Suchergebnisse

Donor financing to low- and middle-income countries for reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health increased substantially from 2008 to 2013. However, increased spending by donors might not improve outcomes, if funds are delivered in ways that undermine countries' public financial management systems and incur high transaction costs for project implementation. We combined quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the quality of funding for reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health globally and in Tanzania, based on two principles of aid effectiveness: the alignment of donor financing with the recipient country's public health financial management systems, and donor harmonization for coordinated, transparent, and collectively effective actions. We found that alignment of donor financing deteriorated throughout the period, with the proportion of funds channeled through governments decreasing from 47 percent to 39 percent. Tanzania-based donors attributed the change to the pressure donors were under to achieve and show results. Donor harmonization was low overall and remained relatively constant, although it increased in sub-Saharan Africa and decreased in South Asia. Bilateral funding agencies were the most harmonized donors. We recommend that future assessments of Sustainable Development Goals financing include measures of harmonization and alignment of funding.

Agriculture is a mainstay of many developing countries' economy, such as Brazil. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Brazil is the major global consumer of pesticides. Irrespective of the fact that the International Agency for Research on Cancer suggests that pesticides promote human cancer risk, a prospective study reports that colorectal cancer (CRC) burden will increase in developing countries by approximately 60% in the coming decades. Here, we review the literature and public data from the Brazilian Federal Government to explore why pesticides levels and new cases of colon cancer (CC) are rising rapidly in the country. CC incidence is the second most common malignancy in men and women in the South and the Southeast of Brazil. However, while these regions have almost doubled their pesticide levels and CC mortality in 14 years, the amount of sold pesticides increased 5.2-fold with a corresponding 6.2-fold increase in CC mortality in Northern and Northeastern states. Interestingly, mortality from endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases are rapidly increasing, in close resemblance with the pesticide detection levels in food. Taken together, we discuss the possibility that pesticides might alter the risk of CC.

Limpopo provincial departments like all other South African government departments are required to report on performance against predetermined objectives in terms of Section 40 of the Public Finance Management Act 1 of 1999, read in conjunction with Section 5.1.1 of the Treasury Regulations. The purpose of this article is to report on a study that was undertaken to establish the challenges faced by the Limpopo provincial departments in reporting on performance against predetermined objectives to the Auditor-General (AG). Reporting on predetermined objectives has been a challenge over the past financial years and this is evident in the AG's reports, in which Limpopo provincial departments continued to receive qualified audit reports. The literature review carried out for purposes of this study revealed that performance management is fundamental to enhancing organisational performance. A qualitative research design was used to collect and analyse data. Key findings of the study included that management should prioritise strategic planning, performance reporting, monitoring and evaluation to enable it to be in a position to make a determination as to whether what was planned by the department was actually realised. It is also of paramount importance that performance reporting is highly prioritised at strategic, tactical and operational management meetings to ensure more effective and efficient organisational performance.

The evolving impact of plant breeders' rights was investigated in a bid to provide a basis for understanding the complex relationship that exists between scientific, legislative and market matters that shape the peach and nectarine fresh fruit sector. The results show that there is complementarity among varietal legislation, deregularisation, international trade policies, market trends and research intensity. Plant varietal legislation is found to play a facilitative role in ensuring the growth in the sector which has evolved from merely facilitating access to better quality cultivars which were bred beyond South Africa's borders, to the provision of good quality germplasm that aids in the breeding of locally bred varieties which better meet the production needs of local farmers. The results of the analysis show that strengthened varietal legislation has contributed significantly to cultivar development, reduced varietal concentration, increased resource (land) utilisation and increased export revenue generation and market penetration. The study warns of the negative effects that widening the scope of the Plant Breeders' Rights Act would have on innovation and cultivar access by poor farmers. Because of the strong ties existing between innovation and R&D investment, the recommendation is for an increase in R&D investment in the local research institution.

Since the late 1990s, the regions in Italy have played a pivotal role in the immigrant integration policy, reinforced in 2001 because of the approval of federal reform assigning to the regions full autonomy on matters of social policy, immigrants' integration included. Notwithstanding this crucial position, during the 2000s Italian regions have faced considerable cuts to their social policy budget, as well as pressures from the national government to accommodate in their immigrant integration policy issues of civic integration and Italian language learning, regarded as priorities in the EU context. This paper analyses how these new constraints and requirements have been confronted in regional policy-making processes, which characterise for the closeness with local administrations and civil society organisations, i.e. the actors charged with the implementation of regional policy programmes. Five regions in different areas of the country will be considered: Piedmont and Lombardy in the North-West; Emilia-Romagna in the North-East; Tuscany in the Centre; and Apulia in the South. The main objective is that of highlighting the emerging of different regional policy styles and systems of governance of immigrant integration, even in a context of increasing pressures towards convergence on civic integration policy priorities.

