Mind the Gap! Reconciling Environmental Water Requirements with Scarcity in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia

The Murray–Darling Basin Plan is a $AU 13 billion program to return water from irrigation use to the environment. Central to the success of the Plan, commenced in 2012, is the implementation of an Environmentally Sustainable Level of Take (ESLT) and a Sustainable Diversion Limit (SDL) on the volume of water that can be taken for consumptive use. Under the enabling legislation, the Water Act (2007), the ESLT and SDL must be set by the “best available science.” In 2009, the volume of water to maintain wetlands and rivers of the Basin was estimated at 3000–7600 GL per year. Since then, there has been a steady step-down in this volume to 2075 GL year due to repeated policy adjustments, including “supply measures projects,” building of infrastructure to obtain the same environmental outcomes with less water. Since implementation of the Plan, return of water to the environment is falling far short of targets. The gap between the volume required to maintain wetlands and rivers and what is available is increasing with climate change and other risks, but the Plan makes no direct allowance for climate change. We present policy options that address the need to adapt to less water and re-frame the decision context from contestation between water for irrigation versus the environment. Options include best use of water for adaptation and structural adjustment packages for irrigation communities integrated with environmental triage of those wetlands likely to transition to dryland ecosystems under climate change.

Study on the Factors Influencing Total Health Cost Based on Multiple Regression Model

In recent years, China's social economy and income level of residents have increased rapidly, the total cost of health has increased rapidly, and the level of medical expenditure of residents has been increasing. This paper establishes a multivariate linear regression model using data from 1996 to 2020, and analyzes several important influencing factors that affect overall health expenditure. The aim is to formulate a health financing policy suitable for the coordinated development of China's social economy, and to provide a basis for adapting to the needs of economic development, structural adjustment and institutional transformation.

Urban Studies of Accra

Accra is one of the largest and most important cities in sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of this article is to assess the evolution of urban studies in Accra and its main historical and contemporary foci. Early knowledge on urban Accra is fragmentary and orientated toward European contact points and urban plans, ostensibly from the gaze of Europeans. Writings from Euro-Africans such as Carl Reindorf provide a different prism into the precolonial, indigenous, urban society, whereas most indigenous urban knowledge was situated in the oral tradition at this time. Around independence, officially appointed social anthropologists wrote about an indigenous community in Tema and surveyed the multiethnic Accra environment. From independence in 1957 until the early 1980s, social scientists viewed the urban settlement as an alien, Western intervention. Local scholarship on Accra was sidelined as the academy in a poor, emergent nation became preoccupied with the genesis of nation-state building and the establishment of viable academic departments in national universities, and growing proportions of migrants regarded “home” as somewhere else, that is, ancestral villages. In the 1970s Accra was inserted into world history and social history, and social scientists began to study residential geographies, but scholarship at the city-scale remained sparse. Engagement with world and social histories and the social sciences demonstrated that history matters, but not in linear and teleological ways. The liberalization era ushered in by structural adjustment policies (SAPs) in 1983 invigorated studies of Accra’s urban impacts and effects. Much of this research was disseminated by international scholars, as Ghanaian scholars had to contend with the negative impacts of SAPs on their own universities and households. Since the turn of the 21st century, scholarship on Accra, and African cities in general, has been increasing. Diverse research questions and a multiplicity of methodologies and frameworks seek to engage Western urban theories and other variants, undertake policy-relevant work, assess ethnic and residential dynamics, contribute to international urban debates, and advance postcolonial and revisionist accounts of urbanism. Viewed at the third decade of the 21st century, scholarship on Accra is of diverse origins, encompassing scholarship from locals, members of the diaspora, and international urbanists, and a promising tilt is local–international collaborations co-producing knowledge.

Rebuilding India’s Public Health

Assuming impervious boundaries of public health service systems when searching for answers to its problems can be misleading as historically, economic and welfare planning to improve the quality of life of all was considered critical. Despite years of planning, the health sector in India has acquired a tumultuous trajectory with chaos prevailing at different levels – conceptualization, policy, financing, organization and community participation. Using the concept of order in Chaos, this paper attempts to trace four basic underlying elementary patterns in the developmental process rooted in the larger socio-political structures that led to this chaos. Its second section explores the roots from where these patterns explaining the links between health, poverty and inequality in health emanate - the zone of conflict of interests among those who hold power and those whom they represent. It explores how they altered the public health service system and settled in favour of a small but powerful elite (the corporates, the upper-middle class and the professionals) seeking international standards irrespective of the local context. Structural Adjustment and the Health Sector Reforms benefited them by shifting subsidies to the private/corporate sector, transforming services into a costly commodity, fragmented and marginalized primary health care and public hospitals while ushering in hi-tech medicine.

