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The author examines the role of constitutions in Hong Kong, the principal concern being the implications of the Basic Law which comes into effect in July 1997 as the constitution of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In order to show the purpose and method of the Basic Law, he also scrutinizes the role of colonial constitutions in the territory. (DÜI-Sen)

Ce texte receille des notes de lecture critiques relatives à l'analyse interdisciplinaire réalisée par Michel Aglietta et Nicolas Lerron dans leur ouvrage « La double démocratie. Une Europe politique pour la croissance », récemment publié aux Éditions du Seuil. Les auteurs placent leur analyse dans une perspective historique, avec l'objectif d'expliquer pourquoi l'Europe est plus vulnérable que les autres région du monde et d'identifier les moyens de donner de nouvelles impulsions au projet européen. Le constat des auteurs est sans appel : l'Union européenne et la zone euro sont aujourd'hui en impasse. Parmi les principales causes, ils identifient l'impuissance publique, les interdépendances négatives entre les États membres et le caractère incomplet de l'UEM. Ils mettent également en lumière une crise de la méthode de l'intégration européenne, vu que le postulat de l'engrenage, ou encore celui des petits pas prôné par Jean Monnet semblent avoir épuisé toutes leurs potentialités.

Fifty years ago this week, Egypt attacked Israeli forces in the Israeli-occupied Sinai, with a simultaneous Syrian attack in the occupied Golan Heights, to begin what became known as the Yom Kippur War. The war and its diplomatic aftermath both exhibited and cemented some ways of viewing the U.S. role in the Middle East that are reflected in policy issues today.President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger viewed the Arab-Israeli conflict, as they viewed most of their foreign policy, primarily through a Cold War lens. At the level of great power relations, such a view could yield successes such as the opening to China, which counted as a success partly as a way of outflanking the Soviet Union. But imposing the Cold War template on local conflicts could lead to unhelpful misinterpretations of what such a conflict was largely about.An example had occurred two years earlier in 1971, when restiveness of Bengalis in what was then the eastern portion of Pakistan, followed by a Pakistani military crackdown and a flow of refugees into India, caused a South Asian crisis and a war between India and Pakistan. Most observers, including in the U.S. national security bureaucracy, viewed the crisis in terms of humanitarian needs and the satisfying of Bengali aspirations for self-determination through creation of what became the state of Bangladesh while keeping the Indo-Pakistani conflict from escalating further. Nixon and Kissinger instead saw the crisis as a Cold War proxy conflict, with the USSR supposedly instigating a move by the Indian government of Indira Gandhi to crush Pakistan.That interpretation was almost certainly a misinterpretation of the nature of the conflict and of Indian objectives. But it was this interpretation that drove U.S. policy, which included a saber-rattling show of force by a nuclear-armed carrier task force in the Bay of Bengal. Among the ill consequences of the episode were a cementing of the USSR's position as the dominant external power on the subcontinent through its support of India — with Moscow scoring additional points as a champion of Bangladeshi independence — and a tilt of opinion in New Delhi toward developing its own nuclear weapons.By Cold War standards, the crisis surrounding the Yom Kippur War was much more of a U.S. success. An airlift of weapons from the United States helped Israel to ultimately prevail militarily over the Soviet-supplied Egyptians and Syrians. Kissinger was the impresario of subsequent disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt, shutting out the Soviets. Not least, events related to the war and its aftermath led Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to abrogate Egypt's friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in 1976 and to become more a partner of Washington than of Moscow.The Cold War framework persists in some present-day American visions of the U.S. role in the Middle East — although with China sometimes now seen as the major great power adversary — in ways that exhibit shortcomings of that framework. Promoters of the Biden administration's effort to broker full diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, in the absence of any other explanation of how this effort supposedly advances U.S. interests, contend that a normalization agreement would limit Chinese influence in the Persian Gulf region.Such a contention continues a Cold War type of zero-sum thinking that mistakenly assumes there is a fixed amount of dealing that Middle Eastern states have with outside powers, and that doing more business with one power necessarily means doing less with another. In fact, there is no good reason to believe that even a Saudi Arabia that had exchanged embassies with Israel and been rewarded by the United States for doing so would lose the strong economic and other reasons it has to maintain extensive relations with China. Israel itself is an instructive example. The decades-long U.S. support to Israel, including $158 billion in military and economic assistance, has not kept Israel from building extensive ties with both China and Russia and trimming its policies to maintain good relations with those powers, such as on issues involving the war in Ukraine.To the extent that sepia-tinged memories of the Yom Kippur War move away from Cold War mentalities and focus on what Arabs and Israelis were doing, those memories tend to cement the image of a beleaguered Israel valiantly defending itself against aggressive and hostile neighbors eager to push the Jewish state into the sea at the first opportunity. This image has underlain those many billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Israel. And it is true that it was two of those Arab neighbors, Egypt and Syria, that launched the war of October 1973.Less prominent in forming lasting and influential images is the fact that Egyptian and Syrian forces were attacking on land that Israel had forcibly seized in a war that Israel started by attacking Egypt on June 5, 1967. The immediate military objective of Egypt and Syria in 1973 was thus to regain land that had been part of those two countries until Israel captured it through force of arms six years earlier.Israel also had fired the first shots in another earlier war against Egypt, in 1956. It later would initiate other hostilities in the region, including an invasion of Lebanon and other actions that collectively constitute more use of military force outside a country's own territory than any other Middle Eastern state has exhibited. Today, ever since Saudi Arabia suspended its air war against Yemen, the most active campaign of cross-border military attacks in the region is the Israeli aerial assault on targets in Syria. Keeping that campaign of attacks unimpeded is one of Israel's reasons for maintaining good relations with Russia.Half a century after the Yom Kippur War, Israel is far from being a beleaguered nation and instead is the most militarily powerful state in the Middle East, with little hesitation to throw its military weight around. But the image of the plucky little state under threat from aggressive neighbors continues to have influence. The political and diplomatic aftermath of the 1973 war is another part of the war's legacy. Although at the time of the cease-fire, Israeli forces were winning and Egyptian forces were losing, the Egyptian military did well enough in the early days of the war to regain some of the honor it had lost in 1967 with its swift defeat by Israel. That gave Sadat the political room to take his peace-making trip to Jerusalem in 1977. That in turn led to the U.S.-brokered Camp David Accords in 1978, one of the signal events in what is still euphemistically called the Arab-Israeli "peace process."It is fitting that the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War almost coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, another landmark in the same "peace process," because the political aftermath of the former set a pattern that the latter would also exhibit. That pattern is one of Israel pocketing whatever peace agreements it can gain with Arab neighbors while making indeterminate noises about Palestinian self-determination, which is continually kicked down the road and never realized.The first part of the Camp David Accords included specific commitments about an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The second part consisted of vaguer language about eventual resolution of the "Palestinian problem." There was to be a five-year transitional mechanism in which Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would be given some autonomy, with negotiations on the final status of those territories to begin no later than the third year of the transitional period. A shortcoming of the Accords was that implementation of the first part (Egypt and Israel did sign a peace treaty the following year) was not made conditional on implementation of the second part.Fifteen years after Camp David, the provisions regarding the Palestinians finally seemed to be getting implemented, with the creation in the Oslo Accords of the Palestinian Authority. But the five-year transitional period came and went long ago, and the Palestinians are as far as ever from self-determination. The "transitional" Palestinian Authority is still around, functioning mainly as a security auxiliary to the Israeli occupation and widely discredited among the Palestinian people. "What we have today," observes Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project "is the language of peace in the service of illegal actions, disenfranchisement, and apartheid."There are too many variables to spin out a convincing alternative history regarding what would have happened had Nixon and Kissinger not stepped into the 1973 war with a surge of military assistance to Israel. But Sadat's words and actions both before and after the war made clear that his objective was not to push Israel into the sea but rather to make peace with it, provided that Egyptian territory was restored.Maybe if Israelis had become less conditioned to count on the United States to provide unqualified protection from any difficult situations — even ones of their own making, such as their previous conquests of other states' territory — the subsequent history regarding the "Palestinian problem" would have been different. The U.S. handling of the Yom Kippur War, however much it might be chalked up as a U.S. win on the Cold War scorecard, was a major episode in that conditioning.The actual history has been one of an ever-stronger Israel becoming increasingly self-assured about kicking the Palestinian can ever farther down an endless road. Policies of later U.S. administrations have furthered that process. The Trump administration's policies of showering Israel with gifts and brokering supposed "peace" agreements with Arab countries that were not even at war with Israel convinced Israelis more than ever that they could enjoy such fruits while continuing to push farther out of reach anything that looked like Palestinian self-determination. The Trump policies were an extreme case of tendencies that had roots in U.S. policies in the 1970s, starting with that victory-ensuring infusion of U.S. munitions during the Yom Kippur War. The Israeli response is embodied in the current extreme right-wing Israeli government, which hardly even bothers to make indeterminate noises on the subject anymore and makes obvious that its policy — if not a new Nakba and expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland — is indefinite apartheid.This Israeli policy means indefinitely living by the sword, which is a tragedy mostly for the Palestinians but also for Israel itself, for its patron the United States, and for the cause of true peace in the Middle East.

Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 11 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and labor market regulation. Doing Business 2016 presents the data for the labor market regulation indicators in an annex. The report does not present rankings of economies on labor market regulation indicators or include the topic in the aggregate distance to frontier score or ranking on the ease of doing business. This regional profile presents the Doing Business indicators for economies in Southern African Development Community (SADC). It also shows the regional average, the best performance globally for each indicator and data for the following comparator regions: East Asia and the Pacific (EAP), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), European Union (EU), Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA). The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2015 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period January–December 2014).

