identifying strategies to enhance the resilience of smallholder farming systems evidence from zambia

To support countries implementing CSA solutions, the Economics and Policy Innovations for Climate Smart Agriculture (EPIC) group at FAO uses a methodology based on building a solid evidence base. The knowledge gained from datasets that combine household, geographical and climate data helps design policies that enhance food security and climate resilience while also taking advantage of mitigation opportunities to obtain financing. Appropriate application of CSA principles depends on specific conditions that vary between and within countries. Demographic, environmental, economic and institutional factors are all important determinants of the effectiveness of any particular policy. This chapter builds upon econometric results obtained from previous analyses by developing a conceptual model that introduces the temporal aspects of household vulnerability. The method is based on a factorial design with two vulnerability levels (high and low) and two production methods (conventional or business as usual, and improved agricultural management with high CSA potential). Farms are classified into groups based on cluster analysis of survey data from Zambia. Results provide a baseline consisting of probability distributions of yields, labor use, cash inputs and profit for each of the four combinations of vulnerability level and production system. This is useful for stochastic dominance analysis, but additional work is required to incorporate the temporal aspect of the problem. The chapter identifies data gaps and additional analyses required to capture the spatio-temporal aspects of household vulnerability and adaptive capacity

Chronic Disease Self-Management Challenges among Rural Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Prakasam, Andhra Pradesh, India: A Qualitative Study.

Rural women living with HIV/AIDS (WLHA) in India experience challenges self-managing HIV/AIDS in their rural communities. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore factors influencing their care and antiretroviral treatment (ART) adherence. Themes that emerged from the qualitative focus groups among WLHA (N = 24) in rural Prakasam, Andhra Pradesh, India, included: (1) coming to know about HIV and other health conditions, (2) experiences being on ART, (3) challenges maintaining a nutritious diet, (4) factors affecting health care access and quality, and (5) seeking support for a better future. Chronic disease self-management in rural locales is challenging, given the number of barriers which rural women experience on a daily basis. These findings suggest a need for individual- and structural-level supports that will aid in assisting rural WLHA to self-manage HIV/AIDS as a chronic illness

Explaining the human resource management preferences of employees: A study of Chinese workers

The forces of globalization, technology and the differences or similarities in institutional systems place substantial pressure on convergence and divergence in HRM practices. Moreover, local customs and the responses from employees also pose serious constraints on the degree of convergence or divergence (Rowley and Benson 2002). In other words, there is what might be termed an upward influence coming from the employees. Although companies may benchmark HRM ‘best practices’, the actual adoption and success of these practices depends, to a large extent, on perceptions and acceptance from employees. However, the opinions of non-managerial employees have been largely neglected in the studies of HRM (Cooke 2009; Legge 1995; Guest 2002; Edgar and Geare 2005; Qiao, Khilji and Wang 2009). Cooke (2009), after reviewing studies on HRM in China published between 1998 and 2007 in major business and management journals, reported that two-thirds of the studies had collected data from managers and most of them relied on managers as the sole source for information. Since the information has mainly been provided by managers, there is the potential for bias because feedback from the managers probably reflects the ideal or ‘best practices’ of HRM that those managers want to implement, rather than the actual HR policies or practices being used in the organization. Thus Cooke (2009, p.19) argued that ‘unless we can broaden our research catchment to include views from the widest range of stakeholders, particularly the employees, our understanding of HRM in China remains partial, from management’s lens’. This study explores the HR preferences of Chinese employees, both non-managerial and managerial ones, based on a sample of 2852 questionnaires from companies in China. A number of questions are explored. For example, what do they think of a ‘promotion-from-within’ policy? Do they prefer an individual-based bonus or a group-based bonus? Do they prefer a ‘downward performance appraisal method’ or a ‘multi-source performance appraisal method’? The research findings shows a strong ‘group orientation’ and a great emphasis on ‘soft factors’ such as seniority, loyalty and connections in many HRM areas. The debate on whether Chinese HRM will converge or diverge towards the Western models is still ongoing. Many argue that there could be further convergence towards the Western practices because globalization may place substantial pressure on firms to standardize practices and policies (see Chen, Lawler and Bae 2005). Others argue that HRM is highly context specific in which institutional and cultural forces have enduring influences (see Rowley and Cooke 2010), which indicates a divergent perspective. The third group supports a ‘cross-vergence’ view which argues that there will be signs of convergence in certain areas but Chinese HRM will keep its ‘Chinese characteristics’ (Cooke 2005, 2010; Yeung, Warner and Rowley 2008; Warner 2009a, b). This study supports the ‘cross-vergence’ perspective. It is argued that certain areas of Chinese HRM are converging to the Western model, but the influence of traditional Chinese personnel practices remains strong. A ‘group orientation’, a major emphasis on ‘soft factors’ and a trade union presence is likely to remain as the three main features of Chinese HRM in the long-term

The vulnerability of ecosystem services to land use change

Terrestrial ecosystems provide a number of vital services for people and society, such as biodiversity, food, fibre, water resources, carbon sequestration, and recreation. The future capability of ecosystems to provide these services is determined by changes in socio-economic characteristics, land use, biodiversity, atmospheric composition and climate. Most published impact assessments do not address the vulnerability of the human-environment system under such environmental change. They cannot answer important multidisciplinary policy relevant questions such as: which are the main regions or sectors that are vulnerable to global change? How do the vulnerabilities of two regions compare? Which scenario is the least, or most, harmful for a given region or sector? The ATEAM project (Advanced Terrestrial Ecosystem Analysis and Modelling) uses a new approach to ecosystem assessment by integrating the potential impacts in a vulnerability assessment, which can help answer multidisciplinary questions, such as those listed above. This paper presents the vulnerability assessment of the ATEAM land use scenarios. The 14 land use types, discussed in detail by Rounsevell et al. (this volume), can be related to a range of ecosystem services. For instance, forest area is associated with wood production and designated land with outdoor recreation. Directly applying the vulnerability methodology to the land use change scenarios helps in understanding land use change impacts across the European environment. Scatter plots summarising impacts per principal European Environmental Zone (EnZ) help in interpreting how the impacts of the scenarios differ between ecosystem services and the European environments. While there is considerable heterogeneity in both the potential impacts of global changes, and the adaptive capacity to cope with these impacts, this assessment shows that southern Europe in particular will be vulnerable to land use change. Projected economic growth increases adaptive capacity, but is also associated with the most negative potential impacts. The potential impacts of more environmentally oriented developments are smaller, indicating an important role for both policy and society in determining eventual residual impact