Exploration and Action
Enhancing Local Resilience to Climate Change: An Evaluation of the Resilient Florida Grants Program
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Haris Alibašić
Florida has established the Resilient Florida Grants Program in response to escalating threats from sea-level rise, violent storms, flooding, and climate-related hazards. The initiative supports local governments in conducting vulnerability assessments and implementing resilience projects. This paper examines the effectiveness of the Resilient Florida Grants Program, focusing on its effectiveness in enhancing the adaptive capacities of local communities to climate change. Through a qualitative-method approach, investigating publicly available documents, data, and reports, the study assesses the effectiveness and outcomes of funded projects on local resilience strategies. The research integrates the principles of resilience theory and community-based adaptation (CBA) to analyze the effectiveness of resilience solutions and local governance in enhancing climate resilience in Florida. These theoretical perspectives offer a comprehensive approach to assessing the multifaceted strategies employed by the state to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change while not directly referring to the term itself. The analysis reveals critical insights into the program's role in fostering statewide adaptation and mitigation planning, the challenges encountered by local entities, and the potential pathways for enhancing the program's effectiveness in mitigating climate risks.
Exploring Sustainable Development in the Cruise Industry
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Eini Haaja, Carolin Lusby
The cruise industry is loudly proceeding with sustainability advancement as both cruise lines and shipbuilders are now setting ambitious sustainability objectives. However, given the wide and complex business networks in the industry, various actors seem to have somewhat scattered, general-level objectives, while the systemic change for sustainability calls for collective, practical and farsighted developments. Our study explores the variety of these views among different industry stakeholders and asks (1) how do different cruise industry actors view the future of the industry and (2) how are the growing sustainability demands affecting it. The research data is based on interviews conducted with company representatives in shipbuilding and cruise lines, and in related associations and policymaking bodies. The findings of the research show that the future seems blurred in terms of how the ships and the whole cruise concept will change in the future, particularly due to regulatory pressures both in the EU as the location for key shipbuilders and in the variety of cruise destinations that seek to limit the negative impacts of cruising in their communities and environments. The sustainability objectives thus play a central role in the future development of the industry, combined with changing customer demands and technological advancements.
Far-Right Ecologism in Local and Transnational Scales: Putting Down Roots and Navigating Contradictions
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rafal Soborski
The long tradition of anti-universalist, localist thought on the far right is articulated nowadays in terms of warnings that globalization not only involves the exploitation of people, but also destroys environmental structures no longer adequately protected by the nation-state. Whereas some on the far-right remain committed to the reconstruction of the nation-state, others have fused deep ecologism with ethnoseparatism in favour of bioregional or other localist solutions, while assuming the eventuality of a catastrophic breakdown of the international system as a precondition for sustainable social renewal. The paper examines the distinctive ideologic of this form of utopian catastrophism alongside that of other versions of deep ecologism and considers its transnational adaptations following the unprecedented rise in human migration in recent decades. As research on social remittances indicates, ideas and values travel with people, and this includes far-right ideas carried by activists who declare uncompromising loyalty to their homelands. Given its attachment to place, and the fact that far-right ecologists leading transnational lives represent a contradiction in terms, the question is how this ideological current adapts when operating in transnational spaces. The paper evaluates the degree of continuity between the transnational far right today and its historical national predecessors. Using the case study of Polish far-right migrants in Britain, it shows that the ideological adaptation which helps far-right ecologists alleviate the tension of migration and put down roots in new places, is mediated through political myths and symbolic narratives revolving around long-established far-right themes of the soil and the dead.