10/28/2020 DR. SAÚL JIMÉNEZ-SANDOVAL NAMED PROVOST – Fresno State News www.fresnostatenews.com/2019/04/05/dr-saul-jimenez-sandoval-named-provost/ 1/4 DR. SAÚL JIMÉNEZ-SANDOVAL NAMED PROVOST Home | ACADEMICS , FEATURED STORIES , PRESS RELEASES | DR. SAÚL JIMÉNEZ-SANDOVAL NAMED PROVOST Previous  Next  Dr. Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, a veteran academic administrator with extensiveties to the Central Valley, is Fresno State's new provost and vice president forAcademic Affairs, effective July 22, 2019. President Joseph I. Castro announced the appointment on April 5. Theprovost is the University's chief academic officer and serves as its leaderwhen the president is away from campus. Jiménez-Sandoval joined the Fresno State faculty in 2000. During his 19years of service at the University, he has served as professor of Spanish andPortuguese, coordinator of the Spanish master of arts, chair of theDepartment of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, interimassociate dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, and dean of theCollege of Arts and Humanities. A multilingual scholar, he recently helped launch the new Portuguese BeyondBorders Institute, in collaboration with fellow deans of other Fresno State       Search . SECTIONS ACADEMICS  CAMPUS &COMMUNITY  RESEARCH  ALUMNI  PRESS RELEASES  FEATURED VIDEOS  NEWS SOURCES Fresno StateMagazine  CommunityNewsletter  Fresno State  The Collegian  Bulldog Blog  ACADEMICS CAMPUS & COMMUNITY RESEARCH ALUMNI ATHLETICS FEATURED VIDEOS  ABOUT PRESS RELEASES MEDIA GUIDE ARCHIVES10/28/2020 DR. SAÚL JIMÉNEZ-SANDOVAL NAMED PROVOST – Fresno State News www.fresnostatenews.com/2019/04/05/dr-saul-jimenez-sandoval-named-provost/ 2/4 colleges. As a scholar, Jiménez-Sandoval studies poetic discourses, criticaltheory, Spanish American literature and Lusophone cultural productions.Among his academic honors are two nominations for the Carnegie U.S.Professor of the Year Award. "Dr. Jiménez-Sandoval is a dynamic scholar and administrator with anunwavering passion for our University's mission to boldly educate andempower students for success," said Castro. "I am excited to work with him toguide Fresno State to even greater heights of academic distinction, which willhelp to elevate the entire Central Valley." Under Jiménez-Sandoval's leadership as dean, the College of Arts andHumanities moved to a new level of excellence by introducing innovativefields, enhancing the quality of programs, increasing the number of tenure-track professors, increasing student enrollment, increasing timely graduationrates, and leading highly successful fundraising initiatives. As he passionately believes that students thrive in multidisciplinaryenvironments, Jiménez-Sandoval has built collaborative programs betweenthe College of Arts and Humanities and other academic units, including aprison art project with the Department of Criminology, an exploration ofcommunicative and philosophical perspectives on science with the College ofScience and Mathematics, a Correctional Recreational Certificate with theDepartment of Recreation Administration, and Ethnic Studies projects with theCollege of Social Sciences. Jiménez-Sandoval said: "I'm humbled and honored by the trust PresidentCastro and the search committee have placed in me, and reinvigorated by thesupport of campus and community members. I love this fertile land – one thatnurtures our community in celebration of its vibrant diversity – and I loveFresno State, for its concrete potential to transform countless lives of studentswho become world-renowned artists, scientists, teachers, engineers, medicalprofessionals and social servants. I'm excited to get to work on promotingstudent excellence, empowering faculty to inspire the next generation ofleaders, and advancing strategic academic, artistic and economic innovationsthat will positively impact the quality of life in our Valley." Jiménez-Sandoval serves in a leadership role on a number of councils thatnurture cultural ties, collaboration and fundraising opportunities, including:President's Commission for the Future of Arts and Humanities; President'sJewish Leadership Council; President's Latino Leadership Community Group;President's Portuguese Leadership Council; President's Armenian LeadershipCouncil; SE Asian Community Task Force; and University High School Board. Go Bulldogs  Videos  Social MediaDirectory  10/28/2020 DR. SAÚL JIMÉNEZ-SANDOVAL NAMED PROVOST – Fresno State News www.fresnostatenews.com/2019/04/05/dr-saul-jimenez-sandoval-named-provost/ 3/4 By Lisa Boyles Bell | April 5th, 2019 | Categories: ACADEMICS , FEATURED STORIES , PRESS RELEASES | Tags: Academics , College of Arts and Humanities , Fresno State , Joseph Castro , provost , Saul Jimenez-Sandoval | 0 Comments SHARE THIS STORY, CHOOSE YOUR PLATFORM!     RELATED POSTS "As chair of the Academic Senate, I am thrilled at the prospect of workingclosely with Dr. Jiménez-Sandoval, our new provost," said Thomas Holyoke,professor of political science. "Dr. Jiménez-Sandoval has a long history ofworking in close consultation with faculty in the College of Arts andHumanities, and I believe that he will bring that same dedication to faculty,and faculty governance, to his new role as our new provost and vice presidentfor Academic Affairs." Jiménez-Sandoval moved to the Fresno region as a child and tended thefamily farm while growing up in a bilingual, bicultural environment. An honorsstudent at Fowler High, he went on to the University of California, Irvine,where he earned a double bachelor of arts (cum laude) in Spanish andhistory, and a Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese literatures. In addition, he hasprofessional certificates in critical theory from Cornell University, in Spanishart history from Escuela de Arte y Antigüedades de Madrid (Spain), and inPortuguese language and culture from Universidade Nova de Lisboa(Portugal). Jiménez-Sandoval is married to Dr. Mariana Anagnostopoulos, a professor inthe Department of Philosophy; they are proud parents of two boys, Arion andLeo. SAÚL JIMÉNEZ-SANDOVALAPPOINTEDINTERIM PRESIDENTOF FRESNO STATE October 28th, 2020 | 0Comments TRANSPORTATIONINSTITUTE RELEASESPROMISINGFINDINGS OFCOVID-19 PUBLICTRANSIT STUDY October 28th, 2020 | 0Comments NURSING MUNIT CONTFREE HEALSERVICES OWEST FRES October 27th, Comments  10/28/2020 DR. SAÚL JIMÉNEZ-SANDOVAL NAMED PROVOST – Fresno State News www.fresnostatenews.com/2019/04/05/dr-saul-jimenez-sandoval-named-provost/ 4/4 Fresno State News Hub isthe primary source ofinformation about currentevents a􀃠􎁥ecting CaliforniaState University, Fresno, itsstudents, faculty and sta􀃠􎀻;providing an archive ofnews articles, videos andphotos, as well as links tomajor resources on campusas a service to theuniversity community. CONTACT US CALIFORNIA STATEUNIVERSITY, FRESNO 5241 N. 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Spatial planning should have a key role in creating urban environments that support less energy-intense lifestyles. A wise consideration of energy in urban land use policies should play an important role considering that, in spite of having a land occupation of 2% and accommodating 50% of the world population, cities produce 80% of GHG emissions and consume 80 % of the world's resources.In the building industry, the green economy is already part of the designers' approach. This has already produced several energy efficient buildings that also feature high architectural quality. Now is the turn of cities to take the same direction in developing the capacity of formulating sounded urban policies. This will contribute to develop adequate new tools for achieving the energy efficiency goal.Climate change concern, the dominating environmental paradigm, is permeating the political scenario worldwide, producing a plethora of formal documents. The most recent one is the COP21 agreed in Paris in December 2015, after the failure of the Copenhagen summit in 2009, and formally signed in April 2016 in New York. The challenge for land use planning now is to translate these general commitments into actions that modify planning practices at all levels, from cities to regions.In this field, the current situation is extremely varied. EU has issued several documents focussed mainly at building level but also sustainable transports are considered a key issue. However, a further step is needed in order to increase the level of integration among all land use approaches, including the idea of green infrastructure as a key component of any human settlement. (European Commission, 2013). The relationship between urbanisation and climate change has become key worldwide but looking at it from a Mediterranean perspective arises some specificities, considering also the political strain that this part of the world is facing. Both Southern Europe and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries will face stronger heat waves in the near future (Fischer and Schär, 2001). Their cities, often poorly planned for decades, will be considerably affected by these temperature upsurges.A further complexity arises from the fact that the energy approach in land use plans is not direct. Including energy considerations in urban and regional planning is hardly a technological issue. On the contrary, it requires a deep change in the mind-set of urban planners that have to think at the whole city structure wearing the new "energy glasses".It is possible to trace the energy issue in land use planning back to its history. Spatial planning has a long lasting tradition in defining the shape of urban fabric and the layout of buildings, taking into account the role of the sun and the wind. This tradition has evolved from the seminal experiences of modernist planning to the new sustainable districts, recently developed in several countries like Germany, the Netherlands, France and Sweden, including the ones described by Peter Hall (2014) in his last book.But Mediterranean countries have an even longer tradition in building cities and houses that were capable of facing hot temperatures, without any of the electric appliances that are consuming now a considerable share of energy. As part of this long-established tradition, it is worth remembering the inspiring contribution of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. Looking back at the city history is not a mere exercise based on nostalgia. Making greener Mediterranean cities, as they were up to a recent past, is a complex task but it will become unavoidable in order to guarantee forms of sustainable cooling.This is especially true in those cities that have grown considerably in the second half of the 20th century, according to high-density models.Urban planning has been also concerned with defining the proper mix of land uses, taking into account the key role of transports. Compact and walkable cites, rich of activities, are naturally energy efficient. The lesson taught by Jane Jacobs in her seminal book Death and Life of Great American Cities remains relevant also assuming the energy approach. More recently, emerging planning themes are including the containment and retrofitting of urban sprawl by integrating transport and land use planning. Applying Transit Oriented Development (Tod) principles can induce a change in mobility choices of inhabitants of this unsustainable form of urban settlement, by giving them more mobility opportunities.Land use planning will also play a relevant role in accommodating new forms of distributed sustainable energy production in the urban fabric. The recent 2015 Snapshot of Global Photovoltaic Markets, by the International Energy Agency, confirms that economic incentives, like feed-in tariffs, are not enough to guarantee a stable diffusion of this type of energy production. After the phasing out of this incentives there diffusion of PV, reduces considerably. This is case of Italy that installed only 300 MW of PV systems in 2014, compared to 9,3 GW in 2011, 3,6 GW in 2012 and 1,6 GW in 2013. Integrating energy production in the city as part of urban design will increase the opportunity of making sustainable energy production an inherent feature of the city design, including energy production devices in the city realm and using them for retrofitting poor quality buildings.In addition, planning tools have to incorporate incentives aimed at favouring higher energy standards, both for new and existing buildings. The costs of these actions should be covered by planning normative tools. Several techniques, like the Carbon Offset Fund in Great Britain, have been tested but there is a great need of new research in this field, at national and local level, since these tools are not easy to implement without taking into account site-specific norms and approaches. In addition, the exclusive use of the market leverage risks to confine these tools to wealthy communities, excluding the poor ones.These new attitudes require not only new planning tools but also a great capacity of devising urban policies capable of involving communities with different cultural backgrounds and planning traditions. A wise mixture of tradition and innovation is central to innovate the urban planning discipline in the direction of sustainability. A lot of mental energy has to be devoted to the difficult but stimulating objective of improving the energy awareness of our cities.

