The Impact of Climate-Change-Related Disasters on Africa’s Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Conflicts: Can Humanitarian Aid and Food Assistance Offset the Damage?

This study analyzed the impact of climate-related natural disasters (droughts, floods, storms/rainstorms) on economic and social variables. As the Africa-specific empirical literature is limited, this study used panel data from 1961–2011 on Africa. The study used a panel data regression model analysis. The results showed that climate change-related natural disasters affected Africa’s economic growth, agriculture, and poverty and caused armed conflicts. Among the disasters, droughts are the main cause of negative impact, severely affecting crops such as maize and coffee and resulting in increased urban poverty and armed conflicts. In contrast, international aid has a positive effect but the impact is insignificant compared to the negative consequences of climate-related natural disasters. Cereal food assistance has a negative crowding-out effect on cereal production. International donors should review their interventions to support Africa’s adaptative capacity to disasters. Government efficiency has reduced the number of deaths, and this is an area that supports Africa’s adaptative efforts.

The Impact of Climate-Change-Related Disasters on Africa’s Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Conflicts: Can Humanitarian Aid and Food Assistance Offset the Damage?

This study analyzed the impact of climate-related natural disasters (droughts, floods, storms/rainstorms) on economic and social variables. As the Africa-specific empirical literature is limited, this study used panel data from 1961–2011 on Africa. The study used a panel data regression model analysis. The results showed that climate change-related natural disasters affected Africa’s economic growth, agriculture, and poverty and caused armed conflicts. Among the disasters, droughts are the main cause of negative impact, severely affecting crops such as maize and coffee and resulting in increased urban poverty and armed conflicts. In contrast, international aid has a positive effect but the impact is insignificant compared to the negative consequences of climate-related natural disasters. Cereal food assistance has a negative crowding-out effect on cereal production. International donors should review their interventions to support Africa’s adaptative capacity to disasters. Government efficiency has reduced the number of deaths, and this is an area that supports Africa’s adaptative efforts.

Climate Variability and Urban Agricultural Activities in Ibadan, Nigeria

Two terms that are enjoying increasing overwhelming global literature advocacy and discussion are urban farming and climate change. While there is increasing advocacy towards the relevance of urban agriculture for urban dwellers and how it translates into a mitigation strategy against climate change variability and adaptation to urban poverty, the effect of some urban farming activities and how it serves as a driver to climate change needs to be investigated. In most of the urban periphery where there is availability of a large expanse of land areas, farming activities are usually practised in form of settlement farm, livestock rearing, or plantation agriculture. The study based on quantitative and qualitative data from urban farmers in Ibadan argues that the location of urban farmlands is dependent on climatic factor such as access to land. The study identified that climate variability as reported by the urban farmers has resulted in the increased use of fertilizer for farming by urban farmers, and the main activity that is pro-climate change and variability is bush burning.

Adolescents, poverty areas, violence, and public health: an intersectional perspective

ABSTRACT Objectives: to discuss the influence of urban poverty on the context of violence among adolescents from an intersectional perspective. Methods: the original research, of the action research type, analyzed data from 13 workshops. The participants were adolescents from both sexes, from 15 to 17 years old, from a public school in a peripheral neighborhood of São Paulo, SP. The methodological proposition of intersectional analysis guided the interpretation of the empirical material. Results: the intersection of class and gender may increase the (re)production of violence in some men. The intersection of race/color, social class, and territory contributes to the construction of narratives that naturalize inequality and, thus, justify discrimination. Final Considerations: there is necessity of new public policies that consider the social contexts and experiences of the subjects that stem from the articulation of social markers.

The Influence of Urban Poverty on Students’ Academic Optimism: Does Government Assistance Play a Role?

The present study investigated the relationship between urban poor students’ perceptions of government assistance and poverty and their level of academic optimism. A survey was administered to 500 urban poor students in two major Malaysian cities, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. The students were identified and randomly selected for the study with the help of their respective schools. AMOS version 24 was used to test the hypothesised model using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The findings revealed a significant direct association between students’ perceptions of poverty and academic optimism. However, no significant indirect influence was found between students’ perceptions of poverty and their academic optimism through government assistance. These findings suggest that government assistance programmes are not necessarily a contributor to students’ academic optimism. The lack of any significant influence between students’ perceptions of poverty and academic optimism, through government assistance, may indicate a need to re-evaluate the existing assistance programmes rendered by the government to students in the urban poor category.

