1,998 research outputs found

    Power, Poverty, and Knowledge – Reflecting on 50 Years of Learning with Robert Chambers

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    Robert Chambers is one of the most influential and prolific scholars to write about participation, poverty, and knowledge in development studies. His writing and thinking have revolutionised the discipline, inspiring both participatory processes and more inclusive practice. His work continues to inspire and provoke debate and discussion among development practitioners, activists, and academics from around the world. Here we present an Archive Collection of the IDS Bulletin in a celebration of Robert’s contribution to the journal over the last five decades. The eight articles included in this IDS Bulletin Archive Collection clearly show change – change in Robert’s evolving interests, change in the strategic focus of IDS as a research institute, change in the wider development studies field, as well as change in the world at large over the last 50 years. Robert’s earlier IDS Bulletin articles show a strong focus on local knowledge and rural development. Over time, this shifts to a concern with professional development management, and a focus on power and participatory methods. While each article stands alone, these themes re-occur and re-emerge. Bias or unfairness in the development sphere is a major concern which Robert highlights in his IDS Bulletin articles, whilst his advocacy for bottom-up, diverse, and process-led approaches to participation clearly emerges. As the editorial introduction explains and explores, the premise of this IDS Bulletin Archive Collection is to delve into Robert’s contribution to the journal, to resurface buried gems of development studies scholarship, and to reinvigorate debates about how we can do better – a question described by Robert as the eternal challenge of development

    Central banks and climate justice: the case for green quantitative easing and its justification

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    This thesis makes two distinct contributions to the debates on climate justice. First, it offers a range of policy proposals that central banks can implement to make a faster transition to a sustainable or ‘green’ energy system. Second, it addresses the normative issues raised by some of these green monetary policy proposals, which involve shifting part of the costs of climate change mitigation and adaptation onto future generations. The project draws together debates from climate justice, intergenerational justice, and the politics of central banking. By taking an interdisciplinary perspective on the problems created by climate change it aims at proposing policy options for the central bank to combat the effects of global warming, and it defends them from the perspective of moral and political philosophy. The argument starts from a distinction between two kinds of principles of intergenerational climate justice. There are principles that tell us to mitigate climate change in order to protect future generations, and principles that tell us how to share mitigation costs fairly across generations. I will present the case for Green Quantitative Easing or green central banking as a range of policies to serve both kinds of principles of intergenerational climate justice. First, I show that central banks can, and should, serve intergenerational climate justice by implementing policies that cut emissions and thereby reduce the climate burden on future generations. Second, I argue that some of these policies justly shift part of the financial costs of mitigation onto future people, promoting a fairer distribution of mitigation costs between the present and future generations. The thesis presents a range of policy options that a green central bank can implement to meet the two principles of climate justice. I start with milder proposals and end with more radical but still realistic ones that are intergenerational in scope. These more radical proposals can be seen as instances of 'borrowing from the future': This is the idea that we need to take climate action now, but we can shift some of the costs onto future generations. Given the power of central banks to create money and buy bonds that can be kept on their balance sheet, Green Quantitative Easing is superior to alternative strategies, such as a global carbon tax or the World Climate Bank envisaged by Broome and Foley. Moreover, unlike Broome and Foley, I suggest that policies that ‘make the grandchildren pay’ for mitigation are not justified only due to the present generation’s unwillingness to bear the costs of urgent climate action. I also defend cost-shifting in enthusiastic terms: as a means to promote intergenerational distributive justice. 8 The justice-based defense of Borrowing from the Future is grounded in the Intergenerational Ability to Pay Principle (IGAPP) as a guiding principle to share the burden of climate change mitigation and adaptation across generations. I draw from Caney’s well-known pluralistic account for the intragenerational case and offer a pluralistic account of burden-sharing principles for the intergenerational case. However, I depart from Caney by arguing that the IGAPP should apply to a broader set of costs. Finally, I respond to one important objection raised by Gardiner: that making our grandchildren pay is a case of intergenerational extortion. I conclude that Green Quantitative Easing is a superior strategy to the alternatives proposed: a strategy that promotes urgent climate action now, whilst fairly sharing the costs with future generations

