Community resilience,policy corridors and the policy challenge

This article discusses the complex interlinkages between community resilience and the policy challenge, linked especially to the notion of state-led policy corridors and who should be in charge of the ‘global resilience transition’. State policies affect every community within a nation state either directly or indirectly, and pathways of change are channelled into specific ‘corridors’ which can have both malign and benign repercussions for community resilience. While the most effective policies are usually tailored specifically at the needs of particular communities and dependent on appropriate timing of policy implementation, state policies also often lead to a reduction of community resilience. The increasing embeddedness of most communities into the global capitalist system also makes it difficult to raise resilience and trade-offs become inevitable. In many communities (often in the global South) policies may have to focus on preventing further loss of resilience at community level, while in others (often in the developed world) the focus may have to be on the rediscovery of strongly resilient pathways. A new contract between the state and communities may have to be established, as new forms of institutionalisation, regulation and spatialisation become significant in the uneven development of spaces of resilience where the rediscovery of strong resilience has to become an inherently moral process. Building strong community resilience is often an endogenous process linked to local customs that, at times, may operate, change and influence decision-making outside of the state policy realm, although community-level actors cannot always be left alone to guide their own resilience pathways without interference from the state. Some external regulation of resilience transitions may be needed and in most cases the state has to play at least some role in guiding and influencing the transition towards strong community resilience – i.e. resilience is not ‘made’ and does not emerge out of a vacuum, but it is transferred through complex processes of policy and other exchanges between communities and wider society.     

One federal policy,four different policy contexts: An examination of agri-environmental policy implementation in the Midwestern United States

Much research attention has been given to devolved environmental policies and variation in state adoption of environmental policies. Less attention has been paid to variation in top-down federal policies, including in the agri-environmental arena. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is the largest working land conservation program in the United States, incentivizing the adoption of conservation practices on active agricultural land through cost-share and technical assistance. While the program is federal, state offices of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are charged with implementing the program in their state. Qualitative interviews (n = 26) were conducted with NRCS personnel in four Midwestern states to explore similarities and differences between state administrative outputs. Program outputs are determined through a mixture of national, state, and local administrative processes and are driven by dissimilarities in state resource concerns and agricultural systems. The process by which farmers apply for cost-share funding through EQIP is largely the same across states, but states vary in several important outputs, especially resource and conservation practice priority, as well as state and local partnerships. Outreach methods do not tend to vary between states; NRCS districts typically rely on passive recruitment and word-of-mouth recruitment. Divergence in state EQIP outputs constitute a significant difference in the policy context in which farmers make conservation decisions in the Midwest, which has implications for research concerning farmer behavior. While federal policies implemented across the states offer some level of consistency in the setting in which individual land managers make decisions, variation may still exist in many policies that results in different policy outputs.     

The agricultural policy trilemma: On the wicked nature of agricultural policy making

Agricultural policy has been seen as exceptional, compartmentalized and complex. Consequently, policy making in agriculture has been portrayed as particularly difficult – sometimes as an example of a ‘wicked problem’. In this paper I argue that agricultural policy is more than ‘just’ a complex and wicked problem. It tends to be inbuilt contradictions in the form of trilemmas in agricultural policymaking, which imply that some combinations of core goals are impossible to reach. In this article I develop and illustrate the concept of an agricultural policy trilemma with Norway as a case – a plausibility probe. I argue that the concept of a trilemma may be a useful analytical tool in analysing policy and shifting policy priorities. I describe the development, and workings, of the trilemma from the 1970′s to the beginning of the corona crisis in 2020.     

Eviction policy in postwar Angola

Angola's four decades of civil war continue to have a profound effect on the country's recovery and development. While the end to the war in 2002 and the subsequent extraction of natural resources has fueled the country's economic recovery for a minority, for the majority recovery depends less on natural resource extraction than it does on acquiring and maintaining secure access to land and property upon which viable livelihoods can be rebuilt. However the current large scale evictions in urban and peri-urban areas of the country and the resulting acute tenure insecurity is significantly worrying, and is the single most acute land rights, land policy, and political problem in the country. Aspects of the country's constitution and the development of the postwar land law facilitate eviction, and an important opportunity to upgrade postwar informal land rights has been missed. Land and property rights problems have played a significant role in the country's armed conflicts and social problems, and current trends are constructing a difficult future.     

