Martin Haigh

• PhD
• Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes University

Effective headwater protection and management requires community support and engagement. This requires an understanding of the attitudes and values of the host community (e.g. Pande and Pande 2020). This chapter examines environmental attitudes among undergraduate learners at a Hindi-medium university in the headwaters of the Uttarakhand Himalaya,...

Environmental education means many more things today than in previous decades. Now, because of the over consumption of natural resources and overloading, curtailment or poisoning of natural ecosystems and, despite the denials of powerful politicians, it is overwhelmingly apparent that we are facing an emergent environmental crisis of global and civ...

Many reclaimed opencast coal-lands in Wales are now seriously degraded. This study explores the 10-year growth of native trees planted on compacted coal spoil. It compares the relative benefits of planting with spent mushroom compost (SMC) or well-rotted farmyard manure (FYM), both with and without supplementary fertilizer. Four main tree species—C...

Degraded land (formerly ‘reclaimed’) after surface-coal-mining is a serious problem in South Wales. This project uses forestation to foster soil development on opencast coal-mine spoil technosols. It compares records of humification and the soil microbiological system (microcoenosis) using paired data from the same plantings in 1998 and 2018. Stati...

Geocapabilities developed during team project-based fieldwork add value to Tourism Geography service modules in professional Tourism and Hospitality Management curricula. This article is based on a case-study in Turkish Higher Education. Here, variations on the Prisoner’s Dilemma were used to confront learners with some ‘wicked problems’ they may f...

Globally, there is a need to promote and empower practical action towards better environmental conservation and greater sustainability; education aspires to achieve and motivate this – one mind at a time. This book advances a future-oriented vision of the development of environmental sustainability education in settings outside the high-school. It...

Teaching learners with different disciplinary backgrounds, aptitudes, worldviews and cultures is an abiding problem in Higher Education. Special measures are needed to ensure that course design, teaching methods and, especially, assessment does not exclude, alienate or disinvite learners simply because they have different capabilities and ways of u...

The reclamation of surface (opencast) coal mines is not always successful; there remains a legacy of degraded land that burdens local communities. This article evaluates a community-oriented, low-cost means of geoecological regeneration, the “Cradle for Nature” strategy, which uses mosaic tree planting to foster positive natural ecological processe...

Healing wells have long played a role in the folklore of Wychwood. Some, like Bridewell, with ancient, pre-Christian and pre-Roman roots, remain active in the present day, although, today, their spiritual life; there are few votive offerings and their healing functions largely forgotten. Until the mid-20th Century, community engagement focussed on...

Constructive ecotourism is tourism based on altruism. It engages well-meaning volunteers in worthwhile environmental projects. This explores the motivations of environmental volunteers using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and India's Triguṇa theory with its three modes of Nature. Adopting different theoretical lenses is an easy path to attaining new i...

While the ideas and objectives of Western, often religious, agricultural and development organisations in international development are well documented, those of Hindu NGOs operating, internationally, outside India are not. This paper explores the approaches of some of the key players. These include Gandhian Sarvodaya (especially in Sri Lanka), the...

The United Kingdom has a problem in the disposal of municipal green waste (MGW). This is unsuitable for landfill, but when properly composted may be beneficial to tree growth. A formal controlled trial of the 11-year growth (height, diameter at breast height [DBH]) and survival of 3 tree species was evaluated on degraded former opencast coal land o...

Headwaters are the low order catchments found on the upper margins of river basins. Designing effective land use policies for headwater areas is challenged by uncertainties related to changes in environmental, political and socio-economic circumstances, and by extreme events. This special headwater issue explores the changing relationships between...

At its best, internationalised education is about promoting the welfare of the future world and tackling its most serious problems. However, the UK’s Higher Education system, internationalisation has evolved at least 8 narrative layers, not all with such lofty ideals. The most base simply concern financial survival. In a world where domestic studen...

Long-term research, which respects the timescales of environmental systems and catchment processes, is important for effective headwater management. However, research is, increasingly being governed by the short-timescales of annual academic and financial reporting and research grants, with negative consequences for research quality. The arguments...

