scholarly journals Wetlands in Ethiopia: Lessons From 20 years of Research, Policy and Practice

Wetlands ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Dixon ◽  
Adrian Wood ◽  
Afework Hailu
Keyword(s):  
Research Policy ◽  
Wetland Management ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Wetland Use

AbstractThroughout sub-Saharan Africa wetlands provide ecosystem services that are critical to the development needs of many people. Local wetland use, however, is often at odds with broader national policy goals in which narratives of conservation and protection dominate, hence a recurring challenge is how to reconcile these tensions through the development of policies and field practice that deliver sustainable development. In this paper we examine the extent to which this challenge has been achieved in Ethiopia, charting the changes in wetlands policy and discourse over the last twenty years while reviewing the contribution of the multidisciplinary Ethiopian Wetlands Research Programme (EWRP) (1997–2000). Our analysis suggests that despite EWRP having a significant legacy in developing national interest in wetlands among research, government and non-governmental organisations, its more holistic social-ecological interpretation of wetland management remains neglected within a policy arena dominated by specific sectoral interests and little recognition of the needs of local people. In exploring the impacts at the local level, recent investigations with communities in Ilu Aba Bora Zone highlight adjustments in wetland use that famers attribute to environmental, economic and social change, but which also evidence the adaptive nature of wetland-based livelihoods.

scholarly journals Adolescent Well-Being Gap Maps: What We Know and Opportunities for Future Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 124-158
Author(s):  
Prerna Banati ◽  
Christina Bacalso
Keyword(s):  
Youth Development ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Emotional Health ◽  
Research Priorities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Sub Saharan

Designing and delivering effective programs for adolescents and youth requires high-quality evidence that is easily available to decision makers. Yet while adolescence as a unique development period has gained policy attention in recent years, and there has been a growth in research, priorities for research investment remain unclear. This paper provides a panoramic view of adolescent development research to review what evidence exists and how evidence is mapped. Our approach interrogated studies mapped by evidence maps (including the subset evidence gap maps or EGMs). Our findings have implications for future directions of research on positive youth development (PYD) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs): The analysis showed that while most evidence maps exist in the adolescent protection, safety, and security domain, most studies focus on outcomes related to well-being and social and emotional health. There are gaps in demographic groupings and contexts studied. For example, while gender and sex inequities were the most prevalent in the studies identified, though seen in less than 1/5 of the studies analyzed, disability appears in only 3%. Housing, participation, and information communication technologies are researched relatively rarely. Rigorous research in conflict or humanitarian settings is absent. Additionally, while most impact evaluations are conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by Latin America, the Middle East and North America were poorly represented regions. This article reflects on the state of the evidence, argues for a more thoughtful approach to equity in adolescent research, and calls for a stronger link between research, policy, and practice in LMICs.

What Can Be Expected from International Frameworks to Regulate Large-Scale Land and Water Acquisitions in Sub-Saharan Africa?

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brüntrup ◽  
Waltina Scheumann ◽  
Axel Berger ◽  
Lidija Christmann ◽  
Clara Brandi
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis paper explores the use of international governance frameworks as being one of the ways to regulate large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs). LSLAs are currently flourishing in both developed and developing countries, in particular in the sub-Saharan Africa region. Although they can potentially have many positive impacts in rural areas, many LSLAs have been shown to mainly produce negative impacts in poor countries with weak national policy and institutional frameworks and poorly defined rights for rural people. To successfully regulate the occurrence of LSLAs and their impacts, it needs to be understood that LSLAs are more complex than they are usually portrayed as being. Some of the complexities pertain to water issues; provenience of investors; legality and legitimacy of acquisitions; as well as the diversity of actors and the people affected. Against this background, five international frameworks are looked at: human rights, voluntary international guidelines, international global water governance regimes and bi-/multilateral river treaties, and voluntary private standards and codes. The paper concludes that the frameworks reviewed provide valuable guidance regarding LSLAs, but no single approach can help in dealing with the multitude of actors, situations, and impacts of LSLAs. Even if they are considered collectively, they can tackle many but not all challenges. Yet, their implementation could substantially improve the process and the impact of LSLAs, including their refusal. A key question is how these frameworks are deployed at the local level. Some rely on translation into national laws and on their implementation, others try to establish a direct linkage between the international and the local level. It is of great interest to study how international frameworks trickle down to local policy arenas, how they are used by stakeholders, and how they are finally shaping conflicts at the local level and affecting their results. In particular, their potential for empowering poor stakeholders should be of interest for research and development.