This thesis provides an analysis of the discourses of nature conservation in South Africa and Driftsands provincial nature reserve from constructionist and environmental justice perspectives. At the outset I examine the theoretical framework on the social construction of nature and that of environmental justice. I then discuss the history of nature conservation in South Africa. Finally I analyse the discourse (nature conservation and local communities) surrounding the Driftsands Provincial Nature Reserve (DNR). This nature reserve is located one kilometre east of Cape Town International Airport, in the Western Cape, South Africa. My analysis of the first theoretical framework (the social construction of nature) confirms that a) the idea of nature is constructed over time; b) nature, as a concept and a phenomenon, is complex; c) nature discourses reveal, hide, and create 'truths' about nature which are accepted as being truthful yet are a question of social struggle and power politics; d) humans have amassed countless definitions of the word 'nature'. Those definitions are categorised by Castree and Braun (2001) into three groups: external, intrinsic, and universal. My analysis of the second theoretical framework (environmental justice) suggests that the idea of nature can be used constructively or negatively depending on who uses it and why. The link between both theoretical frameworks suggests that nature is bound up with agendas. Humans construct natures to pursue individual, social or political agendas. From this standpoint the focus of the thesis shifts from debating whether or not nature is socially constructed to examining what type of agendas were pursued to achieve those 'natural' constructions, and what their consequences were for local communities living in and around protected areas. In order to achieve this, I employed four interlinked analytical methods (stakeholder, discourse, critical and ideological analysis). My analysis of the case study of DNR and that of the history of nature conservation in South Africa suggests ideological similarities. First, in both cases nature conservation is inspired by external environmental views. In the colonial period of South Africa, nature conservation policies and practices were shaped by English and Afrikaner protectionist ideas and aimed also to address the demand of their naturalists, sportsmen, and explorers for hunting and exploiting wild animals. In post-apartheid South Africa, nature has been 12 constructed in protected areas according to universalised environmental views and to some extent has been proactive, meaning that it aimed to address some of the social challenges. Likewise, at DNR, nature conservation was adopted in the early 1980s by the white government to pursue political agendas. In the late 1980s nature conservation began to be influenced by universalised environmental views. Second, the ideological nexus of both discourses regarding nature and local communities suggests conformity with global environmental models. Under these models the normal course is: a) to fence local communities from protected areas or to fence protected areas from local communities, b) to maximise the boundaries of protected areas, or to minimise the settlements of local communities in protected areas, c) to regulate local communities' access to protected areas and natural resources, d) to promote persuasive concepts of ecotourism to achieve nature conservation goals through community participation, co-benefiting local communities from protected areas, co-managing protected areas with local communities, and local socio-economic development, e) to aim for the removal of the on-site communities from protected areas. The impoverishment of the DNR on-site communities has been effected by means of three ideological principles. Since 1990, DNR's on-site communities have been labouring under a state of emergency - the state of living below the flood line; the state of high level of house robbery and a worrying level of rape and child abuse. Their dispossession has led to the spaces of temporality - a state of informality and limited public services and hopelessness (there is no hope of sustaining settlements on the site). Currently, these communities are cornered between two choices. Either they voluntarily relocate their shacks into the surrounding townships or they live with the state of emergency, hopelessness and temporality. Local communities of other protected areas in South Africa have been similarly impoverished by these states of emergency, temporality and hopelessness. During the colonial period, South Africa's conservation discourses were predominantly white-based. Whites constructed the common sense among themselves that they own the land and wildlife. Constructing the idea that they are the people of the land meant also suppressing the non-white sovereignty over land and natural resources. For example, Until late in the twentieth century [South African children's literature in English] 13 usually endorsed the assumption held by whites that they had exclusive ownership of the land and wildlife' (Jenkins, 2004: 107). While whites were protecting South Africa's wildlife, they also alienated blacks from nature. It is just recently, after 1994 that, 'English-Language children's writers and translators of indigenous folktales for children have begun to explore traditional beliefs about and practices in conservation (Jenkins, 2004: 107). These statements do not state or imply that English literature on humannature discourse begun to explore the idea of harmony where indigenous people live and depend on wildlife. In South Africa, it is typical for non-white communities living in or around protected areas to be relocated voluntarily or by force from their land or their settlements, and to be denied resources they had traditionally used within protected areas. Finally, both contemporary discourses continue to be in line with various universalised conservation models. Although both discourses have evolved over time, the status quo of local communities has remained the same: impoverished by exclusion from protected areas, permitted participation in only insignificant co-management models and recipients of intangible benefits. Although the contemporary discourse on nature conservation appears to be more considerate of local communities, I suggest that it is early days for this young discourse to achieve harmony between people and nature. It is up to local and national governmental and non-governmental agencies to modify global environmental views rather than fully adopting them, in order to be more respectful and accommodating of local communities.

In the new issue, our scientific journal offers you thirteen scientific articles. As always, we try to offer a wide variety of topics and areas and follow current trends in the history of science and technology. In the article by Olha Chumachenko, оn the basis of a wide base of sources, the article highlights and analyzes the development of research work of aircraft engine companies in Zaporizhzhia during the 1970s. The existence of a single system of functioning of the Zaporizhzhia production association "Motorobudivnyk" (now the Public Joint Stock Company "Motor Sich") and the Zaporizhzhia Machine-Building Design Bureau "Progress" (now the State Enterprise "Ivchenko – Progress") has been taken into account. Leonid Griffen and Nadiia Ryzheva present their vision of the essence of technology as a socio-historical phenomenon. The article reveals the authors' vision of the essence of the technology as a sociohistorical phenomenon. It is based on the idea that technology is not only a set of technical devices but a segment of the general system – a society – located between a social medium and its natural surroundings in the form of a peculiar social technosphere, which simultaneously separates and connects them. Definitely the article by Denis Kislov, which examines the period from the end of the XVII century to the beginning of the XIX century, is also of interest, when on the basis of deep philosophical concepts, a new vision of the development of statehood and human values raised. At this time, a certain re-thinking of the management and communication ideas of Antiquity and the Renaissance took place, which outlined the main promising trends in the statehood evolution, which to one degree or another were embodied in practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. A systematic approach and a comparative analysis of the causes and consequences of those years' achievements for the present and the immediate future of the 21st century served as the methodological basis for a comprehensive review of the studies of that period. The article by Serhii Paliienko is devoted to an exploration of archaeological theory issues at the Institute of archaeology AS UkrSSR in the 1960s. This period is one of the worst studied in the history of Soviet archaeology. But it was the time when in the USSR archaeological researches reached the summit, quantitative methods and methods of natural sciences were applied and interest in theoretical issues had grown in archaeology. Now there are a lot of publications dedicated to theoretical discussions between archaeologists from Leningrad but the same researches about Kyiv scholars are still unknown The legacy of St.Luke in medical science, authors from Greece - this study aims to highlight key elements of the life of Valentyn Feliksovych Voino-Yasenetskyi and his scientific contribution to medicine. Among the scientists of European greatness, who at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries showed interest to the folklore of Galicia (Halychyna) and Galician Ukrainians, contributed to their national and cultural revival, one of the leading places is occupied by the outstanding Ukrainian scientist Ivan Verkhratskyi. He was both naturalist and philologist, as well as folklorist and ethnographer, organizer of scientific work, publisher and popularizer of Ukrainian literature, translator, publicist and famous public figure. I.H.Verkhratskyi was also an outstanding researcher of plants and animals of Eastern Galicia, a connoisseur of insects, especially butterflies, the author of the first school textbooks on natural science written in Ukrainian. A new emerging field that has seen the application of the drone technology is the healthcare sector. Over the years, the health sector has increasingly relied on the device for timely transportation of essential articles across the globe. Since its introduction in health, scholars have attempted to address the impact of drones on healthcare across Africa and the world at large. Among other things, it has been reported by scholars that the device has the ability to overcome the menace of weather constraints, inadequate personnel and inaccessible roads within the healthcare sector. This notwithstanding, data on drones and drone application in Ghana and her healthcare sector in particular appears to be little within the drone literature. Also, little attempt has been made by scholars to highlight the use of drones in African countries. By using a narrative review approach, the current study attempts to address the gap above. By this approach, a thorough literature search was performed to locate and assess scientific materials involving the application of drones in the military field and in the medical systems of Africans and Ghanaians in particular. The paper by Artemii Bernatskyi and Vladyslav Khaskin is devoted to the analysis of the history of the laser creation as one of the greatest technical inventions of the 20th century. This paper focuses on establishing a relation between the periodization of the stages of creation and implementation of certain types of lasers, with their influence on the invention of certain types of equipment and industrial technologies for processing the materials, the development of certain branches of the economy, and scientific-technological progress as a whole. The paper discusses the stages of: invention of the first laser; creation of the first commercial lasers; development of the first applications of lasers in industrial technologies for processing the materials. Special attention is paid to the "patent wars" that accompanied different stages of the creation of lasers. A comparative analysis of the market development for laser technology from the stage of creation to the present has been carried out. Nineteenth-century world exhibitions were platforms to demonstrate technical and technological changes that witnessed the modernization and industrialization of the world. World exhibitions have contributed to the promotion of new inventions and the popularization of already known, as well as the emergence of art objects of world importance. One of the most important world events at the turn of the century was the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. Thus, the author has tried to analyze the participation of representatives of the sugar industry in the World's Fair in 1900 and to define the role of exhibitions as indicators of economic development, to show the importance and influence of private entrepreneurs, especially from Ukraine, on the sugar industry and international contacts. The article by Viktor Verhunov highlights the life and creative path of the outstanding domestic scientist, theorist, methodologist and practitioner of agricultural engineering K.G.Schindler, associated with the formation of agricultural mechanics in Ukraine. The methodological foundation of the research is the principles of historicism, scientific nature and objectivity in reproducing the phenomena of the past based on the complex use of general scientific, special, interdisciplinary methods. For the first time a number of documents from Russian and Ukrainian archives, which reflect some facts of the professional biography of the scientist, were introduced into scientific circulation. The authors from Kremenchuk National University named after Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi presented a fascinating study of a bayonet fragment with severe damages of metal found in the city Kremenchuk (Ukraine) in one of the canals on the outskirts of the city, near the Dnipro River. Theoretical research to study blade weapons of the World War I period and the typology of the bayonets of that period, which made it possible to put forward an assumption about the possible identification of the object as a modified bayonet to the Mauser rifle has been carried out. Metal science expert examination was based on X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to determine the concentration of elements in the sample from the cleaned part of the blade. In the article by Mykola Ruban and Vadym Ponomarenko on the basis of the complex analysis of sources and scientific literature the attempt to investigate historical circumstances of development and construction of shunting electric locomotives at the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant has been made. The next scientific article continues the series of publications devoted to the assessment of activities of the heads of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Empire. In this article, the authors have attempted to systematize and analyze historical data on the activities of Klavdii Semyonovych Nemeshaev as the Minister of Railways of the Russian Empire. The article also assesses the development and construction of railway network in the Russian Empire during Nemeshaev's office, in particular, of the Amur Line and Moscow Encircle Railway, as well as the increase in the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The article discusses K.S.Nemeshaev's contribution to the development of technology and the introduction of a new type of freight steam locomotive for state-owned railways. We hope that everyone will find interesting useful information in the new issue. And, of course, we welcome your new submissions. ; In the new issue, our scientific journal offers you thirteen scientific articles. As always, we try to offer a wide variety of topics and areas and follow current trends in the history of science and technology. In the article by Olha Chumachenko, оn the basis of a wide base of sources, the article highlights and analyzes the development of research work of aircraft engine companies in Zaporizhzhia during the 1970s. The existence of a single system of functioning of the Zaporizhzhia production association "Motorobudivnyk" (now the Public Joint Stock Company "Motor Sich") and the Zaporizhzhia Machine-Building Design Bureau "Progress" (now the State Enterprise "Ivchenko – Progress") has been taken into account. Leonid Griffen and Nadiia Ryzheva present their vision of the essence of technology as a socio-historical phenomenon. The article reveals the authors' vision of the essence of the technology as a sociohistorical phenomenon. It is based on the idea that technology is not only a set of technical devices but a segment of the general system – a society – located between a social medium and its natural surroundings in the form of a peculiar social technosphere, which simultaneously separates and connects them. Definitely the article by Denis Kislov, which examines the period from the end of the XVII century to the