scholarly journals Scenarios of environmental change in a post-conflict Colombia

Author(s):  
Isabel Rosa ◽  
José Ochoa-Quintero ◽  
Elkin Noguera ◽  
Edwin Tamayo ◽  
Marcelo Pineros

Abstract Colombia is a notorious biodiversity hotspot that came to the spotlight of conservation upon the signing of the peace agreement in 2016. Here we used a counterfactual approach to forecast by 2036 the impact of deforestation on Colombia’s biodiversity and carbon stocks under three scenarios: (1) pre-signing of the peace agreement, (2) post-signing and (3) business-as-usual. We found that if deforestation rates continued at the same pace of post-signing, up to 41,000 km2 of forest area may be lost by 2036, whereas pre-signing rates would save nearly 25,000 km2 (equivalent to the total forest loss observed between 2000 and 2018). Under the pre-signing scenario, between 2018-2036 Colombia would reduce the average impact on the range of forest-specific species by nearly 50% of habitat area relative to 2000-2018, whereas under the post-signing scenario, it would increase by 33%. Moreover, losses of 312-807 Mm3 of growing stock volume and 267-688 Mt of aboveground biomass were projected by 2036, jeopardizing the country’s commitments towards international conservation as well as climate targets. Importantly, we found a mismatch at the department level on biodiversity and biomass losses, which highlight an urgent need to generate coherent policies at a national level aiming to tackle both issues.

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-199
Author(s):  
Héctor Morales-Muñoz ◽  
Katharina Löhr ◽  
Michelle Bonatti ◽  
Luca Eufemia ◽  
Stefan Sieber

Abstract A major challenge in the field of environmental peacebuilding is showing the impact of its initiatives. Questions emerge, such as what kind of postwar peacebuilding dimensions are more likely to be affected by natural resource management projects? Although quantitative studies assess the relation between natural resource management programmes and conflict, the question remains: what are the mechanisms involved in implementing projects designed for environmental peacebuilding? To answer these questions, a mixed methods research approach is chosen, combining four qualitative and quantitative methods to triangulate results. First, we identify a set of peacebuilding dimensions and mechanisms based in the literature that facilitate assessing the impact of sustainable land-use systems (SLUS) design in the post-peace agreement region of Caquetá, Colombia. Second, not only do we interview experts and practitioners at global, national (Colombia) and local (Department of Caquetá) levels in the fields of peacebuilding, natural resource management and environmental peacebuilding, we also conduct three workshops and a survey in Caquetá to prioritize dimensions and discover explanatory mechanisms. The case of Caquetá, Colombia, shows that peacebuilding dimensions, such as socio-economic inclusion (e.g. sustainable livelihoods), creation of governance scenarios, and building capacities for dialogue and a peace culture, should be addressed to take account of the impacts of SLUS projects in post-conflict peacebuilding.


2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-223
Author(s):  
Sandro Knezović ◽  
Valbona Zeneli

This article examines the impact of the process of Europeanization on the consolidation of political systems and on the pace of European Union (EU) accession in very difficult transitional environments like those of Croatia and Albania. Croatia, a post-socialist and a post-conflict state, and Albania, heavily burdened with the consequences of its recent isolationist history (which is unprecedented among other post-socialist states), were intentionally selected for this research as atypical cases. Acknowledging the lack of consensus about the Europeanization phenomena in the academic community, the authors decided to rely on indicators that focus not only on institution-building and policy-making processes in the technical sense, but also in the processes of construction and diffusion of formal and informal rules, procedures, styles and shared beliefs, norms and identities that are being transmitted from the European to the national level. Based on qualitative research comparing the two countries – that is, Albania and Croatia – and using a number of indicators, the authors conclude that while Europeanization is an important part of European politics in general and the EU accession process in particular, it does not result in having a uniform impact on different candidate countries. On the contrary, the pace of integration depends on the specific domestic political context, on the role of the institutions, and on the processes of adaptation to the European political environment.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXIA SOLOMOU

AbstractThis article compares and contrasts the interpretation of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement 1999 by the International Court of Justice, the Peace Agreement between the Government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the European Court of Human Rights. In doing so, it critically analyses the approach of the three different tribunals and attempts to explain the differences identified on the basis of the jurisdictional scope of each tribunal and the substantive law each has been tasked to apply. This comparison is both substantive and procedural. The article then examines the impact of these three tribunals on two specific aspects of the rule of law: legal accountability and legal certainty, both internationally and in the countries under examination. It is argued that, while these tribunals have enhanced legal certainty and accountability on the international level, any contribution they have made to the domestic rule of law has been questionable.


