Water accounting for the Orange River Basin: An economic perspective on managing a transboundary resource

The framework for water accounting is applied to an international river basin, the Orange River Basin, which is shared among Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and South Africa. Each of the riparian states faces water constraints and relies increasingly on shared international water resources. The countries have adopted the principle of an economic approach to water management, once basin human needs are met, and all but Lesotho have constructed national water accounts to assist in water management. The water accounts for the Orange River Basin bring an economic perspective to water management at the regional level. The accounts include supply and use tables, which are used to compare the contribution to water supply from each riparian state to the amount used. The water accounts are then linked to economic data for each country to calculate water use and productivity by industry and country. There are considerable disparities in water productivity among the countries, which should be taken into account in future decisions about water allocation, pricing and infrastructure development.     

Macroeconomic Uncertainty in South Africa

This paper develops a new index of economic uncertainty for South Africa for the period 1990–2014. The index is constructed from three sources: (1 ) Disagreement among professional forecasters, (2 ) a count of international and local newspaper articles discussing economic uncertainty in South Africa and (3 ) mentions of uncertainty in the quarterly economic review of the South African Reserve Bank. The index shows high levels of uncertainty around the period of democratic transition in 1992–1994, the large depreciation of the currency in 2001 and the financial crisis of 2008. The uncertainty index is a leading indicator of a recession. An unanticipated increase in the index is associated with a fall in GDP, investment, industrial production and private sector employment. Contrary to evidence for the U.S.A and the U.K., uncertainty shocks are inflationary. These results are robust to controlling for global uncertainty shocks, consumer confidence and financial shocks.     

Relationship between foreign capital flows,domestic investment and savings in the SADC region

The importance of foreign capital in the domestic economy cannot be underestimated as it bridges the gap between domestic capital demand and supply. Given this background the paper studies the relationship between the different types of foreign capital flows in the Southern Africa Development Region (SADC) region – foreign direct investment (FDI), remittances, cross border bank flows (CBF), overseas development assistance (ODA) – and domestic savings and investment, employing the panel cointegration test and the dynamic ordinary least squares method (DOLS). The empirical results reveal that there is a strong positive relationship between domestic investment and domestic savings, FDI and remittances. These findings indicate that FDI remittances help in overcoming the limits on the domestic capital formation in the SADC region through permitting a rate of investment which is in excess of that which can be generated by domestic savings. Important policy implications on attracting foreign capital flows are discussed in the paper.     

Tourism in Tropical Africa A review of literature in English and research agenda

Literature on tourism in tropical Africa is reviewed to indicate the current and future roles of tourism in tropical African countries. Attention is then directed to research issues whose investigation may lead to the development of guidelines for the extension, regulation, and management of tourism. These issues are arranged under the following headings: inventory, demand, types of tourism, economic impacts, socio-cultural impacts, environmental impacts, infrastructure, regional patterns, international cooperation, and tourism futures.     

Characteristics of a Medical Tourism Industry: The Case of South Korea

This study investigates the process involved in developing a medical tourism industry in South Korea as a case country, one of the fastest growing countries with strong potential in the medical tourism industry. It analyzed 252 articles on medical tourism posted on the websites of the Korean Tourism Organization and the Korean International Medical Association. Both sources are highly representative portal websites for medical tourism in the country. The article aims to enhance understanding of medical tourism as a new growth industry while identifying its key developmental characteristics and makes valuable suggestions for the industry that can be reflected to other countries. The study contributes theoretically and practically by examining the unique and updated characteristics and process of positioning of this recently emerging field in the global tourism industry.     

National parks in the third world and associated national characteristics

Abstract

For 102 third world countries, presence and absence of national parks is used as the dependent or classification variable in a discriminant analysis. Eleven variables suggestive of diverse tropical savanna habitats contribute to a single canonical discriminant function. Socioeconomic variables are poor contributors to the function. Seventy‐nine of the countries are properly classified in their group by the canonical discriminant function. Misclassification focuses on sub‐Saharan Africa where many countries have established parks under “improper”; conditions, and strong positive association with the function calls attention to Latin America.     

Whitewashing Plantations

Summary

This article begins with a brief explanation of personal experiences on plantation tours. It follows with an empirical examination of tourist brochures from over 100 plantations and a textual analysis of their data. A frequency count of keywords is created, serving to highlight that “slavery,” “slaves” and “slave cabins” occur less often than such expressions as “owners,” “landscapes” and “furnishings.” Reasons for this imbalance are sought. More specifically, the investigation asks why plantation owners and their operations under-emphasize slavery and what this situation means for the contemporary tourist. In so doing, the inquiry attempts to answer the question as to whether or not such mar-ginalization of slavery is a legitimate concern now and in the future.     

南方长城与"长城文化之旅"的开发

中国南方长城的存在已是不争的事实,苗疆边墙不论在修筑的时间还是在结构和功能上,都与北方长城没有什么两样,不同的是它经过我国湿润的人口密度较大的地区,从而使长城作为历史上中国特定地区不同民族文化之间的功能界线,这一特有的文化背景,在更小的区域内得到了清晰的体现。由于南方长城的存在,凤凰的文化景观形成了差异明显的三大区：民族文化分界区、民族文化分离区和民族文化联合区,它们各自具有鲜明的特色,都是凤凰旅游的重要引力源。本文在挖掘长城文化内涵,诠注凤凰三大文化景观区之间成因联系的基础上,提出以长城文化为旅游主题,以“中国南方长城之旅”为旅游形象,以南方长城和民族文化分合为景观整合的线索,打造中国长城文化旅游精品的思路和措施。     

RETHINKING THE RESEARCH FUNDING PROCESS: An Indian Perspective

In this paper I focus on the substantial research funding cuts announced by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in March 2021 to examine the process of funding for and participation in global research projects for researchers based in Southern institutions. I focus here on three key aspects of participating in global research projects: first, the structures through which these grants are created—the programmatic frameworks or other imperatives that confine and limit this work to Northern/Western-centric frames; secondly, the precarity of these grants and the work that they generate; and, thirdly, the increasingly output-related and time-bound nature of work in light of limited support. I argue that the effects of these are felt disproportionately by those located in the global South and are therefore worth considering as part of larger debates centred on democratizing and decolonizing knowledge networks.