Vulnerability and Resilience in West Africa: Understanding Human Mobility in the Context of Land Degradation

The loss of productive land is often one of the key drivers of human mobility. Land degradation might lead to increases in migration because of the need to diversify incomes, but it can also cause reduced mobility by eroding the financial or physical assets and capital required to finance migration. When on-site adaptation is either impossible or undesirable, migration allows people to modify their exposure to climate and environmental stressors. On one hand, temporary and circular labour migration, internal and international remittances, and family relocation are among the most common strategies used throughout history, and increasingly so in the past decades, to cope with harsh climatic variations, increasingly hostile natural environments, and natural disasters. On the other hand, land abandonment and out-migration can lead to further isolation and marginalization of both vulnerable rural populations (increasing their vulnerability if migration occurs in unplanned ways) and migrants who relocate toward areas of high environmental risk, such as resource-scarce or urban areas within insecure expanding cities. Based on existing evidence on the West Africa region, the research in this paper aims at gaining a better understanding of how land degradation interacts with drivers of migration by analysing the factors determining vulnerability at individual, household, and community levels, as well as those factors affecting capacities—whether inherent or acquired—and strategies that contribute to building resilience

Back to its roots: REDD+ via the Copenhagen Accord

Although it may be easy to forget, forests affect everyone. Forests, particularly in the tropics, provide a home for millions of people, support 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, and drive many of the earth’s local and global climatic and hydrological cycles. Forests also seriously contribute to climate change when they are cut down. In fact, deforestation and forest degradation activities emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the entire global transportation sector. Unfortunately, the increasing demand for agriculture and timber products, among others, requires the land that forests occupy, which in turn drives deforestation. This especially rings true in developing countries, where land-use changes are often associated with economic development. Recognizing the crucial role that trees play in climate change mitigation, in 2009 the international community presented the Copenhagen Accord at the 15th session of the Conference of Parties (the decision-making body of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change). A large portion of the Accord emphasizes Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) as a viable climate change mitigation strategy. The concept of REDD+ is simple: developed countries, as the main emitters of greenhouse gases, will provide financial incentives to developing countries to keep their forests standing. REDD+ attempts to give an economic value to the carbon stored within the biomass of trees. This article aims to give an overview of the issues that surround deforestation in developing countries, the history of the REDD+ solution, current initiatives that support it, and a suggestion for a phased-implementation approach that will ensure that REDD+ is financially feasible in the long-term. REDD+ has the potential to be the most rapid and cost-effective solution in the fight to mitigate climate change. If implemented, REDD+ will have impacts that reach beyond reducing carbon dioxide emissions: ultimately, REDD+ provides an economic solution for enhancing the sustainable growth of developing countries

Remittances for adaptation: an ‘alternative source’ of international climate finance?

Climate finance is a key issue at the UN climate negotiations, but explicit international funding possibilities for adaptation in developing countries remain limited. According to the recent Paris Agreement, climate finance will come from a ‘wide variety of sources, instruments and channels’. To the extent that these are understood, they do not seem to generate the USD 100 billion per annum that was repeatedly pledged by developed countries, and they flow to mitigation rather than adaptation. Remittances have potential to finance adaptation, because 1) the potential is huge and unexplored); 2) remittances directly reach to households, including in remote and vulnerable areas; 3) remittances are often employed for (climate-induced) disaster relief and sometimes also for investments in long-term adaptation strategies. Whilst not ignoring ethical arguments against poor migrants' remittances as an alternative source of adaptation finance for developing countries under the UN climate negotiations, this chapter examines whether remittances could technically constitute such a source. It analyses empirical evidence from remittance literature against ten climate finance criteria from the UNFCCC Copenhagen Accord. Our analysis finds that remittances could match criteria such as ‘adequate’ and ‘predictability’. However, ‘improved access’ can only be matched if developed and developing countries create the right incentives to reach out to potential diaspora investors. ‘Transparency’ is unlikely to be met. Whether remittances contribute to the USD 100 billion climate finance pledge is a controversial political decision, but in any case remittances can support adaptation at household and community level. Public climate finance could increase the potential of remittance for such purposes

Use of the Italian version of the Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire in the daily practice: results of a prospective study

Abstract Background Asthma is a serious global health problem and its prevalence is increasing, especially among children. It represents a significant social and economic burden, and it can severely affect the health-related quality of life (HRQL) of patients. Among the numerous questionnaires aiming at evaluating asthma HRQL in children, the Pediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (PAQLQ) has proved to have good measurement properties. The present study was aimed at investigating the possible role of the Italian, self-administered version of the PAQLQ in the routine clinical evaluation of children affected by bronchial asthma. Methods 52 Italian children and adolescents (40 males and 12 females), aged 6 to 17 years, affected by allergic asthma, were enrolled. Each patient was evaluated twice, and at each visit asthma control and severity were assessed, spirometry was performed and the patients completed the self-administered version of the PAQLQ. Results The questionnaire was well-accepted and understood by the children. Children showed an overall good quality of life, with mild impairment in the activity and emotional function domains. The PAQLQ showed an overall good correlation with the clinical and functional indexes that are normally evaluated in follow-up visits of asthmatic patients. The PAQLQ appeared to be strongly related to asthma control, both at the first (p 1. Finally, the PAQLQ does not appear to discriminate HRQL in patients with good lung function. Conclusion The Italian version of the PAQLQ is a quick-to-administer aid to clinical activity and can add valuable information to symptom reports, objective measurements and clinical assessment of asthma control and severity in daily clinical practice. Re-administration at each follow-up visit allows HRQL to be monitored over time.</p

Remittances for Adaptation: An ‘Alternative Source’ of International Climate Finance?

Climate finance is a key issue at the UN climate negotiations, but explicit international funding possibilities for adaptation in developing countries remain limited. According to the recent Paris Agreement, climate finance will come from a ‘wide variety of sources, instruments and channels’. To the extent that these are understood, they do not seem to generate the USD 100 billion per annum that was repeatedly pledged by developed countries, and they flow to mitigation rather than adaptation. Remittances have potential to finance adaptation, because (1) the potential is huge and unexplored); (2) remittances directly reach to households, including in remote and vulnerable areas; (3) remittances are often employed for (climate-induced) disaster relief and sometimes also for investments in long-term adaptation strategies. Whilst not ignoring ethical arguments against poor migrants’ remittances as an alternative source of adaptation finance for developing countries under the UN climate negotiations, this chapter examines whether remittances could technically constitute such a source. It analyses empirical evidence from remittance literature against ten climate finance criteria from the UNFCCC Copenhagen Accord. Our analysis finds that remittances could match criteria such as ‘adequacy’ and ‘predictability’. However, ‘improved access’ can only be matched if developed and developing countries create the right incentives to reach out to potential diaspora investors. ‘Transparency’ is unlikely to be met. Whether remittances contribute to the USD 100 billion climate finance pledge is a controversial political decision, but in any case remittances can support adaptation at household and community level. Public climate finance could increase the potential of remittance for such purposes