How Do Population Flows Promote Urban–Rural Integration? Addressing Migrants’ Farmland Arrangement and Social Integration in China’s Urban Agglomeration Regions

China’s urban–rural relationships have been changed dramatically by the intensifying population flows, especially in urban agglomeration regions. This study contributes to the interpretation of urban–rural integration mechanisms in urban agglomeration by constructing a conceptual framework of migration-related resource flows. Taking the Wuhan urban agglomeration as an example, migrants’ farmland arrangement, migration pattern, and social integration have been investigated to uncover the spatial and temporal characteristics of the urban–rural interaction, based on the data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey in 2012–2017. The findings indicate that the farmland circulation in the Wuhan urban agglomeration was generally low, but slightly higher than that of the national average. The central city, Wuhan, had a high degree of family migration and social integration, indicating stronger resource flows in developed areas. However, its farmland circulation level was lower than that of non-central cities. The unsynchronized interaction of resources in urban and rural areas should be taken seriously, especially in areas with a relatively developed urban economy. The advantages of the central city in absorbing and settling migrants confirmed the positive impact of the urban agglomeration on promoting urban–rural integration.

Classification of Objects of Supply Chain Management to Ensure Their Sustainability

Classifications of objects of supply chain management create the basis for managing their sustainability. The author proposes a hierarchy of priorities regarding managed objects − systems, processes and relations, which implies creation of adequate anticrisis measures for operational management of resource flows.The objectives of the study are to clarify and supplement classifications of supply chain management objects based on their qualitative characteristics. The tasks of the study are to identify the problems of classification of objects of supply chain management, to determine the prerequisites and to determine ways to solve these problems.The methodological basis of the research is formed by the provisions of logistics as a science of resource flow management and supply chain management as a science of managing systems and processes of creating value for end users of products and/or services.Logical-structural methods and tools of binary matrices have allowed to develop classifications of flows of the first (A) and second (B) levels, creating basis for adoption of codes of those flows indicating types of systems and processes and ensuring thus their sustainability. The proposed hierarchy of prioritisation of managed objects reveals the dependences that govern the anti-crisis measures of operation management of resource flows. The research results make it possible to eliminate the contradictions between the goals of the supply chain links (suppliers) and requirement chains (consumers) and, on this basis, to organise their effective interaction.

Financing for Sustainable Structural Transformation

Official development assistance (ODA) and domestic expenditures of developing countries on food and agriculture are often too small, relative to needs or for stimulating private investment. ODA and expenditures are suboptimally allocated mostly to subsidies, with little to public goods, such as agricultural education, research, and extension. Learning and evaluation of impacts need to improve and expand to meet complex challenges facing farmers. The multisectoral nature of agriculture means that agricultural financing must consist of multiple components, with resources that are public, private (household), and private (external to household), coming from six categories: public—domestic and international; private—domestic and international; and household—savings and remittances. Information on “traditional” ODA for agriculture is more available than for “nontraditional” ODA: for example, from emerging countries, including China’s growing involvement in Southern countries, private investments in value chains, land purchases, and private philanthropy. Aside from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), few philanthropists report aid to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development–Development Assistance Committee (OECD–DAC). BMGF’s Aid Transparency Index (ATI) rating improved only from “very poor” (18.1 percent) in 2013 to “fair” (47.3 percent) in 2018. The 2020 ATI reported significant improvement in aid donors’ overall transparency, but less in impact of aid projects. New themes, including nutrition and the environment, pose challenges to estimating sources of resource flows in support of adaptation of agriculture. We show that, even though available aid has increased since 2020, resources are very small relative to needs and the extent of advocacy.

Enhanced circularity in aftermarkets: logistics tradeoffs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify requirements and tradeoffs on logistics services for enhanced circularity of materials and resources.Design/methodology/approachBased on multiple case study design and abductive reasoning, the study investigates 13 different product categories. The data were analyzed based on theoretical, a priori codes from the literature review. Inductive, emerging codes were added to the coding scheme during the analysis.FindingsRequirements of logistics services to support slowing of resource flows are categorized with respect to initiator, location of the service, single or multiple actors, and transportation of parts, products and people. Moreover, the study identifies new logistics tradeoffs: material and people, knowledge and people, and information and knowledge. Transportation of product, people and parts can be reduced by increasing local knowledge and improve information sharing.Research limitations/implicationsThis review contributes to the understanding of the relationship between logistics services and enhancement of circularity by highlighting requirements on logistics services in the aftermarket supply chain that support slowing of resource flows. To enhance circularity, logistics services must extend the traditional material information flow with the flow of people and knowledge, respectively.Practical implicationsThe categorization provides practitioners and researchers with an overview of requirements and tradeoffs on logistics services to enhance circularity of a particular circular cycle. The implications will provide an opportunity to address environmental impact of transportation and improve the utilization of scarce materials.Social implicationsVariety of tradeoffs in logistics services can enhance slowing and hence circularity of scarce materials.Originality/valueFirst, the authors illustrate how traditional tradeoffs in logistics such as flow of materials, resources and people need to be addressed to enhance circularity through slowing. Second, the authors identify two new tradeoffs in logistics services: knowledge flow and degree of customer involvement.

