Political Challenges of Addressing Climate Change through the ‘Entrepreneurial State’

This article outlines some of the limitations of existing institutions and their inadequacy in bringing about ‘green transformations’ to address climate change in order to explain the need for alternative approaches to institutions. It outlines the ‘entrepreneurial state’ approach, as outlined by Mariana Mazzucato as a promising conceptual approach with potentially transformative policy implications to address the issues of innovation. It identifies some of the political challenges to achieving entrepreneurial state-type institutions in contexts where configurations of power and existing actor networks are unfavourable. It argues that although entrepreneurial state-type institutions are often framed as operating by harnessing high degrees of cooperation between different actors according to commonly-held long-term objectives, achieving the right types of institutions is likely to require a high degree of contestation in order to overcome existing vested interests. Moreover, it discusses the relationship between green transformations and democratic participation

Adapting to Climate Change: Transforming Development?

This article examines the implications of the growing discussion around transformation and adaptation for development policy and practice. While there is increasing agreement that incremental approaches are insufficient to tackle climate change, and that deeper transformative change is also necessary, the ways in which transformation is understood vary significantly, and hence how it is to be operationalised remains unclear. Tracing the emergence of transformation in adaptation debates, and linking them to the intellectual roots of the idea of transformation, we interrogate different approaches that exist towards transformation in terms of moving beyond dominant neoliberal development trajectories. The article discusses some of the conceptual and practical challenges in bringing about transformational change in international development, concluding with some suggestions for the way forward in operationalising transformation for development in line with long-term climate change adaptation goals

An ethnographic study of the relationship between the Renta Dignidad and wellbeing in the Bolivian Altiplano

The objective of this thesis is to study the impacts of Bolivia’s non-contributory pension, the Renta Dignidad, on the wellbeing of older peasants and their families. Literature on social protection has had a tendency to propose social protection policies as contributing to a broad range of objectives, and non-contributory pensions are no exception. Studies have found them to contribute not only to ‘obvious’ needs such as increased consumption and income security but also to investments in productivity, social relationships, health, increased access to credit and savings, while it has become common to claim that they contribute to intangible goals such as dignity and citizenship. Moreover, because they do not impose conditionalities on recipients and are often relatively broader in their coverage than other social protection policies, social pensions have generally avoided critiques that have been aimed at conditional cash transfers and public works programmes. The danger of this literature is that it assumes that wellbeing is heavily responsive to monetary wealth, rather than other areas. To study this, an ethnographic methodology, based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews was employed in two rural communities located in the La Paz department in the highland Altiplano region of Bolivia close to Lake Titicaca. My analysis shows that older persons’ wellbeing depends heavily on a combination of elements, going beyond material wellbeing into areas such as their relationships with their spouses, children, grandchildren, and the other people in the rural communities in which they live, their ability to contribute their labour and maintain their daily (agricultural) work, to participate in collective social political and religious activities, and to maintain good health. For example, older people work hard for as late in life as possible largely because it is meaningful for them to work the land and produce food. This means that health problems, which are often exacerbated by hard work, are particularly damaging to wellbeing because they inhibit older persons’ ability to do this. Meanwhile, ideas and values about how older people should live are continually being negotiated and contested between older people and with their younger family members, often leading to disputes. These are not driven solely by material interests, but concern the ways in which people should live and seek cultural, social and spiritual fulfilment. This is not due to a particular conception of wellbeing held by these people because they are indigenous, as might be inferred through the romantic lens of the vivir bien concept, but because human wellbeing more generally needs to be understood in relational terms, rather than exclusively in terms of peoples’ capacity to satisfy their basic needs. While the Renta Dignidad increases older persons’ ability to consume, maintain livelihood security, and in some case to participate in exchanges of food and gifts with other family members, it does not respond significantly to these other areas of wellbeing, contributing little to healthcare for example. The policy implications of this are that a more integral approach needs to be adopted to older persons’ wellbeing, going beyond cash transfers to greater efforts to bring healthcare services to older people in remote rural areas

What Explains the Allocation of Aid and Private Investment for Electrification?