Forest phytoremediation through forestry may be an effective means for reducing the metal loading in lands reclaimed after surface-coal-mining in the UK. Planted with mixed woodland, soil loadings of 5 key metals (Zn, Cd, Mn, Pb and Cu) decreased, significantly and progressively, compared to soils left as grassland, through a 14 year forestation ch...

Fieldwork is the most powerful learning invitation in the toolkit of Geographical Education. This review of papers in The Journal of Geography in Higher Education (JGHE) suggests seven modes in the development of fieldwork. These are arrayed as a kind of historical, perhaps evolutionary, sequence but most remain current in Geography fieldwork pract...

The degradation of land formerly reclaimed after surface‐coal‐mining (opencast) is a widespread problem in upland Wales. This community‐based project aims to support the voluntary sector in land reclamation project by investigating the means of reversing land degradation. It explores ways of encouraging trees to ameliorate the severely compacted, i...

Connective practices are affective educational activities and critical for sustainability education. They bridge the gap between knowledge of environmental problems and the will, personally, to do something about them. Three sources of pedagogic theory are tapped for this application to sustainability education. From Deep Ecology comes the pedagogi...

Long-term research, which respects the timescales of environmental systems and catchment processes, is important for effective headwater management. However, research is, increasingly being governed by the short-timescales of annual academic and financial reporting and research grants, with negative consequences for research quality. The arguments...

Self-sustainability is the goal of postmining ecological land reclamation, but nature is the only agency that can create a self-sustaining system. The most effective approach, therefore, is to build a "Cradle for Nature;" an environment softened to enable the self-creation, establishment, and guided development of an infant natural geoecological sy...

A geographical education offers more than skills, subject knowledge and generic attributes. It also develops a set of discipline-specific capabilities that contribute to a graduate’s future learning and experience, granting them special ways of thinking for lifelong development and for contributing to the welfare of themselves, their community and...

This book addresses the evaluation of environmental impacts and services identified in headwaters of different eco-zones around the world. It presents 24 papers selected from contributions to recent meetings of the European Forestry Commission Working Party on the Management of Mountain Watersheds, which is coordinated by the FAO (Food and Agricult...

Powerpoint of AQAL Integral: a holistic framework for pedagogic research

Opencast coal-mining is a controversial and, directly or indirectly, an environmentally damaging land-use choice that is now suspended in several countries including Wales. However, the impact of ‘reclaimed’ opencast coal-mine sites is not totally negative. Reclaimed opencast coal-lands in SE Wales can provide positive benefits through increasing b...

This book is devoted to the search for environmental self-sufficiencies in highland and headwater regions. Its aim is one promoted by the founders of modern India who called upon communities to seek self-reliance and to develop ways of life which allow a harmonious, non-destructive balance with natural systems (Gandhi, 1969). The routes towards thi...

Learning invitations are strategies that encourage learners to engage with education. Learning invitations take many different forms but the aim is to create these invitations intentionally and systematically. This might be easier if there were some guidance to different styles of learning invitations. The Dharmic typology proposed builds upon idea...

Education for Global Citizenship is about living as though the future mattered. This evaluates learner reactions to a tree-planting exercise that invites reflection upon hopes for the world, personal responsibilities and acting locally while thinking globally. Participant hopes concerned: environmental sustainability, peace on earth, then the welfa...

Causal layered analysis (CLA) is a technique that enables deeper critical inquiry through a structured exploration of four layers of causation. CLA’s layers reach down from the surface litany of media understanding, through the layer of systemic causes identified by conventional research, to underpinning worldviews, ideologies and philosophies, and...

The degradation of formerly reclaimed opencast coal-land is a problem for Wales. This project explores strategies for community-based volunteers aiming to re-establish self-sustaining woodland. It evaluates three planting methods (forestry-style notch-planting, parks-and-gardens-style pit-planting and orchard terrace-style trench-planting) through...

A Tirtha yatra, Hindu pilgrimage, is a liminal process that establishes participation in the spiritual realm. It is also undertaken as a social duty, a rite of passage and mode of supplication and engages with sacred landscapes that are partly defined by sacred symbols, cosmographic and astrological alignments, traditions, festivals, and the belief...

Does former coal land of low acid-generating potential impact significantly on water quality in their immediate environment? This chapter explores the evidence from Southeast Wales using data collected on an array of reclaimed opencast coal-lands in a largely post-industrial area where river quality has now improved after many decades of severe pol...

