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Capacity Development and Natural Resources Management in Africa investigates well-known concerns in natural resource management while focusing on the capacity dimension of the problems. It examines dynamics of leadership, governance, criminality, structural transformation, as well as emerging issues such as green growth. Given the limited capacity of many African countries, capacity development measures for reducing the information and power asymmetry between African states and their global counterparts are critical. The authors acknowledge that the development of any society depends on the availability and condition of its human and natural resources. Political leadership sets the tone for the institutional stability required for environmental sustainability and development. Equally important, however, is the role of civil society in acting as watchdogs over how leaders manage or make use of natural resources for national development.

In this article I present an argument for the thesis that one of the most significant revaluations of the Enlightenment was the creation and popularization of faith in the effective shaping of fate by man himself. In every example the Enlightenment had been referring to the creative possibilities of human reason. However, major differences occurred in understanding this very reason and its application in the praxis between the main representatives of the period. In my remarks I recall just a few of selected representatives of the English, Scottish and French enlightenment philosophy. The broadening of that list with other names, including the representatives of other nations, would allow probably to present much more diversified variants of this Enlightenment faith which since that period is a specific distinguishing mark of modernity.

The capacity of recipient governments to absorb increased aid is a serious concern. This article explains a 'Capacity Assessment Tool' that has been developed for the health sector, but - with suitable adaptations - similar assessments can be conducted in other sectors. The tool makes it possible to identify and to provide rapid assessments of incapacities of various kinds, and to tackle them. It only provides an initial guide to a range of needs and possible options for addressing them, and further analysis will be required as capacity-building initiatives take shape. We need to recognise both that we do not yet have good tools for addressing the complexity of issues around the assessment of capacity, and that the solutions to the issues of capacity building are also complex. They depend on changing political opportunities, changing funding allocations, changing dynamic markets, and changing individual motivations. (IDS Bull/DÜI)

Many debates about the moral status of things—for example, debates about the natural rights of human fetuses or nonhuman animals—eventually migrate towards a discussion of the capacities of the things in question—for example, their capacities to feel pain, think, or love. Yet the move towards capacities is often controversial: if a human's capacities are the basis of its moral status, how could a human having lesser capacities than you and I have the same "serious" moral status as you and I? This book answers this question by arguing that if something is human, it has a set of typical human capacities, that if something has a set of typical human capacities, it has serious moral status, and thus all human beings have the same sort of serious moral status as you and I. Beginning from what our common intuitions tell us about situations involving "temporary incapacitation"—where a human organism has, then loses, then regains a certain capacity—this book argues for substantive conclusions regarding human fetuses and embryos, humans in a permanent vegetative state, humans suffering from brain diseases, and humans born with genetic disorders. Since these conclusions must have some impact on our ongoing moral and political debates about the proper treatment of such humans, this book will be useful to professionals and students in philosophy, bioethics, law, medicine, and public policy.