Assessing Opportunities for Livelihood Enhancement and Diversification in Coastal Fishing Communities of Southern India

"The United Nations Team for Tsunami Recovery Support (UNTRS) based in Chennai,India, is facilitating the process of tsunami recovery in the region through specific interventions in strategic areas. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of United Nations (FAO) as a part of the UNTRS team aims to set clear directions to ensure sustainable livelihoods for fishers. It has a pro-poor focus. With the fisheries sector suffering from both over-capitalization and resource depletion, the livelihoods of poor fishers and fisherfolk communities have been badly hit, and the tsunami has aggravated their misery. While relief measures have helped, what's essential for the long term is to improve livelihood opportunities. They need to be enhanced and diversified. Many development interventions have been attempted. But what's needed is a viable people-centric approach that taps the strengths of coastal fisheries and draws on them. Hence this study on ""Assessing opportunities for livelihood enhancement and diversification in coastal fishing communities of southern India."" carried out by Integrated Coastal Management, Kakinada. The study covers tsunami-affected areas in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The study has analysed a number of inherent strategies of the fishers to enhance and diversify livelihoods, both past and present. It has come out with a planning framework for livelihoods enhancement and diversification. Stakeholders in fisheries can make use of the framework, validate its usefulness, and decide and further develop appropriate tool box. They may then spell out the support and co-operation necessary from other stakeholders.

Speaking Truth To Power: Why Energy Distribution, More Than Generation, Is Africa's Poverty Reduction Challenge

This paper revisits the roles that energy plays in poverty reduction. First, while energy does not reduce poverty itself, it delivers energy services. These services can improve poor people's welfare both directly by enhancing their own productivity, education and health, and indirectly by changing the economy around them. The paper provides a simplified framework for thinking about these energy services, and then reviews the literature on their importance to poverty reduction. From this framework, we draw a series of three important conclusions about energy priorities and their implications for poverty reduction and development.Tackling energy poverty will have less to do with ambitious expansion of electricity capacity, and more to do with ambitious distribution of energy services to poor people.Expansion in centralized power generation serves industry, the services sector and already-connected households, before it serves the poor.Distributed, clean energy interventions are best suited to tackling energy poverty -- and poverty more generally

GHG emissions of green coffee production : toward a standard methodology for carbon footprinting : report

In this project, the scope for product specific rules for carbon footprinting of (green) coffee is investigated and a proposal is drafted for further work toward actual definition and implementation of such a standard

Future harvest : the fine line between myopia and utopia

Inaugural lecture upon taking up the post fo Personal Professor of Plant Production Systems at Wageningen University on 12 May 2011

A Hidden Resource: Household-led Rural Water Supply in Ethiopia

Self supply as a strategy for WASH is defined as "improvement to water supplies delivered largely or wholly through user investment usually at household level." The two research studies reported on in this paper examined self supply in rural Ethiopia, gaining insights on the performance of existing family wells, factors that affect the decision of families to build their own wells and the way they use them, and elements of the enabling environment that can be targeted to promote self supply

Competitiveness of milk and wine production and processing in Albania

This study provides an empirical assessment of the competitiveness of Albanian dairy and wine production, based on specifically collected survey data. For both product groups, the analysis is carried out on two levels: farm level production of raw material and processing and manufacturing of the final product in the food industry. In a third step, both levels are aggregated to analyse the competitiveness of the entire production chain for each product group. Overall, the wine sector appears in an economically more favourable situation than the milk sector. Although there is currently no relevant export of wine, there has been considerable in-vestment activity at the farm level and the harmonisation of quality standards with EU legislation is currently pursued. Grape processing is currently profitable. Small farm and herd sizes limit the profitability and efficiency of dairy farming. Fragmented and dispersed production units increase the costs of milk collection. International quality standards are by far not met. This is partially due to the high share of informally traded milk and the importance of direct sales to consumers. It is therefore unlikely that Albanian dairy products will become internationally competitive in the near future. -- G E R M A N V E R S I O N: Die vorliegende Studie beinhaltet eine Einschätzung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der albanischen Milch- und Weinproduktion, die sich auf spezifisch gesammelte Betriebsdaten stützt. Für beide Produktgruppen wird eine Analyse auf zwei Ebenen durchgeführt: Erzeugung der Rohprodukte und Verarbeitungsstufe. In einem dritten Schritt werden die Teilergebnisse der beiden Ebenen zu einer Gesamtbewertung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der jeweiligen Produktions- und Verarbei-tungskette zusammengeführt. Insgesamt präsentiert sich der albanische Weinsektor in ökono-misch günstigerer Verfassung als der Milchsektor. Auch wenn der Export von albanischem Wein derzeit keine Rolle spielt, werden die notwendigen rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen für die Sicherung von Qualität und Herkunftsbezeichnung bei Wein werden derzeit geschaffen. Auf der Erzeugerebene wurden in den vergangenen Jahren bereits größere Investitionen durchge-führt. Die Verarbeitungsstufe weist positive wirtschaftliche Ergebnisse auf. Milchproduktion und -verarbeitung leiden unter mangelnden Hygienestandards und einem stark informell ge-prägten, untransparenten Markt für Frischprodukte. Unter diesen Bedingungen fällt es den Mol-kereien schwer, sich wirtschaftlich zu behaupten. Es ist daher nicht zu erwarten, dass albanische Milchprodukte in nächster Zeit international wettbewerbsfähig sein werden.Agricultural sector,competitiveness,milk,wine,Albania,Agrarsektor,Wettbewerbsfähigkeit,Milch,Wein,Albanien

A novel energy systems model to explore the role of land use and reforestation in achieving carbon mitigation targets: A Brazil case study

Due to its low global share of direct energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (1–2%), the implications of technological transitions in the agricultural and forestry sector on the energy system have been overlooked. This paper introduces the Agriculture and Land Use Sector module part of the ModUlar energy System Environment (MUSE), a novel energy system simulation model. The study presents a generalisable method that enables energy modellers to characterise agricultural technologies within an energy system modelling framework. Different mechanisation processes were characterised to simulate intensification/extensification transitions in the sector and its wider implications in the energy and land use system aiming at providing reliable non-energy outputs similarly to those found in dedicated land use models. Additionally, a forest growth model has been integrated to explore the role of reforestation alongside decarbonisation measures in the energy system in achieving carbon mitigation pathways. To illustrate the model's capabilities, Brazil is used as case study. Outputs suggest that by 2030 under a 2 °C mitigation scenario, most of Brazil agricultural production would move from ‘transitional’ to ‘modern’ practices, improving productivity and reducing deforestation rates, at the expense of higher energy and fertiliser demand. By mid-century Brazil has the potential to liberate around 24.4 Mha of agricultural land, where large-scale reforestation could have the capacity to sequester around 5.6 GtCO2, alleviating mitigation efforts in the energy system, especially reducing carbon capture and storage technology investments in the industry and power sector

Applying a Life-Cycle Costs Approach to Water

This working paper presents findings and recommendations from the application of a life-cycle costs approach (LCCA) to water supply services in rural communities and small towns1 in four countries -- Andhra Pradesh (India), Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mozambique