Soil management in relation to sustainable agriculture and ecosystem services

Requirements for research, practices and policies affecting soil management in relation to global food security are reviewed. Managing soil organic carbon (C) is central because soil organic matter influences numerous soil properties relevant to ecosystem functioning and crop growth. Even small changes in total C content can have disproportionately large impacts on key soil physical properties. Practices to encourage maintenance of soil C are important for ensuring sustainability of all soil functions. Soil is a major store of C within the biosphere – increases or decreases in this large stock can either mitigate or worsen climate change. Deforestation, conversion of grasslands to arable cropping and drainage of wetlands all cause emission of C; policies and international action to minimise these changes are urgently required. Sequestration of C in soil can contribute to climate change mitigation but the real impact of different options is often misunderstood. Some changes in management that are beneficial for soil C, increase emissions of nitrous oxide (a powerful greenhouse gas) thus cancelling the benefit. Research on soil physical processes and their interactions with roots can lead to improved and novel practices to improve crop access to water and nutrients. Increased understanding of root function has implications for selection and breeding of crops to maximise capture of water and nutrients. Roots are also a means of delivering natural plant-produced chemicals into soil with potentially beneficial impacts. These include biocontrol of soil-borne pests and diseases and inhibition of the nitrification process in soil (conversion of ammonium to nitrate) with possible benefits for improved nitrogen use efficiency and decreased nitrous oxide emission. The application of molecular methods to studies of soil organisms, and their interactions with roots, is providing new understanding of soil ecology and the basis for novel practical applications. Policy makers and those concerned with development of management approaches need to keep a watching brief on emerging possibilities from this fast-moving area of science. Nutrient management is a key challenge for global food production: there is an urgent need to increase nutrient availability to crops grown by smallholder farmers in developing countries. Many changes in practices including inter-cropping, inclusion of nitrogen-fixing crops, agroforestry and improved recycling have been clearly demonstrated to be beneficial: facilitating policies and practical strategies are needed to make these widely available, taking account of local economic and social conditions. In the longer term fertilizers will be essential for food security: policies and actions are needed to make these available and affordable to small farmers. In developed regions, and those developing rapidly such as China, strategies and policies to manage more precisely the necessarily large flows of nutrients in ways that minimise environmental damage are essential. A specific issue is to minimise emissions of nitrous oxide whilst ensuring sufficient nitrogen is available for adequate food production. Application of known strategies (through either regulation or education), technological developments, and continued research to improve understanding of basic processes will all play a part. Decreasing soil erosion is essential, both to maintain the soil resource and to minimise downstream damage such as sedimentation of rivers with adverse impacts on fisheries. Practical strategies are well known but often have financial implications for farmers. Examples of systems for paying one group of land users for ecosystem services affecting others exist in several parts of the world and serve as a model.

Rural-urban disparities in child nutrition in Bangladesh and Nepal

Background The persistence of rural-urban disparities in child nutrition outcomes in developing countries alongside rapid urbanisation and increasing incidence of child malnutrition in urban areas raises an important health policy question - whether fundamentally different nutrition policies and interventions are required in rural and urban areas. Addressing this question requires an enhanced understanding of the main drivers of rural-urban disparities in child nutrition outcomes especially for the vulnerable segments of the population. This study applies recently developed statistical methods to quantify the contribution of different socio-economic determinants to rural-urban differences in child nutrition outcomes in two South Asian countries – Bangladesh and Nepal. Methods Using DHS data sets for Bangladesh and Nepal, we apply quantile regression-based counterfactual decomposition methods to quantify the contribution of (1) the differences in levels of socio-economic determinants (covariate effects) and (2) the differences in the strength of association between socio-economic determinants and child nutrition outcomes (co-efficient effects) to the observed rural-urban disparities in child HAZ scores. The methodology employed in the study allows the covariate and coefficient effects to vary across entire distribution of child nutrition outcomes. This is particularly useful in providing specific insights into factors influencing rural-urban disparities at the lower tails of child HAZ score distributions. It also helps assess the importance of individual determinants and how they vary across the distribution of HAZ scores. Results There are no fundamental differences in the characteristics that determine child nutrition outcomes in urban and rural areas. Differences in the levels of a limited number of socio-economic characteristics – maternal education, spouse’s education and the wealth index (incorporating household asset ownership and access to drinking water and sanitation) contribute a major share of rural-urban disparities in the lowest quantiles of child nutrition outcomes. Differences in the strength of association between socio-economic characteristics and child nutrition outcomes account for less than a quarter of rural-urban disparities at the lower end of the HAZ score distribution. Conclusions Public health interventions aimed at overcoming rural-urban disparities in child nutrition outcomes need to focus principally on bridging gaps in socio-economic endowments of rural and urban households and improving the quality of rural infrastructure. Improving child nutrition outcomes in developing countries does not call for fundamentally different approaches to public health interventions in rural and urban areas.

