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3051. Exploring Universal Rights: A Symposium

Author:
Jamie Mayerfeld, Henry Shue, Jack Donnelly, Kok-Chor Tan, Charles Beitz, and Brooke A. Ackerly
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Human Rights and Human Welfare - Review Essays
Institution:
Josef Korbel Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver
Abstract:
The struggle for human rights has been shadowed by philosophical doubt. Can we assert universal human rights without engaging in moral imperialism? Can we have confidence in the moral beliefs that underlie human rights claims? Can we justify human rights to those who do not believe in the intrinsic value of autonomy? Which Rights Should Be Universal?, the first of two projected volumes on human rights, is a significant contribution to this literature. In a series of original and mind-opening arguments, William Talbott, a professor of philosophy at the University of Washington, lifts us over one philosophical impasse after another. Admirers of Which Rights Should Be Universal? will find their thinking about human rights enlarged and enhanced by a wealth of new concepts; critics will be kept busy in answering the book's copious arguments. From any perspective, Professor Talbott's book moves the conversation about human rights onto a new plane.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Gender Issues, Human Rights, Political Economy, and Post Colonialism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3052. Hegemonic Project or Survival Strategy? Language Rights in the Former Soviet Space

Author:
Kitty Lam
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The Soviet Union's collapse brought to surface a complex ethno-political situation in the territory it formerly spanned. Changes in interstate boundaries separated various ethnic populations from their perceived homelands. This post-Soviet landscape has created policy dilemmas for the Russian government, as some 25 million Russians found themselves living outside the borders of the Russian Federation. How Russian leaders have dealt with issues pertaining to its 'compatriots' in the non-Russian Soviet successor states has become a subject of interest to Western observers. In particular, Western analysts have been observing the expression of 'ethnic diaspora' issues in Russian foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Civil Society, Development, and Population
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia

3053. The Role of Agriculture in China's Development: Past Failures, Present Successes and Future Challenges

Author:
Jikun Huang, Keijiro Otsuka, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The view toward agricultural and rural development in the modern world has changed dramatically in the past several decades. Traditionally, agriculture was thought of an inferior partner in development. Since the size of the sector falls during development, it was logically considered that it could be ignored. Why is that leaders would ever want to invest in a sector that shrinking? Some academics urged policy makers to treat agriculture like a black box from which resources could be costlessly extracted (Lewis, 1954). All investment was supposed to be targeted at the industry and the cities. As a low productivity sector, it did not deserve investment.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

3054. Water User Associations and the Evolution and Determinants of Management Reform: A Representative Look at Northern China

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Increasing demand for China's limited water resources (across China, but mostly in northern China) from rapidly growing industry, urban populations and agriculture implies potentially dire consequences for the sustainability of water use and drastic changes in cultivation patterns (Zhang, 2001). Problems in the water sector also have significant implications for China's future trade position in key crops and may affect the income of the farming sector (Huang et al., 1999).
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

3055. Water Management Reform and the Choice of Contractual Form in China

Author:
Siwa Msangi, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, Jikin Huang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper explains the puzzling fact that in organizing the management of surface water, village leaders have provided incentives to canal managers in some areas, but not in all. Our study indicates that the optimal contractual choice depends on the relative abilities of the leader and the manager, the design of the cultivated land, the characteristics of the canal system and the opportunity costs of the leader and the pool of managerial candidates. The unifying mechanism is the relative change in the ability of the leader and manager to perform the unmarketable activities that are needed to provide irrigation services.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China

3056. Why Did the Communist Party Reform in China, But Not in the Soviet Union? The Political Economy of Agricultural Transition

Author:
Johan Swinnen and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

3057. Program for the Study of Biofuels, Poverty and Food Security

Author:
Jikun Huang, Mark Rosengrant, Rosamond Naylor, Walter P. Falcon, David Victor, Kenneth Cassman, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The recent global expansion of biofuels production is an intense topic of discussion in both the popular and academic press. Much of the debate surrounding biofuels has focused on narrow issues of energy efficiency and fossil fuel substitution, to the exclusion of broader questions concerning the effects of large-scale biofuels development on commodity markets, land use patterns, and the global poor. There is reason to think these effects will be very large. The majority of poor people living in chronic hunger are net consumers of staple food crops; poor households spend a large share of their budget on starchy staples; and as a result, price hikes for staple agricultural commodities have the largest impact on poor consumers. For example, the rapidly growing use of corn for ethanol in the U.S. has recently sent corn prices soaring, boosting farmer incomes domestically but causing riots in the streets of Mexico City over tortilla prices. Preliminary analysis suggests that such price movements, which directly threaten hundreds of millions of households around the world, could be more than a passing phenomenon. Rapid biofuels development is occurring throughout the developed and developing world, transforming commodity markets and increasingly linking food prices to a volatile energy sector. Yet there remains little understanding of how these changes will affect global poverty and food security, and an apprehension on the part of many governments as to whether and how to participate in the biofuels revolution.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Economics, Globalization, Government, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States and Mexico

3058. Information, Incentives and Institutions: Experimenting with Private-Public Partnerships to Link the Poor with Modern Supply Chains

Author:
Jikun Huang, Johan Swinnen, Marcel Fafchamps, Tom Reardon, Bart Minten, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
To lift more than 10,000 farmers directly out of poverty by developing new Best-Practice Models for linking the poor to modern supply chains and after scaling up by our private and public partners to lift more than 1 million farmers out of poverty.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Non-Governmental Organization, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa, China, India, Asia, Senegal, and Madagascar

3059. Water price policy analysis in China:An experimental approach

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, Jun Xia, Scott Rozelle, and Dean Karlan
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Water scarcity is one of the key problems that affect northern China, an area that covers 40 percent of the nation's cultivated area and houses almost half of the population. The water availability per capita in North China is only around 300 m per capita, which is less than one seventh of the national average (Ministry of Water Resources, 2002). At the same time, expanding irrigated cultivated area, the rapidly growing industrial sector and an increasingly wealthy urban population demand rising volumes of water (Crook, 2000, Wang, et al., 2005). As a result, groundwater resources are diminishing in large areas of northern China (Wang, et al., 2005). For example, between 1958 and 1998, groundwater levels in the Hai River Basin fell by up to 50 meters in some shallow aquifers and by more than 95 meters in some deep aquifers (Ministry of Water Resource, et al., 2001).
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, Government, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
China

3060. Recommended Best Practices for Regional Fisheries Management Organizations: Technical Study No. 1--Regional Fisheries Management Organizations: Progress in Adopting the Precautionary Approach and Ecosystem-Based Management

Author:
Marjorie L Mooney-Seus and Andrew A Rosenberg
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) employ a variety of approaches and methods to manage resources and associated ecosystems under their jurisdiction. Based primarily on a review of annual and technical reports of 13 RFMOs and various publications by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 'best practices' were identified with respect to Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) and the Precautionary Approach (PA). In addition, information was collected on RFMO target and non-target species, management decision rules and operational benchmarks (where possible), research programmes, and use of scientific advice in decision-making. Through an understanding of best practices employed by various RFMOs, a model for improved high seas governance is derived, which includes measures to promote both EBM and PA.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and United Nations