Labour Force Participation and Employment of Humanitarian Migrants: Evidence from the Building a New Life in Australia Longitudinal Data

This study uses the longitudinal data from the Building a New Life in Australia survey to examine the relationships between human capital and labour market participation and employment status among recently arrived/approved humanitarian migrants. It includes attention to the heterogeneity of labour force participation and employment status across genders and also migration pathways. We find that the likelihood of participating in the labour force is higher for those who had preimmigration paid job experience, completed study/job training and have job searching knowledge/skills in Australia and possess higher proficiency in spoken English. We find that the chance of getting a paid job is negatively related to having better pre-immigration education, but it is positively related to having unpaid work experience and job searching skills in Australia, and better health

Debating dams: The World Commission on Dams 20 years on

The World Commission on Dams (WCD) was a global environmental governance forum that worked between 1998 and 2000 to try to resolve long-standing controversies between supporters and opponents of large dams. Its objectives were to assess the development effectiveness of large dams and to develop best practice guidelines for large dam construction and management, based on an extensive review of scientific evidence and wide-ranging stakeholder consultation. This paper reviews literature discussing the WCD, to understand its influence on the debate on large dams and beyond. We find that its influence is debated within four main contexts: (i) interpretations of stakeholder responses to the WCD report and recommendations; (ii) the persistence of the kinds of impacts of large dams that gave rise to the Commission’s work; (iii) the different visions for appropriate follow-up strategies; (iv) insights from the WCD experience in the context of global environmental governance. Within these four contexts, we identify diverse opinions and directions of post-WCD development and sources of disagreement on its merits and legacy, ranging from calls for its full implementation to dismissal and opposition. Commentators also differ in their assessment of whether the WCD sparked truly novel insights and propositions for dam decision-making or whether it simply represented one among many other elements in the broader debate on dams. Most commonly, the WCD’s work is cited in the context of persistent negative social and environmental impacts of dams: neither the impacts nor the controversy over large dams have ended

Energy and Human Health

Energy use is central to human society and provides many health benefits. But each source of energy entails some health risks. This article reviews the health impacts of each major source of energy, focusing on those with major implications for the burden of disease globally. The biggest health impacts accrue to the harvesting and burning of solid fuels, coal and biomass, mainly in the form of occupational health risks and household and general ambient air pollution