Toward evaluating the effect of climate change on investments in the water resources sector: insights from the forecast and analysis of hydrological indicators in developing countries

The World Bank has recently developed a method to evaluate the effects of climate change on six hydrological indicators across 8951 basins of the world. The indicators are designed for decision-makers and stakeholders to consider climate risk when planning water resources and related infrastructure investments. Analysis of these hydrological indicators shows that, on average, mean annual runoff will decline in southern Europe; most of Africa; and in southern North America and most of Central and South America. Mean reference crop water deficit, on the other hand, combines temperature and precipitation and is anticipated to increase in nearly all locations globally due to rising global temperatures, with the most dramatic increases projected to occur in southern Europe, southeastern Asia, and parts of South America. These results suggest overall guidance on which regions to focus water infrastructure solutions that could address future runoff flow uncertainty. Most important, we find that uncertainty in projections of mean annual runoff and high runoff events is higher in poorer countries, and increases over time. Uncertainty increases over time for all income categories, but basins in the lower and lower-middle income categories are forecast to experience dramatically higher increases in uncertainty relative to those in the upper-middle and upper income categories. The enhanced understanding of the uncertainty of climate projections for the water sector that this work provides strongly support the adoption of rigorous approaches to infrastructure design under uncertainty, as well as design that incorporates a high degree of flexibility, in response to both risk of damage and opportunity to exploit water supply 'windfalls' that might result, but would require smart infrastructure investments to manage to the greatest benefit

Globalisation, adjustment and the structural transformation of African economies?: the role of international financial institutions

Under the auspices of the World Bank and IMF, for almost two decades, sub-Saharan African countries have implemented structural adjustment, an orthodox package of economic reform measures. During this period there has been an unprecedented proliferation of technology investment and trade in the world economy. However sub-Saharan Africa has performed poorly under adjustment and has been largely marginalized from the international economy. The paper investigates the problems with the theoretical model underlying structural adjustment policies to explain why the model is not conducive to either African development or Africa’s increasing participation in the global economy. An example is used to illustrate the existence of an alternative set of policies that may be better suited for Africa

A systematic review of floating and beach landing records of Sargassum beyond the Sargasso Sea

Sargassum algal blooms on ocean surfaces and landings of huge Sargassum mats on beaches is an emerging global environmental challenge with wide socio-economic and environmental implications. Literature on Sargassum growth cycles, travel patterns, species and morphotypes, and quantified impacts have tended to focus on a geographic region, or a specific event. Few, if any, publications document long term continuous monitoring of Sargassum blooms in large areas such as the Pacific, or the tropical Atlantic. To address this gap, this paper systematically reviews the global evidence of Sargassum bloom monitoring beyond the Sargasso Sea, and identifies gaps in the evidence base of floating and landing influxes. This systematic review uses combinations of two key terms relating to Sargassum and monitoring, and utilises the resources in ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus and Google Scholar. The analysis moves us past a classic literature review, and produces an unbiased assessment of empirical research on Sargassum monitoring from 1960 to 2019. We find a significant research focus on open-ocean blooms and floating mats whereas research on beach landings and their associated impacts is comparatively limited. Research is focused within specific countries or water bodies (notably, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean and North Atlantic Ocean) and tends not to comprehensively assess neighbouring or regional shorelines, for example, West Africa and Central America. There was a lack of consistency in the application of methods for quantifying Sargassum biomass volume (including dry/wet weight, unit of measurement, and spatial extent of calculations). Further, in many publications Sargassum species identification was omitted. Given current attempts to understand the drivers and impacts of the exponential growth in Sargassum in some parts of the world, a consistent and replicable research approach to monitoring Sargassum could support creation of a Sargassum evidence database. To move this agenda forwards, we propose a definition for a Sargassum 'event': a continuous bloom of any Sargassum in open oceans, or, an aggregation of landed Sargassum, with the potential to disrupt social, economic or ecosystem functioning, or to impact human health. This review highlights the importance of standardising Sargassum monitoring methods to facilitate improved documentation of temporal and spatial patterns of Sargassum blooms and beach landings

