Interrogating public policy, environmental governance, and sustainable urbanism

Plan-REFUGE aspires to understand and mitigate food inequities experienced by small-holder farmers in the Global South. Using a transdisciplinary approach we investigate how small-holder farmers in the Global South adapt their daily living practices in the face of a number of challenges including globalization and climate change. Lessons from on-the-ground experiences are used to inform purposeful community development and planning strategies. The project ensures a Global South to Global South learning exchange as well as capacity building of policy makers both locally and globally through publications and trainings. Plan-REFUGE is a collaborative effort that aims to have multiple study countries including India.

Published in Geography Research Forum, “Legal Pluralism, Land Tenure and the Production of “Nomotropic Urban Spaces” in Post-colonial Accra, Ghana” explores the legal duality that exists in urban Accra, Ghana, reflected in its customary and statutory legal land systems. The author communicates two key arguments: 1) ‘truly’ informal spaces in Accra, Ghana may only apply when both statutory and customary legal land systems are violated, and 2) the urban poor have little or no motivation to comply with customary and/or statutory legal land systems because of increasing land prices and other bureaucratic processes which increase transaction costs pertaining to land. 

The perceived and actual causes of flood hazards in cities of sub-Saharan African countries have come under tremendous debate. In Accra, the capital of Ghana, flooding has been the key source of human vulnerability. Studies carried out on flood vulnerability in the city have given varied attributions to their frequent occurrences.

Environmental governance systems are under greater pressure to adapt and to cope with increased social and ecological uncertainty from stressors like climate change. UB’s Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah has reviewed principles of social cognition and decision making that shape and constrain how environmental governance systems adapt.