South Africa’s National Water Act and National Water Resource Strategy set out an ambitious societal vision with a strong focus on the redistribution of water resources towards the marginalised and on empowering historically disadvantaged communities including women. This vision is reflected in the framework for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) that acknowledges women as pivotal in water management practices. Based on this premise, this paper examines the challenges women face in performing their roles in IWRM in rural South Africa. It draws on a study of a water user association that operates in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The design of the study was qualitative in nature with a semi-structured interview as the main data collection tool. The interview involved 14 respondents from Limpopo. The results showed marked gender difference in terms of roles performed. Based on the study, three kinds of roles were revealed: domestic, productive and decision-making roles. Men were significantly involved in productive roles, giving low priority to domestic roles. The key factors found to affect the role of women in decision-making in IWRM were cultural practices, low self-confidence, low levels of capacity, and high workloads. These factors were identified as key institutional inherent within the specific society. As such, these findings have significant implications for the efforts aimed at promoting gender equality. Particularly, the impact of culture on women in water management raises concerns regarding gender issues in rural and remote areas where people are poorer and more culturally conservative. 相似文献
In this paper the seismic response of inelastic structures with unilateral contact is revisited with dimensional analysis.
All physically realizable contact types are captured via a non-smooth complementarity approach. The implementation of formal
dimensional analysis leads to a condensed presentation of the response and unveils remarkable order even though two different
types of non-linearity coexist in the response: the boundary non-linearity of unilateral contact and the inelastic behaviour
of the structure itself. It is shown that regardless the intensity and frequency content of the excitation, all response spectra
become self-similar when expressed in the appropriate dimensionless terms. The proposed approach hinges upon the notion of
the energetic length scale of an excitation which measures the persistence of ground shaking to impose deformation demands.
Using the concept of persistency which is defined for excitations with or without distinct pulses, the response is scaled
via meaningful novel intensity measures: the dimensionless gap and the dimensionless yield displacement. The study confirms
that contact may have a different effect on the response displacements of inelastic structures depending on the spectral region.
In adjacent inelastic structures, such as colliding buildings or interacting bridge segments, contact is likely to alter drastically
the excitation frequencies’ at which the system is most vulnerable. Finally, it is shown that the proposed approach yields
maximum response displacements which correlate very well with the persistency of real earthquakes for a bridge system with
considerably complex behaviour. 相似文献
Regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA) is often used in hydrology to estimate flood quantiles when there is a limitation
of at-site recorded flood data. One of the commonly used RFFA methods is the index flood method, which is based on the assumptions
that a region satisfies criterion of simple scaling and it can be treated homogeneous. Another RFFA method is quantile regression
technique where prediction equations are developed for flood quantiles of interest as function of catchment characteristics.