Belgeo hosted a special symposium at the International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society (London), a unique cooperation between the journal and the RGS, held in late August 2014 at Imperial University, London. Alexis-Martin explores the psychosocial impacts of exposure to nuclear radiation by comparing the impacts on female survivors of...

This chapter explores the emergence of Hinduism as a world religion and the globalization of its tradition since the emergence of the post-1960s New Age Counter Culture. Employing Nattier’s three-category ‘import/export/baggage’ model, it examines some key players among those who brought Hinduism out of India. These include some Western ‘˜Seeker’ i...

Focusing on the UK’s Hindu community, this explores some modes for the communication of pro-sustainability messages and their affective strength. These campaigns employ the community-center role of many UK Hindu temples to connect Hindu congregations to the cause of environmental sustainability through the medium of Hindu scripture and tradition. T...

The evolving narrative on internationalisation in higher education is complex and multi‐layered. This overview explores the evolution of thinking about internationalisation among different stakeholder groups in universities. It parses out eight coexisting layers that progress from concerns based largely upon institutional survival and competition t...

The authors propose a working definition of ethical Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), advance an ethical framework for SoTL inquiry, and present a case study that illustrates the complexity of ethical issues in SoTL. The Ethical SoTL Matrix is a flexible framework designed to support SoTL practitioners, particularly in the formative stag...

Unreclaimed strip mine dumps near Henryetta, Oklahoma were employed as a natural laboratory for the study of slope evolution. These dumps were created by similar technologies and from similar materials but at different times. Modern, 30-year-old and 60-year-old slopes were compared through morphometric analysis and by the direct measurement of curr...

AQAL is a methodology for the holistic mapping of multiple perspectives and worldviews. Developed by Ken Wilber and colleagues, AQAL Integral analysis is founded in AQ quadrant mapping, which assesses four viewpoints for every situation. These are the Interior Subjective intentional (I) perspective, the Interior Collective cultural (We) perspective...

Transformative learning may involve gentle perspective widening or something more traumatic. This paper explores the impact of a transformative pedagogy in a course that challenges learners to 'think like a planet'. Among six sources of intellectual anxiety, learners worry about: why Gaia Theory is neglected by their other courses; the removal of h...

Land degradation on officially ‘reclaimed’ opencast coal-mine sites is a widespread problem in South Wales. This project explores methods suitable for use by community volunteers seeking to effect local environmental improvement by restoring geoecological self-sustainability on lands that are commonly affected by extreme auto-compaction and low soi...

AQAL is a methodology for the holistic mapping of multiple perspectives and worldviews. Developed by Ken Wilber and colleagues, AQAL Integral analysis is founded in AQ quadrant mapping, which assesses four viewpoints for every situation. These are the Interior Subjective intentional (I) perspective, the Interior Collective cultural (We) perspective...

The authors propose a working definition of ethical Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), advance an ethical framework for SoTL inquiry, and present a case study that illustrates the complexity of ethical issues in SoTL. The Ethical SoTL Matrix is a flexible framework designed to support SoTL practitioners, particularly in the formative stag...

Intercultural learning processes are about learning to be and about reshaping the learner’s being. An interview survey of international staff at Oxford Brookes University, UK, revealed the important ways that many manage their identities in order to mesh productively with the dominant culture. This experience is elaborated here through an explorati...

This aims of this community education initiative is to foster sustainability consciousness and behavioural change in the UK's minority Hindu community and determine how awareness affects behavioural intentions. This report compares the effectiveness of an educational experience designed for the congregation at the Janmashtami Festival organized at...

Focusing on the peer review process, this guide for potential Journal of Geography in Higher Education (JGHE) authors suggests 10 golden ground rules for preparing a successful contribution to the JGHE. These are (1) have something interesting to say, (2) have something useful to say, (3) address your audience, (4) write with academic rigour, (5) l...

This study is about the fundamental causes and character of landslides in the Himalaya and similar mountain belts. In part, it is intended as a protest against the repetitive and misleading reports that so often follow each successive extreme rainfall event and consequent landslide swarm. The problem is that many of these.‘kneejerk’. reactions to a...