beginning of the XIX century, is also of interest, when on the basis of deep philosophical concepts, a new vision of the development of statehood and human values raised. At this time, a certain re-thinking of the management and communication ideas of Antiquity and the Renaissance took place, which outlined the main promising trends in the statehood evolution, which to one degree or another were embodied in practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. A systematic approach and a comparative analysis of the causes and consequences of those years' achievements for the present and the immediate future of the 21st century served as the methodological basis for a comprehensive review of the studies of that period. The article by Serhii Paliienko is devoted to an exploration of archaeological theory issues at the Institute of archaeology AS UkrSSR in the 1960s. This period is one of the worst studied in the history of Soviet archaeology. But it was the time when in the USSR archaeological researches reached the summit, quantitative methods and methods of natural sciences were applied and interest in theoretical issues had grown in archaeology. Now there are a lot of publications dedicated to theoretical discussions between archaeologists from Leningrad but the same researches about Kyiv scholars are still unknown The legacy of St.Luke in medical science, authors from Greece - this study aims to highlight key elements of the life of Valentyn Feliksovych Voino-Yasenetskyi and his scientific contribution to medicine. Among the scientists of European greatness, who at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries showed interest to the folklore of Galicia (Halychyna) and Galician Ukrainians, contributed to their national and cultural revival, one of the leading places is occupied by the outstanding Ukrainian scientist Ivan Verkhratskyi. He was both naturalist and philologist, as well as folklorist and ethnographer, organizer of scientific work, publisher and popularizer of Ukrainian literature, translator, publicist and famous public figure. I.H.Verkhratskyi was also an outstanding researcher of plants and animals of Eastern Galicia, a connoisseur of insects, especially butterflies, the author of the first school textbooks on natural science written in Ukrainian. A new emerging field that has seen the application of the drone technology is the healthcare sector. Over the years, the health sector has increasingly relied on the device for timely transportation of essential articles across the globe. Since its introduction in health, scholars have attempted to address the impact of drones on healthcare across Africa and the world at large. Among other things, it has been reported by scholars that the device has the ability to overcome the menace of weather constraints, inadequate personnel and inaccessible roads within the healthcare sector. This notwithstanding, data on drones and drone application in Ghana and her healthcare sector in particular appears to be little within the drone literature. Also, little attempt has been made by scholars to highlight the use of drones in African countries. By using a narrative review approach, the current study attempts to address the gap above. By this approach, a thorough literature search was performed to locate and assess scientific materials involving the application of drones in the military field and in the medical systems of Africans and Ghanaians in particular. The paper by Artemii Bernatskyi and Vladyslav Khaskin is devoted to the analysis of the history of the laser creation as one of the greatest technical inventions of the 20th century. This paper focuses on establishing a relation between the periodization of the stages of creation and implementation of certain types of lasers, with their influence on the invention of certain types of equipment and industrial technologies for processing the materials, the development of certain branches of the economy, and scientific-technological progress as a whole. The paper discusses the stages of: invention of the first laser; creation of the first commercial lasers; development of the first applications of lasers in industrial technologies for processing the materials. Special attention is paid to the "patent wars" that accompanied different stages of the creation of lasers. A comparative analysis of the market development for laser technology from the stage of creation to the present has been carried out. Nineteenth-century world exhibitions were platforms to demonstrate technical and technological changes that witnessed the modernization and industrialization of the world. World exhibitions have contributed to the promotion of new inventions and the popularization of already known, as well as the emergence of art objects of world importance. One of the most important world events at the turn of the century was the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. Thus, the author has tried to analyze the participation of representatives of the sugar industry in the World's Fair in 1900 and to define the role of exhibitions as indicators of economic development, to show the importance and influence of private entrepreneurs, especially from Ukraine, on the sugar industry and international contacts. The article by Viktor Verhunov highlights the life and creative path of the outstanding domestic scientist, theorist, methodologist and practitioner of agricultural engineering K.G.Schindler, associated with the formation of agricultural mechanics in Ukraine. The methodological foundation of the research is the principles of historicism, scientific nature and objectivity in reproducing the phenomena of the past based on the complex use of general scientific, special, interdisciplinary methods. For the first time a number of documents from Russian and Ukrainian archives, which reflect some facts of the professional biography of the scientist, were introduced into scientific circulation. The authors from Kremenchuk National University named after Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi presented a fascinating study of a bayonet fragment with severe damages of metal found in the city Kremenchuk (Ukraine) in one of the canals on the outskirts of the city, near the Dnipro River. Theoretical research to study blade weapons of the World War I period and the typology of the bayonets of that period, which made it possible to put forward an assumption about the possible identification of the object as a modified bayonet to the Mauser rifle has been carried out. Metal science expert examination was based on X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to determine the concentration of elements in the sample from the cleaned part of the blade. In the article by Mykola Ruban and Vadym Ponomarenko on the basis of the complex analysis of sources and scientific literature the attempt to investigate historical circumstances of development and construction of shunting electric locomotives at the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant has been made. The next scientific article continues the series of publications devoted to the assessment of activities of the heads of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Empire. In this article, the authors have attempted to systematize and analyze historical data on the activities of Klavdii Semyonovych Nemeshaev as the Minister of Railways of the Russian Empire. The article also assesses the development and construction of railway network in the Russian Empire during Nemeshaev's office, in particular, of the Amur Line and Moscow Encircle Railway, as well as the increase in the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The article discusses K.S.Nemeshaev's contribution to the development of technology and the introduction of a new type of freight steam locomotive for state-owned railways. We hope that everyone will find interesting useful information in the new issue. And, of course, we welcome your new submissions. ; In the new issue, our scientific journal offers you thirteen scientific articles. As always, we try to offer a wide variety of topics and areas and follow current trends in the history of science and technology. In the article by Olha Chumachenko, оn the basis of a wide base of sources, the article highlights and analyzes the development of research work of aircraft engine companies in Zaporizhzhia during the 1970s. The existence of a single system of functioning of the Zaporizhzhia production association "Motorobudivnyk" (now the Public Joint Stock Company "Motor Sich") and the Zaporizhzhia Machine-Building Design Bureau "Progress" (now the State Enterprise "Ivchenko – Progress") has been taken into account. Leonid Griffen and Nadiia Ryzheva present their vision of the essence of technology as a socio-historical phenomenon. The article reveals the authors' vision of the essence of the technology as a sociohistorical phenomenon. It is based on the idea that technology is not only a set of technical devices but a segment of the general system – a society – located between a social medium and its natural surroundings in the form of a peculiar social technosphere, which simultaneously separates and connects them. Definitely the article by Denis Kislov, which examines the period from the end of the XVII century to the beginning of the XIX century, is also of interest, when on the basis of deep philosophical concepts, a new vision of the development of statehood and human values raised. At this time, a certain re-thinking of the management and communication ideas of Antiquity and the Renaissance took place, which outlined the main promising trends in the statehood evolution, which to one degree or another were embodied in practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. A systematic approach and a comparative analysis of the causes and consequences of those years' achievements for the present and the immediate future of the 21st century served as the methodological basis for a comprehensive review of the studies of that period. The article by Serhii Paliienko is devoted to an exploration of archaeological theory issues at the Institute of archaeology AS UkrSSR in the 1960s. This period is one of the worst studied in the history of Soviet archaeology. But it was the time when in the USSR archaeological researches reached the summit, quantitative methods and methods of natural sciences were applied and interest in theoretical issues had grown in archaeology. Now there are a lot of publications dedicated to theoretical discussions between archaeologists from Leningrad but the same researches about Kyiv scholars are still unknown The legacy of St.Luke in medical science, authors from Greece - this study aims to highlight key elements of the life of Valentyn Feliksovych Voino-Yasenetskyi and his scientific contribution to medicine. Among the scientists of European greatness, who at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries showed interest to the folklore of Galicia (Halychyna) and Galician Ukrainians, contributed to their national and cultural revival, one of the leading places is occupied by the outstanding Ukrainian scientist Ivan Verkhratskyi. He was both naturalist and philologist, as well as folklorist and ethnographer, organizer of scientific work, publisher and popularizer of Ukrainian literature, translator, publicist and famous public figure. I.H.Verkhratskyi was also an outstanding researcher of plants and animals of Eastern Galicia, a connoisseur of insects, especially butterflies, the author of the first school textbooks on natural science written in Ukrainian. A new emerging field that has seen the application of the drone technology is the healthcare sector. Over the years, the health sector has increasingly relied on the device for timely transportation of essential articles across the globe. Since its introduction in health, scholars have attempted to address the impact of drones on healthcare across Africa and the world at large. Among other things, it has been reported by scholars that the device has the ability to overcome the menace of weather constraints, inadequate personnel and inaccessible roads within the healthcare sector. This notwithstanding, data on drones and drone application in Ghana and her healthcare sector in particular appears to be little within the drone literature. Also, little attempt has been made by scholars to highlight the use of drones in African countries. By using a narrative review approach, the current study attempts to address the gap above. By this approach, a thorough literature search was performed to locate and assess scientific materials involving the application of drones in the military field and in the medical systems of Africans and Ghanaians in particular. The paper by Artemii Bernatskyi and Vladyslav Khaskin is devoted to the analysis of the history of the laser creation as one of the greatest technical inventions of the 20th century. This paper focuses on establishing a relation between the periodization of the stages of creation and implementation of certain types of lasers, with their influence on the invention of certain types of equipment and industrial technologies for processing the materials, the development of certain branches of the economy, and scientific-technological progress as a whole. The paper discusses the stages of: invention of the first laser; creation of the first commercial lasers; development of the first applications of lasers in industrial technologies for processing the materials. Special attention is paid to the "patent wars" that accompanied different stages of the creation of lasers. A comparative analysis of the market development for laser technology from the stage of creation to the present has been carried out. Nineteenth-century world exhibitions were platforms to demonstrate technical and technological changes that witnessed the modernization and industrialization of the world. World exhibitions have contributed to the promotion of new inventions and the popularization of already known, as well as the emergence of art objects of world importance. One of the most important world events at the turn of the century was the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. Thus, the author has tried to analyze the participation of representatives of the sugar industry in the World's Fair in 1900 and to define the role of exhibitions as indicators of economic development, to show the importance and influence of private entrepreneurs, especially from Ukraine, on the sugar industry and international contacts. The article by Viktor Verhunov highlights the life and creative path of the outstanding domestic scientist, theorist, methodologist and practitioner of agricultural engineering K.G.Schindler, associated with the formation of agricultural mechanics in Ukraine. The methodological foundation of the research is the principles of historicism, scientific nature and objectivity in reproducing the phenomena of the past based on the complex use of general scientific, special, interdisciplinary methods. For the first time a number of documents from Russian and Ukrainian archives, which reflect some facts of the professional biography of the scientist, were introduced into scientific circulation. The authors from Kremenchuk National University named after Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi presented a fascinating study of a bayonet fragment with severe damages of metal found in the city Kremenchuk (Ukraine) in one of the canals on the outskirts of the city, near the Dnipro River. Theoretical research to study blade weapons of the World War I period and the typology of the bayonets of that period, which made it possible to put forward an assumption about the possible identification of the object as a modified bayonet to the Mauser rifle has been carried out. Metal science expert examination was based on X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to determine the concentration of elements in the sample from the cleaned part of the blade. In the article by Mykola Ruban and Vadym Ponomarenko on the basis of the complex analysis of sources and scientific literature the attempt to investigate historical circumstances of development and construction of shunting electric locomotives at the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant has been made. The next scientific article continues the series of publications devoted to the assessment of activities of the heads of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Empire. In this article, the authors have attempted to systematize and analyze historical data on the activities of Klavdii Semyonovych Nemeshaev as the Minister of Railways of the Russian Empire. The article also assesses the development and construction of railway network in the Russian Empire during Nemeshaev's office, in particular, of the Amur Line and Moscow Encircle Railway, as well as the increase in the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The article discusses K.S.Nemeshaev's contribution to the development of technology and the introduction of a new type of freight steam locomotive for state-owned railways. We hope that everyone will find interesting useful information in the new issue. And, of course, we welcome your new submissions.

