Urbanization, Poverty Reduction, and Ecosystem Integrity

In Aotearoa New Zealand, agricultural land-use intensification and decline in freshwater ecosystem integrity pose complex challenges for science and society. Despite riparian management programmes across the country, there is frustration over a lack in widespread uptake, upfront financial costs, possible loss in income, obstructive legislation and delays in ecological recovery. Thus, social, economic and institutional barriers exist when implementing and assessing agricultural freshwater restoration. Partnerships are essential to overcome such barriers by identifying and promoting co-benefits that result in amplifying individual efforts among stakeholder groups into coordinated, large-scale change. Here, we describe how initial progress by a sole farming family at the Silverstream in the Canterbury region, South Island, New Zealand, was used as a catalyst for change by the Canterbury Waterway Rehabilitation Experiment, a university-led restoration research project. Partners included farmers, researchers, government, industry, treaty partners (Indigenous rights-holders) and practitioners. Local capacity and capability was strengthened with practitioner groups, schools and the wider community. With partnerships in place, co-benefits included lowered costs involved with large-scale actions (e.g., earth moving), reduced pressure on individual farmers to undertake large-scale change (e.g., increased participation and engagement), while also legitimising the social contracts for farmers, scientists, government and industry to engage in farming and freshwater management. We describe contributions and benefits generated from the project and describe iterative actions that together built trust, leveraged and aligned opportunities. These actions were scaled from a single farm to multiple catchments nationally.

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Renewable Energy Resources for Better Economics and Sustainable Living in Rural and Desert Areas

Journal of Business and Economics ◽

10.15341/jbe(2155-7950)/12.10.2019/004 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (12) ◽

pp. 1165-1171

Author(s):

Karl Gatterer ◽

◽

Salah Arafa ◽

Keyword(s):

Renewable Energy ◽

Poverty Reduction ◽

Energy Resources ◽

Green Economy ◽

Renewable Energy Resources ◽

Economic Activities ◽

Energy Materials ◽

Sustainable Living ◽

Sustainable Community Development ◽

Access To Knowledge

Reliable and affordable energy is the key for the socio-economic development in rural and desert communities worldwide. While energy can be used for consumption purposes such as Lighting, Access to Information, Comfort and Entertainment, productive use of renewable energy is the key enabler for SMEs and Economy to grow. The paper examines the complex interactions among Energy, Materials, Water, Food, Building, Employment and Environment. It also discusses the implementation of renewable energy technologies to overcome some of barriers faced by rural villages and desert communities. It shows some of the special applications and approaches used over the past few decades in energy conversion, consumption and conservation to achieve poverty reduction, social justice and sustainable development. Field experiences in Basaisa projects, Egypt showed that open free dialogues with all stakeholders, site-specific education and training, appropriate local financing systems and access to knowledge are key-elements and essential factors for achieving green economy and sustainable community development. The coming decade will see a continued expansion of knowledge about renewable energy resources and its useful applications as systems friendly to the environment and as tools for economic activities, sustainable living and growth in rural and desert communities.

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Role of agriculture in poverty reduction in India

Indian Journal Of Applied Research ◽

10.15373/2249555x/apr2014/37 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 4 (4) ◽

pp. 131-132

Author(s):

Dr Aroon Sharma ◽

◽

Hasib Ahmed

Keyword(s):

Poverty Reduction

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