Published: 22 May 2017 ; Climate-related health indicators are potentially useful for tracking and predicting the adverse public health effects of climate change, identifying vulnerable populations, and monitoring interventions. However, there is a need to understand stakeholders' perspectives on the identification, development, and utility of such indicators. A qualitative approach was used, comprising semi-structured interviews with key informants and service providers from government and non-government stakeholder organizations in South Australia. Stakeholders saw a need for indicators that could enable the monitoring of health impacts and time trends, vulnerability to climate change, and those which could also be used as communication tools. Four key criteria for utility were identified, namely robust and credible indicators, specificity, data availability, and being able to be spatially represented. The variability of risk factors in different regions, lack of resources, and data and methodological issues were identified as the main barriers to indicator development. This study demonstrates a high level of stakeholder awareness of the health impacts of climate change, and the need for indicators that can inform policy makers regarding interventions. ; Maryam Navi, Alana Hansen, Monika Nitschke, Scott Hanson-Easey and Dino Pisaniello

Abstract After more than a decade as an observer, Timor Leste's application to become the eleventh member of the ASEAN has officially submitted on 4 March 2011. Indeed, despite being the youngest country in ASEAN, Timor Leste has already made substantial contributions to the region of South East Asia through its involvement in several ASEAN events included the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 2005. The problem is that there are some doubts of its ability to fulfil all the membership obligations at this time. While Indonesia is actively sponsoring Timor Leste's application for membership in ASEAN and strongly believes that this country is ready to becoming part of the ASEAN Community, some suppose that Timor Leste is not yet ready. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the position of Timor Leste in its attempts to join the ASEAN. The study employs qualitative analysis and utilizes some models of diplomacy and ASEAN charter in examining the efforts that Timor Leste has done in achieving full membership status in this regional organization. The data for the research was collected through secondary sources. The study concluded that Timor Leste has boosted its bargaining position in the last few years and its acceptance into ASEAN is only a matter of time.

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0402-5. ; Modernization theory predicts rising education should increase assortative mating by education and decrease sorting by race. Recent research suggests effects of educational expansion depend on contextual factors such as economic development. Using log-linear and log multiplicative models of male household heads ages 36 to 75 in the 1940 U.S. census data, the first census with educational attainment information, I investigate how educational assortative mating changed with one instance of educational expansion: early U.S. compulsory school attendance laws. To improve on existing research and distinguish effects of expansion from changes due to particular years or cohorts, I capitalize on state variation in the timing of these compulsory laws (which ranged from 1852 to 1918). Aggregate results suggest compulsory laws had minimal impact on assortative mating. However, separate analyses by region (and supplemental analyses by race) reveal that assortative mating by education decreased with the laws in the South, but increased in the North. Whether due to economic, legal, political, or other differences, results suggest the implications of educational expansion for marital sorting depend on context. Contemporary implications are discussed in light of President Obama's suggested extension of compulsory schooling.

Metrics have become all pervasive in global health today. Instead of highlighting their advantages or shortcomings, this article builds on Hacking's notion of historical ontology and explores their political, conceptual and material conditions of possibility. Drawing on research on the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use in Developing Countries, one of the largest international efforts to address the non-communicable disease epidemic in the global South, the article starts by introducing the notion of epidemiological reason – a thought style associated with modern epidemiology that undergirds the metrics permeating the global health field and which is made of a multiplicity of elements, from the ethical imperative to save lives to the social-scientific technique of the survey and the concept of global population. The article then goes on to explore the genealogy of this thought style, arguing that three epistemological ruptures have been critical to its development: the reconfiguration of power articulated around a biopolitics of population in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the twentieth-century shift in medical thought marked by the emergence of surveillance medicine and the idea of lifestyle; and the re-organisation of world health informed by globalisation theories at the start of the twenty-first century.

Resilience building has become a growing policy agenda, particularlyfor urban risk management. While much of the resilience agenda has been shapedby policies and discourses from the global North, its applicability for cities of theglobal South, particularly African cities, has not been sufficiently assessed. Focusingon rights of urban citizens as the object to be made resilient, rather than physicaland ecological infrastructures, may help to address many of the root causes thatcharacterize the unacceptable risks that urban residents face on a daily basis.Linked to this idea, we discuss four entry points for grounding a rights and justiceorientation for urban resilience. First, notions of resilience must move away fromnarrow, financially oriented risk analyses. Second, opportunities must be createdfor "negotiated resilience", to allow for attention to processes that support thesegoals, as well as for the integration of diverse interests. Third, achieving resiliencein ways that do justice to the local realities of diverse urban contexts necessitatestaking into account endogenous, locally situated processes, knowledges andnorms. And finally, urban resilience needs to be placed within the context of globalsystems, providing an opportunity for African contributions to help reimagine therole that cities might play in these global financial, political and science processes

