C08.17 Global Change and Human Mobility

Session: Global climate change, economic crisis and human mobility

Chair(s): Armando Montanari & Yoshitaka Ishikawa

Abstract:
Globility examines those forms of human mobility that may be related to the processes of global climate change, to new forms of investment, local development and to social and cultural behaviour. A distinctive feature of such forms of mobility is the way in which they combine economic, social and cultural functions and the shift from mobility driven by labour migration dependent on the organisation of production to mobility generated by activities that are prevalently consumer driven. The Globility Commission considers issues that are quite innovative and not always included as such in the research agenda of geography departments and faculties. Globility studies are hindered by the difficulty in correctly detecting and studying the phenomenon at a general level. The phenomenon can be better analysed on a local scale. Each territory is capable of activating original mobility processes with characteristics and implications which do not occur in the same way elsewhere. If each place is a separate case then at an international level general qualitative conditions can be indicated, but certainly not a precise correspondence of quantitative definitions and characteristics. The local level and the territory become the favoured parameters for the observation of global flows. Indeed, at this level it can be better assessed to what extent the economic development of a location determines the activation of population flows, whether temporary or definitive, and vice versa, that is, to what degree these flows contribute to development in its various stages.

Timeslots: 5

Session: Global climate change and human mobility in coastal area: the SECOA Project

Chair(s): Armando Montanari

Abstract:
Global climate change, human mobility, and urban growth are the most relevant elements affecting coastal areas management and development.
Human mobility includes migrants – at regional, national and international level -, commuters – for reasons linked both to production and consumption -, and tourists. The continuously increasing population in cities has generated an urban growth – both in terms of houses and of enterprises – that has often resulted into deconcentration processes – residential and economic – which has led to phenomena of urban sprawl. Urban growth and processes of urban restructuring determine the attractiveness for new flows of people, thus human mobility and urban growth are interlinked and mutually generated.
The increasing number of persons, houses and enterprises in urban coastal areas determines a pressure on the coastal environment, its natural and cultural resources. There is a permanent increase in (i) water and soil consumption; (ii) water, air and soil pollution; and (iii) waste production. The competition in the resources utilisation generates conflicts among all the stakeholders involved in the urban context, i.e. residents, commuters, tourists, and enterprises. The ever changing coastal natural environments affected by the climate change are complicating the situation, often in the direction of negative consequences. The problem is how to manage those conflicts through a sustainable urban planning which has to include environmental protection, economic development, and social cohesion. On this issues researchers from Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom, Israel, India, and Vietnam prepared a research project on Solutions for environmental contrasts in coastal areas (SECOA) which has been selected by the European Commission for financing under the FP7 for the period 2009-2013 (http://www.projectsecoa.eu/)

Timeslots: 3