A snapshot of the organization and provision of primary care in Turkey

Contains fulltext : 96599.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: This WHO study aimed to support Turkey in its efforts to strengthen the primary care (PC) system by implementing the WHO Primary Care Evaluation Tool (PCET). This article provides an overview of the organization and provision of primary care in Turkey. METHODS: The WHO Primary Care Evaluation Tool was implemented in two provinces (Bolu and Eskisehir) in Turkey in 2007/08. The Tool consists of three parts: a national questionnaire concerning the organisation and financing of primary care; a questionnaire for family doctors; and a questionnaire for patients who visit a family health centre. RESULTS: Primary care has just recently become an official health policy priority with the introduction of a family medicine scheme. Although the supply of family doctors (FDs) has improved, they are geographically uneven distributed, and nationwide shortages of primary care staff remain. Coordination of care could be improved and quality control mechanisms were lacking. However, patients were very satisfied with the treatment by FDs. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides an overview of the current state of PC in Turkey for two provinces with newly introduced family medicine, by using a structured approach to evaluate the essential functions of PC, including governance, financing, resource generation, as well as the characteristics of a "good" service delivery system (as being accessible, comprehensive, coordinated and continuous)

The Wage and Non-wage Costs of Displacement: Evidence from Russia

This paper is the first to analyze the costs of job loss in Russia, using unique new data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey over the years 2003-2008, including a special supplement on displacement that was initiated by us. We employ fixed effects regression models and propensity score matching techniques in order to establish the causal effect of displacement for displaced individuals. The paper is innovative insofar as we investigate fringe and in-kind benefits and the propensity to have an informal employment relationship as well as a permanent contract as relevant labor market outcomes upon displacement. We also analyze monthly earnings, hourly wages, employment and hours worked, which are traditionally investigated in the literature. Compared to the control group of non-displaced workers (i.e. stayers and quitters), displaced individuals face a significant income loss following displacement, which is mainly due to the reduction in employment and hours worked. This effect is robust to the definition of displacement. The losses seem to be more pronounced and are especially large for older workers with labor market experience and human capital acquired in Soviet times and for workers with primary and secondary education. Workers displaced from state firms experience particularly large relative losses in the short run, while such losses for workers laid off from private firms are more persistent. Turning to the additional non-conventional labor market outcomes, there is a loss in terms of the number of fringe and in-kind benefits for reemployed individuals but not in terms of their value. There is also some evidence of an increased probability of working in informal jobs if displaced. These results point towards the importance of both firm-specific human capital and of obsolete skills obtained under the centrally planned economy as well as to a wider occurrence of job insecurity among displaced workers

Complementary feeding: a Global Network cluster randomized controlled trial

Background: Inadequate and inappropriate complementary feeding are major factors contributing to excess morbidity and mortality in young children in low resource settings. Animal source foods in particular are cited as essential to achieve micronutrient requirements. The efficacy of the recommendation for regular meat consumption, however, has not been systematically evaluated. Methods/Design: A cluster randomized efficacy trial was designed to test the hypothesis that 12 months of daily intake of beef added as a complementary food would result in greater linear growth velocity than a micronutrient fortified equi-caloric rice-soy cereal supplement. The study is being conducted in 4 sites of the Global Network for Women\u27s and Children\u27s Health Research located in Guatemala, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia in communities with toddler stunting rates of at least 20%. Five clusters per country were randomized to each of the food arms, with 30 infants in each cluster. The daily meat or cereal supplement was delivered to the home by community coordinators, starting when the infants were 6 months of age and continuing through 18 months. All participating mothers received nutrition education messages to enhance complementary feeding practices delivered by study coordinators and through posters at the local health center. Outcome measures, obtained at 6, 9, 12, and 18 months by a separate assessment team, included anthropometry, dietary variety and diversity scores, biomarkers of iron, zinc and Vitamin B(12) status (18 months), neurocognitive development (12 and 18 months), and incidence of infectious morbidity throughout the trial. The trial was supervised by a trial steering committee, and an independent data monitoring committee provided oversight for the safety and conduct of the trial. Discussion: Findings from this trial will test the efficacy of daily intake of meat commencing at age 6 months and, if beneficial, will provide a strong rationale for global efforts to enhance local supplies of meat as a complementary food for young children