Romina Boccia


There's a well‐​defined budget process that members of Congress are supposed to follow each year to debate how much the federal government will spend and how much money the government will collect in taxes or borrow from credit markets. That's not happening. "Protecting America's Economic Security," the fiscal year 2024 budget plan introduced by Republican Study Committee chairman Kevin Hern (R‑OK) and its Budget and Spending Task Force chairman Ben Cline (R‑VA), proposes several reforms to revive and improve the federal budget process.
Here are five ideas in the RSC budget worth considering:
Adopt a Balanced Budget Amendment or Similar Statutory Spending Limits. "The RSC Budget supports the adoption of a federal Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA), and other long‐​term fiscal controls, to limit tax collection and balance the budget," write the proposals' authors. Taxpayers benefit from fiscal rules that bind legislators. Well‐​designed fiscal rules limit the propensity of government to expand and protect future taxpayers from harmful debt. The current approach of ever‐​expanding debt and growing deficit spending is highly unsustainable and unfair toward younger generations.
As detailed by my Cato colleague Chris Edwards, balanced budgets used to be the norm for more than 100 years of federal history. Not anymore: "From 1791 to 1930, federal politicians balanced the budget 68 percent of the years, but since 1931 they have balanced it only 13 percent of the years. Furthermore, deficits have become larger over time relative to the size of the economy." To address rising spending and debt head‐​on, I am a fan of Kurt Couchman's unified budget idea paired with a Swiss‐​style debt brake to establish and enforce rules toward sustainable federal budgeting.
Account for Interest Costs. "This budget would adopt Rep. Michael Cloud's (R‑TX) bill, the Cost Estimates Improvement Act, to require the CBO to include the projected debt service costs in its legislative cost estimates," write the RSC proposals' authors. Including interest costs in legislative cost estimates would improve accuracy in congressional scorekeeping and should be a bipartisan priority. Cost estimates confront Congress with the fiscal impact of proposed legislation prior to the passage of a bill. Cost estimates also aid in the enforcement of budgetary rules and targets. With interest costs now making up one of the fastest‐​growing budget categories, it is especially important that Congress fully account for interest in legislative cost estimates.
Reform Emergency Spending. "The RSC Budget would… require legislation containing emergency spending to be accompanied by a statement explaining why an emergency designation is necessary and require a three‐​fifths majority vote to approve such legislation. Moreover, emergency funding should be timely and targeted. Thus, the RSC Budget would create a separate point of order against emergency spending legislation that would produce outlays beyond two fiscal years." I commend the RSC for proposing to make it more difficult to abuse emergency spending to prop up other spending. The RSC should go a step further and require Congress to account and pay for emergency spending with lower discretionary spending limits and mandatory spending reductions in future years. I explain this emergency accounting concept in greater detail in my latest Cato policy brief, titled "A Better Budget Control Act."
Stop Unauthorized Spending. In 2022 alone, Congress spent $461 billion on federal programs whose authorizations had expired. More than half of this spending went to programs that expired more than 10 years ago. Congress wastes money on myriad programs that aren't even authorized. Unauthorized appropriations should be a prime target for cuts. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R‑WA) champions legislation with the goal of ending unauthorized appropriations. The Unauthorized Spending Accountability Act (H.R.2056) would sunset unauthorized spending and create a commission to review all discretionary programs. The RSC budget endorses this approach.
Reveal Spending and Gimmicks in Appropriations. "The RSC Budget would require CBO [the Congressional Budget Office] to release a report estimating the fiscal impact of appropriations bills as well as information on changes in mandatory programs contained in appropriations bills, to each member of Congress and to the public," write the proposals' authors. Changes in mandatory programs are a recurring budget gimmick in congressional appropriations. Most CHIMPs provide no real savings. Instead, they facilitate increases in discretionary spending without running afoul of current spending limits. It's a start for the RSC to require CBO to reveal the size and scope of CHIMPS to the public as Congress is debating appropriations bills. Even better would be prohibiting the use of fake savings to prop up discretionary spending.
A Costly Budget Process Failure
The so‐​called federal budget process has disintegrated over the years. Congress regularly misses key budget deadlines and fails to live up to its fiscal responsibilities. Case in point: neither the House nor Senate have introduced budget resolutions this year. As reported by Peter Cohn in CQ‐​Roll Call: "Lawmakers have adopted a budget resolution before the April 15 deadline just four times in four decades."
The consequences of Congress' failure to budget responsibly are severe. Congressional fiscal neglect results in a less effective, more expensive government that wastes taxpayer dollars, drag down economic growth, and burdens current and future generations with increasingly unsustainable debt. The RSC budget contains some worthwhile ideas to revive congressional budgeting and enhance accountability and transparency for taxpayers. Unless members of Congress are willing to push these proposals when up against action‐​forcing fiscal deadlines such as the debt limit or the end of the fiscal year, it's unlikely that they'll be adopted.

This Volume 25 of Lagos Notes and Records presents another round of well-researched scholarly contributions from established and middle-level career researchers spread across key disciplines in the humanities namely language, literature, communication studies, history, linguistics, conflict resolution and crisis management, and music. Articles received from authors outside the traditional base of the journal continue to confirm the transdisciplinary reputation this journal has acquired over the years and its increasing national and international appeal. The first article by Takehiko Ochiai examines the Sandline Affair and the United Kingdom's interference in the Sierra Leonean polity in the 1990s, which led to violations of the United Nations sanctions against Sierra Leone during the country's civil war. The author argues that the role played by the UK, coupled with the complexity of the relationship that existed among the various actors in the conflict, complicated the war situation in the country. Albert Oikelome, in the second article, examines the issue of compositional elements in the music of Fela Kuti, focusing on selected songs of the Afrobeat legend and the key to understanding his creative resourcefulness. The author analyses the techniques employed by the musician to achieve his enviable feats in music and concludes that Fela Kuti's vocal elements were exceptional. The third article by Lọla Akande offers a new approach to our understanding of city life by confronting the rural bias which tends to privilege the countryside over the urban space. Based on a close-reading technique that engages the city as a living space, Akande argues that neither the village nor the city is a haven, but that each demands choices that are both personal and public for inhabitants to survive the various obstacles in life. In the fourth article, Eric Mensah examines Nkrumah's rhetorical urgency as an argumentative tool for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). He demonstrates ways through which major rhetorical constraints could inhibit a successful rhetorical performance and how effectively a rhetorician can deploy relevant tools in addressing a composite audience using the example of Kwame Nkrumah. Akinmade Akande, Kofo Adedeji, and Anjola Robbin on their part examine how stand-up comedy has impacted the linguistic order in Nigeria. They employed recorded performances of seven popular Nigerian stand-up comedians to illustrate the importance of the profession to the development of Nigerian pidgin. The authors argue that Nigerian stand-up comedians are social critics and communicators whose purpose of condemning immoral acts of political leaders is driven by their desire to change the society for the better. Sunday Ofuani, in the sixth article, examines the compositional utility and rationale of figurative-sounds in the vocal music of some eminent Nigerian composers. He argues that sonic idioms creatively permeate sonic-imagery, sonic-reference, and sonic-allusion of replicated phenomenon. He concludes that Nigerian contemporary composers in their search for indigenous sonic materials stylistically indulge in utilizing figurative sounds in their vocal music. Ayọdeji Adedara, in an ecoparadox based article, examines some gubernatorial speeches of Babatunde Fashola selected across his eight-year tenure as governor of Lagos State, Nigeria. He identifies the extent to which the Fashola administration was ecocentric both in policy formulation and programme implementation, noting that the speeches show that the former governor was an earth-friendly leader. However, the fact that some aspects of the speeches portrayed instances in which economic considerations got primacy over environmentalism contra the expectation that political leaders should value the environment the same way they value economic interests. The paper concludes that the framing of climate change in governmental discourse needs to transcend valuing the nonhuman world only extrinsically. In the eight article, Abosede Babatunde emphasises the need to rethink the Eurocentric conflict management strategies often adopted to manage conflicts in Africa given their inherent inadequacies. Consequently, she makes a case for more creative, contextual, and innovative approaches to conflict resolution in Africa that would combine both African and Western conflict management strategies. Carol Anyagwa's article investigates the dominant linguistic pattern of Catholic liturgy in Lagos based on data elicited from seven out of the fifteen deaneries of the Church in Lagos. It opines that there is a subsisting case of unconscious linguicism resulting in a tendency towards mono-lingualism and the domination of English over Latin and indigenous Nigerian languages. It concludes by recommending the need to reverse the trend. The tenth article by Adeyẹmi Adegoju and Bukunmi Adetunji is concerned with the use of linguistic resources to thread ideology in selected political teachings of Pastor Bakare. The authors focus on the pastor's elucidation of leadership-citizenship responsiveness required for building an enduring and participatory democratic culture in Nigeria. They observe that the pastor is ideologically radical in his texts' structuring with the intention to ignite nationalism in his audiences in order to consolidate democracy in Nigeria. Lastly, Adewale Tiamiyu examines the significances of the romantic period in two romantic plays through the analysis of their actions based on the dichotomy of the classics and the romantics. The author applies the Greïmas' theory in three different dimensions to illustrate the conflict between the classics and the romantics and concludes that while men grow classical in marriage, women often desire to retain their degree of romanticism in courtship. Finally, it is my desire and hope that the academic community will find the articles in this volume interesting, meaningful, and useful in their quest to expand the frontiers of knowledge. Prof. Olufunkẹ Adeboye Dean, Faculty of Arts Editor-in-Chief

The article is dedicated to the analysis of axiological ideas lying in the foundation of the modern economic science in general and theory of finances in particular. The concept of homo economicus and its origins are considered. Concept of the "homo economicus" is used in the modern philosophic and methodologic literature on methodologic questions of economical science is used in two meanings. The first considers homo economicus only as a technical construct or model created in the form of certain hypotheses and suppositions set taken in their limit form as an idealization. The second takes it as a certain anthropologic type characterized with according values and behavior. It was demonstrated that the concept of homo economicus has a long before-history consisting in gradual break-up between economical theory and ethics. The homo economicus is a person who build his behavior through calculation of his profit. The latter is a form of his self-discipline that forms a new system of norms free from moral and other similar things. The new system of norms suppose no stable tenets and axioms as it takes place in ethics but remains rational and is based on probabilities calculations. The evolution of economical science is regarded as well as its division into political philosophy and proper economic theory in the end of the XIX century, the role of the growth principle, the growth in spite of anything that stood to the first place in the time of the Great Depression and goes on occupying this place till now. It is demonstrated that the essence of money consists in being a symbol and sign of debt obligations, that the capital is representation of their accumulated form and moving power that makes market economics to move. It is shown also that namely the ideas of capital as well as labour compound axiological foundation of modern economical ideas. The homo economicus or economical man, that means individualistic and egotistic psychotype oriented onto profit and satisfaction of his desires, becomes conceptual ideal. ; Статья посвящена анализу аксиологических представлений, которые лежат в основе теорий современной экономической науки вообще и теории финансов в частности. Рассматриваются истоки концепта homo economicus'a или человека экономического. В современной литературе, посвященной философским и методологическим проблемам экономической теории, термин «homo economicus» употребляется в двух основных значениях. Первое – чисто технический конструкт или модель, образованную в виде суммы определенных предположений, взятых в их предельной форме, или, если проще, как определенную идеализацию. Второе рассматривает «homo economicus» как определенный антропологический тип, который характеризуется соответствующими ценностными и поведенческими особенностями. Показано, что конструкт homo economicus возник не в результате умозрительных рассуждений, а имеет довольно-таки длинную предысторию, суть которой заключается в постепенном отрыве экономической теории от этики. Человек экономический – это человек, который выстраивает свое поведение через подсчет выгоды. Постоянное ведение таких подсчетов является самодисциплиной человека экономического. Такая самодисциплина формирует новую систему норм, свободную от морали или других подобного рода вещей. Новая система норм не предусматривает каких-либо устоявшихся догматов или аксиом (как это обычай имеет место в этике), но является полностью рациональной и опирается на подсчет вероятностей тех или иных вариантов развития событий.