scholarly journals Key Issues and Progress in Understanding Climate Risk in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Katharine Vincent ◽  
Declan Conway
Keyword(s):  
Research Programme ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Sub Saharan

AbstractAdaptations and strategies to build resilience are needed to manage current impacts and will be increasingly vital as the world continues to warm. But making adaptation decisions can be complex, requiring careful consideration of multiple factors and perspectives, and balancing different priorities over different timescales. Society is embarking on a learning process that will continue for decades. This chapter and the book it introduces aim to contribute to this process. The book draws extensively from the Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) research programme that aimed to support adaptation and resilience in sub-Saharan Africa. In this chapter, we first briefly review the planning landscape for adaptation and building resilience and then consider how applications are changing the nature of climate information and the context of its use. This is followed by a review of the current status of climate information, particularly future projections for Africa and the enduring challenge that uncertainty represents to their active use. We then ask how we can improve the use of climate information for resilience building and adaptation and present an overview of the coming chapters. The demand for information and guidance on adaptation is continuing to grow, and is highlighting the need for new types and formats of data, and more innovative interactions with users to increase usability and application. Climate plays a dynamic role within complex, rapidly evolving social-ecological systems; this requires the climate science, resilience and adaptation communities to engage widely with other sectors and actors to make the agenda relevant and tractable for policy and practice.

Land conflicts and social differentiation in eastern Uganda

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Kandel
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Land Conflicts ◽  
Current Period ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Eastern Uganda

ABSTRACTRising competition and conflict over land in rural sub-Saharan Africa continues to attract the attention of researchers. Recent work has especially focused on land governance, post-conflict restructuring of tenure relations, and large-scale land acquisitions. A less researched topic as of late, though one deserving of greater consideration, pertains to how social differentiation on the local-level shapes relations to land, and how these processes are rooted in specific historical developments. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Teso sub-region of eastern Uganda, this paper analyses three specific land conflicts and situates them within a broad historical trajectory. I show how each dispute illuminates changes in class relations in Teso since the early 1990s. I argue that this current period of socioeconomic transformation, which includes the formation of a more clearly defined sub-regional middle class and elite, constitutes the most prominent period of social differentiation in Teso since the early 20th century.

Understanding the Weak Performance of Technology in Urban Management

2016 ◽  
pp. 928-947
Author(s):  
Claire Simonneau
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Urban Management ◽  
Management Tools ◽  
Multiple Case ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Land Information System

The article questions the appropriation of existing urban planning and management tools in Sub-Saharan Africa, through a multiple case study: the implementation of a land information system (or simplified cadastre) in three cities in Benin. An ethnographic exploration of the use of the tool is conducted. The first section presents the historical context of the design of land information systems, framed by the urban management paradigm, and unwarranted confidence in new technologies. The second section presents the theoretical framework and the methodology of the research, inspired by public policy analysis and development anthropology. The third section describes findings of the multiple case studies. A vicious circle is highlighted, made up of: lack of political support, obsolescence, and decline of cost-effectiveness. The fourth section discusses the results of the ethnographic inquiry. These are, essentially, the interpretation of the paradoxes, blockages, and conflicts in the implementation of the tool in light of social, political and economic dynamics that take place at the local level, although unexpected by the creators of the tool.

scholarly journals Open Innovation and Innovation Intermediaries in Sub-Saharan Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertha Vallejo ◽  
Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka ◽  
Nicholas Ozor ◽  
Maurice Bolo
Keyword(s):  
Online Survey ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Technology And Innovation ◽  
Innovation Intermediaries ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Desk Research ◽  
Science Technology And Innovation

This study explores the innovation intermediaries’ landscape in sub-Saharan Africa, considering Science Granting Councils (SGCs) as the key intermediaries in the system. Based on extensive desk research, personal interviews, and an online survey, the study discusses the roles and functions performed by SGCs as intermediators and influences of science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy. The results of the analysis corroborate the need for institutional and systemic changes to enable SGCs to perform their role. The realities, resources, and constraints at the local level cry out for the adaptation of current and future partnerships to the local context. The study concludes that only by tailoring partnerships to the development of capacity at the local level can SGCs perform effectively as influencers of national STI policy and mediators of partnerships with foreign development actors.

