Factors in Urban Stress

This paper examines changing patterns of health, causes and effects of urban stress, and approaches to the management of stress

Climate change: Pro-poor adaptation, risk management, and mitigation strategies

Poverty reduction, Hunger, Climate change, Pro-poor strategies, Development planning, Adaptation measures, Policies, Land use and agriculture, Risk management,

English Proficiency Assessments of Primary and Secondary Teachers and Students Participating in English in Action: Second Cohort (2013)

Background The purpose of the study was to assess the student learning outcomes of English in Action’s (EIA’s) School Based Teacher Development programme, in terms of improved English language (EL) competence, against recognised international frameworks (specifically, the Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE) (Trinity College London [TCL] 2013), which map onto the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Trinity College London 2007)). Measurably improved student learning outcomes are the ultimate test of success of a teacher development programme. A secondary purpose of the study was to explore whether there was any related increase in teachers’ EL competence. English Proficiency Assessments 2013 is a repeat of the study on the pilot EIA programme (Cohort 1) (EIA 2012). The students and teachers of Cohort 2 are sixfold greater in number (4,368 teachers, compared with 751 teachers, in schools). To enable this increase in scale, the programme has been delivered through a more decentralised model, with much less direct contact with English language teaching (ELT) experts, a greater embedding of expertise within teacher development materials (especially video), and a greater dependence upon localised peer support. This report addresses two research questions: 1. To what extent do the teachers and students of Cohort 2 show improved post-intervention EL proficiencies, in speaking and listening, compared with the Cohort 1 2010 pre-intervention baseline? 2. To what extent has the programme been successful in repeating the 2011 post-intervention improvements in EL proficiencies seen in Cohort 1, at the much larger scale of Cohort 2

Climate Change and Asian Agriculture

Asian and global agriculture will be under significant pressure to meet the demands of rising populations, using finite and often degraded soil and water resources that are predicted to be further stressed by the impacts of climate change. In addition, agriculture and land use change are prominent sources of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Fertilizer application, livestock rearing, and land management affect levels of GHG in the atmosphere and the amount of carbon storage and sequestration potential. Therefore, while some impending climatic changes will have negative effects on agricultural production in parts of Asia, and especially on resource-poor farmers, the sector also presents opportunities for emission reductions. Warming across the Asian continent will be unevenly distributed, but will certainly lead to crop yield losses in much of the region and subsequent impacts on prices, trade, and food security—disproportionately affecting poor people. Most projections indicate that agriculture in South, Central, and West Asia will be hardest hit.

Using Individualised Choice Maps to Capture the Spatial Dimensions of Value Within Choice Experiments

Understanding how the value of environmental goods and services is influenced by their location relative to where people live can help identify the economically optimal spatial distribution of conservation interventions across landscapes. However, capturing these spatial relationships within the confines of a stated preference study has proved challenging. We propose and implement a novel approach to incorporating space within the design and presentation of stated preference choice experiments (CE). Using an investigation of preferences concerning land use change in Great Britain, CE scenarios are presented through individually generated maps, tailored to each respondent’s home location. Each choice situation is generated in real time and is underpinned by spatially tailored experimental designs that reflect current British land uses and incorporate locational attributes relating to physical and administrative dimensions of space. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first CE study to integrate space into both the survey design and presentation of choice tasks in this way. Presented methodology provides means for testing how presentation of spatial information influence stated preferences. We contrast our spatially explicit (mapped) approach with a commonly applied tabular CE approach finding that the former exhibits a number of desirable characteristics relative to the latter