Suchergebnisse

Presents an upcoming research that focuses on building a theory on how states relate to emigrating people, how states are organized outside their territories, and how the emigrating people relate to their country of origin. The project will focus on countries in the Middle East with an emphasis on Turkey, Syria and Algeria. L. Pitkaniemi

The aim of this essay is to provide an overview of current research on international democratization. I start by discussing the choice of empirical indicators. Given a set of indicators -- Freedom House & Polity, which stand out as the most useful ones -- I make a graphic representation of democratic tendencies in different regions in the world. In this survey one region, North Africa & the Middle East, comes out as exceptional; here no general improvements have been made since the early 1970s. I then make an account of explanatory conditions which have proved in large-n empirical studies to play a role for democratic progress (such as modernization, access to oil, popular demonstrations & the type of authoritarian regime). I end up in a puzzle, which regards the Muslim countries. We can establish, on the one hand, that these countries clearly under-perform democratically. But on the other hand, comparative research has not managed so far to point out why that is the case. We can see a pattern, but we cannot point out an empirically solid explanatory mechanism. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

The aim of introducing agroforestry and community-based forestry is to secure and improve livelihoods, maintain and restore ecosystem services, and contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, the adoption and scaling up of these systems among food insecure communities have proved to be difficult. To better understand why, I identified barriers and bridges at different adoption stages and levels of governance. These were analysed using policy narratives and the sustainable livelihood approach in the light of sustainable development, sustainability and resilience of landscapes. The first stage was the negotiation process between the Swedish NGO Vi-Skogen and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) about funding. Three explanatory approaches were used: organizational, power and context. Vi-Skogen and Sida were caught in policy incompatibility dilemmas that slowed down the NGO policy process, and delayed critical changes that could have improved project outcomes. The second was Vi-Skogen's agroforestry project in Tanzania's Mara Region. A random sample of 21 households was drawn from each of 89 project villages. The proportion of households with surviving agroforestry trees varied from 10-90 % among villages. Field training and visits to farmers with good practices were important for households to start planting trees. Local collaboration, perceived ownership of trees and benefits of trees for crop production were additional factors important for households' decision to continue with agroforestry practices. The third was eleven community-based forest producer and user groups (CBFGs) in eastern and southern Africa. Development of many groups had stagnated and few had managed to develop large scale value-added production. I identified eight barriers and four bridges that influenced the scaling up process of agroforestry and community based forestry among food insecure households. All resulted from interactions among social, political, and economic structures and processes at multiple ...

Coastal areas are crucial to numerous breeding bird species, but have undergone major changes because of anthropogenic development pressures such as altered land use and increased recreational activities. An understanding of what shapes species distribution patterns, and how human activities affect these patterns, is therefore necessary for marine management. The aim of this thesis is to investigate possible causes of spatial patterns of coastal breeding birds, and how human activities and environmental legislation affect these species. Forty eight coastal breeding bird species were surveyed in 4,646 squares of 1 × 1 km size, covering an archipelago in the Baltic Sea, on the east coast of Sweden. We classified all bird species as either specialist species, i.e. specialized coastal breeders, or as generalist species, i.e. species breeding also inland. Specialist species were found further out to sea, while generalist species were found closer to the mainland. The number of specialist and generalist species per square increased as total shoreline length increased, likely because of availability of suitable breeding habitat and feeding areas. Animal sanctuaries were significantly more effective in capturing specialist species and red-listed species than were unprotected areas, while nature reserves often were less effective compared to unprotected areas. Further, specialist species richness decreased as human shoreline exploitation such as buildings and jetties increased, while there was no significant effect on generalist species richness. Likewise, there was a higher probability of applications for exemptions from the general shore protection regulation to occur in squares with fewer specialist species. It is possible that habitats for specialist species are not appropriate for exploitation or that human disturbance make specialist species avoid exploited areas. The proportion of granted exemptions was very high (96%), and the areas they concerned were often close to previously exploited areas. Exploitation of shores is a continuous but slow process known as the cumulative effects problem or the 'tyranny of small decisions made singly', and this is difficult to tackle by environmental legislation. To conserve the breeding habitat along the shorelines in the archipelago, it is necessary to protect the shoreline against further exploitation, and appropriate management of unprotected shorelines is essential.