Technical Seminar on Water and Poverty for Latin America and the Caribbean: Setting a Research Agenda

This document is the Final Report prepared by the National Center for the Environment (CENMA) of the University of Chile for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to comply with number 5. of the Letter of Agreement signed by both institutions to specified the conditions under which the Seminar was carried out and organized jointly by them. The Seminar was held in Santiago, Chile on May 22-23, 2003. This document contains summaries of the working sessions and a discussion of some of the theoretical and empirical issues related to one of the different aspects of the two dimensions of the water-poverty relationship under analysis in the Seminar.Water management, Water Supply and Sanitation, Poverty, Environment, Water Resources

Inclusive growth in English cities: mainstreamed or sidelined?

<p>The concept of inclusive growth is increasingly presented as offering prospects for more equitable social outcomes. However, inclusive growth is subject to a variety of interpretations and lacks definitional clarity. In England, via devolution, cities are taking on new powers for policy domains that can influence inclusive growth outcomes. This opens up opportunities for innovation to address central issues of low pay and poverty. This paper examines the extent to which inclusive growth concerns form a central or peripheral aspect in this new devolution through the content analysis of devolution agreements. It concludes that inclusive growth concerns appear to be largely sidelined.</p

Does working with spouses make teams more productive? A field experiment in India using NREGA

経済学 / EconomicsAn important question in labour economics is whether the presence in a work environment of friends or relations lowers or raises productivity. We examine the question using evidence from a simple field experiment in Uttar Pradesh, India with married wives and husbands. Teams of four are engaged to dig soil under the NREGA programme. In one treatment husbands and wives work together; in the other treatment they work in separate teams. We find that working with spouses is associated with significantly higher productivity.JEL Classification Codes: C9, D1, D7, M5, O1http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/munro_alistair

A Cross-Sectional Survey on Knowledge and Perceptions of Health Risks Associated with Arsenic and Mercury Contamination from Artisanal Gold mining in Tanzania.

An estimated 0.5 to 1.5 million informal miners, of whom 30-50% are women, rely on artisanal mining for their livelihood in Tanzania. Mercury, used in the processing gold ore, and arsenic, which is a constituent of some ores, are common occupational exposures that frequently result in widespread environmental contamination. Frequently, the mining activities are conducted haphazardly without regard for environmental, occupational, or community exposure. The primary objective of this study was to assess community risk knowledge and perception of potential mercury and arsenic toxicity and/or exposure from artisanal gold mining in Rwamagasa in northwestern Tanzania. A cross-sectional survey of respondents in five sub-villages in the Rwamagasa Village located in Geita District in northwestern Tanzania near Lake Victoria was conducted. This area has a history of artisanal gold mining and many of the population continue to work as miners. Using a clustered random selection approach for recruitment, a total of 160 individuals over 18 years of age completed a structured interview. The interviews revealed wide variations in knowledge and risk perceptions concerning mercury and arsenic exposure, with 40.6% (n=65) and 89.4% (n=143) not aware of the health effects of mercury and arsenic exposure respectively. Males were significantly more knowledgeable (n=59, 36.9%) than females (n=36, 22.5%) with regard to mercury (x²=3.99, p<0.05). An individual's occupation category was associated with level of knowledge (x²=22.82, p=<0.001). Individuals involved in mining (n=63, 73.2%) were more knowledgeable about the negative health effects of mercury than individuals in other occupations. Of the few individuals (n=17, 10.6%) who knew about arsenic toxicity, the majority (n=10, 58.8%) were miners. The knowledge of individuals living in Rwamagasa, Tanzania, an area with a history of artisanal gold mining, varied widely with regard to the health hazards of mercury and arsenic. In these communities there was limited awareness of the threats to health associated with exposure to mercury and arsenic. This lack of knowledge, combined with minimal environmental monitoring and controlled waste management practices, highlights the need for health education, surveillance, and policy changes

