THE ENVIRONMENTAL REALITY OF THE NAGA RIVER IN CAMARINES SUR, PHILIPPINES: THE PERCEPTIONS AND EXPERIENCES OF THE RIVERSIDE HOUSEHOLDS

The present study documented the early and current state of the Naga river by categorizing it in four decades of development. The timeline helped the respondents visualize the ideal state of the river which for them is worth conserving for the future generations. The study also identified the perceptions and experiences of the riverside households on the stresses and shocks, fears and anxiety, and benefits derived. The identification of environmental stresses and shocks constructed a reality map or a perception of environmental reality based on their experiences. Focus Group Discussion was conducted with 79 respondents in 5 of the 11 riverside barangays. These represented the upstream ,midstream, and downstream barangays. Key Informant Interview was done with 19 key people of the study. Results of the FGD show that flood brought about by the typhoons and the heavy rains are their biggest shocks and stresses. As to fears and anxiety, the fear of floods had the highest and the least was the loss of a religious tradition. This concurs on the findings that floods are the primary environmental shock as perceived by the respondents. The identification of benefits determined the reasons on what holds the community to the river despite the threats. Topmost among the benefits was the river as source of livelihood and the least benefit was for recreation. KEYWORDS: Naga River, environmental reality, environmental stresses and shocks, fears and anxiety of the river, benefits of riverside households

Does Slack Buffer? Market Performance after Environmental Shock

Slack is a resource held by a firm but exceeds its needs. It is crucial for a firm to raise more attention on slack when facing environmental shocks, which are one of the causes of unsustainability. Based on agency theory and behavioral theory, this paper analyzes the buffer effect of slack on market performance under different periods and degrees of environmental shocks. Taking two major earthquakes that occurred in China as the natural experimental background and the listed firms in hit areas as the sample, we find that environmental shock is exposed to acts as a positive contingency for the impact of unabsorbed slack on market performance, and as a negative contingency for absorbed slack’s effect. The severity of environmental shock promotes the unabsorbed slack to act as a buffer in the immediate post-shock period and absorbed slack in the during-shock period. These findings contribute to answering the question of how to configure slack to protect firms and even achieve sustainable development when facing environmental shock.

“The Dust Was Long in Settling”: Human Capital and the Lasting Impact of the American Dust Bowl

I find that childhood exposure to the Dust Bowl, an environmental shock to health and income, adversely impacted later-life human capital—especially when exposure wasin utero—increasing poverty and disability rates, and decreasing fertility and college completion rates. The event's devastation of agriculture, however, had the beneficial effect of increasing high school completion, likely by pushing children who otherwise might have worked on the farm into secondary schooling. Lastly, New Deal spending helped remediate Dust Bowl damage, suggesting that timely and substantial policy interventions can aid in human recovery from natural disasters.