    Innovative financing instruments in Latin America and the Caribbean

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    In the aftermath of the global financial crisis (2008–2009), the external financing needs of Latin America and the Caribbean increased significantly, reflecting a process of external debt accumulation in all developing regions, exacerbated by the impacts of COVID-19. The region is now the most indebted in the developing world, with a debt profile that makes it highly vulnerable to changes in international lending conditions and to perceptions of risk. This has placed a major constraint on government responses to the COVID-19 emergency and undermines their capacity to build forward better. This document considers two proposals to address these challenges: (i) expand and redistribute liquidity from developed to developing countries through innovative uses of SDRs; and (ii) expand the set of innovative instruments to increase debt repayment capacity and avoid over-indebtedness.Summary .-- Introduction .-- I. Special Drawing Rights: advantages, limitations, and innovative uses / Esteban PĂ©rez Caldentey, Francisco G. Villarreal and NicolĂĄs CerĂłn Moscoso .-- II. State-contingent debt instruments as insurance against future sovereign debtcrises in Latin American / Leonardo Vera Azaf .-- III. Income-linked bonds / Fausto HernĂĄndez .-- IV. Hurricane clauses in debt contracts in the context of unsustainable debt in Barbados and Grenada / Dave Seerattan .-- V. Sustainable finance / Esteban PĂ©rez Caldentey .-- VI. A multilateral credit rating agency / Susan K. Schroeder

    Le goût d'Orval: constructing the taste of Orval beer through narratives

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    This study explores the construction of taste through narratives, using Orval beer as a case study. Often found on lists of the best or most unique beers in the world, Orval is a bottle conditioned, dry-hopped strong Belgian ale with Brettanomyces yeast, creating an orange-hue beer topped with a large volume of white foam. It is both easy to drink and complex in flavour. Made in southeastern Belgium within the walls of a Trappist Abbey, Orval is closely associated with the country of Belgium, a pilgrimage site for beer lovers because of its unique and diverse beer culture. In 2016 “Beer Culture in Belgium” was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Orval beer also carries the Authentic Trappist Product label, ensuring that this product is brewed under the supervision of Trappist monks or nuns, within the Abbey walls, and is non-profit. Additionally, the beer has a unique, distinctive taste. This dissertation explores narratives that tell of all these aspects. The first section, Narrating Belgium, examines how social and economic histories build Belgium as a beer nation, and how conversion narratives of Belgian beer enthusiasts support this theory. The Narrating Trappist section examines how the Legend of Orval and the history of Orval Abbey create a sense of place for Orval beer and how the Authentic Trappist Product label helps construct its terroir. The last section, Narrating Taste, focuses on narratives of taste as shared in online reviews of Orval beer. I first conduct lexical and network analysis of reviews on Untappd, RateBeer, and BeerAdvocate before focusing specifically on themes found in BeerAdvocate reviews. Through ethnographic and textual research, this dissertation introduces a folkloristic approach to taste and argues that both contextual and sensory elements are essential in building taste through narratives

    Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity

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    Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century: For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car, from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad, for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world? How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication. The authors and institutions come from all continents. The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust! The book is a continuation of the volume “Cyber Ethics 4.0” published in 2018 by the same editors

    Participation dynamics in the management of protected areas: the case of Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve and its adjacent communities, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

