Barriers to the participation of people with psychosocial disability in mental health policy development in South Africa: a qualitative study of perspectives of policy makers, professionals, religious leaders and academics

BACKGROUND: This paper outlines stakeholder views on environmental barriers that prevent people who live with psychosocial disability from participating in mental health policy development in South Africa.METHOD:Fifty-six semi-structured interviews with national, provincial and local South African mental health stakeholders were conducted between August 2006 and August 2009. Respondents included public sector policy makers, professional regulatory council representatives, and representatives from non-profit organisations (NPOs), disabled people's organisations (DPOs), mental health interest groups, religious organisations, professional associations, universities and research institutions. RESULTS: Respondents identified three main environmental barriers to participation in policy development: (a) stigmatization and low priority of mental health, (b) poverty, and (c) ineffective recovery and community supports. CONCLUSION: A number of attitudes, practices and structures undermine the equal participation of South Africans with psychosocial disability in society. A human rights paradigm and multi-system approach is required to enable full social engagement by people with psychosocial disability, including their involvement in policy development

Scientists' warning to humanity on illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade

Illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade is growing at a global level, threatening the traded species and coexisting biota, and promoting the spread of invasive species. From the loss of ecosystem services to diseases transmitted from wildlife to humans, or connections with major organized crime networks and disruption of local to global economies, its ramifications are pervading our daily lives and perniciously affecting our well-being. Here we build on the manifesto 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, issued by the Alliance of World Scientists. As a group of researchers deeply concerned about the consequences of illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade, we review and highlight how these can negatively impact species, ecosystems, and society. We appeal for urgent action to close key knowledge gaps and regulate wildlife trade more stringently.Peer reviewe

Spatial risk assessment and the protection of cultural heritage in southern Tajikistan

Growing digital documentation of cultural heritage resources yielded from an increasing number of international projects, calls for the development of formal computational approaches to assess the risks that this invaluable material heritage is exposed to. This paper proposes a nuanced case-control approach to the risk assessment developed by the Central Asian Archaeological Landscape (CAAL) project for an area in southern Tajikistan. A number of statistical methods are applied for the spatial modelling of the risk to the cultural heritage across the study area and for the assessment of the local scenarios of potential archaeological features already affected by natural and human threats. The value of this formal approach is in its flexible applicability to diverse regional and national settings, as well as in its capability of being updated and repeated within the same territory. This provides local stakeholders, heritage professionals, and local authorities, with a useful tool to develop a risk management plan that includes quantitative as well as qualitative spatial assessments

Asset management as a digital platform industry: a global financial network perspective

While contemporary technological disruption is increasingly conceptualized in terms of the logic and paradoxes of the digital platform economy, discussions of “FinTech” have only engaged to a limited extent with these debates—particularly from an economic geographic standpoint. Here we fill this gap by proposing an adapted Global Financial Network (GFN) framework for conceptualizing the organizational and geographic logic of the digital platform economy in finance, and applying it to examine the impact of the digital platform model on asset management. As we will show, asset management is being profoundly disrupted by what we dub digital asset management platforms—or DAMPs—which encompass services including index fund and ETF provision, robo-advising, and analytics and trading support. Like other digital platforms, DAMPs do not so much leverage technology to enhance their competitiveness within markets, as to radically restructure the market itself. Also, like other platforms, their rise has produced a winner-take-all paradox of centralization through democratization that defies predictions of technology-enabled industry decentralization. However, the logic and implications of the rise of DAMPs diverges, in other respects, from non-financial digital platforms, as finance has long possessed an informational intensity and regulatory and organizational fluidity characteristic of the digital platform economy. Consequently, the digital platform model has mostly developed endogenously in asset management through incremental innovation by major financial firms—in a process that has reinforced the position of leading incumbent asset management centers, and above all New York—rather than being introduced from the outside by upstart technology firms and clusters

Environ Health Perspect

In the absence of scientific clarity about the potential health effects of occupational exposure to nanoparticles, a need exists for guidance in decisionmaking about hazards, risks, and controls. An identification of the ethical issues involved may be useful to decision makers, particularly employers, workers, investors, and health authorities. Because the goal of occupational safety and health is the prevention of disease in workers, the situations that have ethical implications that most affect workers have been identified. These situations include the a) identification and communication of hazards and risks by scientists, authorities, and employers; b) workers' acceptance of risk; c) selection and implementation of controls; d) establishment of medical screening programs; and e) investment in toxicologic and control research. The ethical issues involve the unbiased determination of hazards and risks, nonmaleficence (doing no harm), autonomy, justice, privacy, and promoting respect for persons. As the ethical issues are identified and explored, options for decision makers can be developed. Additionally, societal deliberations about workplace risks of nanotechnologies may be enhanced by special emphasis on small businesses and adoption of a global perspective.17366812PMC1817662720

Assessing the underlying drivers of change over two decades of land use and land cover dynamics along the Standard Gauge Railway corridor, Kenya

We acknowledge funding from the UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) through the Development Corridors Partnership project (project number: ES/P011500/1).Land cover has been modified by anthropogenic activities for thousands of years, although the speed of change has increased in recent decades, particularly driven by socio-economic development. The development of transport infrastructure can accelerate land use land cover change, resulting in impacts on natural resources such as water, biodiversity, and food production. To understand the interaction between land cover and social–ecological drivers, changing land cover patterns and drivers of change must be identified and quantified. This study documents land cover dynamics along the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) corridor in Kenya and evaluates the underlying drivers of this change from 2000 to 2019. The study utilised GIS and remote sensing techniques to assess the land use and land cover changes along the SGR corridor, while correlational and regression analyses were used to evaluate various drivers of the changes. Results showed that built-up areas, bare lands, water bodies, croplands and forests increased by 144.39%, 74.73%, 74.42%, 9.32% and 4.85%, respectively, while wetlands, grasslands and shrub lands reduced by 98.54%, 67.00% and 33.86%, respectively. The underlying drivers responsible for these land use and land cover dynamics are population growth, urbanisation, economic growth and agro-ecological factors. Such land cover changes affect environmental sustainability, and we stress the need to adequately identify and address the cumulative social and environmental impacts of mega-infrastructure projects and their interacting investments. The findings of this study provide an evidence base for the evaluation of the social–ecological impacts of the SGR and the implementation of best practices that will lead to enhanced sustainability in the development corridors in Kenya and beyond.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe