Suchergebnisse

The South African government has emphasised the need for 'developing country' solutions to climate change that simultaneously pursue GHG reductions and socioeconomic development. To encourage the transition to a low-carbon economy the National Treasury has proposed a carbon tax and offset mechanism to be introduced in 2015. The practical delivery of the offset scheme remains uncertain. This paper investigates which features and governance structure would be desirable for such a mechanism in South Africa. Primary research is conducted into the South African voluntary carbon registry; Credible Carbon. The questions asked by this paper are: Should firms be allowed to offset emissions? What is the ideal way to implement offsets in South Africa? This paper concludes that Credible Carbon provides a good model for carbon trading that can be scaled up to meet demand under the new regulations. However, government needs to ensure that projects continue to deliver acceptable social benefits and that carbon auditors are well-trained and accountable.

The South African government has emphasised the need for 'developing country' solutions to climate change that simultaneously pursue GHG reductions and socioeconomic development. To encourage the transition to a low-carbon economy the National Treasury has proposed a carbon tax and offset mechanism to be introduced in 2015. The practical delivery of the offset scheme remains uncertain. This paper investigates which features and governance structure would be desirable for such a mechanism in South Africa. Primary research is conducted into the South African voluntary carbon registry; Credible Carbon. The questions asked by this paper are: Should firms be allowed to offset emissions? What is the ideal way to implement offsets in South Africa? This paper concludes that Credible Carbon provides a good model for carbon trading that can be scaled up to meet demand under the new regulations. However, government needs to ensure that projects continue to deliver acceptable social benefits and that carbon auditors are well-trained and accountable.

This paper discusses the historical roots of, and scientific evidence for, rival 'jackal narratives' about the problems posed by black-backed jackals (canis mesomelas) for sheep farmers in the Karoo, South Africa. The jackal recolonized farms as government policy changed away from subsidising predator control and as farm employment contracted and sheep farming became less economically and politically important. The influential 'environmental jackal narrative' that lethal control is undesirable and ineffective, is rooted in the science of predator ecology but the linked recommendation that farmers learn to 'live with the jackal' is on less solid ground. The rival 'farmer jackal narrative' that jackal populations need to be suppressed on agricultural land resonates with conservation theories justifying the culling of jackals in national parks. Contestation over values remains important, but these competing plausible hypotheses about jackal control suggest that further scientific studies may be helpful in the construction of policies that are acceptable to both sides.

The South African government has emphasised the need for 'developing country' solutions to climate change that simultaneously pursue GHG reductions and socioeconomic development. To encourage the transition to a low-carbon economy the National Treasury has proposed a carbon tax and offset mechanism to be introduced in 2015. The practical delivery of the offset scheme remains uncertain. This paper investigates which features and governance structure would be desirable for such a mechanism in South Africa. Primary research is conducted into the South African voluntary carbon registry; Credible Carbon. The questions asked by this paper are: Should firms be allowed to offset emissions? What is the ideal way to implement offsets in South Africa? This paper concludes that Credible Carbon provides a good model for carbon trading that can be scaled up to meet demand under the new regulations. However, government needs to ensure that projects continue to deliver acceptable social benefits and that carbon auditors are well-trained and accountable.

Article ; The evaluation of government policy programmes is a crucial management instrument applied internationally to establish whether policies are implemented as planned, and effective in achieving specific objectives in society. The article starts off by providing selected theoretical perspectives on public policy evaluation, culminating in a Policy Documentation Template (PDT). The PDT is a framework and control instrument that can serve as a yardstick to measure the effectiveness of public policy documents. The article then refers to policy implementation theory, and the development of a Policy Implementation Monitor (PIM) follows. Comprehensive policy documentation of the Western Cape Public Works & Transport Department (PPW) related to acquisition and provision of land for construction of new state health facilities is then assessed, and the implementation of the policy programme summarised and assessed. The article concludes with a number of recommended strategies to improve the delivery of new state health facilities to the population of the province, within set time frames. Formal partnerships and legal contracting between government departments towards critical service delivery in society are key solutions being put forward.

The Marketing of Agricultural Products Act (47 of 1996) provides for a range of statutory measures given that a Section 7 committee of the NAMC (National Agricultural Marketing Council) can be convinced that these measures would improve market access for all and the overall efficiency of the market. Such an investigation was requested in 2006 and completed in early 2008 (NAMC, 2008). Being allowed to collect a levy is the key benefit of statutory measures, which also includes registration and records and returns, but before any industry qualifies for statutory measures, it must convince Government that it a) has the support of all stakeholders and b) exactly know the extent of the industry. This survey is the first national survey of beekeepers in fourteen years and an important response to the NAMC recommendations towards qualifying for a statutory levy.

AbstractMany recent AI policies have been structured under labels that follow a particular trend: national or international guidelines, policies or regulations, such as the EU's and USA's 'Trustworthy AI' and China's and India's adoption of 'Responsible AI', use a label that follows the recipe of [agentially loaded notion + 'AI']. A result of this branding, even if implicit, is to encourage the application by laypeople of these agentially loaded notions to the AI technologies themselves. Yet, these notions are appropriate only when applied to agents, which current AI technologies are not; and the concern is that this misapplication creates an incentive to inappropriately attribute trustworthiness or responsibility to AI technologies. We endeavour to show that we have good reason to avoid any general AI policy that uses agentially loaded labelling. We suggest labelling these policies not in terms of some qualification of AI, but rather in terms of our approach to the technology and its wider development and use context – focusing on being trustworthy and responsible about AI, rather than on trustworthy or responsible AI.

This article investigates to what extent technological affordances are associated with people's preference for video streaming platforms over traditional television services. Such affordances refer to properties of these platforms (including personalized recommendations and easy-to-navigate interfaces) that provoke certain uses of the technology and satisfy social and psychological needs. Based on a quantitative study of 25–50-year-olds in Belgium ( N = 596) and a hierarchical regression analysis, the study builds further on the conceptualization of technological affordances as presented in the MAIN model, which suggests that four affordances (Modality, Agency, Interactivity and Navigability) are central to digital media technology. As such, the study presents an affordance-based measure of video streaming platforms, and helps to understand how video streaming technology shapes new patterns of audiovisual consumption and enhances the viewing experience beyond that of traditional television. Whereas most research attention has focused on user-oriented gratifications of video streaming platforms, this study addresses a gap in the literature by dealing with platform-oriented gratifications of video streaming platforms.