Gender equality and poverty in Ghana: implications for poverty reduction strategies

Poverty trends in Ghana show a decline over the last two decades. However, the period also shows evidence of the intensification of vulnerability and exclusion among some groups, including women. Among several variables accounting for women’s vulnerability to poverty are gender inequalities, which it is argued, undermines development and the prospects for improving standards of living. Therefore it has been suggested that policies, which aim at reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development must integrate gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment in its goals. Despite these, the interconnections between a reduction in gender inequality and a reduction in poverty are complex. The paper explores the gender dimensions of poverty in Ghana, and how gender inequalities are manifested and implicated in the reproduction of poverty. It also assesses the extent to which these have been taken into account in poverty reduction strategies and policies to enhance the situation of women. It concludes that if strategies to engender poverty reduction programmes are to be sustainable it is important to recognize unequal gender relations and the structures of power that women confront at all levels in Ghana and how these increase women’s vulnerability to poverty.     

城市防震减灾信息管理系统之研究

城市防震减灾信息系统是“数字福建”的一个组成内容。该文结合福建省城市防震减灾信息系统的建设工作 ,探讨了地理信息系统与防震减灾数值模型的集成方法 ,论述了城市防震减灾信息系统的结构、内容、功能和组织方式 ,分析了地震风险评估、建筑物易损性评价、生命与财产损失估算、救援与救灾管理调度等模型的集成方法 ,设计了城市防震减灾信息系统。     

Urban land transformation for pro-poor economies

The transformation of land into a setting for clustering local economies can become an important cornerstone of poverty policy. This transformation has several functional aspects, which in turn have important institutional and political aspects. Underlying both the functional and institutional factors is the role of local government and local democracy. Such a conceptualization puts to center stage several paradoxes: A terrain that seems “slum-like” turns out to be highly productive and employment generating. Complex tenure forms and mixed land use seen as “unplanned” turn out to be pre-requisites for economic development. There are institutional paradoxes that contrast efforts at “transparency” and managerial “best practices”. Here, the messiness of local bureaucracies in municipal government turns out to be critical for poor groups to influence interventions in their favor. Influencing the public process may be more effective in stealth-like ways rather taking a more visible approach. Most fundamentally these issues remind us that the potential of cities to reinforce or reduce poverty moved far beyond projects and programs and the normative frameworks used by planners and administrators. Instead, it is the transformative process of turning land into economic settings that might be at the center stage. This is a stage where poor groups are the central actors who stealth-like draw on complex alliances across ethnic and class lines to shapes cities in their interests.     

A global review of the impact of forest property rights interventions on poverty

Secure property rights are widely understood as critical for socio-economic development and sustainable land management in forested areas. Policies and programs, ranging from devolution of specific resource rights to formal land titling, have therefore been implemented to strengthen forest tenure and property rights in countries around the world. Despite the prevalence and importance of these efforts, however, systematic understanding of their effects on poverty remains lacking. We address this gap by systematically reviewing evidence on the impact of forest property rights interventions on poverty worldwide. We drew from a systematic map of evidence on forest-poverty links (Cheng et al., 2019) and used a population-intervention-comparator-outcome (PICO) framework to identify relevant studies. Our final dataset included 61 articles published from 2002 to 2016 comprising 91 case studies across 24 countries. Of these, only 11 articles (22 cases) used quasi-experimental methods to control for confounders. We find that almost all studied interventions (n = 88; 97%) focused on rights to access a forest area or withdraw resources from it. Relatively few studied interventions supported the more extensive property rights of exclusion (32%) and alienation (10%). Overall, reported impacts on both income/consumption and capital/assets dimensions of poverty were generally positive or mixed. Results from more robust quasi-experimental assessments showed greater variation, with case studies as likely to report negative as positive impacts on both poverty dimensions. We find tentative support for the economic theory that more secure property rights yield positive welfare effects. However, the paucity of evidence from more robust impact assessments constrains our ability to draw generalizable conclusions about the poverty impacts of different kinds of forest property rights interventions.     

搬迁农户生计策略与土地利用行为耦合协调度分析--以贵州省习水县为例

易地扶贫搬迁改变了搬迁农户生计策略,同时影响了其土地利用行为,二者之间的耦合协调度直接影响着农户的可持续生计。本文以贵州省习水县易地搬迁农户调研数据为基础,构建以农户生计策略和土地利用行为为子系统的耦合协调度模型,分析2个子系统之间的耦合关系和耦合协调关系。研究表明:纯农型农户、农兼型农户、兼农型农户生计策略与土地利用行为之间的耦合度值介于0.4~0.5之间,水平较低,处于拮抗状态;不同类型农户生计策略与土地利用行为系统耦合协调度值均处于0.39~0.49之间,处于濒临失调阶段,存在较大优化空间;传统的农业生产形式对于改善农户生计无明显效果,引导农户向专业农业型农户转变对于促进移民安置区“人地系统”协调发展大有裨益。研究结果可为农户生计与土地利用的可持续发展提供理论依据。     