Показана эволюция экономической науки. В ее основу после разделения политической экономии на политическую философию и собственно экономическую науку в конце XIX в. был положен принцип роста. Этот принцип выходит на первый план во времена Великой депрессии, но продолжает свое господство по сей день. Показано, что сущность денег заключается в том, что они являются символом или знаком долговых обязательств, тогда как их концептуальной формой, выражением их количественного аспекта является капитал. Именно капитал является тем двигателем, той движущей силой, которая заставляет двигаться рыночную экономику.Показано, что труд и капитал становятся основополагающими аксиологическими принципами современных экономических представлений. Идеалом становится человек экономический, то есть индивидуалистический и эгоистический тип, ориентированный на поиск выгоды, которая заключается в удовлетворении желаний. ; Стаття присвячена аналізу аксіологічних уявлень, які лежать в основі теорій сучасної економічної науки взагалі та теорії фінансів зокрема. Розглядаються витоки концепту homo economicus'a чи людини економічної. У сучасній літературі, присвяченій філософським і методологічним проблемам економічної теорії, термін «homo economicus» вживається в двох основних значеннях. Перше – як суто технічний конструкт чи модель, утворену у вигляді суми певних припущень та уявлень, узятих у їхній граничній формі, або, якщо простіше, як певну ідеалізацію. Друге розглядає «homo economicus» як певний антропологічний тип, який характеризується відповідними ціннісними та поведінковими особливостями. Показано, що конструкт homo economicus'у виник не в результаті умоглядних міркувань, а має досить-таки довгу передісторію, суть якої полягає у поступовому відриві економічної теорії від етики. Людина економічна – це людина, яка вибудовує свою поведінку через підрахунок вигоди. Постійне ведення таких підрахунків є самодисципліною людини економічної. Така самодисципліна формує нову систему норм, вільну від моралі чи інших подібного роду речей. Нова система норм не передбачає якихось сталих догматів чи аксіом (як це звичай має місце в етиці), але є повністю раціональною і спирається на підрахунок імовірностей тих чи інших варіантів розвитку подій.Показано еволюцію економічної науки. В її основу після розділення політичної економії на політичну філософію та власне економічну науку наприкінці ХІХ ст. був покладений принцип зростання, зростання не зважаючи ні на що. Цей принцип виходить на перший план у часи Великої депресії, але продовжує своє панування донині.Показано, що сутність грошей полягає в тому, що вони є символом чи знаком боргових зобов'язань, тоді як їх концептуальною формою, вираженням їх кількісного аспекту є капітал. Саме капітал є тим двигуном, тією рушійною силою, яка змушує рухатися ринкова економіку.Показано, що праця та капітал стають основоположними аксіологічними принципами сучасних економічних уявлень. Ідеалом стає людина економічна, тобто індивідуалістичний та егоїстичний тип, орієнтований на пошук вигоди, яка полягає в задоволенні бажань.

It has been widely recognized that poor health is an important cause of poverty, especiallyamong the low- and middle- income countries. One of the reasons is the absence of publicfinancial protection against the medical consumption risk in these countries. This Phd dissertationis dedicated to discern the role that health insurance could play in the organization of healthfinancial protection system. The dissertation is composed of two parts. The first part discusses theproblems linking to the financing to medical consumption from a global point of view. Chapter 1brings theoretical discussions on three topics: 1) the specialties of medical consumption risks andthe difficulties in using private health insurance to manage medical consumption risks. 2) Therole of government and market in the distribution of health resources. 3) The options for theorganization of health financing system. Chapter 2 conducts a statistical comparison on theperformance of health financing systems in the countries of different social-Economic background.The discussion is carried out around three aspects of health financing: the availability of resources,the organization of health financing, and the coverage of financial protection. The second part ofthe dissertation studies the evolution of heath financing system in a specific country: China. Threechapters are assigned to this part. Chapter 3 introduces the history of Chinese health financingsystem since 1950s. It helps us to understand the challenges in health financing brought byeconomic reform. Chapter 4 carries out an empirical study on the distribution of health financingburden in China in the 1990s. It illustrates the direct results of the decline of public financing andincrease of direct payment. Chapter 5 presents health insurance reform that launched by thegovernment since the end of 1990s. An impact analysis is conducted on an original dataset of 24township hospitals in Weifang prefecture in the north of the China. The objective is to estimatethe impact of the implementation of New Rural Medical Cooperation System (NRMCS) on theactivities and financial structure of township hospitals. At last, we conclude that social healthinsurance (SHI) permits a sharing of health financial responsibilities between the service provider,the patient-Consumer, and the service purchaser. It can not only involve both public and privateagents into the collection of funds for health financing system, but also make each party moreaccountable due to the risks they bear from the result of medical consumption. Meanwhile it isnecessary to note that SHI is just one option among others to organize health financing system.The implementation of SHI requires a certain level of social-Economic development. SHI does notsystematically bring better performance on health financing if it is not accompanied by thereforms on provider payment or on service delivery system. Government commitment andinstitutional capacity are also key factors for the good function of the system. ; Il est admis qu'avoir une mauvaise santé est une des causes principales de pauvreté,particulièrement dans les pays à faible et moyen revenus. Une des raisons de ce constat est une absence de protection financière. L'objectif de cette thèse est de discerner le rôle que l'assurance maladie pourrait jouer dans l'organisation du système de protection financière de la santé. La thèse se compose de deux parties. La première partie aborde les problèmes liés au financement de santé d'un point de vue global. Le chapitre 1 apporte des discussions théoriques sur trois thèmes: 1) les spécificités des risques de la consommation médicale qui rendent la gestion du risque par l'assurance maladie privé difficile, 2) le rôle du gouvernement et du marché dans la répartition des ressources de santé. 3) les options pour l'organisation du financement de la santé. Le chapitre 2 présente une comparaison statistique sur la performance des systèmes de financement de la santé entre des pays à contextes socio-Économique différents. Les discussions sont menées autour de trois aspects du financement de la santé: la disponibilité des ressources,l'organisation du financement de la santé, et la couverture de la protection financière. La deuxième partie qui comporte trois chapitres étudie l'évolution du système de financement de la santé dans un pays donné: la Chine. Le chapitre 3 présente l'histoire du système de financement de la santé en Chine depuis 1950. Il nous aide à comprendre les défis dans le financement de la santé suscités par la réforme économique. Le chapitre 4 porte sur une étude empirique de la répartition de la charge financière de la santé en Chine dans les années 1990. Il illustre les résultats directs de la baisse du financement public et de l'augmentation des paiements directs sur le bienêtre de la population. Le chapitre 5 présente la réforme de l'assurance maladie lancée par le gouvernement depuis la fin des années 1990. L'objectif est d'estimer l'impact de la mise en oeuvre du nouveau système rural d'assurance médical (NRMCS) sur les activités et la structure financière de ces hôpitaux. Une analyse d'impact est réalisée sur un échantillon de 24 hôpitaux dans la préfecture de Weifang, au Nord de la Chine. Nous concluons que le système d'assurance maladie permet un partage des responsabilités financières entre prestataires de services, patient consommateurs et acheteurs de services. Elle inclut à la fois les agents publics et privés dans la contribution au financement de santé, ce qui rend chaque partie plus responsable vis-À-Vis de son comportement en raison des risques qu'il doit assumer du fait de la consommation médicale.Cependant, il est nécessaire de noter que l'assurance maladie sociale n'est qu'une option parmi d'autres systèmes de financement de la santé. La mise en oeuvre de ce système exige un certain niveau de développement socio-Économique. L'assurance maladie ne conduit pas systématiquement à une meilleure performance du financement de la santé si elle n'est pas accompagnée de réformes quant au paiement au fournisseur ou au système de prestation de services. L'engagement du gouvernement et des capacités institutionnelles sont également des facteurs clés pour le bon fonctionnement du système.

The long history of the Mediterranean records striking examples of success and failure of land use models and management practices, which, in the latter case, are a heavy heritage for the soil resource in this basin. At present day, many forms of soil degradation threaten Mediterranean soils as, for instance, salinization, pollution, structural degradation and erosion. There is a geographical pattern of distribution of these forms of soil degradation and soil erosion is first in rank as far as sloping areas are concerned. Corresponding to a very large surface of Mediterranean land, these are especially sensitive areas, where soils are a qualitatively scarce resource. Sloping Mediterranean agri-environments heir a very significant part of cropping systems, crops and products traditional of the basin, vineyards and olive groves being the most relevant ones. Improvements in productivity and economic income of these areas are imperative to reduce population depletion and its impacts on territory sustainability. On the other hand, the long-term cultivated and highly eroded slopes ask for alternative land use models and management options that allow recovery of already much degraded environments. The importance of sloping areas, their land uses and misuses, comes also from their hydrological key role that, in the Mediterranean, has large consequences for water conservation, flood hazard and off-site effects of soil erosion. Soil protection initiatives are needed to cope with the threats to soil resource highlighted above. The thematic strategy for soil protection in Europe clearly sets the topic in high priority at policy level, as the need for soil protection is there stated in specific terms. This new political background encourages defining specifically oriented rationale in view soil protection measures design and implementation. Actually, expertise acquired in the last couple of decades throughout Europe, as part of the European strong research efforts in the topic, shows the high level of specialization necessary to tackle with soil protection issues. The still growing research-borne information has to be converted into technically useful tools for ―real world‖ problem solving. The thematic strategy for soil protection in Europe asks for such a challenge and problems posed on Mediterranean sloping areas are certainly important test-subjects. Foreword T. de Figueiredo & N. Evelpidou vi Figueiredo & Evelpidou As requirements stated in regulations eventually issued from the thematic strategy for soil protection in Europe become more specific, demand is expected to grow for technical staff able to deal with the design and implementation of soil protection measures. This is why and what for SPinSMEDE was designed, planned and organized. SPinSMEDE, acronym for Soil Protection in Sloping Mediterranean Agri- Environments, labels an Erasmus Intensive Programne that first took place in spring 2008, in Portugal, at Escola Superior Agrária of the Instituto Politécnico de Bragança. Intensive Programmes, within the Lifelong Learning Programme, are short duration higher education programmes, fully creditated within the ECTS framework. They stem on a transnational partnership of EU Universities, where students and professors come from, as in an Erasmus mobility scheme. For SPinSMEDE two-week and 6 credits Intensive Programme, the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, the co-ordinating institution, promoted a partnership including the Wageningen University (The Netherlands), the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), the University of Lleida (Spain), and the Unversity of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). The book objectives, target audience and general sequence of subjects, are all the same as those defined for the programme itself. Therefore, it is aimed at providing basic tools to assess soil degradation and to design soil protection initiatives in Mediterranean sloping areas. Rooted in both the EU thematic strategy for soil protection in Europe and the special environmental sensitivity of Mediterranean slopes, it is oriented towards the capacitation in such specific issue of post-graduation students, especially those with background in agricultural, forest or environmental engineering and those from life or earth sciences. The programme comprises two main parts, and this is reflected in the book contents. In order to allow a better insight on the Mediterranean environment, the texts of overview lectures addressed to geography and geology, climate, soils and vegetation are also presented. Background subjects, the first part, addresses soil degradation processes and assessment, soil protection measures design and implementation applying technical and socio-economic criteria. It is intended to provide the base knowledge necessary to better understand subjects treated in the second part. Selected case studies are presented and explored in the second part, and they concern land use typical of Mediterranean slopes, such as vineyards, olive groves, forests or shrubs. Not by chance, the book falls somewhere between the classical text book and the professionally oriented handbook. As so, after a more theorectically developed topic, the reader may find exercises that set the necessary links with ―real world‖ conditions and problems, and that guide in the application of methods to approach it. This book assembles the texts and reading material of most of the lectures and exercises given during the two editions of SPinSMEDE, the 2008, held in Bragança, and the 2009, held in Athens (a third edition is planned for spring 2010, in Santiago de Compostela). It is felt as a still in progress work, because the relevance of this thematic seemingly requires the attention of a wider audience than the one it may reach now, and, in turn, this goal asks for editorial refinements that, for the moment, could not be achieved according to expectations. Editors and contributors deeply wish their work to serve the outstanding and demanding cause of soil resource protection in the Mediterranean sloping agri-environments.