This paper aims to inform policy looking to step up investment in the electricity sector of developing countries and align it to other development goals such as universal access to energy or sustainability. Three questions guide the analysis: (1) How and why has private and donor finance for electrification changed across time? (2) What are the different motivations of private investors and donors as regards who and what gets financed? (3) Are sustainability and equitable access priorities for private and donor investment? These questions are addressed by describing finance flows during the period 1990–2010 and performing an econometric analysis to explain inter-country allocation.UK Department for International Developmen

Political Economy of Climate Compatible Development: Artisanal Fisheries and Climate Change in Ghana

This chapter presents results of research that explores the socio-political forces and challenges by understanding the political economy of climate compatible development (CCD) in relation to artisanal fisheries in Ghana. The analysis provides insight into the complex political economy in Ghana's artisanal fisheries, a sector that has received little attention with regard to climate change linkages. This could help other projects and wider initiatives on climate change locate their work within a political economy context and target efforts in politically smart ways. The chapter outlines the context for the artisanal fisheries sector and challenges to its sustainability and relations with climate change. It then analyses the politics of climate change policy formulation, including its relationship with the fisheries sector. Ghana is an excellent example of the additional challenges climate change and variability pose to development. It has achieved middle-income country status yet this significant economic progress, as in all other countries, has been accompanied by rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

Is there a Role for Cash Transfers in Climate Change Adaptation?

This article assesses the potential of cash transfer programmes to contribute to adaptation goals in developing countries. It argues that cash transfers are likely to contribute to adaptive capacity by (1) meeting basic needs; (2) helping the poor respond to climate?related shocks; (3) helping vulnerable households to manage risk and consider investment innovations that increase their adaptive capacity; (4) transferring money for investment in long?term adaptive capacity development; and (5) facilitating mobility and livelihood transitions. While the article acknowledges that cash transfers cannot address all areas of adaptation, these transfers may be a prerequisite for further adaptation to be equitable and effective. When compared with other adaptation options, cash transfers fare well as they are supported by a substantial evidence base, do not require much climate?related information, have a demonstrated potential for scaling up and are likely to gain local acceptance

fMRI Response During Figural Memory Task Performance in College Drinkers [pre-print]

Rationale: 18-25-year-olds show the highest rates of alcohol use disorders (AUD) and heavy drinking, which may have critical neurocognitive implications. Regions subserving memory may be particularly susceptible to alcohol-related impairments. Objective: We used blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural correlates of visual encoding and recognition among heavy drinking college students. We predicted that heavy drinkers would show worse memory performance and increased frontal/parietal activation and decreased hippocampal response during encoding. Methods: Participants were 23 heavy drinkers and 33 demographically matched light drinkers, ages 18-20, characterized using quantity/frequency of drinking and AUD diagnosis. Participants performed a figural encoding and recognition task during fMRI. BOLD response during encoding was modeled based on whether each stimulus was subsequently recognized or forgotten (i.e., correct vs. incorrect encoding). Results: There were no group differences in behavioral performance. Compared to light drinkers, heavy drinkers showed: 1) greater BOLD response during correct encoding in right hippocampus/medial temporal, right dorsolateral prefrontal, left inferior frontal, and bilateral posterior parietal cortices; 2) less left inferior frontal activation and greater bilateral precuneus deactivation during incorrect encoding; and 3) less bilateral insula response during correct recognition (clusters \u3e10,233ul, p Conclusions: This is the first investigation of the neural substrates of figural memory among heavy drinking older adolescents. Heavy drinkers demonstrated compensatory hyperactivation of memory-related areas during correct encoding, greater deactivation of default mode regions during incorrect encoding, and reduced recognition-related response. Results could suggest use of different encoding and recognition strategies among heavy drinkers

Laura Villalobos (CATIE). Additional material was prepared by Andrea

Nicolas Bertrand of UNEP managed the chapter, including the handling of peer reviews, interacting with the coordinating authors on revisions, conducting supplementary research and bringing the chapter to final production. Derek Eaton reviewed and edited the modelling section of the chapter. Sheng Fulai conducted preliminary editing of the chapter. Five Background Technical Papers were prepared for this chapte

Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe

The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of observations for these sources, we investigate the effect of gamma-ray flux attenuation by the EBL. We place upper limits on the gamma-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that an EBL intensity in the optical-ultraviolet wavelengths as great as predicted by the "baseline" model of Stecker et al. (2006) can be ruled out with high confidence.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figures, accepted version (24 Aug.2010) for publication in ApJ; Contact authors: A. Bouvier, A. Chen, S. Raino, S. Razzaque, A. Reimer, L.C. Reye

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy