Fostering Social Change in Peru Through Communication: The Case of the Manuani Miners Association

Much has been done to formalize miners in Peru; since its inception in 2006 the Ministry of Environment passed laws to align mining policies with international standards. However, the combination of the necessity to have a source of income and the rapid acquisition of money that illegal and informal gold mining provides has proven a serious impasse for the Peruvian government; hence these mining practices keep growing. As part of the Initiative for the Conservation of the Andean Amazon II (ICAA II), the Manuani Miners Association in Madre de Dios, one of the regions more prone to illegal mining and bad environmental practices in Peru, started a land restoration, remediation, and reforestation process of the degraded rainforest. This case study analyzes how a program within ICAA II used communication to promote this significant change in behavior, what communicational tools were used, and what is their possible further applicability in similar scenarios to foster positive change

The impact of socio-political and economic environments on private sector participation in energy infrastructure delivery in Ghana

Purpose: Investment in power and electricity generation for replacing aging infrastructure with new represents a major challenge for developing countries. This paper therefore aims to examine infrastructure projects’ characteristics and how socio-political and economic investment environments interplay to influence the degree of private sector participation (PPP) in infrastructure delivery in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach: Using World Bank Public-private infrastructure advisory facility (PPIAF) and private participation in infrastructure (PPI) project database data from 1994 to 2013, binary logistic regression was used to: determine the probability of a higher or lower degree of PPP; and examine the significance of factors that are determinants of private investments. Findings: The findings reveal that the private sector is more likely to invest in a higher degree of PPP infrastructure projects through greenfield and concession vehicles as opposed to management and leasing contracts. From the extant literature, drivers of PPP included infrastructure project characteristics and the social–economic–political health of the host country. However, the significance, direction and magnitude of these drivers vary. Originality/value: This paper identifies investment drivers to PPP advisors and project managers and seeks to engender discussion among government policymakers responsible for promoting and managing PPP projects. Direction for future work seeks to explore competitive routes to infrastructure debt and equity finance options that finance energy projects

From climate-smart agriculture to climate-smart landscapes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>For agricultural systems to achieve climate-smart objectives, including improved food security and rural livelihoods as well as climate change adaptation and mitigation, they often need to be take a landscape approach; they must become ‘climate-smart landscapes’. Climate-smart landscapes operate on the principles of integrated landscape management, while explicitly incorporating adaptation and mitigation into their management objectives.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>An assessment of climate change dynamics related to agriculture suggests that three key features characterize a climate-smart landscape: climate-smart practices at the field and farm scale; diversity of land use across the landscape to provide resilience; and management of land use interactions at landscape scale to achieve social, economic and ecological impacts. To implement climate-smart agricultural landscapes with these features (that is, to successfully promote and sustain them over time, in the context of dynamic economic, social, ecological and climate conditions) requires several institutional mechanisms: multi-stakeholder planning, supportive landscape governance and resource tenure, spatially-targeted investment in the landscape that supports climate-smart objectives, and tracking change to determine if social and climate goals are being met at different scales. Examples of climate-smart landscape initiatives in Madagascar’s Highlands, the African Sahel and Australian Wet Tropics illustrate the application of these elements in contrasting contexts.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>To achieve climate-smart landscape initiatives widely and at scale will require strengthened technical capacities, institutions and political support for multi-stakeholder planning, governance, spatial targeting of investments and multi-objective impact monitoring.</p