Loss of land and livelihoods from mining operations: A case in the Limpopo Province,South Africa

Loss or degradation of communal lands can have major implications for people’s livelihoods and well-being in rural underdeveloped areas. Mining operations are one driver of land loss with negative implications for people. This study assesses the livelihood effects of open-cast mining on a rural communal land village that lost 8 000 ha of land and compares it to another village nearby that did not. The results suggest that the loss of land and the ecosystem services they provide has negatively affected people’s livelihood strategies and outcomes. On average, only 23 % of households in the affected village had crop fields compared to an adjacent village, that did not lose land to the mine, where 90 % of households had a crop field. This accounts for substantial losses in income through agriculture, both as cash earnings and savings, and negatively affects household food security. As a result of the mine the affected community has also lost access to grazing, and now many households must pay to graze their livestock in other areas. Furthermore, the option to harvest several key natural resources (provisioning services) or non-timber forest products (NTFPs) such as wild fruits and vegetables, edible insects, fuelwood, and to a lesser extent resources like reeds and medicinal plants were lost due to the mine, negatively impacting local livelihoods. NTFPs are important for rural livelihoods as they allow for cash saving, income generation and act as a safety net or fall-back option during times of increased vulnerability. The findings also give a good indication of changes in agriculture and resource use over time and the varying reasons for this. Other negative effects from the mine included; cracking of houses due to blasting, dust pollution, water contamination, social and cultural effects, community alterations and conflicts, and very little was seen to be gained in terms of employment through Social Labour Plans (SLPs) or corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Households in the village affected by the mine lose approximately R 15 000 per year through losses of agricultural potential and the ability to collect NTFPs, which is larger than the annual cash incomes for most households. This value is likely to be an underestimate of the total value lost, as reductions in grazing potential and the loss of supporting, regulating and cultural ecosystem services were not included in this figure. This study highlights the importance of considering land access and associated land-based livelihoods in rural communal land areas in the context of disturbance and change. Recommendations for future assessments and policy on compensation for rural communities are made and issues relating to CSR are discussed.     

Who is resilient in Africa’s Green Revolution? Sustainable intensification and Climate Smart Agriculture in Rwanda

Under the banner of a "New Green Revolution for Africa," agricultural intensification programs aim to make smallholder agriculture more productive as well as "climate smart". As with Green Revolutions in Asia and Mexico, agricultural innovations (hybrid seeds, agronomic engineering, market linkages,and increased use of fertilizer and pesticides) are promoted as essential catalysts of agriculture-led economic growth. Intensification programs are now frequently linked to Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), which attempts to build resilience and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing crop yields. This article considers who and what is resilient in Africa’s Green Revolution. We report on a multi-season study of smallholder food producers' experiences with Rwanda’s Crop Intensification Program (CIP) and related policies that aim to commercialize subsistence agriculture while implementing CSA. . We suggest that there are fundamental limits to the climate resilience afforded by CSA and development efforts rooted in Green Revolution thinking. Our findings illustrate that such efforts foreground technology and management adjustments in ways that have reduced smallholder resilience by inhibiting sovereignty over land use, decreasing livelihood flexibility, and constricting resource access. We put forth that rural development policies could better promote climate-resilient livelihoods through: 1) adaptive governance that enables smallholder land use decision-making; 2) support for smallholder food producers’ existing agro-ecological strategies of intensification; 3) participatory approaches to visualize and correct for inequalities in local processes of social-ecological resilence Such considerations are paramount for meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and building climate-resilient food systems.     

