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The article is devoted to the financial market crisis, which started in July 2007 and how it became the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depreession. The article submins the information about the impacts of the crisis all over the world and the role of central banks and governments in fighting the crisis. It also gives some suggestions for stabilizing financial markets in the future. = Статья посвящена кризису финансового рынка, который начался в июле 2007г. и стал самым крупным финансовым кризисом со времен Великой Депрессии. В статье предоставлена информация о влиянии кризиса во всем мире и роли центральных банков и правительства в борьбе с кризисом. Также даны рекомендации по стабилизации финансовых рынков в будущем.

SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT (SIA) IS DEFINED AND RELATED TO OTHER POLICY ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES. CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS IN CONDUCTING SIA ARE REVIEWED, AND VARIOUS SIA METHODS ARE IDENTIFIED AND EVALUATED FOR THEIR PROBABLE EFFECTIVENESS IN ASSESSING REGIONAL PLANS. A STRATEGY FOR SIA IS PROPOSED WHICH USES PUBLIC INPUTS DURING PLANNING ITERATIONS FOR IDENTIFYING THE MOST IMPORTANT SOCIAL IMPACTS.

Suggests that a method of impact identification that makes use of experts, including the people effected by a project, can be used in development project evaluation. The method is described, as are some of its applications in Latin America and the Caribbean. Concludes by considering directions for future development and the relationship between planning, evaluation, and impact assessment.(Abstract amended)

Metadata only record ; We review the current literature on human vulnerability to environmental change and suggest that an evolutionary perspective can help integrate the insights of existing research while suggesting new hypotheses and approaches. The concept of a socially constructed adaptive landscape occupied by units at various levels of aggregation and organization -- individuals, households, organizations -- is used to organize our analysis. We argue that this framework can provide a basis for constructing dynamic stochastic models of the diverse environmental, social, economic and political factors affecting vulnerability to climate change and other natural hazards. ; Available in SANREM office, FS

Metadata only record ; Values are often invoked in discussions of how to develop a more sustainable relationship with the environment. There is substantial literature on values that spans several disciplines. In philosophy, values are relatively stable principles that help us make decisions when our preferences are in conflict and thus convey some sense of what we consider good. In economics, the term values is usually used in discussions of social choice, where an assessment of the social value of various alternatives serves as a guide to the best choice under a utilitarian ethic (the greatest good for the greatest number). In sociology, social psychology, and political science, two major lines of research have addressed environmental values. One has focused on four value clusters: self-interest, altruism, traditionalism, and openness to change and found relatively consistent theoretical and empirical support for the relationship of values to environmentalism. The other line of research suggests that environmentalism emerges when basic material needs are met and that individuals and societies that are postmaterialist in their values are more likely to exhibit pro-environmental behaviors. The evidence in support of this argument is more equivocal. Overall, the idea that values, especially altruism, are related to environmentalism, seems well established, but little can be said about the causes of value change and of the overall effects of value change on changes in behavior.

This paper presents a post-project evaluation of an award winning Joint Forest Management (JFM) program in the Shiwalik Hills, Haryana, India. The focus is on the development and management of a series of small dams which commanded the major proportion of funds in the project. Our findings are based on a rapid survey of 28 Hill Resource Management Societies (HRMS) and a detailed case study of two (HRMS) in the Morni-Pinjore Forest Division of Haryana. Over the period 1990-98 the Ford Foundation, Tata Energy Research Institute and Haryana Forest Department worked together to scale-up the highly successful Sukhomajiri watershed management model. The project can hardly be termed a success. Due to rapid siltation less than 20 percent of dams were functioning in 2000. A number of factors contributed to the failure. These include lack of an effective catchment stabilization plan, lack of effective leadership in management of dams and lack of interest on the part of farmers who had either tubewells or substantial income from non-farm sources. In summary, government and donor agencies attempting to scale up participatory watershed management must be aware of the pre-conditions needed for success.

The promise of involving recipients in the assessment of the effects and impacts of the development assistance they have received is discussed. The article describes a participatory development assessment (PDA) methodology developed by a team of researchers from the Netherlands, Ghana and Burkina Faso in an attempt to develop a more convincing approach to participatory evaluation. The current shift from 'livelihoods' to 'well-being' approaches, and the growing interest in 'deep democracy', and what these could mean for evaluation practice are also examined.