农业产业化扶持政策

一、加大财政投入力度各级财政的农业开发资金、基地建设资金等支农资金要优化投资结构,调整投资方向和建设内容,重点投入农业产业化经营,实行捆绑使用,避免分散投入。扶贫资金要紧紧围绕农业产业化经营,集中投入,重点安排。省财政在“十五”期间每年安排一定数量的资金投入市场前景好的农业产业化经营项目和基地建设。各级地方财政要加大对农业产业化经营的投入、配套支持。财政投入龙头企业的资金可采用垫付资本金入股(可先入后退)、贷款贴息等方式扶持企业发展;可对农民实行种苗补贴,让农民直接受益;可安排部分无偿资金用于基地建设及其…     

捕捞渔业的安全政策与研究

捕捞渔业一直是人类最危险的行业之一.在捕捞渔业安全政策领域,相关法律框架的完善是提高安全措施实施的一个重要先决条件.然而,在渔业安全的研究工作上并没有足够数量的对意外事故的处理记录,而且在多数情况下不同国家之间的处理没有可比性.此外,还缺乏对全球捕捞渔业安全的研究工作.目前的工作主要是勾勒出国家最先进的捕捞渔业安全轮廓.论文对涉及渔业安全的主要机构、组织和研究人员等方面都进行了分析,探讨了几个渔业安全方面的问题,包括渔业部门用什么样的制度政策来提高捕捞渔业活动的安全性?哪些方面和/或参数通常用于分析捕捞渔业事故的发生?这种分析通常用于哪些方面?捕捞渔业安全研究的主题是什么?分析结果确定了捕捞渔业安全研究的八条具体路线和五个有关渔业部门处理海上安全的方案.     

Land policy and land engineering

Based on the relationship between land policy and land engineering, we defined the concept of ‘land engineering’ and its contents, and demonstrated the significance of the establishment of land engineering. On the one hand, the land policy guided the development of the land engineering. On the other hand, the land engineering is an important means to improve and execute the land policy. The contents of land engineering are summarized as follows: (1) conversion of non-agricultural land into agricultural land; (2) conversion of low standard use land into a high standard use land; (3) conversion of current land into human construction use; (4) conversion of polluted and damaged land into usable land. Our study provides scientific support for the efficient utilization of land resources.     

Intervention bias in agricultural policy

This paper re-examines the motivation for government intervention in agriculture to support farm prices and incomes. A model is outlined in which the government has a preference for higher farm incomes but fails to provide farmers with the socially optimal level of price support, even when one accepts the government's income redistribution goals as a valid reflection of social preference. It is shown that agricultural policy has an intervention bias: government price supports generally are higher than would be socially optimal. The source of the intervention bias is a time inconsistency in optimal agricultural policy formation, caused by the government's inability to precommit to a rule for setting future price support levels. Simulation results indicate that in some circumstances the intervention bias in agricultural policy can be substantial.     

论现代渔业公共政策客体——基于渔业现代化的公共政策客体分析

"十二五"时期,现代渔业公共政策不仅要作用于渔业、渔村、渔民,而且要调节或解决产业发展的各类矛盾,才有可能达到政策所要改变的状态--推进渔业现代化.渔业公共政策系统可以划分为政策主体、政策客体、政策组织、政策运行体制、政策咨询、政策信息等6个子系统.现代渔业公共政策客体包括目标群体、现代渔业问题、政策所要改变的状态等.渔民及其它涉渔者构成了目标群体,产业发展的各类矛盾构成了现代渔业问题,渔业、渔民、渔村现代化构成了政策所要改变的状态.推进渔业现代化,必须抓养殖对象良种化、渔业投入品化学化、渔业装备机械化、渔业活动标准化、渔业过程信息化、渔业要素配置和产品营销市场化、渔业布局区域化、渔业生产和组织专业化、渔业经营产业化;推进渔业现代化,必须促进农(渔)民的职业分化、迁移流动,提高农(渔)民的教育水平,内生其现代化动力,增强农(渔)民的科技意识和文化素养,以及民主法制意识、依法维权意识,培养渔民健康文明的生活方式;推进渔业现代化,必须稳定和完善渔区农村水域滩涂使用制度,推进渔区农村发展的产业支撑多元化和工业化,推进渔区农村小城镇建设和渔区城乡一体化建设.     

