Deservedness, development, and the state: Geographic categorization in the US Agency for International Development’s Foreign Assistance Framework

The institutions, practices, and discourses of US development policy and foreign assistance are undergoing profound changes. Central to these has been the creation of a new framework for foreign aid, built around a complex taxonomy of developing states and governance issue areas, with geographic and governance categories predicated on notions of state stability and fragility, strategic geopolitical position, and development progress. Given its long-standing position as the primary federal agency responsible for development and foreign aid, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has played an important role in these policy changes, even as its political status and standing have suffered in recent years. The new framework is beset by contradictions, stemming both from the problematic relationship between development, security, and liberalization in agency rhetoric and strategies, and from intensive restructuring processes affecting USAID’s internal character and external relations. This paper investigates the new framework for foreign aid, linking internal restructuring at USAID to broader trends in state development strategies. I argue that shifts in US development and aid policy - toward emphases on “transformational development” abroad and centralization over strategic decision making domestically, crystallized in the new framework - are based in contradictory understandings of aid deservedness that stem from the tensions between economic and geopolitical aims within the current security-focused US state project of neoliberalization. These contradictions and tensions are displaced onto USAID via the Foreign Assistance Framework.     

Walking with farmers: Floods,agriculture and the social practice of everyday mobility

Despite growing interest in the relationship between human mobility and environmental variability and change in recent years, there is relatively little understanding of the role of human agency within this nexus. This paper helps to address this knowledge gap by illuminating the role of perception, action and decision-making in the everyday. Using an innovative walking methodology, it presents an empirical case study of regularised farmers’ movements in and out of a floodplain during the rainy season in central Mozambique to show how people’s day-to-day routes are continuously reproduced through meaningful encounters and engagements with physical obstacles and other people. The paper demonstrates how a concern with everyday mobility highlights people’s day-to-day capacities to respond to environmental variability and change while also drawing attention to the challenges associated with the gradual accumulation of risk in mobile, rural livelihoods.     

An Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management framework: the efficient,regional-level planning tool for management agencies

The value of applying a regional level, Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) framework, which is a step-wise, hierarchical, risk-based approach, was tested on the West Coast Bioregion of Western Australia. With structured stakeholder input, over 600 ecological, social, economic and governance issues were initially identified for the region. This complexity was reduced to a level useful for management by consolidating the individual risks into 60 regional-level risks, with a multi-criteria analysis used to integrate the ecological, social and economic risks into just 24 Departmental-level priorities, which ranged from very low to urgent. Given this success, EBFM-based priorities now form the basis for the Department’s budget planning process, plus the framework is providing a critical link between fishery level issues and the broader processes undertaken by other marine based agencies. The EBFM framework is a significant step forward for the integrated management of natural resources by enabling all assets and issues relevant to stakeholders and government to be holistically considered at a regional level.     

Neoliberalism and environmental justice in the United States environmental protection agency: Translating policy into managerial practice in hazardous waste remediation

In response to the failings of the aggressive neoliberalism of the Reagan era, the Clinton administration sought new ways to promote and deepen the neoliberal project. One of its strategies was to develop “neocommunitarian” programs to support political empowerment and economic self-sufficiency in marginalized communities. Its environmental justice policy became an important vehicle for delivering these programs. This paper examines ways in which one regional office of the US Environmental Protection Agency translated the Clinton administration's environmental justice policy into practical guidelines for its managers. It investigates how these guidelines affected the work of personnel in the EPA's program to clean up hazardous waste sites. It asks how the Clinton administration's approach to environmental justice--emphasizing data analysis, managed public participation, and economic opportunity--helped both to deepen the neoliberal project and to transform the geography of risk and remediation. Although the EPA was unable to “normalize” the environmental justice community--to make it a standardized target for the Clinton administration's empowerment programs--its environmental justice policy both contributed to subtle changes in the distribution of hazardous waste risk and made the delivery of neocommunitarian programs an important part of the work of remedial personnel.     

Harnessing the wind: A case study of applying Flettner rotor technology to achieve fuel and cost savings for Fiji's domestic shipping industry

For over 5000 years, humans have successfully harnessed the power of wind to transport people and goods across the world's oceans. This research expands on previous studies of the unique Flettner rotor propulsion system and the demonstrable success in reducing fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Recent examples such as Enercon's E-ship 1 have proven seaworthy and economically viable along major shipping routes. The remote Pacific island countries (PICS), however, have the unique characteristics of retaining a remarkable seafaring heritage while remaining on the periphery of global commerce. With data obtained from a field study of Fiji's domestic shipping, this research analyzes the potential for implementing Flettner rotor systems to achieve more economically viable alternatives to the current situation. The findings show that with an incremental approach and the addition of a government fuel savings incentive, the Government Shipping Franchise Scheme (GSFS) subsidies could be significantly lowered for Fiji's ten uneconomical shipping routes. Four scenarios of 5%, 10%, 15%, and 25% fuel savings contrast the baseline data on one extreme with a zero-emissions scenario on the other. The most likely fuel savings scenario of between 10% and 15% results in a 20-year government savings of between 348,042 and 522,063 U.S. dollars and a 20-year cumulative reduction in CO₂ emissions of between 2931 and 4396 t. The paper concludes that Flettner rotors show promising results in reducing fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions and recommends future studies in collaboration with the Fiji government to develop practical strategies of implementation.     

中国区域多种数值模式资料的地面气象要素评估

利用中国气象局国家级自动站(2421个站)的观测资料,分别对2010年7月1日至2013年6月30日的欧洲中期数值预报中心(ECMWF)、日本气象厅(JMA)和美国国家海洋大气局的全球预测系统(GFS)数值模式资料的地面气温、相对湿度和风速在中国区域的适用性进行了比较研究。结果表明,3种数值模式资料都能在一定程度上反映观测资料所具有的时间和空间分布特征,东部地区的适用性要高于西部地区。不同的地面气象要素,差异较大:对于地面气温和地面相对湿度,ECMWF比JMA和GFS更接近实际观测,ECMWF和JMA的分析场数据质量要好于预报场;ECMWF和JMA地面气温在冬季与观测差异最大,GFS地面气温在夏季与观测差异最大;3种数值模式资料的地面相对湿度在秋季和冬季与观测差异最大;对于地面风速,在江淮流域和华南等东部区域JMA与实际观测差异最小,在北部和西部区域ECMWF最好,JMA和GFS地面风速在冬季与实际观测差异最大。