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    In many parts of the developing world, participation in the management of ‘protected areas’ is among the most tangible indices of how the rural population encounters formal conservation policies, strategies and ideologies. However, some scholars have argued that the sharing of the burdens and benefits of participation is devoid of equity. While some analysts have emphasised the imperative of multi-stakeholder participation in nature conservation, citing this as a crucial socio-ecological investment, others have highlighted the inherent contradictions in the process, describing it as an avenue for manipulation, tokenism and exploitation. This study is located in this debate and focuses on narratives around the participation of different stakeholders in the management of Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve and its adjacent communities in the rural Wild-Coast, Eastern Cape, South Africa. The researcher notes that research on the degrees and participation dynamics among various role players involved in the management of protected areas in South Africa, Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve in particular is limited. Against this background, this study contributes to ongoing discussions on protected area management in South Africa but seeks to expand this discussion by interrogating the nature and degrees of participation within the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve - to deepen intellectual understanding on the significant role played by protected areas in engendering participatory democracy, equity, justice as well as meeting the needs of marginalised communities. Primary data for the thesis were collected using in-depth and key-informant interviews with officials from government institutions and parastatals, politicians and traditional authority figures. Focus group discussions were held with ‘youth’ participants as well as ‘elders’ in the Reserve’s adjacent communities. An analysis of policy and other government documents sought to outline the institutional attributes of protected areas management in South Africa and the underpinning ideas. A thematic analysis of the corpus of empirical information helped to show how these institutional attributes inhere in Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve as well as the epistemic challenge these attributes pose vis-à-vis indigenous ecological ideas and practices in the adjacent ‘indigenous’ communities. The study revealed that participation is perceived differently by various stakeholders due to multiple, mutually contradictory impulses. While institutional stakeholders attached great importance to the structural role of institutional frameworks, hence the vigorous reliance on formal conservation strategies, narratives from community members drew attention to ‘equity deficits’. The study also found that while the selected Reserve may have fostered cooperation between government and the adjacent communities, conflict and distrust ran deep between these stakeholders. From these and other findings, the study concluded that ecological participation in the study area was characterised by clusters of stakeholders who regard one another as ‘epistemic outsiders’ and related to one another as such, with practical consequences – especially for the long-term sustainability of the Reserve. In the main, the thesis rests on the argument that in the face of epistemic differences, dominance and marginalisation could become a defining feature of protected area management that cannot be readily resolved through the mere process of participation.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 202

    Barriers and enablers of 1.5° lifestyles: Shallow and deep structural factors shaping the potential for sustainable consumption

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    Introduction: Transforming consumption and lifestyles toward sustainability cannot be achieved by individual behavior change alone but requires changes in the structures in which this behavior is embedded. However, “structure” is a blurry concept and scholars use it in a multitude of ways. What often remains implicit in studies on structural phenomena are different types of structures, how they may or may not restrict the agency of individuals in particular ways, and how these restrictions support sustainable consumption patterns at the societal level. To move beyond the current state of research, this article systematizes political, economic, technological, and societal structural factors the literature identifies as impactful regarding the sustainability of consumption and lifestyles compatible with the targets of the Paris Agreement. Methods: We draw on a systematic review of existing research and use empirical observations to develop conceptual terms that revisit the structure-agency dilemma and offer ways going forward about (un)sustainable consumption. Results: We do so based on the material or ideational, as well as shallow or deep nature of these factors. Thereby, the article throws light on the deep and opaque material and ideational structural factors lying underneath and shaping the sustainability impact of the more visible, shallow structural factors typically considered in public debates about sustainability governance. Discussion: The article, thus, highlights the need to consider and address these deep structural factors for any effective pursuit of transformation

    Cultural Routes’ Interactions and Synergies: a case of the „Sultan’s Trail“

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    The concept of cultural routes has evolved significantly through the years, often outlining the interactive, synergetic, and sustainable character of such complex tourist products. The success and development of various cultural routes went in line with specialization trends in the tourism sector. Allowing diversity and certain flexibility, it provided opportunities for synergetic relations between nature, culture, and living societies, being in line with the sustainable development agenda. Apart from the growing specialization and diversification of tourist products, the development of cultural routes is also in line with current lifestyle trends that shape tourist behaviors towards the concept of “active tourism”, “slow tourism” and/or “solo tourism” having in mind the global trend towards more active individualist society. Cultural routes usually provide specially designed “tailor-made” products, a variety of information and digital support and tools available for tourists to provide quality information and experiences: maps and tourist guides, accommodation lists and ratings, information on destinations and attractions, useful advice, traveler networks, and blogs, etc. However, its functionality and success are of a more complex nature compared to standard tourist products. The cultural route programs mostly develop in a form of destination networks and projects and highly rely on the enthusiasm and organizational capacities of the organizations that are dedicated to its development and functionality. This study examines the synergetic effects of various tourism concepts and presents successful management practices in the creation process of the European cultural route “Sultan’s Trail” as long-distance hiking and cycling destination, applying sustainable tourism practices to underdeveloped and still undiscovered but attractive region, the Balkans. The aim is to highlight the synergies between common philosophy and tourist promotion, safeguarding and conservation of heritage, and enhancing the economic, social, and cultural well-being of tourists and local communities (user’s perspective). It also outlines some challenges and opportunities foreseen from the local perspective, and some issues to overcome in the future from the developer’s perspective.The Conference organized by FH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences was held in Bad Gleichenberg (Austria) in October 10-13, 2023
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