Suchergebnisse

It has been long recognized that political borders should not hamper wildlife, and that conservation actions involving several countries are known to bring large scale benefits to nature while helping to resolve social and political conflicts. While many neighboring countries have lived a considerable long peace time, namely the European western countries, several eastern countries were isolated from the west regions due to the so called "iron curtain". More recently, in the former Yugoslavia and currently along the border of Ukraine-Russia, devastating conflicts are also isolating regions and countries. On the other hand, human development, and particularly transportation networks, are serious threats to biodiversity. For example, roads inflict serious mortality rates due to animal-vehicle collisions, can obstruct the animal movement, or represent important pathways for the spread of invasive species. It is normal for conflict zones to have a lower density of roads and populations. We suggest that former isolation and conflict areas can be regarded as opportunities for biodiversity conservation and to strength cross country relations. In fact, as already shown with the German Green Belt project, border areas can become important areas for conservation due to higher habitat quality, namely forest cover and reduced density of infrastructures. Here we provide an assessment of the potential for political European borders to function as key conservation and connectivity areas by evaluating and comparing the number and size of roadless areas within countries and along their borders. The northern and eastern countries have the highest cover in roadless areas, together with Spain. However, Borders of eastern countries have significantly higher cover of roadless areas, namely from Belarus down to Croatia and Greece. Moreover, all European border with Russian Federation has also much higher cover of roadless areas. Interestingly, the borders of the northern countries, Norway, Sweden and Finland have also a higher cover of roadless areas. We further discuss how focusing on conservation action at borders can become a "win-win" outcome with advantages for both biodiversity and human peace. In particular, conservation of flag species, as bear and lynx, at borders of main geo-political blocks can be used to increase the cooperation between such regions and with that ensure long last peaceful coexistence. ; peerReviewed

A discussion of targeted vs distributive aid policies within the context of NY's general-purpose aid program. Development of that program over the past forty years shows ebbs & flows of support for both approaches, & intense policy debates concerning local fiscal policies occur as part of annual state budget negotiations, Recently, NY policymakers have favored targeted approaches, although the traditional measures of targeting governmental needs -- ie, differences in fiscal capacity & effort -- have been expanded to emphasize differences in service responsibilities. Strong parallels are also evident between NY's program & the now defunct revenue-sharing program. 4 Tables. HA

Inflation Targeting (IT) is a macro-monetary policy tool, originally introduced in New Zealand and now adopted by several countries, that can lead to relatively stable and low inflation rates through the adoption of an explicit inflation target, one that can, if successful, lead to enhanced credibility, transparency, and accountability. While noting some of the pros and cons, evidence reveals considerable success in various less-developed countries (LDCs) with this approach, though results with respect to DCs are rather mixed. IT success in the LDCs means reduced inflation rates and lower output volatility, and diminished inflationary expectations. The paper examines these aspects of inflation targeting and also discusses Chile's experience with IT and the lessons from that experience that can be potentially useful for other LDCs. Adapted from the source document.

The concept that certain objects and persons may be legitimately attacked during armed conflicts has been well recognised and developed through the history of warfare. This book explores the relationship between international law and targeting practice in determining whether an object is a lawful military target. By examining both the interpretation and its post-ratification application this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the definition of military objective adopted in 1977 Additional Protocol I to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions and its use in practice. Tackling topical issues such.

AbstractStarting in the mid‐1980s, the level and volatility of inflation decreased across industrial countries. The inflation stabilization can be explained by a shift in monetary policy or by a lucky period of low volatility in business cycle shocks. To test the "good luck hypothesis," we examine the inflation experience of Canada, one of the earliest and most successful adopters of an inflation targeting monetary policy. We Kalman‐filter the historical structural shocks consistent with an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the Canadian economy. The estimated shocks are used to build counterfactual histories. The good luck hypothesis can explain only a minor portion of the change in the path and volatility of inflation after the shift in policy. Most of inflation and output stabilization is accounted by the impact on expectations. Unconditionally, the inflation targeting policy does not improve on the previous policy in terms of inflation volatility, but supports a more favourable trade‐off, reducing substantially output volatility.

