhouse Academy, in Nairobi, Kenya.

The newer, cleaner toilet facilities will feature a bio digester energy recovery system producing biogas for the school and liquid fertiliser. Innovative research will also be investigated into at this location, including utilising energy from microbial life forms to generate electricity.  Katie and the students  will be travelling to Kenya in March this year to continue to work on the project.  Their work is part of the re-designed Wessex Portal  http://www.wessexportal.co.uk/

If you would like to know more about the project and keep up to date with any progress, then follow our blog via: www.wessexportal.co.uk or contact Katie Thompson on thompsonk@bournemouth.ac.uk or Genoveva Esteban gesteban@bournemouth.ac.uk.

New health editorial on Sustainable Development Goals & Nepal

international, Publishing, student research, writing

Regmi SDG 2016SDG 17Since late 2015 the world strives to achieve towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The SDGs bring together the social, economic and environmental aspects of development. There are 17 SDGs sub-divided into 169 targets. One of these 17 goals focuses specifically on health, namely to “ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all age”. SDG devotes 13 health-related targets to diverse population health and wellbeing issues including maternal and child health, communicable disease including HIV, non-communicable diseases, substance use, traffic accidents, universal access to sexual and reproductive health, and sanitation.

Nepal is one of the many countries that have signed up to the SDGs. This week BU researchers Dr. Pramod Regmi, Prof. Vanora Hundley,  Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, FHSS, PhD students Sheetal Sharma and Preeti Mahato, and BU Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (Liverpool John Moores University) published an editorial under the title ‘Sustainable Development Goals: relevance to maternal & child health in Nepal’ [1]. This editorial written by health researchers working in Nepal highlights some of the weaknesses in the country’s health care system.   These key problems include the persistence of inequalities in health and the limited access to health services and the low uptake of care in many poorer populations especially in the more remote rural regions. For instance, only about one in nine of the poorest women deliver their babies with the aid of a skilled birth attendant (SBA), whilst 81.5% for the richest women benefit form a SBA. Therefore, this editorial stresses the need for a continuum of health care services to be available across the country and for all sections of the society. Moreover, we can only assess whether a country has reached all or any of the SDGs if there is systematic monitoring and regular review of interventions at all levels. Hence, Nepal should develop measureable and time-bond indicators to track its progress towards the SDGs. The country will need support from development partners in both its attempts to achieve the SDGs as well when it tries to collect and analysis data to assess its progress.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingn

CMMPH

 

Reference:

  1. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sharma, S., Mahato, P. (2016) Sustainable Development Goals: relevance to maternal & child health in Nepal. Health Prospect 15(1):9-10. healthprospect.org/archives/15/1/3.pdf

 

Future energy needs and efficiency

Funding opportunities

Depleting non-renewable resources and limited alternative (heat pumps and solar photovoltaic), renewable (tidal, wind, solar) options of energy generation are posing challenging questions. In addition sustained energy supply and security are important factors to consider.

“European Union ministers meeting  in Luxembourg have signalled support for draft European Commission plans for an energy efficiency law impacting directly on utilities” http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/news/news.asp . Among other considerations it is noted that “Reinvigorated efforts are necessary in order to reach the 20% EU energy saving objective by 2020.” This is an optimistic, challenging but achievable target. However these savings could easily be topped up with available options and technologies available to us without painful cuts to energy consumption in our daily lives. This should not necessarily mean that energy inlets are to be reduced or energy flow through these inlets is reduced. As both of these are directly related to life standard and output. For example we will have to choose either have a TV or laptop and/or have a smaller TV at domestic level. Or reduced manufacturing lines in the industry or reduced number of industry.

One third of the available energy is dissipated through frictional heat in mechanical interacting machines for example motors, pumps, compressors, internal combustion engines, steam/tidal/wind turbines and manufacturing tools etc. A significant part of this energy is recoverable. This is achieved through mathematically adjusting the surface profile of the interacting surface through which energy is transferred. This key aspect is part of the science and engineering of friction, wear and lubrication; Tribology.

Colleagues in the Sustainable Design Research Centre have expertise and resources in this key and strategically important area of activity and are also actively engaged in the BU initiative within Green Knowledge Economy. If you are interested in this area or would like to find out more contact Professor Mark Hadfield / Dr Zulfiqar Khan. For details please see the SDRC webpage.