长期减贫的未雨绸缪——来自扶贫改革试验区的证据

巩固脱贫成果和解决相对贫困是2020年后中国长期减贫面临的主要挑战,为此东部地区率先进行了实践创新。本文以2003—2016年中国东部80个地级市的数据为样本,利用扶贫改革试验区的设立作为准自然实验,使用合成控制法识别了试验区政策的减贫效应、影响机制及作用渠道。结果显示:政策的实施显著实现了收入减贫与多维减贫,即农户收入得到提高和跌入多维贫困概率降低;丽水试验区的减贫效果最明显,阜新和清远的减贫效果一般;试验区内家庭的各类收入增加,贫困脆弱性和慢性贫困降低。进一步分析表明,减贫效果差异的宏观影响机制是包容性增长,政策主要通过保险覆盖、金融参与和社会网络等渠道对家户增收和减贫产生间接影响。本文的结论对于制定差别化扶贫政策、创新贫困监测机制、构建多元协同扶贫机制以及建立城乡统筹反贫困体系都有重要参考价值。     

产业扶贫政策能降低脱贫农户生计脆弱性吗?--政策效应评估与作用机制分析

在攻坚期内脱贫不脱政策背景下,利用湘鄂渝黔毗邻民族地区脱贫农户的问卷调查数据,实证考察了产业扶贫政策对脱贫农户生计脆弱性的影响。结果表明:产业扶贫政策显著抑制了脱贫农户生计脆弱性。在考虑了遗漏变量和安慰剂检验之后,上述结论仍然成立。对于精准扶贫政策实施力度较大的地区而言,产业扶贫政策对脱贫农户生计脆弱性的抑制效应更加突出。进一步的作用机制分析,明确了生计模式和致富意愿是产业扶贫政策降低脱贫群体生计脆弱性背后的深层原因,其中生计模式呈现了更为明显的渠道效应。在消除绝对贫困转向缓解相对贫困的重要时间节点上,本文为后脱贫攻坚与乡村振兴战略的政策衔接提供了有益的决策参考。     

战略性新兴产业的市场脆弱性及管理者过度自信--基于无锡尚德太阳能电力有限公司破产重组案例研究

利用数量技术方法构建了新兴产业市场脆弱性模型,并且用Matlab软件模拟了市场脆弱性演化趋势,利用文献法总结了管理者过度自信的测量方法和成因,用案例研究方法从市场脆弱性和管理者过度自信双视角分析了无锡尚德破产重组的原因。研究得出：新兴产业市场存在市场脆弱性问题,它受政策、偏好和技术三因素的影响显著;当前,新兴产业处于发展阶段,新兴产业的企业应该具备动态竞争能力,不宜采用规模化和成本化战略,宜采用专业化、小规模和差异化的柔性战略;管理者过度自信会让企业决策偏离对市场脆弱性的客观认识,从而导致企业在决策中采取更冒险的决策行为;战略性新兴产业市场脆弱性和管理者过度自信最终导致了无锡尚德的失败。最后,给出了一些管理建议。     

金融素养是否降低了家庭金融脆弱性?

金融素养对家庭金融脆弱性的影响具有不确定性,既可能通过增加家庭的资产和收入,降低家庭金融脆弱性;也可能通过增加家庭的负债与支出,提升家庭金融脆弱性。本文首先从金融知识、金融行为、金融态度三个维度测算金融素养,再基于"资不抵债"、"入不敷出"两个维度量化家庭金融脆弱性,最后构建实证模型,以CFPS（2014）为样本,量化分析金融素养对家庭金融脆弱性的影响。实证研究表明：金融素养的增加显著降低家庭金融脆弱性及"资不抵债"的概率;在金融素养的三个维度中,金融知识降低金融脆弱性、缓解资不抵债的作用更为显著。     