Local Policy Discretion in Social Welfare: Explaining Subnational Variations in China's De Facto Urban Poverty Line

How do subnational agents exercise policy discretion in the social welfare sphere? To what extent do they do so as a result of various bureaucratic and fiscal incentives? The literature has documented several explanatory frameworks in the context of China that predominantly focus on the realm of developmental policies. Owing to the salient characteristics of the social policy arena, local adaptation of centrally designed policies may operate on distinctive logics. This study synthesizes the recent scholarship on subnational social policymaking and explains the significant interregional disparities in China's de facto urban poverty line – the eligibility standard of the urban minimum livelihood guarantee scheme, or dibao. Five research hypotheses are formulated for empirical examination: fiscal power effect, population effect, fiscal dependency effect, province effect and neighbour effect. Quantitative analysis of provincial-level panel data largely endorses the hypotheses. The remarkable subnational variations in dibao standards are explained by a salient constellation of fiscal and political factors that are embedded within the country's complex intergovernmental relations and fiscal arrangements. Both a race-to-the-top and a race-to-the-bottom may be fostered by distinctive mechanisms. The unique role of provincial governments as intermediary agents within China's political apparatus is illuminated in the social policy arena.

Review of Taína: Una novela

Taina: Una Novela makes strong statements about how social justice, individual determination, education, and compassion can overcome urban poverty. The main character, Julio is a half Ecuadorian/half Puerto Rican teenager who was born and raised in East Harlem. He has good grades and aspires to get into Princeton University. Julio gets the support he needs for his future from his parents and a couple of good teachers from his school. Clearly, Quiñonez makes an important statement as an educator on the things that are needed to deal with issues of urban poverty. Julio ends up believing Taina, a girl marginalized by the whole neighborhood, has an immaculate pregnancy. Taina and her mother are poor, and Julio does criminal acts to support her and her mother. Quiñonez explores the effects of marginalization on mental health, as Taina and her mother become crude, hostile people in their isolation from society.

Influence of Physical Environmental Factors on The Rising Insecurity in Northwestern Nigeria

Northern part of Nigeria has witnessed a widespread security challenges in recent years, in most cases armed conflicts. Boko Haram's insurgency in the Northeast, herdsmen militancy in North-central, while in the Northwest, banditry has become the major security concern. Millions of people have been displaced, some were dead as a result. There are efforts by concerned entities, less attention was given to physical environmental. Environmental psychology has shown that the physical environment is responsible for behavior or crime; therefore, this study identifies the environmental factors that are influencing the increase of insecurity activities in the Northwestern states of Nigeria. Data was collected using focus group discussions, observations, interviews and review of related existing literature. System theory was used to show the interdependence of the factors by identifying and categorizing them into internal and external factors (artificial and natural). The internal factors include; Urbanization and Poor Environmental Design/Planning, Territorial encroachment, Urban poverty among others. While the external factors are; Climate, Topography and Vegetation, Natural resources and etc. The study discusses their effects on increasing insecurity in the region and concluded that both internal and external factors have significant effects on the increasing banditry in Northwestern part of the country and need to be viewed as a system and be treated holistically. Finally made some recommendation on the way forward.

Melodramatic Mayhew: J.B. Johnstone’s How We Live in the World of London

The British stage of the1850s produced a flurry of dramas influenced by Henry Mayhew’s work on urban poverty, many of which were written for the “minor” theatres of London’s East End and the south side of the Thames. Often dismissed as literary “hacks,” the writers for these theatres and their works have been largely undervalued and understudied. This article shines a spotlight on one such writer, John Beer Johnstone, whose How We Live in the World of London; Or, London Labour and the London Poor premiered at the Surrey Theatre on 24 March 1856. Taking a positive view of literary “piracy,” I argue that Johnstone’s play cleverly re-imagines Mayhew’s social journalism and subverts prevalent stereotypes of the urban poor for the Surrey’s mixed audiences.