Certification schemes and the governance of land : enforcing standards or enabling scrutiny?

Given the challenges of upholding human rights in countries where land grabbing has been most acute, attention has turned to alternative regulatory mechanisms by which better land governance might be brought about. This essay considers one such approach: certification schemes. These encourage agricultural producers to adopt sustainability standards which are then monitored by third-party auditors. Used by the European Union to help govern its biofuel market, they now also have an important mandatory dimension. However, through a study of Bonsucro and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, we find both flaws in their standards and shortcomings in their ability to discipline the companies they are financially dependent upon. In sum, we suggest that the real value of these roundtable certification schemes might lie less in their ability to enforce standards than their (partially realised) role in enabling scrutiny, providing new possibilities for corporate accountability in transnational commodity chains

Arenas of contestation: policy processes and land tenure reform in post-apartheid South Africa

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDSummary: This thesis considers different groupings that have come together in their participation in the policy processes relating to tenure reform in post-apartheid South Africa. It is methodologically and theoretically grounded in Bourdieu's notion of cultural 'fields' spaces of ongoing contestation and struggle, but in which actors develop a shared 'habitus', an embodied history. In these land reform policies and law-making activities, individuals and groups from different fields- the bureaucratic, activist and legal - have interacted in their contestations relating to the legitimation of their forms of knowledge. The resulting compromises are illuminated by a case study of a village in the former Gazankulu 'homeland' - a fourth 'cultural field'. Rather than seeing these fields as bounded, the thesis recognises the influence of wider political discourses and materialities, or the wider 'field of power'. In each of the four very different fields, as a result of a shared history, actors within them have developed practices based upon particular shared discourses, institutions and values.South Afric

Philadelphia Drug Monitoring Program and Compliance with Department of Health Requirements

Objectives: With this newly instituted mandate, we found that many of the resident did not have access to the PDMP query site. Our initial goal is to have 100% of residents have log-in access to the PDMP site. Our long-term goals involve increasing the query of the PDMP website by OB-GYN residents prior to prescribing narcotic pain medication. There are several changes that we can make to result in improvement of our initial goal including: identifying residents that require access, working with program coordinator to identify gaps in their PDMP application, and assisting in providing DOH with any additional documentation necessary for access. We will measure our improvement with a survey of residents as to their ability to access the PDMP website prior to our intervention and afterwards. After the intervention we wish to survey the residents on their use and utilization of the Pennsylvania Department of Health Drug Prescription Drug Monitoring Programhttps://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1066/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of Pre-Service Violent Behavior on Violence Perpetration Among Service Members.

Using the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Service Members New Soldier Study data, the present analysis tries to identify some of the factors that may explain variation in violence perpetration (physical assault) among service men. We are particularly interested in observing the lasting effect of pre-service severe violent behavior on more recent violence perpetration. The potential for violence-deterring effect of an adult institution of informal social control such as marriage will be examined as well.https://ir.library.louisville.edu/uars/1033/thumbnail.jp

IPR Policy Brief - Biofuels, development and sustainability in sub-Saharan Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, biofuels have been hailed as a new form of green capitalism. But are they really able to deliver ‘win-win’ outcomes for communities, governments and companies, mitigate climate change and promote ‘pro poor’ development?At a time of global recession and soaring food prices, the large scale diversion of land from the production of food crops to the production of ‘feedstocks’ for biofuels processors has placed the industries’ ‘sustainability’ at the centre of controversy.Qualitative research carried out by Dr Roy Maconachie (University of Bath) and Dr Elizabeth Fortin (University of Bristol) explores corporate strategies to promote biofuel sustainability.It focuses on Sierra Leone, and considers the importance of global, national and local agendas in the development of its emerging biofuel sector. EU policies sustaining markets for alternative fuels have promoted the production of biofuels in Africa. Such production is further buttressed by views that poverty in developing countries will be best alleviated by the provision of employment opportunities in rural areas.The research considers how these agendas, rather than local concerns, have influenced national environment-development policies and corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. Finally, it looks at the implications of biofuels production for local sustainability. The research informs key policy debates relating to: a) CSR and community development; and b) land investment and ‘green’ development in sub-Saharan Africa

Institute for Policy Research Policy Brief: Biofuels, development and sustainability in sub-Saharan Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, biofuels have been hailed as a new form of green capitalism. But are they really able to deliver ‘win-win’ outcomes for communities, governments and companies, mitigate climate change and promote ‘pro poor’ development? At a time of global recession and soaring food prices, the large scale diversion of land from the production of food crops to the production of ‘feedstocks’ for biofuels processors has placed the industries’ ‘sustainability’ at the centre of controversy.Qualitative research carried out by Dr Roy Maconachie (University of Bath) and Dr Elizabeth Fortin (University of Bristol) explores corporate strategies to promote biofuel sustainability. It focuses on Sierra Leone, and considers the importance of global, national and local agendas in the development of its emerging biofuel sector. EU policies sustaining markets for alternative fuels have promoted the production of biofuels in Africa. Such production is further buttressed by views that poverty in developing countries will be best alleviated by the provision of emloyment opportunities in rural areas. The research considers how these agendas, rather than local concerns, have influenced national environment-development policies and corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. Finally, it looks at the implications of biofuels production for local sustainability. The research informs key policy debates relating to: a) CSR and community development; and b) land investment and ‘green’ development in sub-Saharan Africa

Unifying prospective and retrospective interval-time estimation: a fading-gaussian activation-based model of interval-timing

Hass and Hermann (2012) have shown that only variance-based processes will lead to the scalar growth of error that is characteristic of human time judgments. Secondly, a major meta-review of over one hundred studies (Block et al., 2010) reveals a striking interaction between the way in which temporal judgments are queried and cognitive load on participants’ judgments of interval duration. For retrospective time judgments, estimates under high cognitive load are longer than under low cognitive load. For prospective judgments, the reverse pattern holds, with increased cognitive load leading to shorter estimates. We describe GAMIT, a Gaussian spreading-activation model, in which the sampling rate of an activation trace is differentially affected by cognitive load. The model unifies prospective and retrospective time estimation, normally considered separately, by relating them to the same underlying process. The scalar property of time estimation arises naturally from the model dynamics and the model shows the appropriate interaction between mode of query and cognitive load

Comparison Between Standard HABIT and HABIT-VR: Hand-Arm Function and Patient Acceptability Differences​

https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/surp2022/1002/thumbnail.jp