Global Health Governance: Conflicts on Global Social Rights

This paper analyses the impact of new institutional structures in global health governance on the realization of social rights in poor countries. Meanwhile, health is broadly seen as an import precondition for social and economic development. This leads to an integration of the “diseases of the poor” (basically infectious diseases) into strategies of fighting poverty. Considering the example of global HIV/AIDS politics, the paper argues that new governance modes increase the participation of civil society groups and affected communities, but that they are also frequently instrumentalised by powerful actors to pursue their particular interests. In fact, increasing resources are mobilized for the fight against poverty related diseases. The paper concludes that global health governance is characterized by a combination of moral values and material interests which does not guarantee a comprehensive realization of social rights, but which allows some progress in the fight against poverty-related diseases – a precondition of the possible further realization of social rights.Global Health Governance; New Governance Modes, International Organizations, Social Rights, Global Social Justice, Developing Countries, HIV/AIDS Politics

Global Health Governance: Conflicts on Global Social Rights

This paper analyses the impact of new institutional structures in global health governance on the realization of social rights in poor countries. Meanwhile, health is broadly seen as an import precondition for social and economic development. This leads to an integration of the “diseases of the poor” (basically infectious diseases) into strategies of fighting poverty. Considering the example of global HIV/AIDS politics, the paper argues that new governance modes increase the participation of civil society groups and affected communities, but that they are also frequently instrumentalised by powerful actors to pursue their particular interests. In fact, increasing resources are mobilized for the fight against poverty related diseases. The paper concludes that global health governance is characterized by a combination of moral values and material interests which does not guarantee a comprehensive realization of social rights, but which allows some progress in the fight against poverty-related diseases – a precondition of the possible further realization of social rights.Global Health Governance; New Governance Modes, International Organizations; Social Rights; Global Social Justice; Developing Countries; HIV/AIDS Politics

Global health governance: conflicts on global social rights

This article analyses the impact of new institutional structures in global health governance (GHG) on the realization of social rights in poor countries. Focusing on the example of global HIV/AIDS politics. The article argues that new governance modes increase the participation of civil society groups and affected communities, but also that they are frequently instrumentalized by powerful actors to pursue their particular interests. In fact, increasing resources are mobilized for the fight against poverty-related diseases. The article concludes that, as the experience of HIV/AIDS politics, the conflicts around the TRIPS Agreement and the development of Global Public-Private Partnerships GPPPs suggest, GHG is characterized by a combination of moral values and material interests that does not guarantee a comprehensive realization of social rights, but which allows some progress in the fight against poverty-related diseases - a step toward realization of social rights

Towards sustainable management of Indonesian tropical peatlands

Large areas of Indonesian peatlands have been converted for agricultural and plantation forest purposes. This requires draining with associated CO2 emissions and fire risks. In order to identify alternative management regimes for peatlands, it is important to understand the sustainability of different peatland uses as well as the economic benefits peatlands supply under different land uses. This study explores the key sustainability issues in Indonesian peatlands, the ecosystem services supplied by peatlands, and potential responses to promote more sustainable peatland use. A literature review and spatial analysis were conducted. Based on predominantly government data, we estimate the amount of Indonesian peatlands that has been converted between 2000 and 2014. We quantify increases in oil palm and plantation forest crop production in this period, and we analyse key sustainability issues, i.e. peat fires and smoke-haze, soil subsidence and flood risk, CO2 emissions, loss of habitat (in protected areas), and social conflicts that influence sustainability of Indonesian peatlands management. Among others we show that CO2 emissions from peatlands in Indonesia can be estimated at between 350 and 400 million ton CO2 per year, and that encroachment of oil palm and plantation forestry (acacia, rubber) has taken place on 28% of protected areas. However, as we examine, the uncertainties involved are substantial. Based on our findings, we distil several implications for the management of the peatlands.</p

Peatland fire regime across Riau peat hydrological unit, Indonesia

Peatland stretches across approximately 8% of Indonesia's land area. Peat fire disturbance, which affects the carbon dynamics of the ecosystem, will determine the country's vision for a long-term strategy for low carbon development. While the impact of excessive draining on peatland fire is well-known to the scientific community, much less is known about peatland fire regimes in distinctive land management systems. We examined the effect of land use, land management, and climatic factors in peatland fires. The examination was performed at the Peat Hydrological Unit at Gaung?Batang Tuaka, Riau, Indonesia. We used a semi-automatic approach to determine the area of burned peatland and used a spatial analysis tool to analyze the spatio-temporal pattern of peatland fire in the region. Our results demonstrate an increasing trend of peatland fires between 2001 and 2020, with 33% of the burned peatland undergoing multiple fires. The bulk of the burned land was covered by either wet shrubs or estate crops, with the area of burned wet shrub-land cover was two times higher than the burned estate crop-land cover. Concerning peatland draining, this study found a positive correlation between draining intensity, as represented by canal density, and burned area in peatland forests. In managed and unmanaged land, canal density had no apparent correlation with the area of peatland burned; however, we found that the weighted area of burned peatland was, on average, seven times higher in the unmanaged area compared to the managed area. These findings urgently demand an increase in community participation in the utilization of unmanaged land and prompt execution of peatland rewetting in drained peat forests. While the government of Indonesia has developed a social forestry and agrarian reform scheme to enable the legal utilization of unproductive land in forest areas, we argue that greater impacts can only be achieved if environmental services incentive schemes escalate non-party actors' participation