scholarly journals SolarView: Georgia Solar Adoption in Context

Data ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Tidwell ◽  
Abraham Tidwell ◽  
Steffan Nelson ◽  
Marcus Hill
Keyword(s):  
Census Data ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
County Level ◽  
Solar Pv ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Transition Issues

The local-national gap is a problem currently plaguing the adoption of emerging technologies targeted at resolving energy transition issues that are characterized by disparities in the adoption of innovations and policies on a local level in response to national policy implementation. These disparities reflect a complex system of technical, economic, social, political, and ecological factors linked to the perceptions held by communities and how they see energy development and national/global policy goals. This dataset is an attempt to bridge the local-national gap regarding solar PV adoption in the State of Georgia (U.S.) by aggregating variables from seven different publicly-available sources. The objective of this activity was to design a resource that would help researchers interested in the context underlying solar adoption on the local scale of governance (e.g., the county level). The SolarView database includes information necessary for informing policy-making activities such as solar installation information, a historical county zip code directory, county-level census data, housing value indexes, renewable energy incentive totals, PV rooftop suitability percentages, and utility rates. As this is a database from multiple sources, incomplete data entries are noted.

scholarly journals Camp settlement and communal conflict in sub-Saharan Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Fisk
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
General Relationship ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Marginal Effect ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Moderating Effects ◽  
Refugee Studies ◽  
Communal Conflict ◽  
Sub Saharan

Are areas that host encamped refugees more likely to experience communal conflict, and under what conditions? Building on insights from the refugee studies literature suggesting that settling refugees in camps can intensify intercommunal tension in host communities, this article investigates the effect of refugee encampment on the occurrence of communal conflict at the subnational level in sub-Saharan Africa. It first tests for a general relationship between the overall presence and population intensity of encamped refugees and communal conflict before assessing whether this relationship is moderated by local-level characteristics, including interethnic linkages and political and economic marginalization within the host region. The basic findings show that communal conflict occurs more frequently in regions where refugees are camp-settled. Tests for interactive effects indicate that refugee camps have a significant marginal effect on conflict only if they are located in areas with politically marginalized host groups. Origin country/host region ethnic ties are shown to exert significant moderating effects. Moreover, results from an extended set of analyses show that the form of refugee settlement matters, as the presence and population intensity of self-settled refugees are related to decreases in the occurrence of communal conflict.

scholarly journals Transit Migration in Niger

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-88
Author(s):  
Sébastien Moretti
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Migration Policies ◽  
Transit Migration ◽  
Migratory Routes ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Restrictive Measures ◽  
The Impact

Since 2015, the European Union has stepped up its efforts to curb irregular migration from sub-Saharan Africa through increasingly restrictive measures targeting transit countries along migratory routes, including Niger. While the EU has heralded the success of its policies to limit migration through Niger, EU migration policies have disrupted the economic system in Agadez, where transit migration has been one of the main sources of income and a factor of stability since the end of the Tuareg rebellions in 2009. This article discusses the impact that EU migration policies may have at the local level in countries of transit, and highlights the potential for these policies to fuel tensions between local and national authorities. The Agadez case study illustrates the importance of a multilevel approach to migration governance that takes into full consideration the role of local authorities and local communities in countries of transit.

scholarly journals Facilitating the Participation of Children with Disabilities in Early Childhood Development Centres in Malawi: Developing a Sustainable Staff Training Programme

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 2104
Author(s):  
Anita Soni ◽  
Paul Lynch ◽  
Mike McLinden ◽  
Jenipher Mbukwa-Ngwira ◽  
Mika Mankhwazi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Children With Disabilities ◽  
Early Childhood Development ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Training Programme ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Childhood Development ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Sub Saharan

This article explores the development of a sustainable training programme supporting the inclusion of children with disabilities in early childhood, education and care (ECEC) centres in Malawi. This programme is based on a review of literature of curriculum, pedagogy and teaching approaches in ECEC in sub-Saharan Africa, alongside a review of national policy documents. The training was designed to enable staff to value the inclusion of children with disabilities in ECEC centres, as well as suggesting practical ways to do so. We set out our response to the gap in training of ECEC staff through the development of a supplementary integrated training programme, which, whilst respectful of the curriculum, policy and practice of Malawi, challenged staff to consider ways of including children with disabilities (CWD) and their families. We suggest this is a pragmatic and sustainable model that could be applied to training in other ECEC settings across the region in sub-Saharan Africa. It concludes with guiding principles for training those working in ECEC with young children with disabilities in low-income countries.

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