Suchergebnisse

My PLS article, "Risk Factors and Predictability of Famine in Ethiopia" (February, 1991), focused on one nation's experience with the complicated phenomenon of famine, but it suggested that microstudies were needed to investigate more fully those groups of people within a nation who are vulnerable to famine's ravages (Vestal, 1991). Alemneh Dejene's book is such an investigation based on field work that involved interviews with peasant heads of households, survey questionnaires, participant observation, and case studies of villages and families in Wollo Region and in resettlement sites (for settlers from Wollo) in Illubabor and Keffa in 1987-89. His village level data that identify local, place specific processes that fuel environmental degradation are a welcome addition to famine literature.

I thank the respondents for their thoughtful insights from such exotic places as Kenya, India, Southern California, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The geographical origins of the replies brought in by the broadly cast net of this journal underscore the global concern with the phenomenon of famine and its study. The objective of my article was to stimulate discussion about risk factor analysis that takes into account both FAD and entitlement approaches to famine. The four reviews represent an extensive and helpful array of responses that suggest further refinements of research possibilities utilizing the risk factor concept. All offered abundant food for thought about how to address the riddle of what to do about famine, and in their references, the respondents have included first-rate additions to a bibliography of recent famine studies.

Famine, a complex phenomenon with multifactorial causes, produces starvation and associated diseases resulting in unusually high mortality from a lack of food. Devastating famines in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s may have provided an impetus for scholars to find additional analytical tools for predicting famines. Two predominant theories of famines causality are (1) food availability decline (FAD), a supply failure; and (2) the entitlement approach based on a demand failure. Findings from both theories are applied to specific examples from Ethiopian famines to analyze the composition and effects of famine. The limited success of contemporary famines studies in anticipating famine suggests the need for improved analytical tools. Risk factor analysis, used successfully in the social sciences and the medical sciences to predict the occurrence of complicated phenomena, is developed to identify controllable, uncontrollable, and contributing factors to famine. Based on the experience of Ethiopia in 1983-86, categorical cutoff values for identifying a high risk of developing famine are formulated.

The enforcement of the SMCRA in Oklahoma has led to improvements and transformations in the coal industry, state and federal regulatory agencies and the public. The catalyst for these changes was the federal takeover of inspection and enforcement of the SMCRA in Oklahoma with the state carrying on all other mining regulatory activities from 1984 through 1987. This pattern of cohabitation differed from that in Tennessee where OSM took over all enforcement of the SMCRA or that in states that enter into cooperative agreements to provide state regulation of coal mining on federal lands within the state. Cohabitation in Oklahoma produced a new, more positive attitude toward cooperative federalism by both federal and state regulatory bodies that might serve as a model for other states with OSM maintaining state agency support for policy objectives while allowing the state reasonable decisional discretion.

Interaction of the coal industry and state and federal regulatory agencies in enforcing the law. Cooperation between Oklahoma's Department of Mines and the federal Office of Surface Mining.

Die fürchterliche Hungersnot von 1984/85 hatte u.a. eine Reihe politischer Ursachen: Die Kollektivierungspolitik auf dem Lande hatte viele Bauern abgeschreckt, die staatlichen Aufkaufpreise für Nahrungsmittel waren zu niedrig. Trotz der ideologischen Unterschiede zu dem revolutionären Regime sprang in dieser Lage der Westen (vor allem USA) mit Hilfslieferungen ein. (DÜI-Spe)