High levels of wind penetration is widely accepted as presenting problems for energy security. With increasing wind deployment this issue is well recognised in Scotland. Spatial smoothing of generation is seen as one method to enhance energy security in a high wind penetration system. This requires wind farms to be developed in a way to take advantage of this smoothing; however, this is not part of the UK/Scottish government wind deployment strategy – which is instead developer led. This research seeks to contribute to a strategic approach to wind development in Scotland, taking into account spatial smoothing – which is shown in this study to be statistically significant within Scotland. Providing quantification of which pre-existing areas of large-scale wind development in Scotland should be the focus of further development and which are of least benefit. Wind farms in southern Scotland offer least in terms of energy security, due to over-concentration of deployment in this area, further development here should be in part considered in terms of export value, rather than utilization within Scotland. The two island areas modelled are shown to have high spatial smoothing value. This work should help inform current political discourse over grid connections to these areas.

Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism situates late 20th century feminisms within a global framework of women's activism. Its chapters, written by leading international scholars, demonstrate how issues of heterogeneity, transnationalism, and intersectionality have transformed understandings of historical feminism. It is no longer possible to imagine that feminism has ever fostered an unproblematic sisterhood among women blind to race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality and citizenship status. The chapters in this collection modify the "wave" metaphor in some cases and in others re-periodize it. By studying individual movements, they collectively address several themes that advance our understandings of the history of feminism, such as the rejection of "hegemonic" feminism by marginalized feminist groups, transnational linkages among women's organizations, transnational flows of ideas and transnational migration. By analyzing practical activism, the chapters in this volume produce new ways of theorizing feminism and new historical perspectives about the activist locations from which feminist politics emerged. Including histories of feminisms in the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, France, Russia, Japan, Korea, Poland and Chile, Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism provides a truly global re-appraisal of women's movements in the late 20th century. ; https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1299/thumbnail.jpg

The purpose of this paper is to determine the variables that influence venture capital supply in Sub-Sahara Africa. The study developed econometric models and examined a 10-year period (2006 to 2015) pertaining to eight (8) Sub-Sahara African countries namely: Botswana, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. The empirical model includes six determinants (initial public offering, market capitalisation, unemployment rate, foreign direct investment inflow, inflation rate and trade openness). Secondary data was utilised for the study. The primary sources of data were the World Bank Development indicators and Preqin data base. All the statistical analyses in the study were performed using E-views version 8. Panel data models of pooled, fixed and random effects were employed. The results suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between initial public offering, market capitalisation and venture capital supply. Second, there is no significant relationship between unemployment rate, foreign direct investment inflows, trade openness and venture capital supply. Based on the empirical findings, this study recommends that Sub-Sahara African governments should attempt to develop their economies by improving infrastructure and corporate governance. There is also a need for African countries to develop the equity market.

This report focuses on investment in eight EU Member States and their lagging regions. Additionally, the analysis assesses the regional development strategies of the eight Member States and evaluates the main investment needs and complementary alternative support options of the lagging regions over the next ten years. The analysis is performed in two steps. The first step identifies the investment needs of the lagging regions from the countries' own as well as from a European perspective. It analyses to what extent and in what form investments in the lagging regions have to be supported in order to satisfy the needs. The identification of investment needs is approached from two sides, a) the countries' own assessments of investment needs and b) a comparative analysis of the lagging regions with more prosperous EU-28 regions that had similar economic development characteristics as the (Southern) lagging regions. The second step analyses the main national and regional investment trends over the last 10-15 years, and covers different types of investment, depending on whether they are seen from a National Accounts, European or international perspective. ; An annex is available here: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/204198

Originating in South America, cassava is now grown in over 100 countries around the world. It is the third most important source of calories in the tropics after rice and maize. Its caloric value, as well as its ability to tolerate dry conditions and poor soils, makes it a key food security crop in developing countries, particularly in Africa. As demand for food grows, there is an urgent need to increase yields in the face of such challenges as climate change, threats from pests and diseases and the need to make cultivation more resource-efficient and sustainable. Drawing on an international range of expertise, this collection focuses on ways of improving the cultivation of cassava at each step in the value chain, from breeding to post-harvest storage. Volume 1 starts by reviewing current issues facing cassava cultivation around the world before discussing methods for sustainable intensification such as rotations, intercropping and more efficient nutrient management. Achieving sustainable cultivation of cassava Volume 1: Cultivation techniques will be a standard reference for agricultural scientists in universities, government and other research centres and companies involved in improving cassava cultivation. It is accompanied by Volume 2 which reviews breeding, pests and diseases.