...1. Introduction Laos has undertaken substantial trade reforms and liberalization in recent decades under the overall direction of the New Economic Mechanism (NEM). The process was initiated in mid-1980s when the country made efforts to transform the national economy from a centrally planned to a market-oriented one. Laos is making significant progress in moving forward its trade policy reforms and in pursuing a development strategy that recognizes openness to trade as the key engine for growth and poverty alleviation. To a large extent, Laos’ trade policy is now shaped by trade agreements, either at bilateral regional or multilateral fora. To date, Laos has also signed trade agreements with 18 countries, including: Vietnam; China; Cambodia; Burma; Thailand; North Korea; Philippines; Mongolia; Indonesia; Malaysia; Bulgaria; Russia; India; Belarus; Argentina; the United States; Kuwait and Turkey, the most recent and significant one is the bilateral agreement with the US by which Laos accords Normal Trade Relations (NTRs). At the regional level, Laos is participating in the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and undertaking commitments under the Common Effective Preferential Tariffs (CEPT) scheme. It is also engaging in free trade area (FTA) negotiations with ASEAN-dialogues partners: China, Republic of Korea, Japan, India, and Australia and New Zealand together as Closer Economic Relation (CER). Apart from that, Laos benefits from the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) which was formerly...
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...BIO 3108 – NATURAL RESOURCES AND POPULATION GROWTH CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT What are natural resources? A natural resource is defined as a form of energy and/or matter which is essential for the functioning of organisms, populations and ecosystems. In the case of humans, a natural resource refers to any form of energy or matter essential for the fulfillment of physiological, socio-economic and cultural needs, both at the individual level and that of the community. Life on our planet earth depends upon a large number of things and services provided by the nature, which are known as natural resources. Water, air, soil, minerals, coal, forests, crops and wild life are all the examples of natural resources. The basic ecological variables- energy, space, time and diversity are sometimes combined called natural resources. These natural are maintaining ecological balance among themselves. Man is the only organisms who have disrupted this duplicate balance. A natural resource is a form of energy and/or matter, which is essential for the functioning of organisms, populations and ecosystems. In the case of humans, a natural resource refers to any form of energy or matter essential for the fulfillment of physiological, socio-economic and cultural needs, both at the individual level and that of the community. The basic ecological variables- energy, space, time and diversity are sometimes combined called natural resources. These natural resources are maintaining ecological...
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...vastly improved. The single most important problem facing the Indian agricultural industry is the highly inefficient supply chain. Because of lack of cold chain infrastructure and also a food processing industry about 20 per cent of all foods produced in India (Rs. 500 b) are wasted. By building an efficient and effective supply chain using state of the art techniques it is possible to serve the population with value added food while simultaneously ensuring remunerative prices to the farmers. The surplus of cereals, fruits, vegetables, milk, fish, meat and poultry can be processed as value added food products and marketed aggressively both locally and internationally. Investments in cold chain infrastructure, applied research in post harvest technologies, installation of food processing plants in various sectors and development of food retailing sector are mandatory for achieving gains in this sector. Strategic growth plans for achieving both national and international competitiveness of the food industry are essential. 1. OUTLINE OF THE PAPER In this paper we identify emerging opportunities in the food and cold chain sector in India and present ways in which existing market challenges in India can be overcome using technology and experience. In particular, we identify opportunities for improvement in real estate and cold chain infrastructure, establishing food processing plants, wholesale, retail, third party logistics and technology. In Section 2, we discuss the...
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...An Analysis of Wang Lung’s Character in The Good Earth as a Typical Farmer Image in China Abstract Pearl Buck, who lived in China for almost 40 years, has formed an in-depth understanding of Chinese society and owned a spontaneous emotion toward Chinese people. With a meticulous and direct observation of Chinese farmers, she accurately grasped “earth” as the survival core and cultural root of Chinese farmers. In her masterpiece, The Good Earth, Pearl Buck brings authentic rural life and vivid images of farmer in China to western readers through her unique perspectives. The Good Earth not only changes distorted stereotype Chinese images in the westerners’ mind in 19th century, but also fully demonstrates various Chinese farmer’s characters. This thesis intends to analyze Wang Lung’s behavior and his hidden characters as a typical farmer in China. Through scrutinizing the text content, the author discovers that both merits of traditional Chinese farmer and backward thoughts under the feudal society are embodied in Wang Lung’s character. On the one hand, Wang Lung, industrious and frugal, simple and kind, has a keen attachment to earth. On the other hand, he is feudalistic, timid and conservative with a strong lust to women. Key Words: The Good Earth Wang Lung image of farmer Contents I. Introduction 1 1.1. Summary of The Good Earth 1 1.2. The Significance of The Good Earth 2 1.3. Relevant Studies of The Good Earth 3 II. Wang Lung’s...