How do governmental divisions within an authoritarian state influence protest outcomes? In this article, the authors propose two divergent mechanisms—"co-optation" and "coercion"—to capture the relationships between types of protest target and the violence that results from protest events. The "co-optation" hypothesis proposes that protests against judicial and security branches will be more likely to become violent compared to those against the administrative ones because protesters anticipate no substantial economic return from judicial and security branches that do not have financial resources at hand to distribute. The "coercion" hypothesis proposes that protests targeting judicial and security branches pose a lower risk of mass violence than those targeting administrative ones due to the public's fear of violent crackdowns by judicial or military branches that control the state's coercive means. Analysing a unique data set of protest events in China between 2006 and 2017, the authors find that protests involving administrative divisions are significantly less likely to turn violent when compared to those opposing nongovernmental targets, while protests targeting judicial or security divisions are significantly more likely to involve mass violence. The findings suggest that protest violence in authoritarian regimes is associated with the organisational divisions within an authoritarian government, and the explanation of the relations focuses on whether the branches have the co-optation capacity to allocate substantial economic resources instead of whether the branches control the coercive forces to intimidate the public. (China/GIGA)

In this paper, we analyze Brazilian inflation under the inflation-targeting system from a conflict inflation perspective and show how the inflation target system only worked well when there was a trend of exchange rate appreciation. Later, the strengthening of the bargaining power of workers and rising real wages since 2006, combined with continuous nominal exchange rate depreciation after mid-2011, increased distributive conflicts and are ultimately behind the recent shift toward austerity.

In the ongoing war on terror both the American and Israeli governments
have resorted to a policy of 'targeting terrorists'. In essence,
both governments authorize their military or intelligence services to
kill specific 'terrorists' who they believe mortally threaten citizens
and cannot otherwise be neutralized. President Bush calls this 'sudden
justice' and the Israeli government 'targeted killing' but their critics
speak of 'assassination', 'liquidation' or 'extra-judicial killing'.
Since 11 September 2001, America is reported to have killed at least
44 people without warning or trial under the guidance of this policy,
at least 18 of whom were civilians; the Israelis have killed at least 348,
including 120 unintended targets (B'tselem 2006; Byman 2006b;
Meyer 2006).

Few violations of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) are as pernicious as using civilians to shield military objectives from attack. This unlawful tactic unfortunately seems to be an all too common practice of organized armed groups, especially in conflicts against tactically superior conventional state armed forces. The very term "human shielding" presupposes, however, the ultimate objective is to prevent an opponent from attacking the shielded military objective or, in the alternative, substantially complicate that attack decision. But is a shielding effect always the ultimate objective of such civilian exploitation? This article argues that the answer is no; that there is a more aggravated form of "human shielding" that occurs when the party exploits civilians in an effort to "bait" the opponent into launching an attack in the hope that it will actually produce civilian casualties, casualties that can be exploited in the broader "legitimacy battle." Thus, unlike the conduct-based violation of human shielding condemned by the LOAC, this tactic seeks to produce the far more egregious result of civilian casualties by exploiting the attacking force as an "innocent agent" to launch an attack. In this situation, the defending force effectively uses the attacking force to "indirectly" attack civilians by executing an attack on the shielded military objective even though the attack is assessed as lawful. This aggravated form of civilian exploitation is not fully captured by the concept of human shielding. Accordingly, this article argues that more effort needs to be devoted to identifying when and how such "indirect attacks" on civilians can be identified and condemned.

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between Inflation targeting (IT) and financial instability from 1990 to 2015 for Asian economies. To measure financial instability, a multidimensional financial conditioning index is calculated following the ECB's approach. Using a fixed effects panel data model the study finds that adoption of IT policy in Asian economies has an adverse impact on financial stability, thus rejecting the 'conventional wisdom' hypothesis. Further, the Vector Autoregression (VAR) result shows that an IT regime increases housing returns and encourages investors to take higher risks.