Doing more harm than good? Community based natural resource management and the neglect of local institutions in policy development

Approaches to natural resource management emphasise the importance of involving local people and institutions in order to build capacity, limit costs, and achieve environmental sustainability. Governments worldwide, often encouraged by international donors, have formulated devolution policies and legal instruments that provide an enabling environment for devolved natural resource management. However, implementation of these policies reveals serious challenges. This article explores the effects of limited involvement of local people and institutions in policy development and implementation. An in-depth study of the Forest Policy of Malawi and Village Forest Areas in the Lilongwe district provides an example of externally driven policy development which seeks to promote local management of natural resources. The article argues that policy which has weak ownership by national government and does not adequately consider the complexity of local institutions, together with the effects of previous initiatives on them, can create a cumulative legacy through which destructive resource use practices and social conflict may be reinforced. In short, poorly developed and implemented community based natural resource management policies can do considerably more harm than good. Approaches are needed that enable the policy development process to embed an in-depth understanding of local institutions whilst incorporating flexibility to account for their location-specific nature. This demands further research on policy design to enable rigorous identification of positive and negative institutions and ex-ante exploration of the likely effects of different policy interventions.

Introduction to politics of climate change: discourses of policy and practice in developing countries

This Themed Section aims to increase understanding of how the idea of climate change, and the policies and actions that spring from it, travel beyond their origins in natural sciences to meet different political arenas in the developing world. It takes a discursive approach whereby climate change is not just a set of physical processes but also a series of messages, narratives and policy prescriptions. The articles are mostly case study-based and focus on sub-Saharan Africa and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). They are organised around three interlinked themes. The first theme concerns the processes of rapid technicalisation and professionalisation of the climate change ‘industry’, which have sustantially narrowed the boundaries of what can be viewed as a legitimate social response to the problem of global warming. The second theme deals with the ideological effects of the climate change industry, which is ‘depoliticisation’, in this case the deflection of attention away from underlying political conditions of vulnerability and exploitation towards the nature of the physical hazard itself. The third theme concerns the institutional effects of an insufficiently socialised idea of climate change, which is the maintenance of existing relations of power or their reconfiguration in favour of the already powerful. Overall, the articles suggest that greater scrutiny of the discursive and political dimensions of mitigation and adaptation activities is required. In particular, greater attention should be directed towards the policy consequences that governments and donors construct as a result of their framing and rendition of climate change issues.

From farmers’ perspective : pesticide use and pest control

Many studies have shown that farmers in developing countries often overuse pesticides and do not adopt safety practices. Policies and interventions to promote a safer use of pesticides are often based on a limited understanding of the farmers’ own perspective of pesticide use. This often results in ineffective policies and the persistence of significant pesticide-related health and environmental problems, especially in developing countries. This chapter explores potentials and limitations of different approaches to study pesticide use in agriculture from the farmers’ perspective. In contrast to the reductionist and mono-disciplinary approaches often adopted, this chapter calls for integrative methodological approaches to provide a realistic and thorough understanding of the farmers’ perspective on pesticide use and illustrates the added value of such an approach with three case studies of pesticide use in Iran, India, and Colombia.

Concessionary nature of public-private partnerships in Russia and Kazakhstan: a critical review

This article provides a critical overview of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Russia and Kazakhstan and examines the rationale underpinning such partnerships. The analysis discusses the reasons why governments in Russia and Kazakhstan focus principally on concessions as a form of PPP and goes on to provide a critical assessment of the key approaches and situational factors relating to concessions in these two countries. The article finds that external globalization impulses pressed Russia and Kazakhstan to align their policies and institutions with western orthodoxy and perceived international best practice. An ever-increasing emphasis on use of PPPs has been a key feature of this alignment. However, the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have increasingly resorted to concessions as progress with the development and implementation of Western style PPP models has stalled. This article concludes that the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have demonstrated an overly optimistic approach to PPP and as a result may have substantially understated their overall concessional risks and costs. Features of Russian and Kazakhstani PPP arrangements such as ambiguity in output specification and extensive reliance on government subsidies, combined with lack of expertise of private partners, may significantly decrease concession benefits.