Investment rigidity and policy measures

This paper assesses the impacts of decoupled government transferson production decisions of a sample of Kansas farms. Our empiricalanalysis is based on a reduced-form application of the dualmodel of investment under uncertainty developed by Sckokai,which is extended to a consideration of irregularities in thecapital stock adjustment cost function. To do so we adopt thethreshold regression methods proposed by Hansen. The econometricresults support the existence of three regimes characterisedby different economic behaviour. Our analysis suggests thatin a dynamic setting that allows for irregularities in the capitaladjustment cost function, decoupled transfers can have a powerfulinfluence on production decisions. The dynamics of the stockof capital cause this influence to grow over time.     

Banana policy: a European perspective

European Union banana policies do not make economic sense, and hence criticism of these policies is justified. Some facts should, though, be remembered. If the EU had chosen free trade in bananas when the Single Market was established, certain producers both inside and outside the EU would have lost income, and it proved politically impossible to choose direct financial compensation. Also, the quantitative implications of the new EU banana regime may be less than sometimes assumed, as trade has not been reduced very much. The WTO's role is not to judge the economic merits of these policies, but their legal justification.     

Investment decision-making under economic policy uncertainty

It is widely established that economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects investment decisions and performance, yet research in this area has overlooked the direct property investment market. This article seeks to rectify this and proposes a multistage multilevel analytical framework to offer new insights and a richness of findings. Using a news-based measure of EPU in the United Kingdom, and controlling for economic conditions, a national-level analysis reveals some evidence of Granger-Causality between EPU and total returns, indicating that pricing is responsive to uncertainty. These findings suggest that EPU is an important risk factor for direct property investments, with pricing implications. Differences in data and performance measure are important, however, with income returns unresponsive. A micro-level investigation begins to reveal some of the asset-pricing decisions underpinning the national results, indicating investors’ concerns for income streams are consistently high, regardless of varying EPU. Pricing can also cause changes in EPU, such as in the retail and industrial markets (increasingly linked through logistics) reflecting sector-specific stakeholder groups and newsworthy issues. This evidence highlights how important it is for policy-makers to understand the complex and bi-directional relationship, that indecision can undermine investment confidence and cause investment market volatility, in turn raising EPU.     

农村“双置换”的适用条件分析

农村"双置换"能够推进农村城镇化,实现农村土地规模化经营,提高农村土地利用效率,缓解城市用地的需求压力,促进当地经济发展。结合我国"双置换"的实施情况,针对"双置换"出现的问题,提出保证农村"双置换"实施的4个适用条件,即当地应具有较强的财政支撑能力,城市对当地农村应有较强的辐射能力,农民有较高程度的自愿性,农民应具备从事非农产业的能力。     

完善粮食直补的建议

1.对于粮食直接补贴政策目标的认识存在误区。关于我国粮食直接补贴政策目标的认识,目前存在的一个误区就是部分人认为补贴主要目标是提高农民收入。在实践中,不少地区采用脱钩补贴的形式,即以计税面积、计税常产或基期商品粮数量为依据计算补贴,补贴的对象是所有承包土地的农户,而与是否种粮并无关系。我们应当明确,与美国、欧盟等发达国家不同,我国粮食直接补贴政策的目标应主要是提高农民的种粮积极性,确保我国的粮食安全,目前我国还没有进入通过直接补贴来稳定和提高农民收入水平的发展阶段。2.补贴强度太低。由于我国目前财力有限,各地…