Author(s):  
Priyastiwi Priyastiwi

The purpose of this article is to provide the basic model of Hofstede and Grays’ cultural values that relates the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and Gray‘s accounting value. This article reviews some studies that prove the model and develop the research in the future. There are some evidences that link the Hofstede’s cultural values studies with the auditor’s judgment and decisions by developing a framework that categorizes the auditor’s judgments and decisions are most likely influenced by cross-cultural differences. The categories include risk assessment, risk decisions and ethical judgments. Understanding the impact of cultural factors on the practice of accounting and financial disclosure is important to achieve the harmonization of international accounting. Deep understanding about how the local values may affect the accounting practices and their impacts on the financial disclosure are important to ensure the international comparability of financial reporting. Gray’s framework (1988) expects how the culture may affect accounting practices at the national level. One area of the future studies will examine the impact of cultural dimensions to the values of accounting, auditing and decision making. Key word : Motivation, leadership style, job satisfaction, performance


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 1183-1189
Author(s):  
Dr. Tridibesh Tripathy ◽  
Dr. Umakant Prusty ◽  
Dr. Chintamani Nayak ◽  
Dr. Rakesh Dwivedi ◽  
Dr. Mohini Gautam

The current article of Uttar Pradesh (UP) is about the ASHAs who are the daughters-in-law of a family that resides in the same community that they serve as the grassroots health worker since 2005 when the NRHM was introduced in the Empowered Action Group (EAG) states. UP is one such Empowered Action Group (EAG) state. The current study explores the actual responses of Recently Delivered Women (RDW) on their visits during the first month of their recent delivery. From the catchment area of each of the 250 ASHAs, two RDWs were selected who had a child in the age group of 3 to 6 months during the survey. The response profiles of the RDWs on the post- delivery first month visits are dwelled upon to evolve a picture representing the entire state of UP. The relevance of the study assumes significance as detailed data on the modalities of postnatal visits are available but not exclusively for the first month period of their recent delivery. The details of the post-delivery first month period related visits are not available even in large scale surveys like National Family Health Survey 4 done in 2015-16. The current study gives an insight in to these visits with a five-point approach i.e. type of personnel doing the visit, frequency of the visits, visits done in a particular week from among those four weeks separately for the three visits separately. The current study is basically regarding the summary of this Penta approach for the post- delivery one-month period.     The first month period after each delivery deals with 70% of the time of the postnatal period & the entire neonatal period. Therefore, it does impact the Maternal Mortality Rate & Ratio (MMR) & the Neonatal Mortality Rates (NMR) in India and especially in UP through the unsafe Maternal & Neonatal practices in the first month period after delivery. The current MM Rate of UP is 20.1 & MM Ratio is 216 whereas the MM ratio is 122 in India (SRS, 2019). The Sample Registration System (SRS) report also mentions that the Life Time Risk (LTR) of a woman in pregnancy is 0.7% which is the highest in the nation (SRS, 2019). This means it is very risky to give birth in UP in comparison to other regions in the country (SRS, 2019). This risk is at the peak in the first month period after each delivery. Similarly, the current NMR in India is 23 per 1000 livebirths (UNIGME,2018). As NMR data is not available separately for states, the national level data also hold good for the states and that’s how for the state of UP as well. These mortalities are the impact indicators and such indicators can be reduced through long drawn processes that includes effective and timely visits to RDWs especially in the first month period after delivery. This would help in making their post-natal & neonatal stage safe. This is the area of post-delivery first month visit profile detailing that the current article helps in popping out in relation to the recent delivery of the respondents.   A total of four districts of Uttar Pradesh were selected purposively for the study and the data collection was conducted in the villages of the respective districts with the help of a pre-tested structured interview schedule with both close-ended and open-ended questions.  The current article deals with five close ended questions with options, two for the type of personnel & frequency while the other three are for each of the three visits in the first month after the recent delivery of respondents. In addition, in-depth interviews were also conducted amongst the RDWs and a total 500 respondents had participated in the study.   Among the districts related to this article, the results showed that ASHA was the type of personnel who did the majority of visits in all the four districts. On the other hand, 25-40% of RDWs in all the 4 districts replied that they did not receive any visit within the first month of their recent delivery. Regarding frequency, most of the RDWs in all the 4 districts received 1-2 times visits by ASHAs.   Regarding the first visit, it was found that the ASHAs of Barabanki and Gonda visited less percentage of RDWs in the first week after delivery. Similarly, the second visit revealed that about 1.2% RDWs in Banda district could not recall about the visit. Further on the second visit, the RDWs responded that most of them in 3 districts except Gonda district did receive the second postnatal visit in 7-15 days after their recent delivery. Less than half of RDWs in Barabanki district & just more than half of RDWs in Gonda district received the third visit in 15-21 days period after delivery. For the same period, the majority of RDWs in the rest two districts responded that they had been entertained through a home visit.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-17
Author(s):  
Elena Blagoeva

