Then and Now: Examining Older People's Engagement in Outdoor Recreation Across the Life Course

Outdoor recreation provides a range of health and wellbeing benefits and facilitates engagement with natural environments. We explore older people's participation in outdoor recreation throughout their lives to examine how past experiences shape engagement later in life. A qualitative life history approach, consisting of semi-structured interviews and a focus group in three place-specific (urban, rural, and small town coastal) case studies in Scotland, was adopted. Thematic analysis revealed ways in which childhood experiences shaped adult engagement and highlighted life course transitions where behaviour change was most pronounced. Place and gender were considered as factors which may affect responses. Participants identified the points of getting married, becoming a parent, children entering adolescence, retirement, the onset of disabilities or ill health, and the death of others as “moments of change” in the extent and/or form of their outdoor recreation. The findings highlight potential for targeted interventions to promote outdoor recreation throughout life.     

AN EPISTEMIC COMMUNITY AS INFLUENCER AND IMPLEMENTER IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTING IN AUSTRALIA

This paper explicates the dual role of epistemic communities as influencers of accounting policy within regulatory space and as implementers who effect change within the domain of accounting. Set within the context of New South Wales in Australia, and the challenge of the financial sustainability of its local councils, the study was informed by documentary sources, and used data from interviews and a survey. Accounting and finance professionals, as an epistemic community, played a pivotal role in formulating accounting policy and in embedding fair value measurement of infrastructure assets.     

The future of the uplands

Upland areas provide UK society with many important functions, goods and services, but have experienced a number of disturbing trends and face an uncertain future. This paper outlines historic, current and future drivers of environmental, economic, socio-cultural and policy change in UK uplands, and assesses how these have affected or are likely to affect ways in which land is used and the provision of ecosystem services. Information is synthesised into scenarios summarising a range of possible futures anticipated for UK uplands to 2060 and beyond. Finally, innovations in science, technology, governance and policy are evaluated that could enable uplands to continue providing key ecosystem services under a range of scenarios. The paper concludes that many upland areas will need to be prepared for significant reductions in grazing and prescribed burning. Conversely, other areas could experience agricultural intensification, for example significant increases in grazing or an expansion of arable or bioenergy crops into upland valleys, due to anticipated increases in global demand for food and energy. These scenarios will take place in the context of climate change. Many may take place together and may interact with each other, with complex and unpredictable implications for the upland environment, economy and society. In this context, a number of advances are needed in science, technology and policy to maintain viable upland communities and the future provision of ecosystem services. These may include funding for ecological and hydrological restoration via carbon offsetting or other means. It may also involve advances in ecosystem service modelling, mapping and valuation, which through stakeholder participation could facilitate more integrated rural planning. New forms of environmental governance need to be explored that can empower those interested in developing upland economies to maintain thriving upland communities, while managing the ecosystem services they provide as efficiently as possible.     

THE NPM AGENDA: BACK TO THE FUTURE

The New Public Management agenda for change has been extremely influential. This paper considers future developments in NPM. In this evaluation of the future of NPM it is argued that the complexity of NPM – in concept and in practice – requires a multi‐dimensional consideration of what NPM is and what it will become. In this paper, NPM is explained around three key dimensions: (1) management processes; (2) mechanisms of change, and (3) constraints. Within these three dimensions, nine key elements of NPM implementation are discussed. This paper concludes that the pressures for NPM will not abate. However, its evolution will continue to be severely contested.     

A simple and efficient method for estimating the magnitude and precision of welfare changes: comment

A recent article (Breslaw and Smith, 1995 ) published in this journal provided an iterative numerical technique for computing the welfare effects of price changes. In this note we take issue with the application used to demonstrate this technique. In particular, we show that the demands used are inappropriate and that the authors incorrectly interpret the precision of the estimates of welfare change. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.