Ethiopian Foreign Policy: A Weak State or a Regional Hegemon?

When foreign policies of states are examined, pride of place often goes to what are called high politics: the politics of diplomacy and war. However, for most developing nations, especially those in the region of sub-Saharan Africa, economic foreign policy, or low politics, may be as, or even more, important. In fact, the foreign policies of African nations are often seen as an extension of strategies to consolidate domestic political power. African leaders routinely place themselves in charge of foreign policy as a means of controlling these resource flows as well as to create some autonomy from competing domestic political forces. This is not to say that external state forces do not impinge on the ability of leaders to stay in power; however, in sub-Saharan Africa, this has been less of a priority, perhaps with the significant exception of Ethiopia. This paper seeks to show that the general foreign policy perspectives of Ethiopia from 1991 to the present have been an extension of the leaders and ruling elites trying to obtain significant sources of financial resources by exploring the general trends of how Ethiopia has engaged in international flows of resources. Examining Ethiopian foreign policy on three levels—international, regional, and domestic—this paper explains how, despite being a potential regional hegemon, Ethiopia has significant problems stemming from domestic issues of poverty and legitimacy. Moreover, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be highlighted as a case to explore how it affects, and is impacted by, all three levels.

A new approach to the application of the principles of sustainable development

Most of the environmental, economic, social and political problems that have given rise to the global crisis continue to grow negatively and rapidly. It is with this situation that the world community has faced, feeling the consequences of earlier decisions. It is natural to raise the question: why, despite enormous efforts, it is not possible to reverse the negative trends and ensure the transition to sustainable development of the world community. In order for the criteria of sustainable development to meet these requirements, it is necessary to determine the main governing laws and find a way to measure different quality social, natural processes and resource flows in stable and universal units of measurement (measures). The article presents the basic definitions for the development of a formalized description of the tasks of monitoring sustainable development that meets the principles and requirements of sustainable development. It provides examples of calculating the parameters of sustainable development of Latvia and their primary interpretation. To formalize the tasks of sustainable development, the authors considered the methodology of systems analysis, methods of managing sustainable development projects using the concept of flows of full and useful power in open non-equilibrium stable systems, flows model of interactions in the system ‘man - society – nature’, as well as the theory of a unified system of space-time measurements. The main conclusions are: the system of four universal indicators of sustainable development shows that by 2019 the system of Latvia had a trend towards non-sustainable development. A decrease in consumption indicates an extensive development and is the result of a decrease in population, and is not associated with improving the structure of resource consumption and their efficient use.

Leapfrogging on Steroids

Accounts of economic development as catch-up, via technological leverage and leapfrogging, have been successfully applied to explain cases of catch-up by East Asian countries, from Japan through Korea to Taiwan, Singapore, and others. Now in the twenty-first century it is the turn of emerging industrializing giants, led by China, but with India, Brazil, and others also looking to catch up, drawing as much as possible from the prior experiences and strategies of East Asia. But these emerging giants are looking to industrialize in fundamentally different circumstances from those that applied in earlier cases as industrialization powered by fossil fuels and linear resource flows is no longer feasible, not just because countries have pledged to reduce carbon emissions, but because at the scale required for the industrialization of China, India and others, fossil fuels present insuperable energy and resource security problems. They confront geopolitical limits to growth that demand alternative green strategies if they are to be evaded. The argument is developed in this chapter that green development strategies are the only feasible strategies for such countries to enable them to bring their industrialization processes to fruition. This chapter outlines the issues and options open to them, and evaluates the strategies pursued so far, demonstrating how they necessitate a break with the path dependence inherited from earlier patterns of industrialization. Green growth strategies turn out to be a strategic necessity; they promise to become the developmental norm in the twenty-first century, enabling the more recent industrial arrivals to leapfrog their predecessors.