Monitoring urban growth and land use land cover change in Al Ain, UAE using remote sensing and GIS techniques

Urbanization and industrialization cause a serious land degradation problem, including an increased pressure on natural resources such as deforestation, rise in temperature and management of water resources. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects of urbanization are widely acknowledged. Increase of impervious surface is a surrogate measure of urbanization and their effects on local hydrology is well reported in literature. This study investigates the spatial-temporal dynamics of land use and land cover changes in Al Ain, UAE, from 2006 to 2016. The Landsat images of two different periods, i.e., Landsat ETM of 2006 and Landsat 8 for 2016 were acquired from earth explorer site. Semi-supervised known as the hybrid classification method was used for image classification. The change detection was carried out through post-classification techniques. The study area was categorized into five major classes. These are agriculture, gardens, urban, sandy areas and mixed urban/sandy areas. It was observed that agricultural and urban land increases from 42,560 ha to 45,950 ha (8%) and 8150 ha to 9105 ha (12%), respectively. Consequently, the natural sandy area was reduced. It was also found that the urban area was expanded dramatically in the west and southwest directions. The outcomes of this study would help concerning authorities for a sustainable land and water resources management in the Al Ain region

Preferential trade agreements between the monetary community of Central Africa and the European Union: Stumbling or building blocks? A general equilibrium approach

"This paper uses a computable general equilibrium approach to simulate two opposing views describing regional trade agreements either as building blocks for or stumbling blocks to multilateral trade liberalization. This study focuses on the free trade agreement (FTA) between the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) and the European Union (EU). Results show that although a regional trade agreement may slightly raise welfare among the members of the agreement, the cost to nonmembers can be high. In this paper we argue that multilateral liberalization and a regional free trade agreement between the EU and CEMAC are not mutually exclusive. Regional trade agreements should be complementary and consistent with a multilateral agreement, not an attempt to replace it. The regional breakdown in our design considers 14 regions, allowing for country-specific analysis for one least-developed country (Democratic Republic of Congo) and one non-least-developed country (Cameroon). Multilateral liberalization amplifies welfare gain for Cameroon. The Democratic Republic of Congo, with its weaker institutional capacity, is affected negatively. An EU-CEMAC FTA without multilateralism produces gains for both Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The gain for Cameroon is, however, moderate compared with that achieved when the EU-CEMAC FTA is accompanied with a multilateral agreement." from authors' abstractRegional trade, multilateral trade, Computable General Equilibrium Models, European Union, Development strategies,

European Union preferential trade agreements with developing countries and their impact on Colombian and Kenyan carnation exports to the United Kingdom:

"United Kingdom (UK) demand for carnations by exporting country was estimated using a production version of the Rotterdam model, and model estimates were used to assess the effects of EU preferential trade agreements on import demand. Of particular importance was how these agreements affected Colombian and Kenyan carnation exports to the UK, the second largest market for Colombian carnations and the largest market for Kenyan carnations. Results showed that Colombia benefited from preferential access to the UK more so than Kenya: the benefit to Colombia was due to both trade creation and diversion, whereas the benefit to Kenya was mostly due to trade diversion. Results further showed that the competition between Colombian and Kenyan carnations was insignificant, and there was no evidence that the preferences given to Colombia harmed Kenya or vice versa." from authors' abstractCarnations, Preferential trade agreements, Trade diversion, Development strategies,