Suchergebnisse

This volume analyzes food security issues such as agricultural policy, global agricultural trade, international agricultural research and development, biotechnology, climate change, food waste, and nutrition guidelines.

World agricultural resources will be altered by climate change which will require both public and private actions. Global agriculture is affected by invasive alien pest and disease species and by severe weather such as sea-level rise flooding and drought. Rising sea levels will increase salinity in coastal groundwater and the loss of coastal wetlands. Drought will increase the vulnerability of forest ecosystems due to decreased soil moisture and increased evapotranspiration. Many changes will be needed to maintain global food security. Climate change will affect food supply and demand, as well as prices. Research and development have the potential to impact both supply and demand, especially through the adoption of biotechnology. Researching plant and animal breeding for multiple disease resistance against pathogens of global relevance has great evolutionary potential. One such program is aquaculture. Another problem is land constraints as rural and urban areas compete for land. For rural food-insecure households, land competition means necessary changes in production practices. Research and development investments could substantially decelerate food prices to prevent hunger and deteriorating living standards in rural households worldwide. Increasing food security will mean establishing dietary guidelines that alleviate the negative health and economic outcomes associated with malnutrition. It is highly questionable to aggregate all food items based solely on calories per kilogram content when not all calories are equal in their effect on health. Food security also includes increasing diet diversity while decreasing food waste and loss. It is imperative that actions be taken for a food-secure future.

This article investigates how the notion of security is used in Estonia both to legitimise and delegitimise international integration. It outlines the assumptions, claims and modes of analysis that underpin security narratives, specifying what are constructed as threats to Estonia and what are framed as appropriate countermeasures to these threats. The article scrutinises in particular whether this discourse is undergoing a transformation from exclusive confrontational to inclusive cooperative conceptualisations. I argue that a shift has occurred from military definitions of security to those articulated in terms of culture and values, but that this cultural definition works not against but in tandem with the binary oppositions of inside/outside and us/them. The transition has been not from exclusive to inclusive operationalisations of security but from exclusions based on the notion of military threat to those invoking culture and values. This diffuse cultural discourse enables the selective deployment of divergent arguments to different audiences while maintaining the familiar underlying dichotomies.

3. NATIVE MAIZE CONSERVATION AS A PROPOSAL FOR MULTIFUNCTIONAL PERI-URBAN AGRICULTURE IN MEXICO CITY (FEDERAL DISTRICT)CONCLUSION; REFERENCES; Chapter 6: YOUTH EMPLOYMENT IN LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES: THE CONTRIBUTION OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE ; ABSTRACT; INTRODUCTION; THE GROWING YOUTH POPULATION; YOUTH EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT; DECLINING RURAL YOUTH POPULATION; THE EMPLOYMENT PREDICAMENT IN LDCS; BUILDING DECENT JOBS IN AGRICULTURE; TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE; CONCLUSION; REFERENCES; Chapter 7: AN OVERVIEW OF MULTIFUNCTIONAL BENEFITS IN RELATION TO SMALL SCALE FARMING IN CHINA.

Almost everyone recognizes the salience of cyberspace as a fact of daily life. Given its ubiquity, scale, and scope, cyberspace has become a fundamental feature of the world we live in and has created a new reality for almost everyone in the developed world and increasingly for people in the developing world. This paper seeks to provide an initial baseline, for representing and tracking institutional responses to a rapidly changing international landscape, real as well as virtual. We shall argue that the current institutional landscape managing security issues in the cyber domain has developed in major ways, but that it is still "under construction." We also expect institutions for cyber security to support and reinforce the contributions of information technology to the development process. We begin with (a) highlights of international institutional theory and an empirical "census" of the institutions-in-place for cyber security, and then turn to (b) key imperatives of information technology-development linkages and the various cyber processes that enhance developmental processes, (c) major institutional responses to cyber threats and cyber crime as well as select international and national policy postures so critical for industrial countries and increasingly for developing states as well, and (d) the salience of new mechanisms designed specifically in response to cyber threats. ; This material is based on work supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grant No. N00014-09-1-0597. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations therein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research.

Shaping National Security: International Emergency Mechanisms and Disaster Risk Reduction presents international emergency mechanisms relative to disaster risk reduction (DRR). The goal is to share knowledge about existing frameworks, and utilize established DRR policies and programs, as another means to reinforce and strengthen national security in countries around the world. The book outlines, in detail, the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC), the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) DRR programs. While these entities' versions of DRR best practices are largely directed at decreasing the impact of disaster hazards, limiting relevant exposure, local vulnerabilities, increasing capacities to cope with disaster, the authors present these frameworks as potential tools, and effective means, to support national security efforts. This is especially important in disaster circumstances when local, and national emergency resources, may be insufficient to face hazards and multi-hazards, and result in cascading effects to occur as hazard events transpire. Chapters present various resources available to them, through these programs, to encourage authorities from every country to effectively apply the mechanisms--and emergency mechanisms specifically--to offer domestic solutions. Due to these programs proven track records in providing organisational standards, the use of such mechanisms can serve as both the basis to foster sound DRR practices and, by extension, can supplement resiliency, security, and continuity within countries. This concept is based on the premise that the UNDAC, INSARAG, NATO and ECPM emergency mechanisms have been developed to be implementable (directly or indirectly) in every country in the world when disasters occur. Shaping National Security takes a "big-picture," holistic view of DRR and national security to offer innovative ideas and solutions to professionals and officials working in disaster management, disaster risk reduction, emergency management, crisis management, civil protection, public security management, national security, criminal justice, international studies, and homeland security.