Cultural policy, literature and readership in revolutionary Cuba: the view from the 21st century

This article presents a fresh perspective on cultural policy in revolutionary Cuba, focusing specifically on the centrality of dialogue with the general readership to the production, reception and regulation of literature. It first summarises the positions regarding revolutionary literature that have been asserted and essayed at various points along the sometimes chaotic trajectory of revolution in Cuba. It then examines reading-related policies and recent attempts within Cuba to re-orient reading practices in the aftermath of the Período Especial [Special Period], and ends by presenting current Cuban debates on the need to mitigate dialogic breakdown between literary text and readership.

Basic concepts for convection parameterization in weather forecast and climate models: COST Action ES0905 final report

The research network “Basic Concepts for Convection Parameterization in Weather Forecast and Climate Models” was organized with European funding (COST Action ES0905) for the period of 2010–2014. Its extensive brainstorming suggests how the subgrid-scale parameterization problem in atmospheric modeling, especially for convection, can be examined and developed from the point of view of a robust theoretical basis. Our main cautions are current emphasis on massive observational data analyses and process studies. The closure and the entrainment–detrainment problems are identified as the two highest priorities for convection parameterization under the mass–flux formulation. The need for a drastic change of the current European research culture as concerns policies and funding in order not to further deplete the visions of the European researchers focusing on those basic issues is emphasized.

Real estate and social inequality in Latin America: approaches in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia

Latin America is known as the most unequal region in the world, where extreme displays of wealth and exposure to scarcity lay bare in the urban landscape. Inequality is not just a social issue; it has considerable impact on economic development. This is because social inequality generates instability and conflict, which can create unsettling conditions for investment. At the macro level, social inequality can also present barriers to economic development, as most government policies and resources tend to be directed in solving social conflict rather than to promote and generate growth. This is one of the reasons usually cited in explaining the development gap between Latin America and other emerging economies, take East Asia for example - they have similar policies to those applied recently in Latin America, but are achieving better growth. The other reason cited is institutional; this includes governance as well as property rights and enforcement of contracts. The latter is the focus of this chapter.

International transmission mechanisms and contagion in housing markets

This paper explores international transmission mechanism and its role in contagion effect in the housing markets across six major Asian cities. The analysis is based on the identification of house price diffusion effects through a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model estimated using quarterly data for six major Asian cities (Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Bangkok) from 1991Q1 to 2011Q2. The empirical results indicate that the open economies heavily relying on international trade such as Singapore, Japan (Tokyo), Taiwan (Taipei) and Thailand (Bangkok) show positive correlations between the economy's openness and house prices, which is consistent with the Balassa–Samuelson hypothesis. Interestingly, some region-specific conditions also appear to play important roles as determinants of house price movements, which may be driven by restrictive housing policies and demand–supply imbalances such as Singapore and Bangkok. These results are reasonably robust across several model specifications. The findings bear significant implications for formulation of investment strategy and public policies.

Washington's growth and opportunity act or Beijing's 'Overarching Brilliance': will African governments choose neither?

Growing criticism of Chinese engagement in Africa centres on the risk to African development posed by China's aggressive export policies and the threat to the Washington Consensus and African governance posed by China's 'non-interference' approach to engagement. This article challenges both these assumptions. The growth of Chinese trade has a wide range of impacts, depending on the sector in question, and the current terms of trade Washington extends to Africa under the auspices of the AGOA do not result in uniformly beneficial effects. With regard to African governance, it is argued that the 'Washington Consensus' has been based on competing and often muddled perceptions of US national interest. This fact tempers the regret felt at Washington's loss of influence over the good governance agenda. Evidence is provided to show that China can work within properly regulated countries and industries, if the African governments in question can provide fair, efficient and transparent environments in which to operate.

Transformation through translation: translation policies at Amnesty International

International non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are powerful political players who aim to influence global society. In order to be effective on a global scale, they must communicate their goals and achievements in different languages. Translation and translation policy play an essential role here. Despite NGOs’ important position in politics and society, not much is known about how these organisations, who often have limited funds available, organise their translation work. This study aims to contribute to Translation Studies, and more specifically to investigating institutional translation, by exploring translation policies at Amnesty International, one of the most successful and powerful human rights NGOs around the world. Translation policy is understood as comprising three components: translation management, translation practices, and translation beliefs, based on Spolsky’s study of language policy (2004). The thesis investigates how translation is organised and what kind of policies different Amnesty offices have in place, and how this is reflected in their translation products. The thesis thus also pursues how translation and translation policy impact on the organisation’s message and voice as it is spread around the world. An ethnographic approach is used for the analysis of various data sets that were collected during fieldwork. These include policy documents, guidelines on writing and translation, recorded interviews, e-mail correspondence, and fieldnotes. The thesis at first explores Amnesty’s global translation policy, and then presents the results of a comparative analysis of local translation policies at two concrete institutions: Amnesty International Language Resource Centre in Paris (AILRC-FR) and Amnesty International Vlaanderen (AIVL). A corpus of English source texts and Dutch (AIVL) and French (AILRC-FR) target texts are analysed. The findings of the analysis of translation policies and of the translation products are then combined to illustrate how translation impacts on Amnesty’s message and voice. The research results show that there are large differences in how translation is organised depending on the local office and the language(s), and that this also influences the way in which Amnesty’s message and voice are represented. For Dutch and French specifically, translation policies and translation products differ considerably. The thesis describes how these differences are often the result of different beliefs and assumptions relating to translation, and that staff members within Amnesty are not aware of the different conceptions of translation that exist within Amnesty International as a formal institution. Organising opportunities where translation can be discussed (meetings, workshops, online platforms) can help in reducing such differences. The thesis concludes by suggesting that an increased awareness of these issues will enable Amnesty to make more effective use of translation in its fight against human rights violations.

The Cold War and its aftermath in the Americas: the search for a synthetic interpretation of U.S. policy

More than two decades have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the transfer of the Cold War file from a daily preoccupation of policy makers to a more detached assessment by historians. Scholars of U.S.-Latin American relations are beginning to take advantage both of the distance in time and of newly opened archives to reflect on the four decades that, from the 1940s to the 1980s, divided the Americas, as they did much of the world. Others are seeking to understand U.S. policy and inter-American relations in the post-Cold War era, a period that not only lacks a clear definition but also still has no name. Still others have turned their gaze forward to offer policies in regard to the region for the new Obama administration. Numerous books and review essays have addressed these three subjects—the Cold War, the post-Cold War era, and current and future issues on the inter-American agenda. Few of these studies attempt, however, to connect the three subjects or to offer new and comprehensive theories to explain the course of U.S. policies from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present. Indeed, some works and policy makers continue to use the mind-sets of the Cold War as though that conflict were still being fought. With the benefit of newly opened archives, some scholars have nevertheless drawn insights from the depths of the Cold War that improve our understanding of U.S. policies and inter-American relations, but they do not address the question as to whether the United States has escaped the longer cycle of intervention followed by neglect that has characterized its relations with Latin America. Another question is whether U.S. policies differ markedly before, during, and after the Cold War. In what follows, we ask whether the books reviewed here provide any insights in this regard and whether they offer a compass for the future of inter-American relations. We also offer our own thoughts as to how their various perspectives could be synthesized to address these questions more comprehensively.

A multi level analysis on pollination-related policies

The paper explores pollination from a multi level policy perspective and analyses the institutional fit and inter play of multi-faceted pollination-related policies. First, it asks what the major policies are that frame pollination at the EU level. Second, it explores the relationship between the EU policies and localised ways of understanding pollination. Addressed third is how the concept of ecosystem services can aid in under- standing the various ways of framing and governing the situation. The results show that the policy systems affecting pollination are abundant and that these systems create different kinds of pressure on stakeholders, at several levels of society. The local-level concerns are more about the loss of pollination services than about loss of pollinators. This points to the problem of fit between local activity driven by economic reasoning and biodiversity-driven EU policies. Here we see the concept of ecosystem services having some potential, since its operationalisation can combine economic and environmental considerations. Further- more, the analysis shows how, instead of formal institutions, it seems that social norms, habits, and motivation are the key to understanding and developing effective and attractive governance measures.