Poverty and profit in Central American forest policies

The failure of forestry to contribute to poverty reduction in Central America is due to public policies which inhibit its profitability. Absence of public regulation of harvesting and competing subsidies to agriculture keep forestry stumpage prices artificially low. This encourages destruction of the forest resource, which damages both the environment and the potential to reduce poverty. A comparison of Costa Rica and Honduras reveals two dissimilar approaches toward forest policy. While Costa Rica attempts to raise producer and grower stumpage prices by tax credits, soft loans and differential species fees, Honduras enforces price ceilings and uses centralized authority to control forest production and export. Both countries exhibit weaknesses in the management control cycle of programming, budgeting, implementing and evaluating their forest policies. Yet the Costa Rican approach has increased stumpage prices already, which bodes well for their forest sector. By contrast, the major beneficiary of Honduran forest policy has been COHDEFOR, the state enterprise responsible for forestry management, controlling production, and running its national system of agroforestry cooperatives. Despite greater public authority and resources than the Costa Rican forest service (DGF), the Honduran forest policy is not likely to increase producer profitability or reduce poverty in the near future.     

阿富汗在地区合作中的作用

2006年6月20日,阿富汗伊斯兰国总统哈米德·卡尔扎伊(HamidKarzai)应邀访问中国现代国际关系研究院,并就阿富汗当前形势,包括阿富汗和平与重建的成就、阿富汗如何重新融入地区与国际社会、阿富汗在地区发展与繁荣中的作用与地位,以及阿富汗的稳定对中国的具体利益何在等问题作了精彩演讲。现将卡尔扎伊总统的演讲全文刊发,以飨读者。     

The Social Conditions for Nanomedicine: Disruption, Systems, and Lock-in

Here we consider two ways that nanomedicine might be disruptive. First, low-end disruptions that are intrinsically unpredictable but limited in scope, and second, high end disruptions that involve broader societal issues but can be anticipated, allowing opportunity for ethical reflection.     

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