Financial capitalism has driven profound changes in urban land use patterns in Majorca, at the Balearic Islands (Spain). This archipelago is a major tourist destination located in the Mediterranean basin, with 4,492 km2 of surface area, 1,113,114 inhabitants and 12,316,399 tourists (2011), of whom 29.9% came from Germany, 24% from the UK and 19% from the rest of Spain. Neoliberal state regulation has favored the elite’s financial interests in the real estate sector through transport megaproject investment and lifting regional planning restrictions which prevented urban growth.

Many internally displaced people (IDPs) find refuge in cities. However, the scale of global urban internal displacement caused by violence, conflict, disasters and development projects is unknown. Cities struggle to accommodate IDPs since their movements are largely spontaneous, and some authorities may resist helping IDPs for fear of encouraging further influxes. Meanwhile, IDPs face displacement-specific challenges to rebuild their lives in urban settings and may be displaced again in the process due to lack of housing tenure security and violence and insecurity.

Despite a longstanding recognition of the need to improve the response of actors addressing urban displacement, there is a lack of guidance on how to do this and a limited knowledge of practices that have successfully addressed the housing, tenure security and livelihood needs of urban IDPs.

A ENCNB é um instrumento fundamental da prossecução da política de ambiente e na resposta às responsabilidades nacionais e internacionais de reduzir a perda de património natural. Avaliações à escala regional e global evidenciam, de modo crescente, que a prosperidade económica e o bem-estar da sociedade são suportados pelo capital natural, o que inclui os ecossistemas naturais e os seus serviços cuja funcionalidade depende, em larga escala, da utilização sustentável e eficiente dos recursos.

The story of urbanization in Kenya should be one of cautious optimism. As an emerging middle-income country with a growing share of its population living in urban areas and a governance shift toward devolution, the country could be on the verge of a major social and economic transformation. How it manages its urbanization and devolution processes will determine whether it can maximize the benefits of its transition to a middle-income country.

Almost one in seven people around the world are chronically hungry, lacking enough food to be healthy and lead active lives. This is despite the fact that enough food exists for all of the world’s people.1 Agricultural policies, the prices of certain food commodities such as meat and grain and economic development hugely impact food security, but demographic trends also play a role.

In conflict situations, peace settlements and cease-fire agreements may often, end violent conflicts, but do not prevent renewed violence or guarantee a permanent end to conflicts.5 According to the World Bank, chances that renewed conflicts will erupt are high and even higher when control over natural resources is at stake.6 In the past two decades alone, Africa has experienced violent conflicts with successive cease-fire agreements and peaceful settlements, which have often been followed by outbreaks of new conflicts.

Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably.

Producing adequate food to meet global demand by 2050 is widely recognized as a major challenge, particularly for Africa south of the Sahara, including Tanzania (Godfray et al. 2010; Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012; van Ittersum et al. 2016). Increased price volatility of major food crops (Koning et al. 2008; Lagi et al. 2011) and an abrupt surge in land area devoted to crop production in recent years (Grassini et al. 2013) reflect the powerful forces underpinning this challenge.

Urban populations are expanding rapidly and so are cities. Remote sensing offers a convenient means of monitoring this expansion as it covers a period of 40 years in the case of the LANDSAT satellite. In some parts of the globe, this is probably the only viable means of monitoring due to the lack of other types of data. In order to monitor expansion, first, urban land has to be separated from other land-cover types.

Due to urban growth, some agricultural lands have been replaced by residential, municipal, and industrial areas. In some cases the remaining agricultural land will not have enough water because of transfers from agriculture to M''I (municipal and industrial) users. Therefore, in many places, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, the use of treated wastewater as a reliable source of irrigation water has already been, or will be, considered in the future.

Objective: The global obesity epidemic has been partially attributed to modern environments that encourage inactivity and overeating, yet few studies have examined specific features of the physical neighborhood environment that influence obesity. Using two different measurement methods, this study sought to identify and compare perceived and observed neighborhood indicators of obesity and a high-risk profile of being obese and inactive.