The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is the top destination for Russian food exports, grains in particular. Focusing on Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, this chapter shows that Russia's food trade with MENA countries is strongly affected by bilateral political relations. Russia banned most food imports from Turkey over a political conflict in 2016. In the same year, improved intergovernmental cooperation with Saudi Arabia resulted in a diversification of Russia's food exports to the Gulf country, and in 2019, Iran's accession to the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) led to increasing food trade with Russia. Food imports in MENA countries are usually managed by powerful state trading enterprises (STEs), which recurrently disapprove food products originating from Russia based on non-adherence to food quality standards. Our analysis shows that Russia is successfully working to open additional destination markets, while simultaneously impeding imports of food products that it aims to produce domestically.
APPROVED ; Interpretations of the period following the disintegration of the Carolingian empire in Western Europe at the end of the ninth century have long divided historians, between those who believe a violent rupture in political and social structures took place around the year 1000 and those who argue for an essential continuity. This thesis aims to transcend these debates, by approaching medieval society through a case-study in the Loire valley region relying on two fresh methodological insights. Firstly, it will investigate changes in the economic structures which provided society's material base; secondly, it will analyse how those ?lites claimed, performed and maintained their status. Based on these two approaches, the thesis explores changing patterns of ?lite behaviour in order to better understand the social and economic changes which took place from the late ninth century onwards. The thesis examines the effects of shifting landholding patterns, the emergence of seigneurial customs, changing attitudes to church patronage and lay violence, and the methods by which ?lites were identified in documents, to establish their implications for the ways by which ?lites could claim and maintain their status. It concludes that there was a significant and fundamental transformation of social and economic structures, beginning in the middle of the tenth century, in the middle Loire valley, although the pace of change is slower than would be appropriate for a 'Feudal Revolution'. Nevertheless, the breakdown of the Carolingian political order unleashed a wave of competition amongst local and regional ?lites, which saw them innovate and adapt the heritage of Carolingian culture to create a new, 'feudal' social order. This was fuelled by the changes in economic structures which provided ?lites with more wealth to promote their own status; the competition for status in turn fuelled ?lites' need for more wealth and their incentive for economic expansion.
Insufficiency of water resources in the Middle East Region represents vital factors that influence the stability of the region and its progress. Expectations indicate that the condition will be dimmer and more complicated, especially in Iraqi territory. Iraq, which is situated in the Middle East, it covers an area of 433,970 square kilometers and populated by about 32 million inhabitants. Iraq greatly relies in its water resources on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as a surface water resources, and several productive groundwater aquifers in which from the hydrogeological point of view divided into several major aquifer units including Foothill, Al-Jazira, Aquifer System, Mandali-Badra-Teeb, Mesopotamian and Desert Aquifer system. Recently, Iraq is suffering from water shortage problems. This is due to external and internal factors affecting the water quality of water resources; they are controlled and uncontrolled factors. The uncontrolled factors are climate change and its consequences, such as reduction of precipitation and temperature increasing. The controlled factors have a significantly negative influence on water resources, but their effects involve more specific regions. The controlled factors are mainly represented by building dams and irrigation projects within the upper parts of the Tigris and Euphrates catchments, Al-Tharthar Scheme, waste water, solid wastes and wastes from wars, which has a significant effect on surface water in Iraq because about 80% of the water supply to Euphrates and Tigris Rivers come from Turkey. In addition, the pressures resulting from the high demand for water resources, and the continued decline in their quantity rates have led to major changes in the hydrological condition in Iraq during the past 30 years. The decrease in surface water levels and precipitation during these three decades reflects the drop in the levels of water reservoirs, lakes, and rivers to the unexpected levels. The level of main country's water source, Tigris, and Euphrates Rivers has fallen to less than a third of its natural levels. As storage capacity depreciates, the government estimates that its water reserves have been reduced precariously. According to the survey from the Ministry of Water Resources, millions of Iraqi people have faced a severe shortage of drinking water. Since of the importance of water for human life and the need to monitor temporal and spatial changes in quality and quantity, there is a need to develop a general Iraqi Water Quality Index (Iraq WQI) to monitor surface water and groundwater and classify it into five categories, very good, good, acceptable, bad and very bad, in terms of suitability for domestics, irrigation and agriculture depending on the Iraqi and WHO standards for drinking water. In addition, strict establishment for the regular quantitative monitoring surface water and groundwater setting and processes. Prospects are more negative for all riparian countries. This implies that solving these problems requires actual and serious international, regional, and national cooperation to set a prudent plan for water resources management of the two basins. Iraq being the most affected country should seriously set a prudent, scientific, and strategic plan for the management and conservation of its water resources. ; Validerad;2020;Nivå 1;2020-11-18 (johcin)
Presenting an analysis of higher education in eight countries in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, Degrees of Dignity works to dismantle narratives of crisis and assert approaches to institutional reform. Drawing on policy documents, media narratives, interviews, and personal experiences, Elizabeth Buckner explores how apolitical external reform models become contested and modified by local actors in ways that are simultaneously complicated, surprising, and even inspiring. Degrees of Dignity documents how the global discourses of neoliberalism have legitimized specific policy models for higher education reform in the Arab world, including quality assurance, privatization, and internationalization. Through a multi-level and comparative analysis, this book examines how policy models are implemented, with often complex results, in countries throughout the region. Ultimately, Degrees of Dignity calls on the field of higher education development to rethink current approaches to higher education reform: rather than viewing the Arab world as a site for intervention, it argues that the Arab world can act as a source for insight on resilient higher education systems. ; This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
