Monday 30 November 2015

Paris Climate Change conference recommended academic resources


The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 or CMP 11 is being held in Paris from November 30 to December 11. It will be the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. 

Official websites.
The official website has agendas, documents,  decisions and webcasts. 
On the left of the home page there are some very useful links to basic treaties, documents and process information.
The Paris organisers have a twitter account with the latest news.

National governments and international bodies
UK government website with information for citizens
the House of Commons Library have also prepared an excellent briefing
European Commission work on climate change OECD documents and policy on climate change
UNDP video   and UNDP policy and documents
 IEA document on energy and climate change 2015
UNESCO 
NATO Parliamentary assembly 
World Meterological organization statement on temperatures and climate


News coverage.
find out why the conference matters in this BBC short video  
more updates and detailed analysis can also be obtained from the News website
Guardian
Nature magazine 
Economist
FT
Telegraph
New York Times EurActiv

Declarations form interest groups and campaigners.
Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact
The Women's Earth & Climate Action Network
Shift Project 

Green Alliance ( Christian Aid, Green Alliance, Greenpeace, RSPB, and WWF) 


Academic research and analysis
Brookings Institution
World Resources Institute
Includes some papers with suggestions on the legal text
The Conversation blog 
Chatham House calls for lowering meat consumption
Grantham Institute LSE

Looking for articles and reports
Eldis has lots of links to free reports and documents
LSE subscriptions include: Environmental Impact
Greenfile, scopus and web of science 





Friday 27 November 2015

Social Science sites of the week


Social Science sites of the week.
Here is our round up of new and interesting sites for social scientists 


2015 - Spending Review and Autumn Statement - try these free resources

The government published a joint Spending Review and Autumn Statement on 25th November

The official government website is a good starting point . It provides an explanation of the process.and contains the speeches and supporting documents
HM Treasury has supporting documents.
Office of Budget Responsibility has financial data and forecasts

A House of Commons briefing paper. gives detailed background on the context and aims of the review
See more on our blog posting http://alissresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/2015-spending-review-and-autumn.html

Working household poverty is worse
According to the latest annual poverty and social exclusion report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which provides data and analysis for the last 5 years . The Trussell Trust has also recorded rising foodbank usage Also this week analysis on lifetime wealth from IFS found that using data from the Wealth and Assets survey younger generations were likely to be less well off than their parents.
For more recent links to free onlne reports covering UK social policy, economics and more from think tanks see our blog at http://socialsciencecurrentwareness.blogspot.co.uk/
ISER is also conducting some interesting research into new ways of measuring poverty. Their blog links to a number of discussion papers.


European Data Portal
Launched this month a new resource developed by the European Commission offering free access to over 240,000 datasets from 28 European Nations. These are harvested from open government data from EU nations websites. It is possible to search or browse by category, records give source information, URLs and license terms. Datasets can often be exported in excel or xml formats. Eurostat provides access to official datasets from EU bodies and surveys

Want to find more free open access data portals?
Try this list from openinception it has mapped over 1600. Hover over the maps to get statistics on different nations. Then zoom in on individual areas to get direct links to individual websites. Some are national, some regional or local government Read this article to find out more.about the aims and process

Are women under-represented in the news?
Yes according to the latest Global Media Monitoring Project report which found that they represented only 25% of those heard read about of mentioned in the news 2015 . The same overall percentage as in 2010. The report gives finding s on news coverage and women journalists presenting the news in a variety of media worldwide.

For other sources on this see the IWMF Global report on the status of women in the media 2011 which examines their employment status in new organisations. Journalists.org has a useful collection of links to recent full text reports from a range of think tanks and monitoring groups.

Accountable Journalism site launched
New from the The Ethical Journalism Network and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, University of Missouri. This free database has the full text of ethics codes covering the media from nations worldwide. There is also an extensive bibliography of books on media codes and accountability

Examining UK government performance
Just released this week from the Institute for Government the Annual Whitehall Monitor 2015. This provides statistics and visual data on government department size staffing impact and transparency. There are 163 data tables

Last month the Alliance for Useful Evidence released a new framework tool to measure government departments in how transparent their use of evidence is in policy making decisions.


Finally starting xmas shopping how about some suffragette badges from the Womens Library@lse flick photo album . Or how about a suffragette hat as advertised in the December 23, 1911 edition of the Vote womens Freedom League newspaper. The lse has just made available a podcast of a discussion with the director of the recent suffragette film