Reconsidering institutional cosmopolitanism : global poverty and the importance of the state in international political theory

Cosmopolitan scholarship has been at the forefront of efforts to consider political structures capable of realising justice in a more robust manner than prevailing global governance arrangements. In particular, the arguments of Thomas Pogge have contributed significantly to scholarly thinking about global poverty and his scheme of 'institutional cosmopolitanism' aspires to institutionalise human rights in the structures of global governance. This essay critiques the capacity of Pogge's cosmopolitan approach to productively guide political action in relation to global poverty by questioning whether global institutions generated by human rights are sufficient to address global poverty. The argument in this essay is that a viable guide to political action which alleviates global poverty must also take account of the potential utility of the state. This essays draws upon republican ideas to contend that cosmopolitanism needs to encompass a robust account of local institutions such as the state.

Farming the waters for people and food : proceedings of the global conference on aquaculture 2010

The Global Conference on Aquaculture 2010 brought together a wide range of experts and important stakeholders and reviewed the present status and trends in aquaculture development, evaluated the progress made in the implementation of the 2000 Bangkok Declaration and Strategy, addressed emerging issues relevant to aquaculture development, assessed opportunities and challenges for future aquaculture development and built consensus on advancing aquaculture as a global, sustainable and competitive food production sector. This volume, yet another joint effort of FAO and NACA, brings the outcome of the Global Conference on Aquaculture 2010, the much-needed clear and comprehensive technical information on how aquaculture could be mobilized to alleviate global poverty and improve food and nutrition security in the coming decades.

Applying a transformative consumer research lens to understanding and alleviating poverty

Increasing attention to global poverty and the development of market-based solutions for poverty alleviation continues to motivate a broad array of academicians and practitioners to better understand the lives of the poor. Yet, the robust perspectives residing within consumer research remain to a large degree under-utilized in these pursuits. This paper articulates how applying a transformative consumer research (TCR) lens to poverty and its alleviation can generate productive insights with potential to positively transform the well-being of poor consumers.

Emerging health issues: the widening challenge for population health promotion

The spectrum of tasks for health promotion has widened since the Ottawa Charter was signed. In 1986, infectious diseases still seemed in retreat, the potential extent of HIV/AIDS was unrecognized, the Green Revolution was at its height and global poverty appeared less intractable. Global climate change had not yet emerged as a major threat to development and health. Most economists forecast continuous improvement, and chronic diseases were broadly anticipated as the next major health issue. Today, although many broadly averaged measures of population health have improved, many of the determinants of global health have faltered. Many infectious diseases have emerged; others have unexpectedly reappeared. Reasons include urban crowding, environmental changes, altered sexual relations, intensified food production and increased mobility and trade. Foremost, however, is the persistence of poverty and the exacerbation of regional and global inequality. Life expectancy has unexpectedly declined in several countries. Rather than being a faint echo from an earlier time of hardship, these declines could signify the future. Relatedly, the demographic and epidemiological   transitions have faltered. In some regions, declining fertility has overshot that needed for optimal age structure, whereas elsewhere mortality increases have reduced population growth rates, despite continuing high fertility. Few, if any, Millennium Development Goals (MDG), including those for health and sustainability, seem achievable. Policy-makers generally misunderstand the link between environmental sustainability (MDG #7) and health. Many health workers also fail to realize that social cohesion and sustainability—maintenance of the Earth’s ecological and geophysical systems—is a necessary basis for health. In sum, these issues present an enormous challenge to health. Health promotion must address population health influences that transcend national boundaries and generations and engage with the development, human rights and environmental movements. The big task is to promote sustainable environmental and social conditions that bring enduring and equitable health gains.