Sound environmental policy is fully dependent on sound science. However, we have little scientific knowledge of the driving forces behind environmental change. We use the well-known I = PAT formulation (environmental impacts are the multiplicative product of population, affluence, & technology) as a framework to assess the relative impacts of driving forces. We introduce the concept of plasticity -- the potential for each factor to vary, particularly because of purposive human action (eg, policy) -- to fine-tune our understanding of how each factor can influence different impacts. We illustrate plasticity by assessing each driving force for a variety of environmental impacts. We demonstrate that population, affluence, & technology have different potentials for mitigating different types of impacts & that no one factor is of greater importance than the others. We conclude that plasticity measures can guide policymakers toward identifying & prioritizing those environmental problems most responsive to policy solution. 2 Tables, 47 References. Adapted from the source document.

The social psychological values of altruism, self-interest, traditionalism, & openness to change are key correlates of environmental concern & proenvironmental behavior. We investigate the relationship between gender & these values to better understand gender differences in environmentalism. We consider both gender differences in value priorities (differences in mean response on value scales) & differences in the meaning of values (differences in the factor structure of values) as well. Our analysis is based on data from a 1994 random-digit-dialed national telephone survey of US adults. We examine differences in factor structure of values for a group of 145 white men & 200 white women using confirmatory factor analysis & differences in mean value scores using multivariate analysis of variance. We find no substantial differences in value factor structure, but differences in value priorities, with women ranking altruism as more important than men. Our analysis supports work that focuses on mean differences in environmentalism across genders without examining gender differences in factor structure, although further examination of gender differences in factor structure is warranted. Our results also highlight the importance of gender differences in altruism as a basis for gender differences in environmentalism. 3 Tables, 42 References. Adapted from the source document.

Metadata only record ; Although many countries in Africa are devastated by poverty and famine, and are desperately in need of aid, it is generally recognised that programmes of aid and development in Africa are imposed upon local communities with little regard for their traditional values and way of life. This is true of development schemes imposed by national African governments, just as it is true of international aid schemes.

The Third World is too diverse to allow us to make many meaningful generalizations. No matter how we define the Third World, some countries will fit the definition better than others. Pretty much the same can be said with regard to "underdevelopment". No one theory can explain underdevelopment everywhere, just as no one development strategy can solve all problems of underdevelopment throughout the Third World. In the same way that likenesses are hidden under apparent divergences, so differences are hidden under apparent resemblances.

More than forty states worldwide currently pursue explicit political strategies to expand and promote their bioeconomies. This paper assesses these strategies in the context of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our theoretical framework differentiates between four pathways of bioeconomic developments. The extent to which bioeconomic developments along these pathways lead to increased sustainability depends on the creation of effective governance mechanisms. We distinguish between enabling governance and constraining governance as the two fundamental political challenges in setting up an effective governance framework for a sustainable bioeconomy. Further, we lay out a taxonomy of political support measures (enabling governance) and regulatory tools (constraining governance) that states can use to confront these two political challenges. Guided by this theoretical framework, we conduct a qualitative content analysis of 41 national bioeconomy strategies to provide systematic answers to the question of how well designed the individual national bioeconomy strategies are to ensure the rise of a sustainable bioeconomy.

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled "The Voluntary Coffee Standard Index (VOCSI). Developing a composite Index to Assess and Compare the Institutional Strength of Mainstream Voluntary Sustainability Standards in the Global Coffee Industry" (Dietz et al., 2018) in press) [1]. The VOCSI presents the most detailed comparison all major voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) that currently exist in global coffee production. This Data in Brief contains the database that we have generated to set up the VOCSI. We publish this dataset in order to facilitate further critical or extended analyzes.

The climate crisis requires nations to achieve human well-being with low national levels of carbon emissions. Countries vary from one another dramatically in how effectively they convert resources into well-being, and some nations with low levels of emissions have relatively high objective and subjective well-being. We identify urgent research and policy agendas for four groups of countries with either low or high emissions and well-being indicators. Least studied are those with low well-being and high emissions. Understanding social and political barriers to switching from high-carbon to lower-carbon modes of production and consumption, and ways to overcome them, will be fundamental.