In this paper, the scaling property of regional floods in New South Wales (NSW) State in Australia is investigated. The results
indicate that the annual maximum floods in NSW satisfy a simple scaling assumption. The application of a heterogeneity test,
however, reveals that NSW flood data set does not satisfy the criteria for a homogeneous region. Finally, a set of prediction
equations are developed for NSW using quantile regression technique; an independent test shows that these equations can provide
reasonably accurate design flood estimates with a median relative error of about 27%. 相似文献
The relicts of large meandering palaeochannels are found throughout the territory of the periglacial zone of the Last (Valdai=Weichselian) Glaciation on the Russian Plain. Channel widths of macromeanders can be 15 times larger than the recent meanders of the same rivers. Palaeolandscape and palaeohydrological reconstructions show that these periglacial river channels were formed under conditions of high spring water flow, up to eight times greater than the modern discharges, when the flow coefficient was close to 0.9-1.0 due to presence of permafrost, summers were dry and streams lacked ground water supply. Permafrost degradation increased soil permeability in spring and increased ground water flow in summer, causing a decrease of annual flow (due mainly to the flood flow decrease in spring). As a result, large periglacial channels were abandoned and transformed into lakes and bogs. Late Holocene channels have much smaller channel widths and meander lengths. These were formed under conditions of lower annual flows and much steadier flow regime. 相似文献
This paper describes the design, expectations, and prototyping of a new allsky survey, called 2MASS (Two Micron All Sky Survey) to be carried out with the new generation of infrared array detectors. 相似文献
Although the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is widely commendable in several ways, access to the Fund has been very challenging for many African countries. Using GCF published statistics, we identify possible challenges likely to be responsible for this. First, we present an assessment of the GCF’s Readiness Support Programme with respect to how the programme’s performance may have affected achievement of African countries’ readiness outcomes. Second, a critical evaluation of the status of African GCF portfolio (pipeline and approved projects) provides a means by which to assess how well Africa’s current portfolio aligns with GCF strategic impact areas, results areas and investment priorities. We then discuss GCF access modalities and the implications of relying on International Accredited Entities (IAEs) to indirectly access the Fund. The readiness support assessment indicates that the distribution of support requests and funding approvals is nearly equal across the regions of Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean. However, when the regions are considered individually, Africa demonstrates lower approvals with respect to requests and securing funding. Results from the GCF portfolio evaluation reveal that little or no attention has been devoted to GCF critical result areas such as forests and land use or transport, where great potentials for low-carbon development transitions exist. With respect to access modalities, the IAE financing mechanism currently provides access to the Fund for the majority of projects in both the global and African GCF portfolios. The implications of these findings are extensively discussed.
Key policy insights
For Africa, limited readiness support and a reliance on International Accredited Entities constrains capacity building, thereby reinforcing a lack of both readiness and direct access to the GCF.
There are opportunities for Africa to diversify its GCF portfolios, adhere to international commitments, and address its adaptation and development needs by identifying and capitalizing on linkages between GCF funding priorities, mitigation, and adaptation.
There are leverage points within existing climate finance and governance systems that could catalyse a shift in Africa’s engagement with the GCF and generate positive, cascading effects on institutional strengthening, direct access accreditation and securing funding.
Core samples were collected in Lagoa Vermelha, a hypersaline lagoon located about 100 km east of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The sediment composition is predominantly carbonate in amounts up to 93%. Analysis of δ13C of the total organic matter in the sediments showed that marine organic matter predominates throughout the core (δ13C ranges from −15.84 to −22.64‰ vs. PDB). Organic carbon contents (TOC) ranged from 0.81 to 13.28%. A series of cadinane-type sesquiterpenoids can be recognized in the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry data. Essentially the same components are present in all the samples, with variations only in their relative abundances. The most abundant compounds are α- and β-cubebene, α- and β-cedrene, cadinenes (different isomers), α-curcumene and calamenene, with minor amounts of calarene, humulene, calacorene and cadalene. Since this lagoon is surrounded by dunes with only minor vegetation typical of this environment (grasses, small non-resinous shrubs and no forest) with no potential source for sesquiterpenoids, a terrestrial origin for these compounds is excluded and an algal origin is more consistent with the locale and the recognition of sesquiterpenoids (including cadinol) in microbial mats from the lagoon. Only the natural product precursor sesquiterpenoids are present in the microbial mats with no detectable diagenetic derivatives (e.g. calamenene and cadalene). This indicates that the compounds in the mats are from recent input and those found in the sediments are most likely derived from former algal biomass in this lagoon, a fact confirmed by the recognition of a series of diagenetic aromatic components in the sediments. Surface sediments contain n-alkanes with no even-to-odd predominance indicating that microbial activity is higher in shallower sediments. Moreover, mass fragmentograms (m/z 191) of biomarkers revealed the presence of 17α(H),21β(H)-hopanes, the mature isomers, together with their ββ precursors and low amounts of the intermediates with the βα configuration (moretanes). This indicates a contribution of mature organic matter to these immature sediments. 相似文献