Predicting the deforestation-trend under different carbon-prices

BACKGROUND: Global carbon stocks in forest biomass are decreasing by 1.1 Gt of carbon annually, owing to continued deforestation and forest degradation. Deforestation emissions are partly offset by forest expansion and increases in growing stock primarily in the extra-tropical north. Innovative financial mechanisms would be required to help reducing deforestation. Using a spatially explicit integrated biophysical and socio-economic land use model we estimated the impact of carbon price incentive schemes and payment modalities on deforestation. One payment modality is adding costs for carbon emission, the other is to pay incentives for keeping the forest carbon stock intact. RESULTS: Baseline scenario calculations show that close to 200 mil ha or around 5% of todays forest area will be lost between 2006 and 2025, resulting in a release of additional 17.5 GtC. Today's forest cover will shrink by around 500 million hectares, which is 1/8 of the current forest cover, within the next 100 years. The accumulated carbon release during the next 100 years amounts to 45 GtC, which is 15% of the total carbon stored in forests today. Incentives of 6 US$/tC for vulnerable standing biomass payed every 5 year will bring deforestation down by 50$/year. On the other hand a carbon tax of 12 $/tC harvested forest biomass will also cut deforestation by half. The tax income will, if enforced, decrease from 6 billion US$ in 2005 to 4.3 billion US$in 2025 and 0.7 billion US$ in 2100 due to decreasing deforestation speed. CONCLUSION: Avoiding deforestation requires financial mechanisms that make retention of forests economically competitive with the currently often preferred option to seek profits from other land uses. Incentive payments need to be at a very high level to be effective against deforestation. Taxes on the other hand will extract budgetary revenues from the regions which are already poor. A combination of incentives and taxes could turn out to be a viable solution for this problem. Increasing the value of forest land and thereby make it less easily prone to deforestation would act as a strong incentive to increase productivity of agricultural and fuelwood production, which could be supported by revenues generated by the deforestation tax

Mental health in the slums of Dhaka - a geoepidemiological study

Gruebner O, Khan MH, Lautenbach S, et al. Mental health in the slums of Dhaka - a geoepidemiological study. BMC Public Health. 2012;12(1): 177.Background: Urban health is of global concern because the majority of the world's population lives in urban areas. Although mental health problems (e.g. depression) in developing countries are highly prevalent, such issues are not yet adequately addressed in the rapidly urbanising megacities of these countries, where a growing number of residents live in slums. Little is known about the spectrum of mental well-being in urban slums and only poor knowledge exists on health promotive socio-physical environments in these areas. Using a geo-epidemiological approach, the present study identified factors that contribute to the mental well-being in the slums of Dhaka, which currently accommodates an estimated population of more than 14 million, including 3.4 million slum dwellers. Methods: The baseline data of a cohort study conducted in early 2009 in nine slums of Dhaka were used. Data were collected from 1,938 adults (>= 15 years). All respondents were geographically marked based on their households using global positioning systems (GPS). Very high-resolution land cover information was processed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to obtain additional exposure information. We used a factor analysis to reduce the socio-physical explanatory variables to a fewer set of uncorrelated linear combinations of variables. We then regressed these factors on the WHO-5 Well-being Index that was used as a proxy for self-rated mental wellbeing. Results: Mental well-being was significantly associated with various factors such as selected features of the natural environment, flood risk, sanitation, housing quality, sufficiency and durability. We further identified associations with population density, job satisfaction, and income generation while controlling for individual factors such as age, gender, and diseases. Conclusions: Factors determining mental well-being were related to the socio-physical environment and individual level characteristics. Given that mental well-being is associated with physiological well-being, our study may provide crucial information for developing better health care and disease prevention programmes in slums of Dhaka and other comparable settings

Controlling Groundwater Exploitation Through Economic Instruments: Current Practices, Challenges and Innovative Approaches

Groundwater can be considered as a common-pool resource, is often overexploited and, as a result, there are growing management pressures. This chapter starts with a broad presentation of the range of economic instruments that can be used for groundwater management, considering current practices and innovative approaches inspired from the literature on Common Pool Resources management. It then goes on with a detailed presentation of groundwater allocation policies implemented in France, the High Plains aquifer in the USA, and Chile. The chapter concludes with a discussion of social and political difficulties associated with implementing economic instruments for groundwater management

conditions for re deployment and energy development

Irrespective of technical abundancy, RE potential per se does not imply a structural and inclusive expansion of energy access and an overall sustainable energy development of EA. Proper technological, economic, institutional, and policy considerations must be made to assess which are the best ways and most apt policies to sustain the exploitation of such potential in the regional context in relation to other energy sources, as well as which roadblocks and challenges are faced. A first meaningful consideration in this sense is that EA is characterised by a strong rural-urban imbalance: the majority of the population lives in poorly interconnected rural communities away from the electricity grid, which serves predominantly densely populated urban centres. While plans to tackle the imbalance are in place in virtually every country (both Kenya and South Africa have achieved notable results in this sense), the issue is not going to be structurally overcome rapidly. Thus, as highlighted by the least-cost electrification scenarios in Chap. 4, when discussing the case for renewables to increase and improve access, a distinction must be made between national grid expansion to reach additional shares of the population, and specific decentralised solutions