The European Forestry Commission Working Party on the Management of Mountain Watersheds, formerly called the Working Party on Torrent Control, Protection from Avalanches and Watershed Management, was established by the European Forestry Commission (EFC) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on the occasion of its Thir...

Shri Balarama’s Sarasvati River pilgrimage from the Mahabharata’s Tirthayatraparva is examined as an archetype for modern Hindu pilgrimage. Exploration of contexts suggests that Shri Balarama enacts His journey in His role Adiguru, the original teacher, and as Ananta-shesha, the eternal servant and support for Shri Vishnu. The Goddess Sarasvati, th...

The increasing focus of universities on employability is stimulating debates about the purpose of higher education. In this article, we consider what attributes society will demand from graduates in the future. We use Wilber's integral theory to tease out some of the issues in the current conceptualisation of graduate attributes and argue that we n...

Invitational Theory argues that learning is enhanced when learners are positively encouraged or ‘invited’ into the educational experience. Arising from perceptual and self-concept theory, Invitational Pedagogy is constructed on four principles: respect for people, trust, optimism and intentionality, and upon five pillars: people, places, policies,...

Geographers are commonly called upon to diagnose the causes of natural disasters and provide guidance for policy makers. This case study concerns one of the landslide and flood disasters that afflicted the Himalaya in the later Monsoon of 2010, the Almora District (Uttarakhand), landslide swarm, which affected thousands of kilometres of roadway and...

AbstrAct This editorial uses the framework of spiral dynamics, from business and leadership education, to explore the different worldviews represented within this special issue on transformative learning. It highlights the misalignment of the consciousness of current top-down, authoritarian, management hierarchies in higher education with that of t...

Increasingly, sustainability is conceived as a crisis of the human mind and the key challenge for pro-sustainability education is developing sufficient motivation in learners. The spiritual aspirations of religious communities contain sufficient motivational force, which may be deployed for effective sustainability education. This paper explores th...

The objective of the study was to engage Brookes academic and academic-related staff (international staff, local staff with international educational experience and local staff without international educational experience) in a dialogue about their experiences of education overseas and their experiences of teaching in the UK and to enter into a mut...

Reductions in the fieldwork component of many environmental curricula mean that graduates have less practical experience. This paper attempts to compensate by developing a short, intensive, highly structured field exercise that aims to connect classroom theory to field realities in the context of the management of reclaimed coal-land. A self-paced...

Sees wetlands in context ▶ Considers wetlands in headwater – upland and mountain regions ▶ Holistic examination of wetlands in their wider environmental, hydrological and socioeconomic contexts – most previous work treated wetlands in isolation ▶ Outcome of the 'Nairobi Declaration for the International Year of Freshwaters' 2003 Internationally, th...

The bed-load sediments that are found trapped in the depositional alluvial fans of ephemeral gullies and ravines are the remains of sediments mobilised by erosion in the catchment minus those sediments removed by flowing water. Erosion is selective; it removes different parts of the soil and regolith in different proportions and the least easily mo...

The 6th International Conference on Headwater Control (IHC6) was held in Bergen in 2005. This meeting on Headwaters belongs to a tradition established at the first international conference in Prague, 1989 (Krecek et al., 1989) and developed through subsequent meetings (Krecek and Haigh, 1992; Singh and Haigh, 1995; Haigh et al., 1998). Much of any...

Despite Nilsson coining the term 'Internationalisation at Home' in 1999, discussion of internationalising the curriculum is still dominated by ways of inducting international students into 'How the West is Done' (Doherty and Singh, 2005). Research has repeatedly shown that the focus of internationalisation needs to be on the majority home student (...

It is easier to introduce international content and components into a curriculum than to internationalise the curriculum itself. Learners find it easier to deal with international material embedded in a traditional curriculum but harder to accommodate to a curriculum constructed on different foundations to the norm. Here, in general, the problem le...

Education for a sustainable future aspires to increase pro-environmental behavior. This evaluates a project designed to help a British Vaishnava congregation reduce their ecological footprint by linking “Karma to Climate Change.” It employs a tented educational experience fielded at major Hindu Festivals. Participants are guided through a linked se...

Instead of treating internationalization as the addition of multicultural elements to a Western curriculum, why not begin with a non-Western curriculum framework?

