Estimating Public Benefits of Forest Roads in Natural Recreation Forests Using DBCV : An Example of Forest Recreation and Activities

In many recent democracies, candidates compete for office using illegal strategies to influence voters. In Hungary and Romania, local actors including mayors and bureaucrats offer access to social policy benefits to voters who offer to support their preferred candidates, and they threaten others with the loss of a range of policy and private benefits for voting the “wrong” way. These quid pro quo exchanges are often called clientelism. How can politicians and their accomplices get away with such illegal campaigning in otherwise democratic, competitive elections? When do they rely on the worst forms of clientelism that involve threatening voters and manipulating public benefits? This book uses a mixed method approach to understand how illegal forms of campaigning including vote buying and electoral coercion persist in two democratic countries in the European Union. It argues that clientelistic strategies must be disaggregated based on whether they use public or private resources, and whether they involve positive promises or negative threats and coercion. The authors document that the type of clientelistic strategies that candidates and brokers use varies systematically across localities based on their underlying social coalitions, and also show that voters assess and sanction different forms of clientelism in different ways. Voters glean information about politicians’ personal characteristics and their policy preferences from the clientelistic strategies these candidates deploy. Most voters judge candidates who use clientelism harshly. So how does clientelism, including its most odious coercive forms, persist in democratic systems? This book suggests that politicians can get away with clientelism by using forms of it that are in line with the policy preferences of constituencies whose votes they need. Clientelistic and programmatic strategies are not as distinct as previous studies have argued.

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A Holistic Framework for Evaluating Adaptation Approaches to Coastal Hazards and Sea Level Rise: A Case Study from Imperial Beach, California

Water ◽

10.3390/w13091324 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (9) ◽

pp. 1324

Author(s):

David Revell ◽

Phil King ◽

Jeff Giliam ◽

Juliano Calil ◽

Sarah Jenkins ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Sea Level Rise ◽

Sea Level ◽

Public Trust ◽

Adaptation Strategy ◽

Public Benefits ◽

Study Results ◽

Local Risk ◽

Over Time

Sea level rise increases community risks from erosion, wave flooding, and tides. Current management typically protects existing development and infrastructure with coastal armoring. These practices ignore long-term impacts to public trust coastal recreation and natural ecosystems. This adaptation framework models physical responses to the public beach and private upland for each adaptation strategy over time, linking physical changes in widths to damages, economic costs, and benefits from beach recreation and nature using low-lying Imperial Beach, California, as a case study. Available coastal hazard models identified community vulnerabilities, and local risk communication engagement prioritized five adaptation approaches—armoring, nourishment, living shorelines, groins, and managed retreat. This framework innovates using replacement cost as a proxy for ecosystem services normally not valued and examines a managed retreat policy approach using a public buyout and rent-back option. Specific methods and economic values used in the analysis need more research and innovation, but the framework provides a scalable methodology to guide coastal adaptation planning everywhere. Case study results suggest that coastal armoring provides the least public benefits over time. Living shoreline approaches show greater public benefits, while managed retreat, implemented sooner, provides the best long-term adaptation strategy to protect community identity and public trust resources.

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Potential of Small Culverts as Wildlife Passages on Forest Roads

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13137224 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (13) ◽

pp. 7224

Author(s):

Hsiang-Ling Chen ◽

Erin E. Posthumus ◽

John L. Koprowski

Keyword(s):

Animal Movement ◽

Small Dimension ◽

Lynx Rufus ◽

Tamiasciurus Hudsonicus ◽

Red Squirrels ◽

Forest Roads ◽

Alternative Pathways ◽

Slow Moving ◽

Trail Cameras ◽

Spermophilus Variegatus

Roads and traffic can cause animal mortality. Specifically, roads serve as barriers by impeding animal movement, resulting in demographic and genetic consequences. Drainage structures, such as culverts, can provide linkages between habitat patches. However, the potential of small culverts with diameters of <60 cm (e.g., wildlife passages that facilitate movement on forest roads) are relatively unknown. In this study, we used trail cameras to monitor the use of 14 small culverts, by mammals, along forest roads on Mt. Graham, home of the critically endangered Mt. Graham red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamensis), in southeastern Arizona, USA. From 2011 to 2013, we only recorded 20 completed road crossings through culverts. More than half of culvert uses were by striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis), followed by the rock squirrel (Spermophilus variegatus) and the bobcat (Lynx rufus). The Mt. Graham red squirrel was the only species that was common along the roads, but never crossed the roads. Culverts with higher usages were characterized by shorter culvert lengths and absence of accumulated soil inside the culverts. Our study shows that small-dimension drainage systems may provide alternative pathways for wildlife crossing roads, especially for slow moving and ground dwelling species. However, the potential of small culverts assisting wildlife crossings can only be maximized when culverts are accessible year-round.

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Determinants of vegetation regeneration on forest roads following restoration treatments: implications for boreal caribou conservation

Restoration Ecology ◽

10.1111/rec.13414 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Rebecca Lacerte ◽

Mathieu Leblond ◽

Martin‐Hugues St‐Laurent

Keyword(s):

Forest Roads ◽

Vegetation Regeneration ◽

Boreal Caribou

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How America’s Corporations Lost their Public Purpose, and How it Might be (Partially) Restored

Accounting Economics and Law - A Convivium ◽

10.1515/ael-2019-0088 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

David Ciepley

Keyword(s):

Corporate Control ◽

Historical Process ◽

Business Corporation ◽

Public Benefits ◽

Public Purpose ◽

Present Essay ◽

The U.S

AbstractIn honor of Lynn Stout’s efforts to better suit the business corporation for the pursuit of long-term, publicly-beneficial purposes, the present essay reviews critically the historical process by which the corporation’s tie to public purposes—a precondition of the earliest grants of corporate powers to business enterprisers—was slowly severed. And it explores a form of corporate control, once widespread in the U.S. and easily revivable, that could partially restore corporate emphasis on public benefits—the foundation-controlled corporation.

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