Domestic violence victimisation and its association with mental distress: A cross-sectional study of the Yangon Region, Myanmar

Objectives To estimate the prevalence of domestic violence, with subgroups of physical, sexual and emotional violence, among men and women and to assess the association between any lifetime domestic violence (DV) and mental distress among ever-married men and women. Design We conducted a cross-sectional study from October to November 2016 using a multistage sampling design. DV questionnaire was adopted from the Demographic and Health Survey programme. Mental distress was estimated using the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-10 (HSCL-10). HSCL-score and DV were the outcome and exposure variables, respectively, in multiple linear regression. Prevalence estimates and associations were presented with a 95% CI and the Wald test. Setting Urban and rural areas of the Yangon region, Myanmar. Participants Men and women ages 18 to 49 years were included. Institutionalised people, monks, nuns and individuals deemed too ill physically and/or mentally to participate were excluded. Results A random sample of 2383 people was included in the analyses. Among ever-married participants, lifetime (LT) and past-12-month (12M) prevalence of any domestic violence victimisation was higher in women compared with men: LT women: 61.8% (95% CI: 54.3 to 68.9) versus LT men: 42.4% (95% CI: 37.5 to 47.5) and 12M women: 51.2% (95% CI: 44.9 to 57.5) versus 12M men: 37.7% (95% CI: 32.9 to 42.7). Among never-married participants, lifetime physical and sexual violence victimisation rates was higher in men (34.3% and 7.9%) compared with women (19.1% and 6.4%). Mental distress was significantly associated with lifetime DV in women who were afraid of their husbands and men who had wives who exhibited controlling behaviours. Conclusions Domestic violence is prevalent among both men and women and is associated with mental distress. The findings highlight an urgent need to prevent domestic violence in both sexes, including through legal and policy reform and improved mental health services for DV victims.publishedVersio

On the Classification of All Self-Dual Additive Codes over GF(4) of Length up to 12

We consider additive codes over GF(4) that are self-dual with respect to the Hermitian trace inner product. Such codes have a well-known interpretation as quantum codes and correspond to isotropic systems. It has also been shown that these codes can be represented as graphs, and that two codes are equivalent if and only if the corresponding graphs are equivalent with respect to local complementation and graph isomorphism. We use these facts to classify all codes of length up to 12, where previously only all codes of length up to 9 were known. We also classify all extremal Type II codes of length 14. Finally, we find that the smallest Type I and Type II codes with trivial automorphism group have length 9 and 12, respectively.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

The SEEA EEA carbon account for the Netherlands

The carbon account provides a comprehensive overview of all relevant carbon stocks and flows. The carbon account for the Netherlands was developed within the scope of the ‘System of Environmental Economic Accounts – Experimen tal Ecosystem Accounting’ (SEEA EEA) project for the Netherlands (Natuurlijk Kapitaalrekeningen Nederland: NKR_NL), which is currently c arried out jointly by Statistics Netherlands and Wageningen University. Funding and support was provided by the Ministries of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure and the Environment. Within the NKR_NL project, a number of accounts are currently under devel opment. The carbon account is described in detail in this report

Ecosystem service change caused by climatological and non‐climatological drivers: A Swiss case study

Understanding the drivers of ecosystem change and their effects on ecosystem services are essential for management decisions and verification of progress towards national and international sustainability policies (e.g. Aichi Biodiversity Targets, Sustainable Development Goals). We aim to disentangle spatially the effect of climatological and non‐climatological drivers on ecosystem service supply and trends. Therefore, we explored time series of three ecosystem services in Switzerland between 2004 and 2014: carbon dioxide regulation, soil erosion prevention, and air quality regulation. We applied additive models to describe the spatial variation attributed to climatological (i.e. temperature, precipitation and relative sunshine duration) and non‐climatological drivers (i.e. random effects representing other spatially structured processes) that may affect ecosystem service change. Obtained results indicated strong influences of climatological drivers on ecosystem service trends in Switzerland. We identified equal contributions of all three climatological drivers on trends of carbon dioxide regulation and soil erosion prevention, while air quality regulation was more strongly influenced by temperature. Additionally, our results showed that climatological and non‐climatological drivers affected ecosystem services both negatively and positively, depending on the regions (in particular lower and higher altitudinal areas), drivers, and services assessed. Our findings highlight stronger effects of climatological compared to non‐climatological drivers on ecosystem service change in Switzerland. Furthermore, drivers of ecosystem change display a spatial heterogeneity in their influence on ecosystem service trends. We propose an approach building on an additive model to disentangle the effect of climatological and non‐climatological drivers on ecosystem service trends. Such analyses should be extended in the future to ecosystem service flow and demand to complete ecosystem service assessments and to demonstrate and communicate more clearly the benefits of ecosystem services for human well‐being