Suchergebnisse

Drought is a natural hazard that can cause a wide range of impacts affecting the environment, society, and the economy. Providing an impact assessment and reducing vulnerability to these impacts for regions beyond the local scale, spanning political and sectoral boundaries, requires systematic and detailed data regarding impacts. This study presents an assessment of the diversity of drought impacts across Europe based on the European Drought Impact report Inventory (EDII), a unique research database that has collected close to 5000 impact reports from 33 European countries. The reported drought impacts were classified into major impact categories, each of which had a number of subtypes. The distribution of these categories and types was then analyzed over time, by country, across Europe and for particular drought events. The results show that impacts on agriculture and public water supply dominate the collection of drought impact reports for most countries and for all major drought events since the 1970s, while the number and relative fractions of reported impacts in other sectors can vary regionally and from event to event. The analysis also shows that reported impacts have increased over time as more media and website information has become available and environmental awareness has increased. Even though the distribution of impact categories is relatively consistent across Europe, the details of the reports show some differences. They confirm severe impacts in southern regions (particularly on agriculture and public water supply) and sector-specific impacts in central and northern regions (e.g., on forestry or energy production). The protocol developed thus enabled a new and more comprehensive view on drought impacts across Europe. Related studies have already developed statistical techniques to evaluate the link between drought indices and the categorized impacts using EDII data. The EDII is a living database and is a promising source for further research on drought impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks across Europe. A key result is the extensive variety of impacts found across Europe and its documentation. This insight can therefore inform drought policy planning at national to international levels.

In his article, Ulrich K. Preuss illustrates deficits of the so-called European public. Chiefly, given that the European Union exists as a union of states and peoples, there is no European communication community. A European communication community could emerge if there were a European political sphere. This requires a transnational coding of politicizable societal conflict, and eventually a "transnationalization of social struggles". The author believes that these voices would not speak in their national accents, but from their "specific and distinct social origins". A European visibility in the public would thus allow commonalities to flourish even in a context of plurality. Adapted from the source document

This article looks at developments in Eastern European civil society (as measured by the participation in organisations) and how this has changed between 1995 and 2005 using the World Values Survey. There are comparisons with Western Europe on the one hand and the United States on the other, which show that although civic participation of this kind has declined in the United States, it remains stable in Europe, including at a low level in Eastern Europe. Surprisingly, there seemed to be little differences between countries that had joined the European Union and those that had not. The article considers reasons for this continued weakness of civil society in Eastern Europe.

Central banks have taken drastic steps to keep their economies afloat during the COVID-19 lockdowns. In the euro-area, the European Central Bank (ECB) has eased significantly the conditions of its refinancing operations and has announced a new asset purchase programme. This response has triggered fears of a significant increase in inflation, and concerns about whether the ECB measures are compatible with its price-stability mandate and with the limits set by the EU Treaties. -Accelerating inflation is not an immediate threat, as the euro area will experience in 2020 its deepest recession ever recorded. Initially, the pandemic took the form of a supply shock, but second-round effects have now generated a massive aggregate demand shock. The overall impact on prices will depend on which of these two shocks dominates, but at this stage, it seems that deflationary forces are likely to dominate and bring headline inflation into negative territory in the near future. -An expansionary monetary policy is thus clearly warranted for the ECB to fulfil its price-stability mandate. Moreover, given the severity of the shock, there is currently no trade-off between the ECB's primary mandate and its secondary macroeconomic objec-tives, which all point in the same direction. New measures implemented by the ECB also seem to respect the legal boundaries set by the EU Treaties and the criteria set by the EU Court of Justice in its rulings on previous ECB asset purchase programmes. -However, the legal situation has been complicated by the 5 May 2020 ruling of the German Constitutional Court (GCC) on the ECB's 2015 Public Sector Purchase Programme. The ECB is not under the GCC's jurisdiction and it is difficult to predict how the legal situation will evolve, but from an economic perspective, if the ECB were to abide by the more strin-gent rules dictated by the GCC, it would make it harder for the ECB to fulfil its primary mandate and secondary objectives. -The ECB's current actions and the increase in the size of its balance sheet, even if it were to prove permanent, should not restrict significantly its ability to increase rates to fulfil its price-stability mandate. The ECB would have enough tools at its disposal to counter a surge in inflation if it were to happen. -While the ordering is clear between the ECB's primary price-stability mandate and its secondary objectives, the secondary goals are not ranked by priority, possibly creating difficult trade-offs. Dealing with these is a political task and the ECB should welcome some clear guidance from the European Parliament and EU Council on which secondary objectives are the most relevant for the EU in a particular situation.

Defence date: 15 February 2016 ; Examining Board: Professor Pepper D. Culpepper, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore / formerly European University Institute; Professor Victor Lapuente, University of Gothenburg; Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Hertie School of Governance. ; Since 1996, when James D. Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, called corruption a cancer and declared a war against it, we have seen only partial victories. The phenomenon of corruption presents exceptional resilience in contemporary societies. Yet, empirical research shows that there are countries, regions, and cities that have been able to reverse their fate and managed to bring corruption under control. By taking up this issue, my doctoral thesis attempts to determine: a) the ways in which a negative (corrupt) institutional equilibrium can be reversed; and b) in areas of widespread corruption, why some cities and their politicians decide to opt out from corruption and to limit it. In order to do this, I explore a puzzling variety of levels of corruption across and within different levels of government (national, regional and local). I aim to explain why in some cities there is corruption, collusion and bad government, while in other cities within the same institutional framework we observe non-corruption and good government. In other words, I aim to explain institution-building in societies hampered by low levels of trust and fragmented interests, and to assess if the possibilities exist for corrupt cities to alter these negative tendencies and become "good apples on bad trees". I thus focus on well-performing cities in highly corrupt regions and countries, in an attempt to understand what lies behind the variation in levels of corruption between and within regions II argue that the answer to this question lies in the cost of corruption for government, combined with the capacity of the business sector to cooperate (business association strength) and press the government to invest in administrative capacity. I contend that business associations with the strong cooperation of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can press government, and that this, together with government stability, enables a shift from the government's short-term horizons to long-term investment in administrative capacity. In that way, government's potential "grabbing hand" can be limited. The methodology to probe this question is twofold: qualitative analysis using process tracing on eight cases of local government in Spain and Italy, and a historical analysis of the evolution of the economic circumstances and quality of government in these eight cases. My thesis contributes to the burgeoning literature on corruption and anti-corruption but also to the wider literature on political economy and collective action, by modeling endogenous institutional change and cooperation, even in the absence of trust and strong institutional control.

Abstract
Background
In Morocco, fish is an important protein source especially, even not exclusively, for coastal communities and marketed fresh all along the coastline. One of the main targets of coastal artisanal fisheries is the European conger (Conger conger, Linnaeus 1758), a widely distributed benthic predatory species of a maximum weight of up to 50 kg. However, information on heavy metal contamination of conger is scarce. Therefore, concentrations of mercury, lead and cadmium were analysed in 108 European conger specimens from nine locations along the along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Morocco to describe the spatial distribution of heavy metal contamination.

Results
The average heavy metal concentration in all conger samples under investigation was 246.90 ± 216.83 µg mercury/kg wet mass, 74.14 ± 87.02 µg lead/kg wet mass and 255.12 ± 287.15 µg cadmium/kg wet mass respectively. Mercury and cadmium showed a clear site-specific bioaccumulation in European conger but lead does not. Hence, the effect of fish length bias on contamination was corrected through a generalized linear model (GLM) prior to any spatial comparison.

Conclusions
Different regional hotspots for the three analysed metals are identified and local sources are discussed. Mercury levels in big specimens of European conger exceeded the European threshold level for human consumption at some of the locations under investigation.

Why have governments responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in such different ways? During the past quarter century, international agencies and donors have disseminated vast resources and a set of best practice recommendations to policymakers around the globe. Yet the governments of developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean continue to implement widely varying policies. Boundaries of Contagion is the first systematic, comparative analysis of the politics of HIV/AIDS. The book explores the political challenges of responding to a stigmatized condition, and identifies ethnic boundaries--the formal and informal institutions that divide societies--as a central influence on politics and policymaking. --From publisher's description.

Abstract Background Community-based initiatives (CBIs) on childhood obesity are considered a good practice approach against childhood obesity. The European Commission called for an overview of CBIs implemented from 2005–2011. A survey was executed by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment of the Netherlands, in collaboration with the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the European CBIs, as identified in the survey, presenting their general characteristics, applied strategies (separately for actions targeting the environment and/or directly the children's behaviour) and the reported effects on weight indicators. Methods Potentially eligible CBIs were identified by informants in 27 European Union countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, and through desk research. School based approaches could be included if they complied with criteria related to being 'community-based'. In total, 278 potential eligible CBIs were identified and of these, 260 projects were approached. For 88 an electronic questionnaire was completed; of these 71 met all criteria. The included projects were reported by 15 countries. Results 66% of the 71 CBIs implemented actions in more than one setting or throughout the neighbourhood. Most frequently reported environmental actions were professional training (78%), actions for parents (70%), and changing the social (62%) and physical (52%) environment. Most frequently reported educational activities were group education (92%), general educational information (90%), and counselling sessions (58%). The vast majority (96%) implemented both environmental and individual strategies and about half of the CBIs reported a public-private partnership. Eight CBIs provided evidence supporting positive effects on weight indicators and/or overweight prevalence in a general population of children (aged 6 to 12 yrs), and one CBI did not support this. Two of those CBIs were also conducted among adolescents (aged 12 to 16,5 yrs), but showed no effect in this age-group. Conclusions Despite diversity of included CBIs, common characteristics were the application of integrated actions at a local level, aimed at changing the environment and the children's behaviour directly. Evidence supporting effectiveness on weight indicators is available, although the design and conduct of most of these studies were suboptimal (i.e. no control group, a small sample size, not random).

The low participation of women in politics leads to a lack of women's involvement in politics. Although there is already 30% quota of women's representation in politics, there are still not represented women's voices in politics, especially regional leader. One way to increase women'srepresentation is through political communication strategies involving women, affirmative action, women leadership and political education for women. Strategies carried out through messages and medias used. Give woman opportunities to empower other woman. Hopefully Indonesian women can participate in the political frenzy. Not only as a sweetener but directly involved in practical politics.

Abstract
After the US surge in 2007, the Sadrists were at crossroads. The Mahdi Army's proclivity for violence had been discrediting Sadr's movement and was increasingly allienating its own constituency. Therefore, they started to refocus on politics. Generally, the Sadrist behaviour after 2009 can be defined as 'electoral militarism', a symbolic extension of the conflict as an electoral strategy. While the leadership has to compromise with Iran and support sectarian politics, they at the same time jealously protect the movement's nationalist outlook, using a rhetoric focused on national unity and emphasizing the movement's independence. This dualism between rhetoric and action is the most basic contradiction in the Sadrist movement today – and in Iraq in general.

PART I THE PROMISE OF LOCAL ECONOMIC INITIATIVES -- The Emergence of an Idea -- Consensus Policies and their Ambiguous Politics -- PART II POLICIES AND DEBATES -- The Radical Alternatives: the Right and the Left -- The Mainstream -- PART III THE LOCALNESS OF LOCAL ECONOMIC POLICY -- Are there Local Economies? -- Community, Locality and the Erosion of Place Local Control in an International Economy -- PART IV THE FUTURE OF LOCAL ECONOMIC POLICY -- The Left: Modernisation or Class Struggle? -- How Can Markets be Freed? -- The Future of the Consensus -- The International Economy and the Future of Local Economic Policy.

Introduction: the question of freedom -- A divided revolution -- The habitus of the homestead -- Urban social engineering and revolutionary consciousness -- Neoliberalism as misfortune -- Death in an age of wild ghosts -- Colonial nostalgias and the reinvention of culture -- Conclusion: on the politics of culture

The social theory of Henri Lefebvre -- The production of space -- Space, abstraction and law -- State power and the politics of space -- Modernity, inhabitance and the rhythms of everyday life -- The right to the city and the production of differential space