A global perspective of aquaculture in the new millennium

In modern times, not many primary industries have consistently recorded high yearly growth over a period of two decades. Aquaculture has sustained a global growth, continues to grow, and is expected to increasingly fill the shortfall in aquatic food products resulting from static or declining capture fisheries and population increase well into the year 2025. Its further growth and development will have to occur under a different socio-economic milieu in the new millennium. The basic paradigm changes will be from an increased production at almost any cost, to a sustainable increase in production with minimal environmental perturbations. Despite such paradigm changes, aquaculture will increasingly contribute to food security, poverty alleviation and social equity. The contribution of aquaculture to world food supply of aquatic products has been increasing over the past 10 years, in comparison to capture fisheries, growing from 15 to 28 percent of total production between 1988 and 1997. As the bulk of aquaculture is rural and subsistence, it plays a major role as a provider of direct and indirect employment to the rural poor and, thereby, to poverty alleviation. In many developing countries, aquaculture provides opportunities for diversification on agriculture farms and productive use to otherwise idle land during certain seasons. The main cause for the upsurge in the sector has been the transformation of aquaculture from an “art” form to a “science”. This brought many advantages, ranging from less dependence on wild stock to the development of techniques that optimized yields, such as polyculture, or enabled the achievement of high yields with low inputs. Two major developments also enabled the sector to maintain growth momentum, appropriate institutional frameworks and concerted research and development. Regions or continents have many commonalities. These include the predominance of finfish among the cultivated species, and the predominance of species that feed lower in the food chain, although shrimp, which does not naturally feed high in the trophic level but is mostly reared on artificial feed, has become a significant culture commodity. Notable differences, however, include the fact that all regions, except Africa and the countries of the former USSR, have recorded a significant increase in per capita production between 1984 and 1997. While Asia continues to dominate world aquaculture in overall tonnage, as well as in every major commodity, South America has registered a very high (72.8 percent) average annual growth between 1984 and 1997. The global and regional trends over the last 20 years in the sector from a number of perspectives, such as production trends, contribution of aquaculture to aquatic food consumption etc., are evaluated. Based on these different trends and in the light of changing socio-economic conditions globally, and in particular, in developing nations, the potential changes in the sector in the new millennium are highlighted. Finally, projections are made for the next 20 years, where opportunities, constraints and strategies for achieving the targets are presented and discussed.

Responsible aquaculture and trophic level implications to global fish supply

Hunger and malnutrition remain among the most devastating problems facing the world’s poor and needy, and continue to dominate the health and well-being of the world’s poorest nations. Moreover, there are growing doubts as to the long-term sustainability of many existing food production systems, including capture fisheries and aquaculture, to meet the future increasing global demands.Of the different agricultural food production systems, aquaculture (the farming of aquatic animals and plants) is widely viewed as an important weapon in the global fight against malnutrition and poverty, particularly within developing countries where over 93% of global production is currently produced, providing in most instances an affordable and a much needed source of high quality animal protein, lipids, and other essential nutrients. The current article compares for the first time the development and growth of the aquaculture sector and capture fisheries by analyzing production by mean trophic level. Whereas marine capture fisheries have been feeding the world on high trophic level carnivorous fish species since mankind has been fishing the oceans, aquaculture production within developing countries has focused, by and large, on the production of lower trophic level species. However, like capture fisheries, aquaculture focus within economically developed countries has been essentially on the culture of high value-, high trophic level-carnivorous species. The long term sustainability of these production systems is questionable unless the industry can reduce its dependence upon capture fisheries for sourcing raw materials for feed formulation and seed inputs. In line with above, the article calls for the urgent need for all countries to adopt and adhere to the principles and guidelines for responsible aquaculture of the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.

Economic network structures, growth and poverty

While investors are advised to diversify in order to manage risk, developing countries are advised instead to liberalise their trade regimes and specialise according to their current comparative advantage. This study uses 67 regions of the GTAP database to investigate the effects of unilateral liberalisation and its impacts on countries’ economic structures and the extent to which this affects countries’ vulnerability to an economic shock. While liberalisation resulted in improvements in GDP and welfare on average, there were significant variations. A number of countries experienced contractions in their GPDs and declines in welfare. While there was no evidence of a relationship between the percentage change in GDP and the initial export or output concentration, there was a positive relationship between the percentage change in GDP and the percentage change in export and output concentrations. On average, increases in GDP following liberalisation were associated with increases in concentration in both the export sector and in overall industrial output and also reductions in the fraction of unskilled labour employed by the main export sector. Initial GDP per capita has no significant effect, implying that once concentration measures and the fraction of costs in the main export are accounted for, the per capita income levels of a country show no systematic effects on the percentage change in GDP induced by the liberalisation. For developing countries undergoing unilateral liberalisation, the results imply that they are likely to experience an increase in GDP, but an increase accompanied by more highly concentrated industrial output and exports, and also a lower fraction of main export costs due to unskilled labour. Following liberalisation, the responses of liberalised and non-liberalised versions of the region’s economies to a shock were compared. The rest of the world’s productivity in the country’s main export was increased by 10%, with the liberalised economies faring marginally worse on average in welfare and terms of trade effects, but slightly better on GDP effects. When the net effects of the initial liberalisation and subsequent technology shock were compared, countries were better off on average if they had liberalised. But this average masked important sectoral differences. Countries specialising in sectors with high proportions of own-commodity inputs in their main export’s total cost, such as manufacturing, did best, while those specialising in food tended to suffer welfare declines. Higher levels of export and output concentration also tended to reduce welfare. This suggests that increased concentration does indeed make countries more vulnerable to certain economic shocks. Finally, the economic network structures of the two extreme cases, Tanzania and Vietnam are compared visually as an aid to interpretation.