Human activities now represent the most important force shaping the degradation of ecosystems in all of the world´s major biomes (well established). Long-established drivers of land degradation continue to increase across much of the world, including agricultural activities {3.3.1, 3.3.2}, driven by increasing demands for food and bioenergy. More recent global change drivers, such as climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition, further exacerbate impacts {3.4}. We are now in a qualitatively different and novel world, compared to only a few decades ago, and the combination of drivers creates significant challenges to restore degraded land and mitigate further degradation (established but incomplete). Few, if any, areas of the world are now free of some form of human influence (well established) and some systems are experiencing unprecedented challenges. Changes in the extent and severity of both land degradation and restoration commonly result from multiple underlying social and economic factors – indirect drivers, many of which occur in places distant from where the impacts are felt (well established) {3.6.4}. Demand for food imports is increasing across much of the world. This high dependency on imported commodities means that a large share of the environmental impacts of consumption is felt in other parts of the world. The physical quantity of goods traded internationally only represents one third of the actual natural resources that were used to produce these traded goods. The sustainability of the commodity production systems that support global supply chains is thus substantially shaped by the sourcing and investment decisions of market actors who may have little direct connection to the production landscapes (established but incomplete). Moreover, the globalized nature of many commodity supply chains potentially elevates the relative importance of global-scale factors such as trade agreements, market prices and exchange rates, as well as distant linkages related to buyer and investment preferences, over national and regional governance arrangements and the agency of individual producers (inconclusive). Addressing this complexity to avoid and reverse land degradation therefore requires the building of effective multi-sector and multi-stakeholder partnerships that span national boundaries (established but incomplete) {3.6.6}. Economic growth and per capita consumption, more than poverty, is one of the biggest threats to sustainable land management globally (established but incomplete) {3.6.3, 3.6.4}. Extreme poverty, combined with resource scarcity, can contribute to land degradation and unsustainable levels of natural resource use, but is rarely the major underlying cause (well established). Many of the most marked changes in how land is used and managed come from individual and societal responses to economic opportunities, such as a shift in demand for a particular commodity or improved market access, moderated by institutional and political factors (established but incomplete). For example, clearance of native vegetation and land degradation across much of Latin America and Asia is linked to agricultural expansion and intensification at a commercial scale for export markets (well established). Reducing poverty, although a priority for sustainable development, is insufficient to mitigate land degradation if not accompanied by additional measures. Concurrently, rising per capita consumption levels can exacerbate degradation. Efforts to reverse degradation therefore require a combination of local and regional poverty-alleviation strategies, including the adoption of pro-poor food production systems, together with efforts to improve the enforcement of public regulations for sustainable land uses, and strengthening the accountability of global market actors in effectively supporting such strategies. The highly interconnected and globalized nature of indirect drivers of land degradation and restoration means that the outcome of any global, regional or local intervention can be highly unpredictable, yet contextual generalizations are possible (established but incomplete) {3.6.2.3, 3.6.3}. The ways in which land is used in one part of the world can be highly sensitive to sudden, unexpected changes in economic and institutional factors elsewhere (unresolved). For example, changes in currency exchange rates, and cascading effects on the profitability of a given commodity, can markedly accelerate or decelerate the clearance of native vegetation for agriculture within a single year {3.6.2.3}. The sudden imposition of trade restrictions (e.g., due to disease controls), can have a similarly marked impact. However, with an improved understanding of the interactive effects amongst different drivers, it is possible to make predictions that are valid under a certain range of conditions. For example, agricultural intensification and agroforestry practices can help reduce the pressure on remaining areas of native vegetation under certain conditions (such as inelastic demand for staple crops), but unless such measures are coupled with increased enforcement of land-use policies they can result in a rebound effect that increases pressure on natural resources (established but incomplete) {3.6.3}. Land degradation in any given place is rarely the consequence of a single anthropogenic driver, but is instead the result of a diverse and frequently mutually-reinforcing set of human activities and underlying drivers (well established) {3.4.5, 3.5, 3.6.2.1}. Typically, at least three types of indirect driver, such as economic, technological and institutional, underpin any direct driver of land degradation or restoration (established but incomplete). The complexity of drivers that commonly underpin land degradation highlights the fact that single factors, such as high rural population density, rarely provide an adequate underlying explanation on their own for observed impacts (established but incomplete) {3.6.3}. Land degradation is typically the result of multiple direct drivers, especially in instances of severe degradation (e.g., where land-use intensification drives increased species invasions and increases in fire frequency). This combination of drivers has resulted in large expanses of economically important grazing lands, including in North America, being transformed to fire-prone annual grass monocultures (well established) {3.3.7}. The multi-causality of land degradation requires commensurately holistic policy responses that operate across multiple scales and combine both regulatory and incentive based measures (established but incomplete). Rapid expansion and inappropriate management of agricultural lands (including both grazing lands and croplands), especially in dryland ecosystems, is the most extensive land degradation driver globally (well established) {3.3.1, 3.3.2}. The expansion of grazing lands has largely stagnated globally with evidence for an approximate 1% decline in grazing land area over the past decade. Grazing pressure has been stable or only moderately increasing across the major land areas globally, although there are regional exceptions such as Southern Asia. Over half of grazing lands occur in dryland environments that are highly susceptible to land degradation (established but incomplete) {3.3.1.3}. More recently intensification and increasing industrialization of livestock production systems, especially in developed countries, has resulted in an increasing reliance on mixed crop-livestock production systems and industrialized "landless" systems. As a result, 35% of global crop production is now allocated to livestock feed. Globally, fertilizer and pesticide use is expected to double by 2050 {3.3.2.2}. Marked drops in nitrogen-use efficiency (change in yield per unit of fertilizer input) in many parts of the world, particularly the Asia Pacific region, often accompanied by continued excessive fertilizer application, underscore the critical importance of sustainable agricultural practices, including conservation agricultural techniques, to maintain yield improvements (established but incomplete) {3.3.2.3}. Increases in consumption levels of many natural resources underpin increasing levels of degradation in many parts of the world (well established), with slow rates of adoption of sustainable production systems (established but incomplete) {3.6.2.2, 3.6.3.2, 3.6.4.2}. Projections to 2050 suggest that one billion ha of natural ecosystems could be converted to agriculture by that time. More than half of agricultural expansion in the last three decades has occurred in relatively intact tropical forests. Economic growth in the developing world is projected to double global consumption of forest and wood products by 2030, with demand likely to exceed production in many developing and emerging economies in Asia and Africa within the next decade. Traditional fuelwood and charcoal continue to represent a dominant share of total wood consumption in low income countries, up to 70%, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (well established). Under current projections efforts to intensify wood production in plantation forests, together with increases in fuel-use efficiency and electrification are only likely to partly offset the pressure on native forests (unresolved). Adoption of more sustainable production systems continues to be slow, as seen, for example, by a slowdown in the expansion of the area of certified forests. More than half of the terrestrial surface of the Earth has fire regimes outside the range of natural variability, with changes in fire frequency and intensity posing major challenges for land restoration (established but incomplete) {3.3.7}. The frequency of fires has increased in many areas – exacerbated by decreases in precipitation – including in many regions of humid and temperate forests that rarely experience large-scale fires naturally. Some changes in fire regimes, particularly in tropical forests, are sufficiently severe that recovery to pre-disturbance conditions may no longer be possible. Increases in international trade, intensification of land use and urbanization have meant that few areas of the planet are free of invasive species (established but incomplete) {3.3.8}. Nearly one fifth of the Earth´s surface is at high risk of plant and animal invasion, including many biodiversity hotspots. Climate change, including increased nitrogen deposition and changes in CO2, as well as increases in fire frequency with rising temperatures in many areas, are all likely to increase invasions {3.4}. Once established, the eradication of many invasive species is often very expensive, if not impossible, underscoring the need to develop proactive strategies to pre-empt invasions, including through inspections, research and education. Activities related to industrialization, infrastructure development, urbanization, and many extractive industries result in complete transformation of ecosystems, accompanied by near or complete loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function and the services those ecosystems provide (well established) {3.3.6}. Infrastructure, industrial development and urbanization activities, often replace natural ecosystems with impervious or contaminated surfaces such as asphalt, concrete and rooftops, leading to the one of the most severe forms of land degradation in the form of soil sealing. Built-up areas, which are dominated by sealed soils, currently occupy nearly 0.6% of the global land surface. If population densities in cities remain stable, the extent of built-up areas in developed countries is expected to increase by 30% and triple in developing countries between 2000 and 2050. Under more extreme scenarios of increasing population density and economic development, the extent of built-up areas globally may increase to over 2% of the global land area over this same time period. New urban design and green technologies that incorporate features that promote sustainability and delivery of ecosystem services can play an important role in restoring some of the ecosystem functions and services of built environments. The importance of climate change for land degradation is most prominent through its role in exacerbating the impacts of other human activities (established but incomplete) {3.4}. The exacerbating effect of climate change on the impact of degradation drivers, including land clearance and intensive farming techniques, can be felt both through chronic impacts and directional changes – like temperature changes, leading to shifts in species range sizes, as well as changes in average precipitation levels, atmospheric CO2 and nitrogen deposition – and acute impacts through extreme weather events of flooding, drought, and other natural disasters (well established). Heavy rainfall events and storms as well as heat waves and droughts are predicted to increase in frequency over several parts of the globe, with cascading effects on the frequency, intensity, extent and timing of other drivers such as fires, pest and pathogen outbreaks, species invasions, soil erosion and landslides (established but incomplete). The last decade has witnessed a rise in consumer-driven demand for sustainable land use and land management, as well as commitments to restore degraded land that is unprecedented in human history (well established) {3.6}. In the last decade hundreds of companies have made pledges to reduce their impacts on forests and on the rights of local communities, with many committing to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains entirely by 2020. In the same period, many governments and civil society groups have made ambitious commitments to restore hundreds of millions of hectares of degraded land. New players, such as the finance sector, who until recently have been completely detached from the mainstream sustainability agenda are also starting to make explicit commitments to avoiding environmental harm. The overall impact of these voluntary measures remains to be assessed but they offer a vital window of opportunity for reversing degradation trends and placing economies on a more sustainable footing – especially as large areas of marginal agricultural become increasingly abandoned with ongoing development (unresolved).