Conceptualising sustainability in UK urban Regeneration: a discursive Formation

Despite the wide usage and popular appeal of the concept of sustainability in UK policy, it does not appear to have challenged the status quo in urban regeneration because policy is not leading in its conceptualisation and therefore implementation. This paper investigates how sustainability has been conceptualised in a case-based research study of the regeneration of Eastside in Birmingham, UK, through policy and other documents, and finds that conceptualisations of sustainability are fundamentally limited. The conceptualisation of sustainability operating within urban regeneration schemes should powerfully shape how they make manifest (or do not) the principles of sustainable development. Documents guide, but people implement regeneration—and the disparate conceptualisations of stakeholders demonstrate even less coherence than policy. The actions towards achieving sustainability have become a policy ‘fix’ in Eastside: a necessary feature of urban policy discourse that is limited to solutions within market-based constraints

National Security Risks? Uncertainty, Austerity and Other Logics of Risk in the UK government’s National Security Strategy

Risk scholars within Security studies have argued that the concept of security has gone through a fundamental transformation away from a threat-based conceptualisation of defence, urgency and exceptionality to one of preparedness, precautions and prevention of future risks, some of which are calculable, others of which are not. This article explores whether and how the concept of security is changing due to this ‘rise of risk’, through a hermeneutically grounded conceptual and discourse analysis of the United Kingdom government’s national security strategy (NSS) from 1998 to 2011. We ask how risk-security language is employed in the NSS; what factors motivate such discursive shifts; and what, if any, consequences of these shifts can be discerned in UK national security practices. Our aim is twofold: to better understand shifts in the security understandings and policies of UK authorities; and to contribute to the conceptual debate on the significance of the rise of risk as a component of the concept of security

Clinical leadership in service redesign using Clinical Commissioning Groups: a mixed-methods study

Background: A core component of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (Great Britain. Health and Social Care Act 2012. London: HMSO; 2012) was the idea of devolving to general practitioners (GPs) a health service leadership role for service redesign. For this purpose, new Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) were formed in the English NHS.Objectives: This research examined the extent to which, and the methods by which, clinicians stepped forward to take up a leadership role in service redesign using CCGs as a platform.Design: The project proceeded in five phases: (1) a scoping study across 15 CCGs, (2) the design and administration of a national survey of all members of CCG governing bodies in 2014, (3) six main in-depth case studies, (4) a second national survey of governing body members in 2016, which allowed longitudinal comparisons, and (5) international comparisons.Participants: In addition to GPs serving in clinical lead roles for CCGs, the research included insights from accountable officers and other managers and perspectives from secondary care and other provider organisations (local authority councillors and staff, patients and the public, and other relevant bodies).Results: Instances of the exercise of clinical leadership utilising the mechanism of the CCGs were strikingly varied. Some CCG teams had made little of the opportunity. However, we found other examples of clinicians stepping forward to bring about meaningful improvements in services. The most notable cases involved the design of integrated care for frail elderly patients and others with long-term conditions. The leadership of these service redesigns required cross-boundary working with primary care, secondary care, community care and social work. The processes enabling such breakthroughs required interlocking processes of leadership across three arenas: (1) strategy-level work at CCG board level, (2) mid-range operational planning and negotiation at programme board level and (3) the arena of practical implementation leadership at the point of delivery. The arena of the CCG board provided the legitimacy for strategic change; the programme boards worked through the competing logics of markets, hierarchy and networks; and the practice arena allowed the exercise of clinical leadership in practical problemsolving, detailed learning and routinisation of new ways of working at a common-sense everyday level.Limitations: Although the research was conducted over a 3-year period, it could be argued that a much longer period is required for CCGs to mature and realise their potential.Conclusions: Despite the variation in practice, we found significant examples of clinical leaders forging new modes of service design and delivery. A great deal of the service redesign effort was directed at compensating for the fragmented nature of the NHS – part of which had been created by the 2012 reforms. This is the first study to reveal details of such work in a systematic way

Ambitions of a global city: Arts, culture and creative economy in 'Post-Crisis' Singapore

10.1080/10286632.2011.639876International Journal of Cultural Policy183279-29