This paper introduces a series of African and Asian case studies on environment and development. It explores the tension between optimistic and pessimistic interpretations of environmental maintenance and transformation. It critically examines political ecology and eco-populism before analysing underlying models of governance, social justice and human rights. Key concepts in understanding the relationship between environment and development are discussed, including security, sustainable livelihoods, coping and entitlements. The paper ends with a discussion of marginality and vulnerability with particular attention to urban and informal sector environments.

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Since the late 1980s international aid for development has fallen while humanitarian assistance for emergencies has increased. This change of emphasis reflects the collapse of the USSR and consequent political instability in the former Soviet Union, its former satellites and client states. It also reflects donor disillusion with the failure of many development projects. Much humanitarian assistance is delivered in complex emergencies such as in Angola, Somalia, Rwanda, the Caucasus and former Yugoslavia. Almost without exception these emergencies relate directly to global, regional, national and local political instability created by the ‘new international political order’. Many of the emergencies have roots in the colonial era and a deep history in cultural tensions loosely described as ethnic conflict. Many complex emergencies entail enormous violence, massacres of civilian populations, deliberate destruction of the means of production, ethnic cleansing, torture and rape, displacement of population, refugeedom, social and economic collapse, traumatisation and psycho‐social problems of whole populations and state collapse. Complex emergencies are dynamic, characterised by uncertainty and by rapid and unpredictable changes affecting all aspects of life.

This article looks at a seasonal river¯ooded irrigation system in eastern Sudan called the Gash Delta. The Gash Delta, as an irrigation system, has been managed since the 1900s, ®rstly by the Anglo-Egyptian colonial administration and currently by the Gash Delta Agricultural Corporation (GDAC). The Gash Delta supports a range of ethnic groups who have a diversity of production strategies, some of which are more successful than others. Since the 1980s, there has been a recognition of a breakdown of the irrigation system, illustrated by the declining surface areas available for agriculture and a general degradation of the physical production base. This has had negative impacts on the ethnic groups who rely on the Gash Delta for subsistence and livelihood. This paper examines the process of degradation and the looks at the possibility for rehabilitating the Gash Delta.

Overview This article presents an overview of the additional aspects of history-taking that need to be considered when assessing patients presenting with a rash. This relies on strong underpinning anatomy and physiology knowledge to correlate the skin presentation to what may be happening pathophysiologically within the patient's skin. Four case studies are presented, with leading questions which are then explained. The overall aim of this article is to provide an introduction to key dermatological presentations for the paramedic as a starting point for more thorough reading and exploration on the subject.