Analysis of institutional arrangements and common pool resources governance: the case of Lake Tana sub-basin, Ethiopia

Although Common Pool Resources (CPRs) make up a significant share of total income for rural households in Ethiopia and elsewhere in developing world, limited access to these resources and environmental degradation threaten local livelihoods. As a result, the issues of management, governance of CPRs and how to prevent their over-exploitation are of great importance for development policy. This study examines the current state and dynamics of CPRs and overall resource governance system of the Lake Tana sub-basin. This research employed the modified form of Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. The framework integrates the concept of Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) and Interactive Governance (IG) perspectives where social actors, institutions, the politico-economic context, discourses and ecological features across governance and government levels were considered. It has been observed that overexploitation, degradation and encroachment of CPRs have increased dramatically and this threatens the sustainability of Lake Tana ecosystem. The stakeholder analysis result reveals that there are multiple stakeholders with diverse interest in and power over CPRs. The analysis of institutional arrangements reveals that the existing formal rules and regulations governing access to and control over CPRs could not be implemented and were not effective to legally bind and govern CPR user’s behavior at the operational level. The study also shows that a top-down and non-participatory policy formulation, law and decision making process overlooks the local contexts (local knowledge and informal institutions). The outcomes of examining the participation of local resource users, as an alternative to a centralized, command-and-control, and hierarchical approach to resource management and governance, have called for a fundamental shift in CPR use, management and governance to facilitate the participation of stakeholders in decision making. Therefore, establishing a multi-level stakeholder governance system as an institutional structure and process is necessary to sustain stakeholder participation in decision-making regarding CPR use, management and governance.

Integrating mobile and cloud resources management using the cloud personal assistant

The mobile cloud computing model promises to address the resource limitations of mobile devices, but effectively implementing this model is difficult. Previous work on mobile cloud computing has required the user to have a continuous, high-quality connection to the cloud infrastructure. This is undesirable and possibly infeasible, as the energy required on the mobile device to maintain a connection, and transfer sizeable amounts of data is large; the bandwidth tends to be quite variable, and low on cellular networks. The cloud deployment itself needs to efficiently allocate scalable resources to the user as well. In this paper, we formulate the best practices for efficiently managing the resources required for the mobile cloud model, namely energy, bandwidth and cloud computing resources. These practices can be realised with our mobile cloud middleware project, featuring the Cloud Personal Assistant (CPA). We compare this with the other approaches in the area, to highlight the importance of minimising the usage of these resources, and therefore ensure successful adoption of the model by end users. Based on results from experiments performed with mobile devices, we develop a no-overhead decision model for task and data offloading to the CPA of a user, which provides efficient management of mobile cloud resources.

Depression and 'crises of meaninglessness' in the political-economic theology of the money-God

The thesis starts with a historical analysis of the development of depression as a concept. Through this inquiry, the controversies behind the apparent consensus about depression’s etiology and treatment are illuminated, suggesting that the understanding of the climbing rates of depression in contemporary Western civilization is still up for grabs. That’s what the thesis sets out to investigate. In order to accomplish this aim, the study builds upon the classical accounts of Georg Simmel, Émile Durkheim and the more contemporary ideas of Dany-Robert Dufour, in dialogue with an array of supplementary theoretical sources. Navigating through this ‘sea’ of extraordinary and different theories, a new avenue of reflections arises, contributing for the sophistication of the questions made about the phenomenon of depression’s rates. The fundamental argument emerging from this theoretical undertaking is that ‘crises of meaninglessness’ that pervade the collective body of Western contemporary societies have, as one of its consequences, the expansion of depression rates. Meaninglessness in contemporary times is the primary object of investigation of the thesis. The concept, in the context of this study, is not understood as merely an effect of the historical decline of shared social norms due to processes of individualization. Rather, it is claimed, it originates from and is reinforced by the ‘political-economic theology of neo-liberalism’ which becomes virtually generalized in the West, erecting money as a God. The study concludes that by undermining culturally established values, ideals, institutions and principles that may block the dissemination of commodities this new transcendence has been challenging the task of signifying life, potentializing – among other subjective difficulties – the diffusion of depression.