Patrick Neumann's Blog – June 2012 Archive (5)

I read the article "Covering risk". I was kind of surprised about what I read. I mean, after I read it, it all seemed logical and comprehensible to me, but I never really was conscious about how "easily" people's perception of something is influenceable by journalists and the media in general. For example, the words you choose to describe the current situation make a huge difference and are from enormous importance. Here is a classic example:

If you say a pandemic could kill…

I chose the case study "Involving fishing communities in marine protected area development: The establishment of marine reserves in Negros Oriental, Philippines" which is about a project that has the aim "to protect selected parts of the coral reefs in order to allow over-exploited economically important food-fish stocks to recover".

As the Philippines are an archipelago (about 7.107 islands), it is surrounded by lots of coral reefs. Approximately two million Filipinos are dependent on…

In ten years, I hope I have nice job which is well-paid but also makes a lot of fun. I don't want to be a top manager, but I want to earn enough money to enable my family a life free from (financial) worries. Of course, I hope my wh*** family will still be healthy. Health is the most valuable thing in life.

I live together with my wife and my two children, a boy and a girl who were just born (but no twins ;)), in a beautiful town in either Germany (e.g. Hamburg, Munich) or Australia…

I think, for my town, Braunschweig/Germany, an information system like Ushahidi is not that necessary. Of course, it would be a "nice thing to have", but as I tried to think about something that is most likely to happen here (natural disaster, food shortages, power outages, political crises, health outbreaks, other social disruptions), I came to the decision that none of it has a high probability of occurring here in the next years. Our region is quite safe concerning natural…

I chose a story about child marriage in Pakistan. Unfortunately, child marriage is still common in countries like Pakistan. Almost 25% of the girls get married before they turn 18. Families decide to marry their girls "as a reasonable response to the economic and psychological stresses of flood-related displacement and loss of livelihood, and a way to reduce the future burden of the family".

That's why the organization PLaCES (Protective Learning and Community Emergency Services) has…