A Preliminary Impact Assessment of Doha Round Results on Agricultural Policies in Turkey

Turkish agriculture has been experiencing a period of unique policy experiment over the last couple years. A World Bank-initiated project, called the Agricultural Reform Implementation Project (ARIP), has been at the forefront of policy change. It was initially promoted by the Bank as an exemplary reform package which could also be adopted by other developing countries. It was introduced in 2001 as part of a major International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank-imposed program of “structural adjustment” after the country had been hit by a major financial crisis. The project has finally come to an end in 2009, and there is now an urgent need for a retrospective assessment of its overall impact on the agricultural sector. Has it fulfilled its ambitious objective of reforming and restructuring Turkish agriculture? Or should it be recorded as a failure of the neo-liberal doctrine? This book aims at finding answers to these questions by investigating the legacy of ARIP from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

Monitoring and Assessment of Desertification and Land Degradation: Knowledge Management, Institutions and Economics: White Paper of the DSD Working Group 3

The White Paper is a review of leading scientific knowledge on the role of knowledge management, institutions and economics in monitoring and assessment of land degradation and desertification. It provides key recommendations for more effective policies and actions for combating desertification both withn the UNCCD and beyond. This White Paper is the result of an international collaboration and consultation led jointly by the Association of DesertNet International and the United Nations University - Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), of the Dryland Science for Development Consortium (DSD). The findings were presented at the First UNCCD Scientific Conference held during the COP-9 in Buenos Aires, 2009.

Can wild ungulate carcasses provide enough biomass to maintain avian scavenger populations? An empirical assessment using a bio-inspired computational model

Background The reduction in the amount of food available for European avian scavengers as a consequence of restrictive public health policies is a concern for managers and conservationists. Since 2002, the application of several sanitary regulations has limited the availability of feeding resources provided by domestic carcasses, but theoretical studies assessing whether the availability of food resources provided by wild ungulates are enough to cover energetic requirements are lacking. Methodology/Findings We assessed food provided by a wild ungulate population in two areas of NE Spain inhabited by three vulture species and developed a P System computational model to assess the effects of the carrion resources provided on their population dynamics. We compared the real population trend with to a hypothetical scenario in which only food provided by wild ungulates was available. Simulation testing of the model suggests that wild ungulates constitute an important food resource in the Pyrenees and the vulture population inhabiting this area could grow if only the food provided by wild ungulates would be available. On the contrary, in the Pre-Pyrenees there is insufficient food to cover the energy requirements of avian scavenger guilds, declining sharply if biomass from domestic animals would not be available. Conclusions/Significance Our results suggest that public health legislation can modify scavenger population trends if a large number of domestic ungulate carcasses disappear from the mountains. In this case, food provided by wild ungulates could be not enough and supplementary feeding could be necessary if other alternative food resources are not available (i.e. the reintroduction of wild ungulates), preferably in European Mediterranean scenarios sharing similar and socio-economic conditions where there are low densities of wild ungulates. Managers should anticipate the conservation actions required by assessing food availability and the possible scenarios in order to make the most suitable decisions.

Quantifying entrepreneurship and its impact on local economic performance: A spatial assessment in rural Switzerland

Regional and rural development policies in Europe increasingly emphasize entrepreneurship to mobilize the endogenous economic potential of rural territories. This study develops a concept to quantify entrepreneurship as place-dependent local potential to examine its impact on the local economic performance of rural territories in Switzerland. The short-to-medium-term impact of entrepreneurship on the economic performance of 1706 rural municipalities in Switzerland is assessed by applying three spatial random effects models. Results suggest a generally positive relationship between entrepreneurship and local development: rural municipalities with higher entrepreneurial potential generally show higher business tax revenues per capita and a lower share of social welfare cases among the population, although the impact on local employment is less clear. The explanatory power of entrepreneurship in all three models, however, was only moderate. This finding suggests that political expectations of fostering entrepreneurship to boost endogenous rural development in the short-to-medium term should be damped.

Business as Usual? : The Implementation of the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity and EU Media Law and Policies

Irrespective of the diverse stances taken on the effect of the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity in the external relations context, since its wording is fairly open-ended, it is clear to all observers that the Convention’s impact will largely depend on how it is implemented domestically. The discussion on the national implementation of the Convention, both in the policy and in the academic discourses, is only just emerging, although six years the Convention’s entry into force have passed. The implementation model of the EU can set an important example for the international community and for the other State Parties that have ratified the UNESCO Convention, as both the EU and its Member States acting individually, have played a critical role in the adoption of the Convention, as well as in the longer process of promoting cultural concerns on the international scene. Against this backdrop, this article analyses the extent to which the EU internal law and policies, in particular in the key area of media, take into account the spirit and the letter of the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity. Next to an assessment of the EU’s implementation of the Convention, the article also offers remarks of normative character – in the sense of what should be done to actually attain the objective of protecting and promoting cultural diversity. The article seeks to critically evaluate the present state of affairs and make some recommendations for calibration of future policies.

Ice-Core Based Assessment of Historical Anthropogenic Heavy Metal (Cd, Cu, Sb, Zn) Emissions in the Soviet Union

The development of strategies and policies aiming at the reduction of environmental exposure to air pollution requires the assessment of historical emissions. Although anthropogenic emissions from the extended territory of the Soviet Union (SU) considerably influenced concentrations of heavy metals in the Northern Hemisphere, Pb is the only metal with long-term historical emission estimates for this region available, whereas for selected other metals only single values exist. Here we present the first study assessing long-term Cd, Cu, Sb, and Zn emissions in the SU during the period 1935–1991 based on ice-core concentration records from Belukha glacier in the Siberian Altai and emission data from 12 regions in the SU for the year 1980. We show that Zn primarily emitted from the Zn production in Ust-Kamenogorsk (East Kazakhstan) dominated the SU heavy metal emission. Cd, Sb, Zn (Cu) emissions increased between 1935 and the 1970s (1980s) due to expanded non-ferrous metal production. Emissions of the four metals in the beginning of the 1990s were as low as in the 1950s, which we attribute to the economic downturn in industry, changes in technology for an increasing metal recovery from ores, the replacement of coal and oil by gas, and air pollution control.