What happens in global value chains when the markey shifts from the north to the south?

This paper charts the evolution of financial and economic crisis in the global economy and argues that the likely outcome will be sustained growth in the two very large Asian Driver economies of China and India and stagnation in the historically dominant northern economies. Given the nature of demand in low income southern economies, it is likely to be reflected in sustained demand for commodities, with other southern economy producers in global value chains being forced into lower levels of value added. Standards are likely to be of considerably reduced significance in value chains feeding into China and India. These issues are considered in the light of evidence drawn from the experience of Thai exporters of cassava, and Gabonese exporters of timber

China, the United States, and the Climate Change Challenge

Outlines China's climate change policy, U.S. concerns about transfer of carbon-intensive jobs to China and ways to address them, ways for U.S. policy and legislation to spur China's adoption of clean technologies, and specific mechanisms for cooperation

Exporting Destruction: Export Credits, Illegal Logging and Deforestation

Analyzes case studies of the role of export credit agencies, which make government-subsidized loans to companies doing business in countries considered investment risks, in supporting illegal logging, corruption, and deforestation. Lists policy options

China's energy consumption in the building sector: A Statistical Yearbook-Energy Balance Sheet based splitting method

China's energy consumption in the building sector (BEC) is not counted as a separate type of energy consumption, but divided and mixed in other sectors in China's statistical system. This led to the lack of historical data on China's BEC. Moreover, previous researches' shortages such as unsystematic research on BEC, various estimation methods with complex calculation process, and difficulties in data acquisition resulted in “heterogeneous” of current BEC in China. Aiming to these deficiencies, this study proposes a set of China building energy consumption calculation method (CBECM) by splitting out the building related energy consumption mixed in other sectors in the composition of China Statistical Yearbook-Energy Balance Sheet. Then, China's BEC from 2000 to 2014 are estimated using CBECM and compared with other studies. Results show that, from 2000 to 2014, China's BEC increased 1.7 times, rising from 301 to 814 million tons of standard coal consumed, with the BEC percentage of total energy consumption stayed relatively stable between 17.7% and 20.3%. By comparison, we find that our results are reliable and the CBECM has the following advantages over other methods: data source is authoritative, calculation process is concise, and it is easy to obtain time series data on BEC etc. The CBECM is particularly suitable for the provincial government to calculate the local BEC, even in the circumstance with statistical yearbook available only

Twenty Years of Working Towards a Sustainable Southeast Asia: 1993 -- 2013

The Southeast Asia program first set about testing hypotheses applicable to each of the three ecosystem zones. On the forest margins, the hypothesis was that complex agroforests provided a superior alternative for small-scale farmers to either food-crop systems or monocultural plantations of perennials. As an alternative to slash and burn, complex agroforests increased production sustainability, increased biodiversity, reduced production risks and increased returns to labour compared to continuous food crops or monocultural plantations. The second hypothesis stated that rehabilitating Imperata grasslands with small-scale agroforestry systems would be superior to plantation reforestation in terms of production, equitability and participation. For hilly farmlands, the team hypothesised that there were several pathways to sustainable farming. Among these, contour hedgerow systems initiated through natural vegetative strips provided distinct advantages as a superior, least-cost foundation upon which to build agroforestry-based, conservation farming

Gaining Depth: State of Watershed Investment 2014

Last year, governments, businesses, and donors channeled $12.3 billion (B) toward nature-based solutions to the global water crisis. Water users and public funders were paying land managers to repair and protect forests, wetlands, and other natural systems as a flexible, costeffective strategy to ensure clean and reliable water supplies, resilience to natural disasters, and sustainable livelihoods. These deals paid for watershed protection and restoration across more than 365 million (M) hectares (ha) worldwide in 2013, an area larger than India.The value of investment in watershed services1 (IWS) - referring to funding for watershed restoration or protection that delivers benefits to society like aquifer recharge or erosion control - has been growing at anaverage rate of 12% per year. The number of operational programs grew by two thirds between 2011 and 2013, expanding in both scale and sophistication as program developers introduced new tools to track returns on watershed investment, coordinated efforts across political boundaries, and delivered additional benefits like sustainable livelihoods and biodiversity protection

Forest Ecosystem Services: An Analysis of Worldwide Research

The relevance of forests to sustain human well-being and the serious threats they face have led to a notable increase of research works on forest ecosystem services during the last few years. This paper analyses the worldwide research dynamics on forest ecosystem services in the period from 1998 to 2017. A bibliometric analysis of 4284 articles was conducted. The results showed that the number of published research articles has especially increased during the last five years. In total, 68.63% of the articles were published in this period. This research line experiences a growing trend superior to the general publishing trend on forest research. In spite of this increase, its relative significance within the forest research is still limited. The most productive subject areas corresponded to Environmental Science, Agricultural and Biological Sciences and Social Sciences Economic topics are understudied. The scientific production is published in a wide range of journals. The three first publishing countries are United States, China and the United Kingdom. The most productive authors are attached to diverse research centres and their contributions are relatively recent. A high level of international cooperation has been observed between countries, institutions and authors. The findings of this study are useful for researchers since they give them an overview of the worldwide research trends on forest ecosystem services