Human activities now represent the most important force shaping the degradation of ecosystems in all of the world´s major biomes (well established). Long-established drivers of land degradation continue to increase across much of the world, including agricultural activities {3.3.1, 3.3.2}, driven by increasing demands for food and bioenergy. More recent global change drivers, such as climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition, further exacerbate impacts {3.4}. We are now in a qualitatively different and novel world, compared to only a few decades ago, and the combination of drivers creates significant challenges to restore degraded land and mitigate further degradation (established but incomplete). Few, if any, areas of the world are now free of some form of human influence (well established) and some systems are experiencing unprecedented challenges. Changes in the extent and severity of both land degradation and restoration commonly result from multiple underlying social and economic factors – indirect drivers, many of which occur in places distant from where the impacts are felt (well established) {3.6.4}. Demand for food imports is increasing across much of the world. This high dependency on imported commodities means that a large share of the environmental impacts of consumption is felt in other parts of the world. The physical quantity of goods traded internationally only represents one third of the actual natural resources that were used to produce these traded goods. The sustainability of the commodity production systems that support global supply chains is thus substantially shaped by the sourcing and investment decisions of market actors who may have little direct connection to the production landscapes (established but incomplete). Moreover, the globalized nature of many commodity supply chains potentially elevates the relative importance of global-scale factors such as trade agreements, market prices and exchange rates, as well as distant linkages related to buyer and investment preferences, over national and regional governance arrangements and the agency of individual producers (inconclusive). Addressing this complexity to avoid and reverse land degradation therefore requires the building of effective multi-sector and multi-stakeholder partnerships that span national boundaries (established but incomplete) {3.6.6}. Economic growth and per capita consumption, more than poverty, is one of the biggest threats to sustainable land management globally (established but incomplete) {3.6.3, 3.6.4}. Extreme poverty, combined with resource scarcity, can contribute to land degradation and unsustainable levels of natural resource use, but is rarely the major underlying cause (well established). Many of the most marked changes in how land is used and managed come from individual and societal responses to economic opportunities, such as a shift in demand for a particular commodity or improved market access, moderated by institutional and political factors (established but incomplete). For example, clearance of native vegetation and land degradation across much of Latin America and Asia is linked to agricultural expansion and intensification at a commercial scale for export markets (well established). Reducing poverty, although a priority for sustainable development, is insufficient to mitigate land degradation if not accompanied by additional measures. Concurrently, rising per capita consumption levels can exacerbate degradation. Efforts to reverse degradation therefore require a combination of local and regional poverty-alleviation strategies, including the adoption of pro-poor food production systems, together with efforts to improve the enforcement of public regulations for sustainable land uses, and strengthening the accountability of global market actors in effectively supporting such strategies. The highly interconnected and globalized nature of indirect drivers of land degradation and restoration means that the outcome of any global, regional or local intervention can be highly unpredictable, yet contextual generalizations are possible (established but incomplete) {3.6.2.3, 3.6.3}. The ways in which land is used in one part of the world can be highly sensitive to sudden, unexpected changes in economic and institutional factors elsewhere (unresolved). For example, changes in currency exchange rates, and cascading effects on the profitability of a given commodity, can markedly accelerate or decelerate the clearance of native vegetation for agriculture within a single year {3.6.2.3}. The sudden imposition of trade restrictions (e.g., due to disease controls), can have a similarly marked impact. However, with an improved understanding of the interactive effects amongst different drivers, it is possible to make predictions that are valid under a certain range of conditions. For example, agricultural intensification and agroforestry practices can help reduce the pressure on remaining areas of native vegetation under certain conditions (such as inelastic demand for staple crops), but unless such measures are coupled with increased enforcement of land-use policies they can result in a rebound effect that increases pressure on natural resources (established but incomplete) {3.6.3}. Land degradation in any given place is rarely the consequence of a single anthropogenic driver, but is instead the result of a diverse and frequently mutually-reinforcing set of human activities and underlying drivers (well established) {3.4.5, 3.5, 3.6.2.1}. Typically, at least three types of indirect driver, such as economic, technological and institutional, underpin any direct driver of land degradation or restoration (established but incomplete). The complexity of drivers that commonly underpin land degradation highlights the fact that single factors, such as high rural population density, rarely provide an adequate underlying explanation on their own for observed impacts (established but incomplete) {3.6.3}. Land degradation is typically the result of multiple direct drivers, especially in instances of severe degradation (e.g., where land-use intensification drives increased species invasions and increases in fire frequency). This combination of drivers has resulted in large expanses of economically important grazing lands, including in North America, being transformed to fire-prone annual grass monocultures (well established) {3.3.7}. The multi-causality of land degradation requires commensurately holistic policy responses that operate across multiple scales and combine both regulatory and incentive based measures (established but incomplete). Rapid expansion and inappropriate management of agricultural lands (including both grazing lands and croplands), especially in dryland ecosystems, is the most extensive land degradation driver globally (well established) {3.3.1, 3.3.2}. The expansion of grazing lands has largely stagnated globally with evidence for an approximate 1% decline in grazing land area over the past decade. Grazing pressure has been stable or only moderately increasing across the major land areas globally, although there are regional exceptions such as Southern Asia. Over half of grazing lands occur in dryland environments that are highly susceptible to land degradation (established but incomplete) {3.3.1.3}. More recently intensification and increasing industrialization of livestock production systems, especially in developed countries, has resulted in an increasing reliance on mixed crop-livestock production systems and industrialized "landless" systems. As a result, 35% of global crop production is now allocated to livestock feed. Globally, fertilizer and pesticide use is expected to double by 2050 {3.3.2.2}. Marked drops in nitrogen-use efficiency (change in yield per unit of fertilizer input) in many parts of the world, particularly the Asia Pacific region, often accompanied by continued excessive fertilizer application, underscore the critical importance of sustainable agricultural practices, including conservation agricultural techniques, to maintain yield improvements (established but incomplete) {3.3.2.3}. Increases in consumption levels of many natural resources underpin increasing levels of degradation in many parts of the world (well established), with slow rates of adoption of sustainable production systems (established but incomplete) {3.6.2.2, 3.6.3.2, 3.6.4.2}. Projections to 2050 suggest that one billion ha of natural ecosystems could be converted to agriculture by that time. More than half of agricultural expansion in the last three decades has occurred in relatively intact tropical forests. Economic growth in the developing world is projected to double global consumption of forest and wood products by 2030, with demand likely to exceed production in many developing and emerging economies in Asia and Africa within the next decade. Traditional fuelwood and charcoal continue to represent a dominant share of total wood consumption in low income countries, up to 70%, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (well established). Under current projections efforts to intensify wood production in plantation forests, together with increases in fuel-use efficiency and electrification are only likely to partly offset the pressure on native forests (unresolved). Adoption of more sustainable production systems continues to be slow, as seen, for example, by a slowdown in the expansion of the area of certified forests. More than half of the terrestrial surface of the Earth has fire regimes outside the range of natural variability, with changes in fire frequency and intensity posing major challenges for land restoration (established but incomplete) {3.3.7}. The frequency of fires has increased in many areas – exacerbated by decreases in precipitation – including in many regions of humid and temperate forests that rarely experience large-scale fires naturally. Some changes in fire regimes, particularly in tropical forests, are sufficiently severe that recovery to pre-disturbance conditions may no longer be possible. Increases in international trade, intensification of land use and urbanization have meant that few areas of the planet are free of invasive species (established but incomplete) {3.3.8}. Nearly one fifth of the Earth´s surface is at high risk of plant and animal invasion, including many biodiversity hotspots. Climate change, including increased nitrogen deposition and changes in CO2, as well as increases in fire frequency with rising temperatures in many areas, are all likely to increase invasions {3.4}. Once established, the eradication of many invasive species is often very expensive, if not impossible, underscoring the need to develop proactive strategies to pre-empt invasions, including through inspections, research and education. Activities related to industrialization, infrastructure development, urbanization, and many extractive industries result in complete transformation of ecosystems, accompanied by near or complete loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function and the services those ecosystems provide (well established) {3.3.6}. Infrastructure, industrial development and urbanization activities, often replace natural ecosystems with impervious or contaminated surfaces such as asphalt, concrete and rooftops, leading to the one of the most severe forms of land degradation in the form of soil sealing. Built-up areas, which are dominated by sealed soils, currently occupy nearly 0.6% of the global land surface. If population densities in cities remain stable, the extent of built-up areas in developed countries is expected to increase by 30% and triple in developing countries between 2000 and 2050. Under more extreme scenarios of increasing population density and economic development, the extent of built-up areas globally may increase to over 2% of the global land area over this same time period. New urban design and green technologies that incorporate features that promote sustainability and delivery of ecosystem services can play an important role in restoring some of the ecosystem functions and services of built environments. The importance of climate change for land degradation is most prominent through its role in exacerbating the impacts of other human activities (established but incomplete) {3.4}. The exacerbating effect of climate change on the impact of degradation drivers, including land clearance and intensive farming techniques, can be felt both through chronic impacts and directional changes – like temperature changes, leading to shifts in species range sizes, as well as changes in average precipitation levels, atmospheric CO2 and nitrogen deposition – and acute impacts through extreme weather events of flooding, drought, and other natural disasters (well established). Heavy rainfall events and storms as well as heat waves and droughts are predicted to increase in frequency over several parts of the globe, with cascading effects on the frequency, intensity, extent and timing of other drivers such as fires, pest and pathogen outbreaks, species invasions, soil erosion and landslides (established but incomplete). The last decade has witnessed a rise in consumer-driven demand for sustainable land use and land management, as well as commitments to restore degraded land that is unprecedented in human history (well established) {3.6}. In the last decade hundreds of companies have made pledges to reduce their impacts on forests and on the rights of local communities, with many committing to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains entirely by 2020. In the same period, many governments and civil society groups have made ambitious commitments to restore hundreds of millions of hectares of degraded land. New players, such as the finance sector, who until recently have been completely detached from the mainstream sustainability agenda are also starting to make explicit commitments to avoiding environmental harm. The overall impact of these voluntary measures remains to be assessed but they offer a vital window of opportunity for reversing degradation trends and placing economies on a more sustainable footing – especially as large areas of marginal agricultural become increasingly abandoned with ongoing development (unresolved).