Suchergebnisse

After giving a short account of objectives of the Public Rural Works Programme (PRWP), the author discusses the administrative organization of the programme, macro-planning of such programmes, project level planning and implementation, financial aspects of PRWP, its physical achievements etc. The author thinks that as an anti-poverty measure the PRWP is limited because it has difficulty in reaching those who are employed, but whose income falls below a 'poverty line' and also because the benefits of the Programme may be distributed unevently. (DÜI-Sen)

Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. A substantial part of human well-being is dependent on the sustainable flow of ES. Climate change, economic growth and an increasing human population has placed greater pressures on global ES. Australias ecosystems are among the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. Hence, a comprehensive review is necessary to explore ES research that integrates climate change impacts. Our review reveals that ES research in Australia, stimulated in the early 2000s, has continued to increase consistently after the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Australian ES research has primarily focused on the impact of land-use change and management, policy and governance issues, but less on the impact of climate change on ES. Climate change models show that climate will threaten most of the main ES in Australia by 2050. For the sustainable management of these ES-incorporating climate change-ecosystem and ES specific adaptations are suggested as the best sustainable policy tools for the future. Therefore, further research needs to incorporate climate change and ES for evidence-based sustainable management of Australias ES. We provide the following recommendations for future ES research: (i) evaluating the extent and trend of climate change impacts on ES through consideration of different climate change scenarios; (ii) preparing vulnerability maps of important ES that are likely to be sensitive to climate change and (iii) developing ecosystem and ES specific adaptations to climate change that involve key stakeholders. © 2014 Taylor and Francis. ; Associated Grant:Australian Government Endeavour Postgraduate Award programme

The Cross River State Government in Nigeria is proposing to construct a ''Cross River Superhighway'' that would bisect critical remaining areas of tropical rainforest in south eastern Nigeria. We offer and evaluate two alternative routes to the superhighway that would be less damaging to forests, protected areas, and biological diversity. The first alternative we identified avoids intact forests entirely while seeking to benefit agriculture and existing settlements. The second alternative also avoids intact forests while incorporating existing paved and unpaved roads to limit construction costs. As currently proposed, the superhighway would be 260 km long, would intersect 115 km of intact forests or protected areas, and would cost an estimated ~US$2.5 billion to construct. Alternative Routes 1 and 2 are only slightly longer (~290 and ~353 km, respectively) and have markedly lower estimated construction costs (~US$0.92 billion). Furthermore, the alternative routes would have negligible impacts on forests and protected areas and would be better aligned to benefit local communities and agriculture. We argue that alternative routings such as those we examined here could markedly reduce the economic and environmental costs, and potentially increase the socioeconomic benefits, for the proposed Cross River Superhighway.