An evaluation framework for earthquake-responsive land administration

In recent years earthquakes and their secondary hazards have claimed the largest number of lives of all large natural disasters. Some of the world’s most earthquake-prone zones are also areas of high population density. The impact is magnified by vulnerability factors including non-enforcement of building codes, knowledge gaps, urban poverty and poor governance capacity to manage and reduce earthquake risks. Poor security of land tenure and property rights increases the vulnerability of people and affects their ability to respond to natural disasters.Earthquake recovery and reconstruction provides very significant challenges for land agencies, with these challenges differing from one country to the next due to differences in the local context. Drawing on contrasting case studies in Haiti, Nepal and New Zealand this paper identifies the common post-earthquake land administration functions and challenges that may apply to many contexts. These lessons provide land agencies and other key stakeholders with a summary of the challenges an earthquake poses for land administration at different post-disaster stages. We also discuss the policy and regulatory, institutional, operational and preparedness lessons for land administration. From these lessons we propose a framework for evaluating the earthquake-responsiveness of a land administration system. This framework can be used by a land agency in an earthquake prone region, or where an earthquake has recently occurred, to assess what challenges to land administration might occur in the event of an earthquake, and the preparedness of their land administration system.     

IDENTIFYING VULNERABILITY TO POVERTY: A CRITICAL SURVEY

In the economic literature on poverty, various methods have been proposed for measuring a phenomenon known as ‘vulnerability’. However, after more than a quarter century of research, no consensus has been reached on how to identify such vulnerable individuals within a given population. Some misunderstandings have also arisen from the overlapping of other closely related concepts, such as the expectation of being poor, expected poverty, multi‐period poverty and risk exposure. This paper offers a detailed conceptual discussion on vulnerability to poverty and its related elements, reviewing a wide range of identifying criteria provided in the literature. It is found that according to the state of the art in this field of research, two key elements stand out in identifying vulnerable individuals: an expected well‐being below the poverty line and a relevant risk of falling into poverty due to downside deviation from a reference level of well‐being. The traditional classification of vulnerability approaches has been updated into four groups: (i) those that stress the element of exposure to risk; (ii) those that emphasize the element of expected poverty; (iii) those that define vulnerability through a utility gap and (iv) those that are supported by a mean‐risk dominance criterion.     

Assessing disaster risk by integrating natural and socio-economic dimensions: A decision-support tool

The paper provides a conceptual framework for a multi-dimensional assessment of risk associated to natural disasters. The different components of risk (hazard, exposure, vulnerability and resilience) are seen in a combined natural and socio-economic perspective and are integrated into a Disaster Risk Assessment Tool (DRAT). The tool can be used to support disaster management strategies, as well as risk mitigation and adaptation strategies at very disaggregated geographical or administrative scales. In this paper, we illustrate the features of the DRAT and we apply the tool to 7556 Italian municipalities to map their multidimensional risk. DRAT can be particularly useful to identify hotspots that are characterized by high hazard, exposure and vulnerability and by low resilience. In order to identify hotspots, we perform a cluster analysis of the Italian municipalities in terms of their risk ranking based on DRAT. We also suggest how the tool may be exploited within the processes of disaster risk policy.     

What drives brands’ price response metrics? An empirical examination of the Chinese packaged goods industry

As competition among CPG brands intensifies in both emerging and developed markets, brand managers increasingly focus on price as the weapon-of-choice. This calls for an assessment of not only their own price response, but also of their competitive pricing power, and its antecedents. The authors propose a set of universally applicable ('etic') and country-specific ('emic') drivers of brand price elasticity, clout, and vulnerability, for the world’s largest emerging market (viz., China). Leveraging a unique and large-scale data set from this market, they find that high price response is not necessarily indicative of high clout, nor does it signal high vulnerability. Hence, all three price response metrics matter. They also uncover marked differences in the impact of brand- and category-level drivers on these three metrics. Established etic factors such as line length, distribution intensity, and stockpilability have a substantial effect on one or more price response metrics. Among the emic factors, Chinese embeddedness, and especially social demonstrance play an important role: it strongly drives down brands’ price elasticity, but also reduces the intensity of price competition in the category and makes brands less vulnerable to rival actions. Foreign brands, in contrast, exhibit higher price response, and do not enjoy higher clout nor lower vulnerability than their domestic counterparts. Hence, they neither benefit from the aura, nor suffer from the liability, of foreignness. Overall, the study adds to empirical generalizations on the impact of price, and helps managers improve the effectiveness of their pricing strategies.