Fragmented participation in management of the fishery for small pelagic fish in South Africa – inclusion of small-rights holders is a complex matter

The reasons why most small-rights holders do not participate in management of the fishery for small pelagic fish (‘small pelagics’) in South Africa, despite legislation and policy encouraging their participation, were analysed. Membership of the Small Pelagics Management Working Group (SPMWG), the main participatory governance organ, is limited to representatives of recognised stakeholder associations. Rights holders therefore have to belong to a stakeholder association, which then selects a member or members to represent them on the SPMWG. Small quotas and the difficulties of sourcing capital mean that small-rights holders are not able to invest in infrastructure. Besides, most of the small-rights holders and their companies lack experience and management skills to survive independently in this highly competitive industry, which is based on high volume and low profit margins. As a result, most of the small-rights holders have no option but to enter into complex catching and processing agreements with vessel- and factory owners belonging to the existing recognised stakeholder associations. For the small-rights holders, it does not make sense to join these associations or even to form their own if they cannot actively participate in the industry independently. Greater participation by small-rights holders should start with their genuine integration into the industry through improved ability to invest in infrastructure and through management skills development. Most likely, this will require an interventionist approach by government.Department of HE and Training approved lis

The Intensive Margin of Technology Adoption - Experimental Evidence on Improved Cooking Stoves in Rural Senegal

Today 2.6 billion people in developing countries rely on biomass as primary cooking fuel, with profound negative implications for their well-being. Improved biomass cooking stoves are alleged to counteract these adverse effects. This paper evaluates take-up and impacts of low-cost improved stoves through a randomized controlled trial. The randomized stove is primarily designed to curb firewood consumption but not smoke emissions. Nonetheless, we find considerable effects not only on firewood consumption, but also on smoke exposure and smoke-related disease symptoms - induced by behavioural changes at the intensive margin affecting outside cooking and cooking time due to the new stove.Fast drei Milliarden Menschen in Entwicklungsländern kochen auf traditionelle Art und Weise mit Biomasse. Damit einhergehende Folgen sind unter anderem eine verstärkte Abholzung der Wälder und eine ausgeprägte Rauchpartikelbelastung der Haushalte. Kochöfen, die eine effizientere und sauberere Verbrennung ermöglichen, gelten als probates Mittel, negativen Effekten auf die Lebensbedingungen der betroffenen Bevölkerung entgegenzuwirken und den Holzverbrauch zu reduzieren. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Einführung und in der Folge auftretende Wirkungen von verbesserten und zugleich einfachen Kochöfen anhand einer randomisierten kontrollierten Studie im ländlichen Senegal. Der untersuchte Ofen ist in erster Linie dazu konzipiert den Feuerholzverbrauch zu reduzieren und günstig lokal herstellbar zu sein. Jedoch lassen sich auch erhebliche positive Gesundheitswirkungen nachweisen, die einer geringeren Rauchbelastung zugeschrieben werden, welche wiederum auf Verhaltensänderungen zurückzuführen ist: Haushalte kochen vermehrt im Freien und Köche verbringen deutlich weniger Zeit an der Feuerstelle. Diese Beobachtungen liefern weitere Evidenz dafür, dass die Effektivität von technologieorientierten Interventionen stark von dem Verhalten, wie die neue Technologie genutzt wird, beeinflusst werden kann

A healthy diet consistent with Australian health recommendations is too expensive for welfare-dependant families

Objective: Examine the cost of healthy food habits for welfare-dependent families in Australia.Method:&nbsp; A seven-day meal plan was developed, based on Australian public health recommendations, for two typical welfare-dependent families: a couple-family (two adults, two children) and a one-parent family (one adult, two children). The cost of the meal plan was calculated using market brand and generic brand grocery items, and total cost compared to income.Results: In Australia, the cost of healthy food habits uses about 40% of the disposable income of welfare-dependent families. Families earning an average income would spend only 20% of their disposable income to buy the same healthy food. Substituting generic brands for market brands reduced the weekly food cost by about 13%. This is one of few economic models to include generic brands.Conclusion: Compared with average-income Australian families, healthy food habits are a fiscal challenge to welfare-dependent families.Implications: These results provide a benchmark for economic and social policy analysis, and the influence disposable income has on prioritising healthy food habits.<br /

International trade, and land use intensification and spatial reorganization explain Costa Rica’s forest transition

While tropical deforestation remains widespread, some countries experienced a forest transition—a shift from net deforestation to net reforestation. Costa Rica had one of the highest deforestation rates in the 1980s and is now considered as a model of environmental sustainability, despite being a major producer of bananas and pineapples.Wetested three land use processes that are thought to facilitate forest transitions. First, forest transitions may be accompanied by land use displacement through international trade of land-based products, which may undermine the global-scale environmental benefits of national forest protection. Second, reforestation is often associated with land use intensification in agriculture and forestry, allowing for land sparing. Third, this intensification may partly result from a geographical redistribution of land use at the sub-national scale to better match land use with land suitability. These hypotheses were verified for Costa Rica’s forest transition.We also tested whether forest increased mainly in regions with a low ecological value and agriculture expanded in regions with a high ecological value. Intensification and land use redistribution accounted for 76% of land spared during the forest transition, with 32% of this spared area corresponding to net reforestation. Decreasing meat exports led to a contraction of pastures, freeing an area equivalent to 80% of the reforested area. The forest transition in Costa Rica was environmentally beneficial at the global scale, with the reforested area over 1989–2013 corresponding to 130% of the land use displaced abroad through imports of agricultural products. However, expansion of export-oriented cropland caused deforestation in the most ecologically valuable regions of Costa Rica. Moreover, wood extraction from forest plantations increased to produce the pallets needed to export fruits. This highlights the importance of a multi-scale analysis when evaluating causes and impacts of nationalscale forest transitions