The GIZ Transboundary Water Management in Central Asia programme supports Tajik-Kyrgyz cooperation on the shared Isfara river basin by means of sustainable basin planning and management through capacity building. In addition, the rehabilitation of small-scale infrastructure and automatised flow measurement systems ensure a safe and fair allocation of water resources. As a result, improved water management and infrastructure in the Isfara River contribute to better information and water availability for more than 200,000 agricultural water users across both countries. Alongside already established methods of transboundary cooperation in the basin, which has complicated boundary issues, the hereinafter described measures counteract latent tensions among Tajik and Kyrgyz communities over the limited resource of arable land, which is closely linked to water. The GIZ Transboundary Water Management in Central Asia programme is implemented on behalf of the German Federal Foreign Office and cofunded by the European Union.
The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we analyse the failure of the Prisoner's Dilemma and Suasion Game in explaining refugee protection burden-sharing cooperation through a literature review of both game-theory models. Second, the paper also supports an alternative to these theoretical models: the Issue Linkage. This paper is set out in three main parts: fi rst, we provide the background to the 2015 Emergency Relocation Scheme as part of the EU's immediate response to the migration and refugee crisis; second, we review the existing Prisoner's Dilemma and Suasion Game literature on international cooperation in general, and on refugee protection in particular, followed by an Issue Linkage literature review to get some insight into overcoming collective action failure in EU asylum cooperation; third, we apply these theoretical models to explain EU refugee protection burden-sharing through an analysis of Germany's and Poland's approaches to the implementation of the 2015 Emergency Relocation Scheme.
In: Liu Daqun, Suzannah Linton and Zhu Lijiang (eds), East-West Perspectives on International Law: A Selection of Papers from Conferences in Beijing and Hangzhou (2015-2017) (China University of Political Science and Law Press 2019) 453-475
For more than a decade, suicide rates in Australia have shown no improvement despite significant investment in reforms to support regionally driven initiatives. Further recommended reforms by the Productivity Commission call for Federal and State and Territory Government funding for mental health to be pooled and new Regional Commissioning Authorities established to take responsibility for efficient and effective allocation of 'taxpayer money.' This study explores the sufficiency of this recommendation in preventing ongoing policy resistance. A system dynamics model of pathways between psychological distress, the mental health care system, suicidal behaviour and their drivers was developed, tested, and validated for a large, geographically diverse region of New South Wales; the Hunter New England and Central Coast Primary Health Network (PHN). Multi-objective optimisation was used to explore potential discordance in the best-performing programs and initiatives (simulated from 2021 to 2031) across mental health outcomes between the two state-governed Local Health Districts (LHDs) and the federally governed PHN. Impacts on suicide deaths, mental health-related emergency department presentations, and service disengagement were explored. A combination of family psychoeducation, post-attempt aftercare, and safety planning, and social connectedness programs minimises the number of suicides across the PHN and in the Hunter New England LHD (13.5% reduction; 95% interval, 12.3–14.9%), and performs well in the Central Coast LHD (14.8% reduction, 13.5–16.3%), suggesting that aligned strategic decision making between the PHN and LHDs would deliver substantial impacts on suicide. Results also highlighted a marked trade-off between minimising suicide deaths versus minimising service disengagement. This is explained in part by the additional demand placed on services of intensive suicide prevention programs leading to increases in service disengagement as wait times for specialist community based mental health services and dissatisfaction with quality of care increases. Competing priorities between the PHN and LHDs (each seeking to optimise the different outcomes they are responsible for) can undermine the optimal impact of investments for suicide prevention. Systems modelling provides essential regional decision analysis infrastructure to facilitate coordinated federal and state investments for optimal impacts.