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Worldwide, the private sector is expected to play a lead role in economic and production activities, while the public sector provides the supportive policy as well as the legal and other institutional environment for this. National governments of most developing countries have limited financial resources to fund sustainable forest management (SFM) and society is incresingly expecting the rpivate sector to fund SFM. However, the participation of the private sector is not forthcoming as many would like to see. This book presents the papers prepared for the Oslo workshop which convey the perceptions and views of the private sector, including: a glimpse of the currents status of private sector involvement in the forest sector in general, and SFM in particular; the main obstacles the private sector currently faces that deter it from making greater investments; the desired changes in the policy and operating environment which can make conditions more 'enabling for private sector engagement. The first chapter gives a brief background on financing SFM, and a synthesis blending ideas from the papers and the discussions at the workshop on the role of the private sector. The nine chapters are the original Oslo workshop papers.

The Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement pose new conceptual challenges for energy decision makers by compelling them to consider the implications of their choices for development and climate mitigation objectives. This is a nontrivial exercise as it requires pragmatic consideration of the interconnections between energy systems and their social and environmental contexts and working with a plurality of actors and values. There are an increasing number of indices, frameworks and academic studies that capture these interconnections, yet policy makers have relatively few ex-ante tools to pragmatically aid decision-making. This paper, based on a collation of 167 studies, reviews how multi-criteria decision approaches (MCDA) are used in energy policy decisions to explicitly consider multiple social and environmental objectives, and the conceptual usefulness of doing so. First, MCDA can be used to distil a finite set of objectives from those of a large number of actors. This process is often political and objectives identified are aligned with vested interests or institutional incentives. Second, MCDA can be used to build evidence that is both qualitative and quantitative in nature to capture the implications of energy choices across economic, environmental, social and political metrics. Third, MCDA can be used to explore synergies and trade-offs between energy, social and environmental objectives, and in turn, make explicit the political implications of choices for actors. The studies reviewed in this paper demonstrate that the use of MCDA is so far mainly academic and for problems in the Global North. We argue for a mainstreaming of such a multi-criteria and deliberative approaches for energy policy decisions in developing countries where trade-offs between energy, development and climate mitigation are more contentious while recognizing the data, capacity and transparency requirements of the process.

Background: Despite increasing numbers of MDR TB cases seen in Nepal, a lot remains to be understood about the disease in the local context. We evaluated possible risk factors for MDR TB among patients enrolled for treatment at a district hospital in western Nepal. Methods: A descriptive case-series study using structured interviews and abstraction of treatment records of all patients registered at the DOTS Plus clinic at Bhim Hospital, Bhairahawa from April 2008 to Dec 2008 was done. Descriptive analysis was done to find out frequencies and relations. Results: Of the total 31 patients, 22 were males (age range 18-68, median 36.7) and the remaining 9 females (age range 23-56, median 33.7). 27(87%) of the patients had monthly income below Rs 3000 and 24 (77%) of them were illiterate. 21(67%) had missed at least a few weeks of drugs during their previous treatment and 4 (13%) had been marked as defaulters. 6 (20%) had treatment failure. 74% of the patients were smokers, 2 were HIV positive. 20 (58%) had lived in India for at least 6 months where they had incomplete treatment of TB. 30 (97%) patients had disclosed their MDR status to their families; however 70% said they did not do so immediately. Conclusions: Previous TB treatment, male sex, poverty, migration to India, illiteracy and smoking have been observed in a majority of the cases in this study. These findings need to be corroborated with multi-centre casecontrol studies to bring out nationally relevant risk factors for MDR TB. Key words: directly observed treatment short course-plus; multi- drug resistance; risk factors; tuberculosis. DOI: 10.3126/jnhrc.v7i2.3013 Journal of Nepal Health Research Council Vol.7(2) Apr 2009 89-92

Changes in climate are usually considered in terms of trends or differences over time. However, for many impacts requiring adaptation, it is the amplitude of the change relative to the local amplitude of climate variability which is more relevant. Here, we develop the concept of "signal-to-noise" in observations of local temperature, highlighting that many regions are already experiencing a climate which would be "unknown" by late 19th century standards. The emergence of observed temperature changes over both land and ocean is clearest in tropical regions, in contrast to the regions of largest change which are in the northern extratropics-broadly consistent with climate model simulations. Significant increases and decreases in rainfall have also already emerged in different regions with the United Kingdom experiencing a shift toward more extreme rainfall events, a signal which is emerging more clearly in some places than the changes in mean rainfall. Plain Language Summary Changes in climate are translated into impacts on society not just though the amount of change, but how this change compares to the variations in climate that society is used to. Here we demonstrate that significant changes, when compared to the size of past variations, are present in both temperature and rainfall observations over many parts of the world. ; National Centre for Atmospheric Science. ERA4CS INDECIS project. European Union (EU): 690462. Australian Research Council: DE180100638. NERC Natural Environment Research Council: NE/S004645/1, NE/N018486/1. Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT), CONICYT FONDAP: 15110009. Whakahura project - Endeavour Fund: RTVU1906.