Verschuivende vensters: veranderingen in het institutionele landschap van de Nederlandse ontwikkelingssamenwerking - 40

Political Scienc

Neighbor removal increases forager longevity, slows progression through temporal castes (Pogonomyrmex badius)

Sustainability standards like Fair Trade (FT) or Utz certified (Utz) are widely regarded as a promising way of improving smallholder coffee farmer welfare. As yet, the impact of certification remains poorly understood. This chapter presents the findings of the study regarding the impact of FT and Utz in Kenya. The study was carried out in the Kiambu and Nyeri districts of Kenya (Figure 3.1). The study is based on two waves of data collection carried out in 2009 and 2013 with farmers belonging to six cooperative societies: Ndumberi, Tekangu, Kiambaa, Mikari, Rugi and Kiama. This chapter aims to answer the following central research question: What is the impact of FT/Utz involvement at producer and producer organisation level in Kenya

The rise of policy coherence for development: a multi-causal approach

In recent years policy coherence for development (PCD) has become a key principle in international development debates, and it is likely to become even more relevant in the discussions on the post-2015 sustainable development goals. This article addresses the rise of PCD on the Western donors’ aid agenda. While the concept already appeared in the work of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the early 1990s, it took until 2007 before PCD became one of the Organisation’s key priorities. We adopt a complexity-sensitive perspective, involving a process-tracing analysis and a multi-causal explanatory framework. We argue that the rise of PCD is not as contingent as it looks. While actors such as the EU, the DAC and OECD Secretariat were the ‘active causes’ of the rise of PCD, it is equally important to look at the underlying ‘constitutive causes’ which enabled policy coherence to thrive well

Hungarian International Development Cooperation: Context, Stakeholders and Performance

This paper explores the domestic and international context of Hungary's emerging international development policy. Specifically, it looks at three factors that may influence how this policy operates: membership in the European Union (EU) and potential ‘Europeanization’, Hungary's wider foreign policy strategy, and the influence of domestic stakeholders. In order to uncover how these factors affect the country's international development policy, semi-structured interviews were carried out with the main stakeholders. The main conclusions are: (1) While accession to the EU did play a crucial role in restarting Hungary's international development policy, the integration has had little effect since then; (2) international development policy seems to serve mainly Hungary's regional strategic foreign policy and economic interests, and not its global development goals; and (3) although all the domestic development stakeholders are rather weak, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) still seems to play a dominating role. Convergence with European requirements and best practices is, therefore, clearly hindered by foreign policy interests and also by the weakness of non- governmental stakeholders

Scaling Parameters for Dynamic Diffusion-Reaction over Porous Catalysts

The effect of diffusion resistance in porous solid catalysts on reaction rate during periodic cycling of CO concentration is shown for CO oxidation over Pt/Al2O3 by numerical simulation. At some cycling frequencies, the average reaction rate during cycling is higher than the steady-state rate at the mean CO concentration, as expected for this nonlinear, reactant-inhibited reaction. In order to identify major aspects of dynamic diffusion-reaction behavior, a simple kinetic mechanism that shows the main features of CO oxidation and other reactions with significant inhibition by reactants is investigated. A single dimensionless parameter group, the dynamic diffusion coefficient, is added when going from steady-state to unsteady-state diffusion-reaction equations. In the dynamic diffusion coefficient, the rate at which the gas-phase reactant diffuses is reduced by the surface adsorption capacity of the catalyst. The frequency at which the peak average rate occurs is controlled by the dynamic diffusion coefficient

Beyond the merchant and the clergyman: assessing moral claims about development cooperation

This article proposes to move beyond the categories of altruism and self-interest in the analyses of the motives for development cooperation. This opposition ignores the inherently moral nature of development policy. The article illustrates the shortcomings of such a perspective by tracing the metaphor of the merchant and the clergyman as archetypical figures shaping Dutch development policy. Through these images the suggestion of an opposition between moral and amoral motives in the history of development has gained a strong foothold within the interplay of scholars, policy makers and public opinion. We go on to assess claims about economy, security, solidarity, prestige and guilt, and ecology, which have been brought forward to legitimise Dutch foreign aid. This analysis calls for research on the dynamics of the transnational exchanges of ideas, interests and expectations, especially during episodes when the moral validity of policy has been explicitly contested

Introduction: Coffee certification in East Africa: Searching for impact

Certification of coffee producers is frequently suggested as a useful strategy for improving the position of smallholders in the market. It started with the launch of the Fair Trade label in 1988 and was followed by several other standards that are promoted either by voluntary agencies and/or by private coffee companies. The label of Utz certified (first called Utz Kapeh) has been launched in 2002 with the aim to enhance responsible coffee certification by established private companies. In recent years, company coffee labels were established by Starbucks (C.A.F.E. Practices) and Nestle (AAA).1 The 4C Association (originally Common Code for the Coffee Community) provides an entry standard for stakeholders in the coffee sector to address sustainability issues in production and sourcing in a pre-competitive manner

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