‘Ethical’, but Gender-Biased?

The migration of healthcare professionals from developing to developed countries, often aided by recruitment agencies, is a phenomenon of great international concern, as reflected in the construction of numerous ethical recruitment codes, which aim to govern the process. In an attempt to provide an overview of the situation, dealing specifically with the migration of nurses, as well as a critical and gender sensitive analysis of the codes, this paper follows three broad steps: first, it reviews the literature dedicated to the migration of nurses from developing to developed countries, adding a gendered account to more conventional push-pull explanations; second, it delineates the positive and negative effects that nurse migration has at the stakeholders levels of the individual, institutional, national and international level, paying particular attention to the role of gender; and third, it reviews and compares numerous codes for the ethical recruitment of nurses, highlighting the gendered rationale and consequences they may have. In showing that nurse migration is a gendered phenomenon, the paper questions whether the codes, written in gender neutral language, will come to bear unintended consequences that will effectively work to uphold gender stereotypes and inequalities.

Factors influencing a conversion to organic farming in Nepalese tea farms

Organic agriculture in developing countries has increased in past decades especially due to the high demand of organic products in developed countries. The rate of conversion to organic production in Nepal, however, is observed much slower than expected. This study investigates factors that determine the conversion to organic production using Nepalese tea producers as a case study. A survey of 181 farmers was conducted in the Ilam and Panchthar district of Nepal, among which 86 were organic farmers and 95 were conventional farmers. A discriminant analysis was used to identify socio-economic characteristics that distinguish conventional and organic farmers. Results from the estimated discriminant function suggest that farmers located in a distance from regional markets, older in age, better trained, affiliated with institutions and having larger farms are more likely to adopt organic production. Similarly, a factor analysis shows that environmental awareness, bright market prospects, observable economic benefit and health consciousness are the major factors influencing farmers’ decisions on the conversion to organic production. While planning programs for the development of the organic tea sector in Nepal, policy makers should consider the support of farmers’ institutions, provision of training to farmers and raise farmers’ awareness about the environmental, economic and health benefits of organic farming.

Biofuel as the solution of alternative energy production?

There have being increasing debate on the prospects of biofuel becoming the next best alternative to solving the problem of CO2 emission and the escalating fuel prices, but the question is whether this assertion is true and also if it comes without any cost to pay. This paper seeks to find out whether this much praised alternative to solving these problems is a better option or another way for the developed countries to find more areas where they could get cheap land, labour and raw materials for the production of biofuel. This will focus mainly on some effects the growing biofuel production has on food security, livelihood of people, the environment and some land conflicts developing as a result of land grabbing for biofuel production in the developing countries.

Transaction costs of farmers’ participation in forest management: Policy implications of payments for environmental services schemes in Vietnam

Recent research on payments for environmental services (PES) has observed that high transaction costs (TCs) are incurred through the implementation of PES schemes and farmer participation. TCs incurred by households are considered to be an obstacle to the participation in and efficiency of PES policies. This study aims to understand transactions related to previous forest plantation programmes and to estimate the actual TCs incurred by farmers who participated in these programmes in a mountainous area of northwestern Vietnam. In addition, this study examines determinants of households’ TCs to test the hypothesis of whether the amount of TCs varies according to household characteristics. Results show that average TCs are not likely to be a constraint for participation since they are about 200,000 VND (USD 10) per household per contract, which is equivalent to one person’s average earnings for about two days of labour. However, TCs amount to more than one-third of the programmes’ benefits, which is relatively high compared to PES programmes in developed countries. This implies that rather than aiming to reduce TCs, an appropriate agenda for policy improvement is to balance the level of TCs with PES programme benefits to enhance the overall attractiveness of afforestation programmes for smallholder farmers. Regression analysis reveals that education, gender and perception towards PES programmes have significant effects on the magnitude of TCs. The analyses also points out the importance of local conditions on the level of TCs, with some unexpected results.