Energy Security, Poverty and Vulnerability in Central Asia and the Wider European Neighbourhood

This paper seeks to disaggregate concerns about energy security within the wider European neighborhood from the nation-state to the household, and particularly to poor households in the transition and developing economies of the former Soviet Union. It argues that two decades of under-investment in Soviet-era energy, water, and communal service infrastructures threaten significant reductions in access to these services in the poorer countries of this region, particularly Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. These problems are manifesting themselves both in terms of growing physical restrictions on access to energy, water, and communal service networks in these countries, and in terms of rapid growth in tariffs for these services which could price some vulnerable households "out of the market". The paper also suggests that these problems are apparent to various degrees in a number of other former Soviet republics, and that the impact of the global economic crisis is likely to exacerbate these problems. By calling attention to growing household vulnerability to energy and water insecurities, particularly in Central Asia, the paper seeks to bring an economic development perspective to bear on energy policy debates in the wider European region.legal monopolies, regulation, deregulation, energy, environment, transition, welfare, consumer economics, poverty, health, education, training

The economics of the 'European Neighbourhood Policy': An initial assessment

This paper describes the general framework of the EU’s emerging relationship with its new neighbours and investigates the potential economic impact of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), both for the EU itself and for its neighbours. In particular, it seeks to develop an answer to the question of whether the ENP is sufficiently attractive so as to induce the governments in neighbourhood countries to adopt (or accelerate the adoption of) the types of economic and governance reforms that were implemented in the new member states during their accession processes. Although the specifics of the ENP are still being developed, the lack of incentives as regards to unclear accession to the EU is identified as the main weakness of the ENP. Economically, the ENP seeks to ease trade restrictions through the implementation of legislative approximation and convergence with EU standards, before accessing the EU’s single market can become a reality. Positively though, is that the access to the single market could improve significantly under the ENP. As experienced by the Central European states, FDI is instrumental to transform the economies of the Western CIS and the Caucasus. The ENP can be a supportive framework for improving investor confidence. Likewise, the new European Neighbourhood Instrument can add more coherence in technical assistance, and provide more financial support for creating capacities for trade infrastructures and institutional and private sector development. Finally, measures to promote increased labour migration between the new neighbours and the enlarged EU may be worth to put on the agenda for the future development and impact of the ENP.European Neighbourhood Policy, European integration, foreign direct investment, transition economies

Mobile device forensics: a snapshot

In the increasingly dynamic environment of mobile forensics, this paper provides an overview of the capabilities of three popular mobile forensic tools on three mobile phones based on Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and RIM’s BlackBerry operating systems. The paper identifies where each specific tool is best applied and also describes the limitations of each in accessing contacts, call history, message data (SMS, MMS and emails), media files and other data. New releases of forensic tools and mobile operating systems may change the way the data are acquired and preserved in the future. It is therefore hoped that future research will continue to provide the digital forensics community with the most up-to-date overview of mobile forensics capabilities