The impact of the last global economic crisis (2008) on the European economy put a strain on higher education (HE), yet it also pushed the sector towards intensive reforms and improvements. This paper focuses on the “Strategy for the Development of Higher Education in the Republic of Bulgaria 2014-2020”. With a case study methodology, we explore the strategic endeavours of the Bulgarian government to comply with the European directions and to secure sustainable growth for the HE sector. Our research question is ‘How capable is the Bulgarian HE Strategy to overcome the economic and systemic restraints of Bulgarian higher education?’. Because the development of strategies for HE within the EU is highly contextual, a single qualitative case study was chosen as the research approach. HE institutions are not ivory towers, but subjects to a variety of external and internal forces. Within the EU, this is obviated by the fact that Universities obtain their funds from institutions such as governments, students and their families, donors, as well as EU-level programmes. Therefore, to explore how these pressures interact to affect strategic action on national level, the case method is well suited as it enabled us to study the phenomena thoroughly and deeply. The paper suggests the actions proposed within the Strategy have the potential to overcome the delay, the regional isolation and the negative impact of the economic crisis on the country. Nevertheless, the key elements on which the success or failure of this Strategy hinges are the control mechanisms and the approach to implementation. Shortcomings in these two aspects of strategic actions in HE seem to mark the difference between gaining long-term benefits and merely saving face in front of international institutions.


Author(s):  
Dirk Luyten

For the Netherlands and Belgium in the twentieth century, occupation is a key concept to understand the impact of the war on welfare state development. The occupation shifted the balance of power between domestic social forces: this was more decisive for welfare state development than the action of the occupier in itself. War and occupation did not result exclusively in more cooperation between social classes: some interest groups saw the war as a window of opportunity to develop strategies resulting in more social conflict. Class cooperation was often part of a political strategy to gain control over social groups or to legitimate social reforms. The world wars changed the scale of organization of social protection, from the local to the national level: after World War II social policy became a mission for the national state. For both countries, war endings had more lasting effects for welfare state development than the occupation itself.


Author(s):  
Karolina Parkitna ◽  
Grzegorz Krok ◽  
Stanisław Miścicki ◽  
Krzysztof Ukalski ◽  
Marek Lisańczuk ◽  
...  

Abstract Airborne laser scanning (ALS) is one of the most innovative remote sensing tools with a recognized important utility for characterizing forest stands. Currently, the most common ALS-based method applied in the estimation of forest stand characteristics is the area-based approach (ABA). The aim of this study was to analyse how three ABA methods affect growing stock volume (GSV) estimates at the sample plot and forest stand levels. We examined (1) an ABA with point cloud metrics, (2) an ABA with canopy height model (CHM) metrics and (3) an ABA with aggregated individual tree CHM-based metrics. What is more, three different modelling techniques: multiple linear regression, boosted regression trees and random forest, were applied to all ABA methods, which yielded a total of nine combinations to report. An important element of this work is also the empirical verification of the methods for estimating the GSV error for individual forest stand. All nine combinations of the ABA methods and different modelling techniques yielded very similar predictions of GSV for both sample plots and forest stands. The root mean squared error (RMSE) of estimated GSV ranged from 75 to 85 m3 ha−1 (RMSE% = 20.5–23.4 per cent) and from 57 to 64 m3 ha−1 (RMSE% = 16.4–18.3 per cent) for plots and stands, respectively. As a result of the research, it can be concluded that GSV modelling with the use of different ALS processing approaches and statistical methods leads to very similar results. Therefore, the choice of a GSV prediction method may be more determined by the availability of data and competences than by the requirement to use a particular method.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101053952110260
Author(s):  
Mairead Connolly ◽  
Laura Phung ◽  
Elise Farrington ◽  
Michelle J. L. Scoullar ◽  
Alyce N. Wilson ◽  
...  

Preterm birth and stillbirth are important global perinatal health indicators. Definitions of these indicators can differ between countries, affecting comparability of preterm birth and stillbirth rates across countries. This study aimed to document national-level adherence to World Health Organization (WHO) definitions of preterm birth and stillbirth in the WHO Western Pacific region. A systematic search of government health websites and 4 electronic databases was conducted. Any official report or published study describing the national definition of preterm birth or stillbirth published between 2000 and 2020 was eligible for inclusion. A total of 58 data sources from 21 countries were identified. There was considerable variation in how preterm birth and stillbirth was defined across the region. The most frequently used lower gestational age threshold for viability of preterm birth was 28 weeks gestation (range 20-28 weeks), and stillbirth was most frequently classified from 20 weeks gestation (range 12-28 weeks). High-income countries more frequently used earlier gestational ages for preterm birth and stillbirth compared with low- to middle-income countries. The findings highlight the importance of clear, standardized, internationally comparable definitions for perinatal indicators. Further research is needed to determine the impact on regional preterm birth and stillbirth rates.


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