Cambium electrical resistance (CER) is explored as a rapid-assessment method of measuring of forest vitality and disease damage. A five year study in a 10-year-old mixed plantation of Alder (Alnus glutinosa, L.) and Oak (Quercus petraea (Mattuschka) Liebl.) created for the reclamation of surface-coal mined land in South Wales found a negative corre...

The internationalisation of higher education aims to produce ‘citizens that feel at home in the world’ but the process is driven by both economic and educational motivations. Today, the international community aspires to promote Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Education for Democratic Citizenship (EDC), together planetary citizenshi...

Environmental quality must be sustained in areas affected by surface coal-mining. This requires designing and developing environmentally sensitive strategies for coal extraction and land reclamation. It demands a more rigorous control of environmental impacts and more attention to ensuring productive and sustainable land restoration. The greatest t...

Making educational places more inviting to learners is a key aspect of Invitational Theory. This paper introduces a simple technique for sensitizing learners and instructors to how their environment affects their feelings and ability to learn. It describes a learning exercise that may be used to assess, evaluate and transform places, to promote eit...

This paper examines ethics in learning and teaching geography in higher education. It proposes a pathway towards curriculum and pedagogy that better incorporates ethics in university geography education. By focusing on the central but problematic relationships between (i) teaching and learning on the one hand and research on the other, and (ii) eth...

Commencing each class session with a class quiz, which emphasizes the previous week’s work and is supported by immediate feedback, encourages students to revise their notes ahead of the session, undertake more reading and keep pace with course progression. It reduces the necessity for any spoken review of the previous week’s work, provides guidance...

This geomorphological examination of the effects of two common erosion control strategies on a 17° coal-briquette spoil embankment at Pernik, Bulgaria, finds that while ground losses increase significantly with both slope length and slope angle, the forestation of an unvegetated slope significantly reduced inter-rill erosion (1.9 vs 7.0 mm yr-1) wh...

Environmental sustainability education, the dissemination of environmental education for sustainable development into the community, should be a lifelong process and not one restricted to a learner's years in higher education. Informal environmental sustainability education, including personal involvement in NGO environmental action, can be an effe...

Around 13% of the UK is peat wetland. The perceived value of this land has been low and much has been invested in converting these lands to agriculture and forestry. Perhaps a fifth of the British peaty uplands have been drained and, since 1945, about a fifteenth forested. The traditional view is peat lands adsorb and store rainwater but undisturbe...

Hitherto, wetland research has focused more on the internal attributes of wetlands than on the role of wetlands in wider watershed contexts. It has also concentrated on coastal and floodplain wetlands more than those in headwaters, many of them peatlands, which have greater hydrological significance through potential downstream impacts. Previously,...

Runoff from peat land is supposed to be dominated by surface and near surface flows causing large flood peaks. However, Waunafon's degraded valley fen peat moorland includes organic layers up to 0.5m deep that are unsaturated in summer. So while, overland flow may be affected by rainfall onto saturated ponds, runoff in soil pipes, and through chann...

This paper makes a critical assessment of problem-based learning (PBL) in geography. It assesses what PBL is, in terms of the range of definitions in use and in light of its origins in specific disciplines such as medicine. It considers experiences of PBL from the standpoint of students, instructors and managers (e.g. deans), and asks how well suit...

Deep ecology arises from the personal intuition that one's self is part of the world's environmental wholeness. This awareness may be constructed upon scientific foundations but it is more commonly thought a spiritual concept. Deep ecology pedagogy emerges from its three-step process of ecological Self-realization. This paper traces the roots of th...

Preface.- eadwater Wetlands J. Krecek, M. Haigh.- Mapping Wetlands in European Headwater Areas M.L. Paracchini, J.V. Vogt.- The Role of Forest on the Hydrology of Headwater Wetlands Y. Fukushima.- Role of Grassland Ecosystems in Protection of Forested Wetlands J. Krecek et al.- The Effect of Peat Land Drainage and Afforestation of Runoff Dynamics:...

This report details the main. Water supply and better water management were linking themes. These works suggest four arbiters for success in the sustainable management of headwaters: a clear and agreed message, clearly targeted action, a willingness to work with others (not least the UN agencies), and personal commitment as the main motivation. In...