Does agricultural development affect environmental quality? The case of carbon dioxide emission in Ghana

PurposeAgricultural development still constitutes an integral part of Ghana's drive towards job creation, industrial development and economic growth with various growth policies placing the agricultural sector at the core. While there are likely environmental effects of agricultural activities, evidence in Ghana remains scanty. The study focused on examining, empirically, the effects of the development of the agricultural sector on carbon dioxide (CO2) emission in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employed the Stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence and technology (STIRPAT) framework to test for the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for agriculture and carbon dioxide emission as well as the effect that the changing structure of Ghana's agricultural development has on carbon dioxide emission for the 1971–2018 period. Regression analysis, variance decomposition and causality analysis were performed.FindingsThe regression results revealed a U-shaped relationship between agricultural development and carbon emission, implying a rejection of the EKC hypothesis between the two variables. In addition, the Structural Adjustment Programme was found to positively moderate the effect agriculture has on carbon emission.Practical implicationsThe study recommends the need for policy-makers to facilitate the large-scale adoption and use of modern technology and environmentally friendly agricultural methods.Originality/valueThe study is among the few works to assess the EKC hypothesis between agriculture and carbon dioxide emission in Africa. The direct and indirect effect of structural adjustment programme on carbon emission is estimated.

Effect of monetary policy on economic growth in nigeria in the post structural adjustment programme

The study investigated the effect of monetary policy on economic growth during post structural adjustment programmer in Nigeria. It used the expo-facto design. Secondary data for the period of 1985-2015 were utilized. The data were extracted from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistical Bulletin and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The linear regression with the application of Ordinary least Squares (OLS) technique was employed to estimate the parameters of the model numerically. Finding revealed that broad money supply had a positive and significant effect on economic growth in Nigeria during post structural adjustment programmer from 1986-2015. Interest rate had a negative and significant effect on economic growth in Nigeria during the same period and inflation rate had a positive and insignificant effect on economic growth in Nigeria at the same time. The study recommended that Central Bank of Nigeria should facilitate the emergence of market based interest rate that would attract both domestic and foreign investments, as well as create jobs, and promote non-oil export, while reviving industries that are currently operational, far below installed capacity. In order to strengthen the financial sector, the Central Bank has to encourage the introduction of more financial instruments that are flexible enough to meet the risk preferences and sophistication of operators in the financial sector.

Historical experience and prospects of corporatization of the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant (1988–2021)

The article provides a retrospective analysis of the historical experience and problems of corporatization of the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant – a leading domestic manufacturer of industrial electric vehicles and railway rolling stock. The author traces historical circumstances of development and preconditions of diversification of production activity of the enterprise on the background of market economy in Ukraine and decrease in demand for narrowly specialized products. It was found out that during the 1990s–2000s the staff of SPA «DEVZ», having a promising research and production potential, mastered a wide range of production of mainline equipment to meet the needs of railways for innovative electric vehicles. However, due to low product quality and inefficient management system, the company is currently on the verge of bankruptcy, and its outdated design and technological improvements are not able to ensure competitiveness in the global railway market. It is proved that given the strategic importance of SE «DEVZ» for the national economy as the last profile locomotive company, its corporatization can be a real alternative to privatization, providing effective capitalization, financial and technological recovery and improving the culture of production with a state guarantee of preservation of the enterprise, as well as obtaining additional funds through the placement of securities on stock exchanges, and attracting private investment and innovation from international manufacturers. Further research on the historical aspects of the development of domestic engineering enterprises and their impact on the fleet of JSC «Ukrzaliznytsia» should be carried out taking into account the achievements of domestic science on the problems of structural adjustment of the economy and the use of modern strategic management tools.

Applications of Biopower to NGO-Donor Partnerships for HIV Prevention in Jordan

NGOs serving marginalized groups in the developing world often lie under heavy donor influence, so they must toe the line between compliance with and resistance against their funders to best promote the well-being of their beneficiaries. Jordanian health NGOs have grappled with these power dynamics since the 1990s when donor countries began pouring money into Jordan's private sector as part of structural adjustment. I use ethnographic data from a Jordanian HIV prevention NGO to analyze how Foucault’s (1978) theory of biopower applies to international NGO-donor relationships. I argue that the international aid chain transforms NGO staff and the populations they serve into biological subjects expected to adhere to norms set by American and European donors. Biopower manifests differently depending on donor approaches to project implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.