How can links between disaster mitigation and urban planning be strengthened? Can urban livelihood strategies reduce poor city dwellers’ vulnerability to disaster? Scant attention is currently paid by relief organisations to urban planning and disaster mitigation, according to a recent Care International report.
Can private sector participation (PSP) in the provision of water supply and sanitation services (WSS) meet essential social and environmental needs? New research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) suggests that inappropriate forms of private sector involvement that are inadequately regulated are unlikely to be of much value to poorer households or the environment.
The domestic water sector has focused for many years on benefiting health by improving supply. Can more and better water improve people’s health? Does improved water supply by government and agencies really meet the basic needs of the poor? Or should water be treated as an economic good?
Transition from subsistence to market economy is not easy. In Papua New Guinea most land is still held under traditional systems of common property resource ownership and a growing cash economy can spark conflict concerning management or ownership issues. Research presented at the annual meeting of the UK Development Studies Association (DSA) examines the institutional limitations, during transition, of traditional ownership systems.
Can the twin developmental goals of administrative decentralisation and improving services for the urban poor be meshed? How can urban authorities and local politicians learn to listen to service users, particularly women? What services should be run by municipalities and what could be managed by neighbourhood or private management?
How can young people be involved in creating more livable cities? Can the noble participation principles set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Agenda 21 of the Earth Summit, and Habitat II be realised? What is being done to help young people, especially children in difficult circumstances, to get their voices heard by policy-makers?
The incidence of skin diseases, including leishmaniasis, spread by different varieties of sandflies in tropical areas has increased dramatically in humans. Because of deforestation, sandflies have encroached further into human settlements. Here they have begun to infect domestic animals and humans. What can be done to control this trend? Researchers studied the impact that insecticide impregnated curtains have had on skin leishmaniasis.
Could more efficient use of energy have an impact on poverty alleviation? What changes in energy use patterns are likely to generate the greatest benefits for the poor? What are the constraints on the uptake of energy efficiency measures? Can they be overcome?
Traditional land tenure systems in Togo have been undermined but not destroyed by the introduction of private property and ‘modern’ tenure reform. However, confusion over land tenure issues has proved to be an obstacle to efforts to promote efficient resource management and to combat desertification.
Is the formal education system the best avenue for delivery of effective environmental education? Can Ethiopia’s newly decentralised educational administrations work with other arms of government and farmers to tackle the short-term and unsustainable resource exploitation patterns which imperil prospects of ever achieving food self-sufficiency?
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