Building back better from COVID-19: Knowledge, emergence and social contracts.

COVID-19 recovery is an opportunity to enhance life chances by Building Back Better, an objective promoted by the UN and deployed politically at national level. To help understand emergent and intentional opportunities to Build Back Better, we propose a research agenda drawing from geographical thinking on social contracts, assemblage theory and the politics of knowledge. This points research towards the ways in which everyday and professional knowledge cocreation constrains vision and action.

The future for Mediterranean wetlands: 50 key issues and 50 important conservation research questions.

Unlabelled: Wetlands are critically important for biodiversity and human wellbeing, but face a range of challenges. This is especially true in the Mediterranean region, where wetlands support endemic and threatened species and remain integral to human societies, but have been severely degraded in recent decades. Here, in order to raise awareness of future challenges and opportunities for Mediterranean wetlands, and to inform proactive research and management, we identified (a) 50 key issues that might affect Mediterranean wetlands between 2020 and 2050, and (b) 50 important research questions that, if answered, would have the greatest impact on the conservation of Mediterranean wetlands between 2020 and 2050.

How do you build back better so no one is left behind? Lessons from Sint Maarten, Dutch Caribbean, following Hurricane Irma.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals call for action to build back better in ways that leave no one behind. At the same time, ensuring a local voice is increasingly central to humanitarian engagement. These aims contrast with limited analysis of how local actors might be supported in these respects during response and recovery, and how far recommendations are specific or generalisable across richer and poorer national contexts.