广西扶贫开发与城乡协调发展战略探讨

广西石漠化地区人口-资源-环境-发展的矛盾非常突出。2002年,广西农村贫困人口仍有95．6万人,城乡居民收入差异、人均消费支出差异分别为3.43和3．37倍,明显高于同期全国的平均水平,因而是我国贫困人口集中、城乡差距问题突出的区域之一。在分析广西农村贫困化基本状况、发生成因基础上,梳理了近10多年来广西实施就地开发、对口帮扶、异地安置和小额信贷等主要的扶贫开发成功模式,进一步指出新形势下加快扶贫开发和统筹城乡协调发展的必要性,以及促进农村扶贫开发和城乡协调发展的可行战略。     

中国连片特困区经济韧性测度及影响因素分析

巩固脱贫攻坚成效,提升抗风险与自我发展能力对连片特困区而言意义深远。经济韧性作为反映区域经济应对冲击时抵抗、恢复、调整及转型能力的指标,能够有效评估连片特困区的抗冲击能力和返贫风险。基于中国12个连片特困区的地市级数据,通过构建综合指标体系及核心评估变量对其经济韧性进行了测度与对比,并运用多种回归模型识别主要影响因素,结果发现:① 连片特困区经济韧性小于非连片特困区,二者虽均呈逐年递增趋势,但非连片特困区增速略快。进一步对指数分解后发现,连片特困区与非连片特困区经济韧性的差距主要来自于适应与调整能力的差异。② 罗霄山区、燕山—太行山区、大别山区经济韧性均值最高,而滇西边境山区、六盘山区、四省藏区最低,东西差异明显。③ 大部分片区经济韧性逐年递增,经济韧性越高的片区往往增速越快,但四省藏区、六盘山区、吕梁山区经济韧性出现下降趋势,其中,吕梁山区下降最明显。在对不同片区经济韧性分解后发现,不同片区间适应与调整能力差异最大,创新与转型能力差异最小。④ 地理区位、人均固定资产投资、外贸依存度、财政自给水平、地方财政教育经费支出、专利授权数等变量对连片特困区经济韧性存在显著影响。⑤扶贫政策有利于增强片区经济韧性,经济韧性较低的片区对扶贫政策的依赖程度更高,其中,四省藏区、六盘山区、滇西边境山区对扶贫政策依赖最为严重。     

关于新时期中国西部发展沙产业的思考

沙产业是中国西部开发、生态文明建设和脱贫致富的必然选择。在对新时期沙产业内涵理解的基础上,对中国西部发展沙产业的空间基础、资源基础和科技基础进行了潜力分析,通过案例分析了新时期沙产业发展与生态文明建设和精准扶贫的关系。指出了目前中国西部沙产业发展中存在的主要问题,并提出了中国西部沙产业发展的政策建议。     

Changing poverty distribution in Bolivia: the role of rural–urban migration and urban services

Bolivia is a country with high levels of poverty and inequality among its peoples and regions. For the nation and its urban and rural areas, trends in the social and spatial distribution of poverty (and extreme poverty) are identified from 1976 to 2003 using UBN data with minor support where appropriate from poverty lines. The main survey between 1992 and 2001 uses composite and selected UBN to track detailed poverty change for the country’s nine departments, its ten largest cities and a selection of other smaller urban and rural municipalities. Because of rising background increases in population in the various surveyed administrative units, many instances of relative reductions in poverty are accompanied by rising absolute increases. Marked spatial variations in poverty and development in the country over the last several decades are identified as the main driver for the country’s quickening pace of rural–urban migration. As a result, the paper concludes by assessing two different but closely related views. One investigation tests the notion that because more poor people have been living in Bolivia’s cities than in its rural areas since the mid to late 1990s, rapid rural–urban migration has simply shifted the locus of poverty from the countryside to the cities in a process called, the ‘urbanisation of poverty.’ A second, more challenging, investigation assesses the view that the flow of poor rural people to the better serviced urban areas of Bolivia has actually acted to alleviate national poverty levels.     

四川少数民族自治区域旅游开发与贫困缓解

四川少数民族自治地区是一个贫困面大、贫困程度深的区域。但它有着非常丰富的自然生态和民俗风情旅游资源,旅游业有着其他产业所无法比拟的资源优势。近年来,旅游业已成为区域新的经济增长点和国民经济的先导产业,将旅游开发与扶贫有机结合应该成为缓解贫困的有效的途径。但旅游扶贫功效的发挥是有条件的,并不是所有的旅游形式都具有同等的扶贫功效。为此文章论述了有利于贫困缓解的旅游发展战略。