This article identifies and estimates economic drought vulnerability indicators among communal farmers in South Africa, using an economic vulnerability index based on a household survey of 121 communal farmers. The results show that lack of resources, unemployment, price sensitivity, market access, the level of farm debt, output, on- and off-farm diversification, management, and financial safety nets were the main economic vulnerability variables. Farm debt and financial safety provide the bulk of the vulnerability index. The study’s findings suggest that government should reconsider priorities in the implementation of appropriate policy measures in response to drought. 相似文献
Informal objectives of managers next to the formal objective of the organization can be a source of organizational slack or X-inefficiency in nonprofit organizations. If the organization is subsidized the donor can restrain organizational slack by choosing an appropriate subsidy system. Four subsidy systems are discussed: output, input, revenue and lump sum subsidy. Output subsidy reduces slack most. The ranking of input subsidy compared with lump sum subsidy depends on the elasticity of demand for output. Revenue subsidy equals input subsidy. Changes in the subsidy regime for residential adult educations in the Netherlands turn out to have been inconsistent. 相似文献
This article provides an assessment of the "Kyoto mechanisms" – joint implementation, Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and emissions trading established pursuant to Articles 6, 12 and 17 of the Kyoto Protocol. It focuses on significant policy issues raised by supplementarity, liability, equity and the design considerations relevant to operationalizing the mechanisms nationally and internationally. 相似文献
Inthis article a number of general principles and practical tasks awaiting South African publishers are discussed by Andries Walter Oliphant, editor of Staffrider. Some of the points discussed are:
the need for all South African publishers to underwrite non-racist democratic values;
the need for South African publishers to advocate and defend the right of the reading public to have access to all published material and information;
the need for publishers to counter the history of injustice, ignorance, racial prejudice and oppression by exposing and criticising any manifestation of it in society, the state and the media; and
to give space to subordinate classes, such as workers and gender groups, to articulate their interests and conceptions of what freedom and social justice might mean to them.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, several national and international government agencies have initiated organised crime
threat assessments. Additionally, a few scholars have published methods to assess the risks and threats of organised crime.
These governmental bodies and scholars claim that their reports and methods can demonstrate that certain forms of organised
crime are more threatening than others and thus help policy-makers set strategic priorities. In this article I discuss these
claims by examining the reliability and validity of the operational definitions of the key concepts used, such as organised
crime, threat and risk. This examination reveals that most reports and methods provide insufficient detail—and sometimes even
no details at all—to guarantee the reliability and validity of their operational definitions. The search for validity is made
particularly difficult by the ambiguity surrounding the concepts of organised crime, threat and risk, while the concept of
cost is less problematic. Moreover, establishing what constitutes a threat is at its core a normative decision that cannot
be left to intelligence analysts or scientists alone. The challenge ahead lies in acknowledging the normative framework of
organised crime threat assessments and within that framework maximising the reliability and validity of the operational definitions
of key concepts and related measuring instruments. 相似文献
A post-2012 regime aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could develop towards a universal or fragmented regime.
The fundamental difference between a universal and a fragmented regime is that the first involves a single comprehensive climate
regime in which all countries participate, whereas the second involves either multiple treaties or a single treaty in which
not all countries participate. This study assesses the literature on a wide range of different model studies concerning the
environmental effectiveness and economic consequences of various universal and fragmented climate regimes. The most important
conclusions (e.g. relative position of regions in terms of costs) are generally consistent across different studies, despite
the differences in methodology. We conclude that stabilising GHG concentrations at low levels is more costly with a fragmented
regime than with a universal regime, because reduction targets must be achieved by a smaller number of countries or because
fragmented treaties may prevent reducing GHGs where it is cheapest to do so. However, establishing a universal regime will
be challenging due to cost differences between regions if emissions are allocated based on specific allocation rules and incentives
to free-ride on a universal regime. Even though alternative behaviours such as responsibility, the implementation of transfer
schemes or exclusive membership can increase the likelihood of achieving a universal regime, a fragmented regime seems more
feasible. Therefore, a transitional fragmented ‘coalition of the willing’ could be established first, which could provide
the basis for a larger, universal regime in the long term.
In the European Union a number of emission standards for stationary sources have been harmonised. For many years the legal basis has been article 100 EEC (renumbered as article 94 by the Amsterdam Treaty), which calls for harmonisation to eliminate and prevent distortions of competition in the common market. In the paper, two views of distortion of competition are distinguished: either as an inefficiency in the allocation of resources or as an inequity of starting conditions. At first sight, the inequity interpretation seems to have been the primary motive for harmonising source emission standards. However, a closer investigation reveals that actual harmonisation policies also partly reflect the inefficiency view. Implicitly, the harmonisation policies of the EU may trade off efficiency and equity. 相似文献
This study investigates the tenability off. Wayne Baker's viewsof theological and political federalism and the origins thereofin the thought of Heinrich Bullinger within the jurisprudentialcontext of the early Cape settlement (16521708). Mostauthors commenting on the ideological roots of this Dutch settlementof the middle of the seventeenth century advanced the uncriticalnotion that Dutch Calvinism determined the nature of the communityat the Cape. A critical analysis shows that the Reformed approachof federalism, flowing from Henrich Bullinger's views of thecovenant, played a much more fundamental role in this earlyformative phase of typical Cape jurisprudence. This federaljurisprudence provided a vision of legality based on the lawof God and legitimacy involving the whole of society bound tothe precepts in the Decalogue. In the final analysis, the underpinningsof the rule of law applied at the Cape settlement confirm Baker'sconclusions about the fundamental impact Bullinger's federalviews had on the Reformed world of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. 相似文献