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...March 2, 2013 – The Everglades Flood Control and Restoration: A Century of Disaster OUTLINE ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Before drainage of the Everglades began over a century ago, the wetlands of southern Florida were an interconnected hydrological assortment of lavish freshwater lakes and streams, cypress swamps, secluded estuarine lagoons, freshwater sloughs, tree islands, wet prairies, and mangrove swamps spanning 3.6 million hectares. After a century of intrusion, the daunting task of understanding, fixing, maintaining, and regaining a sustainable, natural Everglades-type ecosystem in South Florida is monumental. The area south of Lake Okeechobee now has a human population of over four million people, with greedy agricultural and urban demands for more water and more space. Therefore, several uphill battles have ensued. The conceptual plans for restoring this ecosystem, currently on record, are all extremely expensive to implement. A more thorough definition of the environmental and societal objectives and measures of success are required. How the ecosystem will respond to the return of a more natural hydrological pattern is uncertain, but needs to be addressed as the expected and desired outcome through measures of performance. The critical level of deterioration of the Everglades has created a crisis-management atmosphere instead of a full spectrum response and future prevention methodology. The political and social aspects of the Everglades...
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...to limit the scope available to developing and transition economies for reducing poverty through employment generation in the manufacturing sector? Automation usually implies an entrepreneur’s effort to cut down cost in the long run by leaning more towards the fixed costs of owning machineries rather than generating more variable costs in human resource employment. Having said this, automation and employment generation then stand at paradoxical ends of the factors of production. Can we not, thus, easily surmise from this that automation in the manufacturing industry may help reduce poverty in a country such as ours through increased production, but probably not employment generation? A country such as Bangladesh, developing and with one abundant source of production being its labor force, may not be able to sustain the blow that may be rendered by flooding its manufacturing industry with high-tech machineries. Such a step would mean that manual labor would be replaced by low-cost but machine-oriented methods of production. Yet, it is not only our labor market that would suffer if manufacturers of our country begin following the trends set by the “Chinese monopoly” on low-cost FMCG. Jute, one of Bangladesh’s crowning glories in the export sector has suffered precisely in the face of such changes. The rise of synthetic substitutes like polypropylene is now favorites to manufacturers. Hence, this has caused the jobs of over 25 million of the poorest Bangladeshis. Yet, however, if...
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...DEFINITION FROM WIKI (understand and write it yourself) In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbanceby resisting damage and recovering quickly. Such perturbations and disturbances can include stochastic events such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation and the introduction of exotic plant or animal species. Disturbances of sufficient magnitudeor duration can profoundly affect an ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a threshold beyond which a different regime of processes and structures predominates.Human activities that adversely affect ecosystem resilience such as reduction of biodiversity, exploitation of natural resources,pollution, land-use, and anthropogenic climate change are increasingly causing regime shifts in ecosystems, often to less desirable and degraded conditions. Interdisciplinary discourse on resilience now includes consideration of the interactions of humans and ecosystems via socio-ecological systems, and the need for shift from the maximum sustainable yield paradigm to environmental management which aims to build ecological resilience through "resilience analysis, adaptive resource management, and adaptive governance". The concept of resilience in ecological systems was first introduced by the Canadian ecologist C.S. Holling in order to describe the persistence of natural systems in the face of changes in ecosystem variables...
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...Masters of rural markets: Accenture Research Report The Hallmarks of High Performance Contents Foreword: Unleashing India’s rural multiplier effect Growing business confidence in rural opportunities The attractions and distractions of rural markets 03 05 09 Distinctive capabilities that enable 15 companies to succeed in India’s hinterland Framework factors critical to nurturing distinctive capabilities Developing the right capabilities—and acting on them Last word 28 29 31 2 Foreword Unleashing India’s rural multiplier effect But rural India’s contributions to the nation’s economic success—and the obvious potential for profitable growth—is just a part of the promise of wholehearted commitment to doing business beyond the city centers and suburbs. India’s rural markets offer unprecedented opportunities for global and local companies to experiment with approaches and business models, which if successful, may be replicated in rural markets of other emerging economies. India is on the march. Its momentum is not only evident in metros— it is apparent in small towns and villages as well. Collectively, all over India’s rural heartland and in its teeming cities, India is readying for an even more impressive era of economic growth. There is no question that India’s rural markets are becoming a powerful economic engine. One telltale sign: rural accounts now comprise over 50 percent of new subscribers for some of the leading telecom providers.1 The rural multiplier...
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...REVIEW D. Ryan Georgianna1 & Stephen P Mayfield1 . doi:10.1038/nature11479 Exploiting diversity and synthetic biology for the production of algal biofuels Modern life is intimately linked to the availability of fossil fuels, which continue to meet the world’s growing energy needs even though their use drives climate change, exhausts finite reserves and contributes to global political strife. Biofuels made from renewable resources could be a more sustainable alternative, particularly if sourced from organisms, such as algae, that can be farmed without using valuable arable land. Strain development and process engineering are needed to make algal biofuels practical and economically viable. D espite limited supply and increasing demand, fossil fuels remain among the world’s cheapest commodities. Prices will inevitably rise once demand starts to outstrip supply, but short- to medium-term replacement of fossil fuels by renewable and more environmentally benign alternatives will occur only if the substitutes can compete economically. One of these alternatives is based on the oils extracted from algae, and commercial-scale pilot facilities to test these are in operation. However, significant improvements are still needed to make algal biofuels economically viable. In this Review, we outline the advantages of algae as a biofuel producer, discuss the different cultivation methods, consider the options for achieving optimal algal biomass and lipid production, and the process engineering...
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...,This report has been prepared as input to the 2012 World Water Week and its Special Focus on Water and Food Security. Feeding a Thirsty World Challenges and Opportunities for a Water and Food Secure Future RepORT 31 Copyright © 2012, Stockholm International Water Institute, SIWI ISBN: 978-91-978846-5-5 ISSN: 1404-2134 How to Cite: Jägerskog, A., Jønch Clausen, T. (eds.) 2012. Feeding a Thirsty World – Challenges and Opportunities for a Water and Food Secure Future. Report Nr. 31. SIWI, Stockholm. Cover photo: iStockphoto Design by Britt-Louise Andersson and Elin Ingblom, SIWI Printing by Elanders, Mölnlycke, Sweden. The printing process has been certified according to the Nordic Swan label for environmental quality. For electronic versions of this and other SIWI publications, visit www.siwi.org. Feeding a Thirsty World Challenges and Opportunities for a Water and Food Secure Future Note to the Reader Today, in 2012, nearly one billion people still suffer from hunger and malnourishment, in spite of the fact that food production has been steadily increasing on a per capita basis for decades. Producing food to feed everyone well, including the 2 billion additional people expected to populate the planet by mid-century, will place greater pressure on available water and land resources. This report provides input into the discussions at the 2012 World Water Week in Stockholm, which is held under the theme of Water and Food Security, and was edited by Anders Jägerskog...
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...GOVERNMENT OF ZIMBABWE Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) “Towards an Empowered Society and a Growing Economy” OCTOBER 2013- DECEMBER 2018 Contents List of Acronyms......................................................................................... 3 Foreword ................................................................................................. 6 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1............................................................................................... 12 1.0 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….12 Chapter 2............................................................................................... 16 2.0 Situational Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………………..16 Chapter 3............................................................................................... 26 3.0 Towards an Empowered Society and a Growing Economy:………………………………………26 Chapter 4............................................................................................... 45 4.0 Implementation Structure…………………………………………………………………………………………….45 Chapter 5............................................................................................... 47 5.0 Monitoring and Evaluation…………………………………………………………………………………………….47 Chapter 6................................................................................
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...agriculture sector. Considered an integral part in the country’s economy, the agriculture sector accounts a significant portion of the total employment, which ranged from 45-50% during the 1980s. On the other hand, this sector also attributed significant portions of the total poor in the country for decades. Thus, in June 1988, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) was signed into law, paving the way for extensive land distribution and reforms which communist insurgencies urged during the Marcos regime. Consequently, the initial stages of the implementation process of CARP was met with apparent complications, expectedly so given that such a policy entailed a wide scope, whilst rural landlords provided staunch opposition in seizing their ownership to government. However, as the years passed and administrations would change, the promises of sweeping agrarian reform have remained unfinished, otherwise, significantly watered down. Such arbitration would be considered a detrimental factor to the current pitfalls that have hindered the development of Philippine political economy. In that, this paper questions what led to this failure of comprehensive agrarian reform and in pronouncing these mistakes, did other countries experience who also employed land reforms if they experienced similar dilemmas. We argue that deeply seated class structures have inevitably played a role in this development policy outcome, particularly elite groups and landlords who have established themselves...
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...REPORT Independent Assessment of the Sugar Industry 2002 Clive Hildebrand Independent Assessment of the Sugar Industry 2002 Clive Hildebrand Report to the Hon. Warren Truss MP Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry I n d e p e n d e n t A s s e s s m e n t o f t h e S u g a r I n d u s t r y Secretariat: GPO Box 858, Canberra ACT 2601 ph: +61 2 6272 4388 fax: +61 2 6272 3359 email: sugar@affa.gov.au web: www.affa.gov.au/sugar The Hon Warren Truss MP Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Parliament House CANBERRA ACT 2600 Dear Minister I have pleasure in presenting my Assessment of the sugar industry’s viability and restructuring needs as requested. It is my personal opinion, neither more nor less, after an intense period of contact activity covering all the groups requested, and after personal research. As requested it is written in direct terms, and is without modification for outside requests except to observe confidentiality. While at times critical, it is a genuine attempt to contribute to the long term future of this industry, which is so rich with history and today’s hard working and dedicated people, and so important to regional coastal Queensland and northern New South Wales, as well as the Ord River Irrigation Area. The process chosen was open and transparent. Despite time limitations I am confident that I have been given a privileged insight into the state of the industry and the key issues. Economic and environmental drivers were examined...
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...Ingredient Profile, Functionality, and Regulations in the United States M.A. Heckman, K. Sherry, and E. Gonzalez de Mejia ABSTRACT: The consumption of energy drinks is rapidly increasing, as demonstrated by their large market growth. The targeted demographic group is teenagers, young adults, 18 to 34 y old; although expansion into nontraditional markets is also occurring. It is claimed that energy drinks can offer an increased energy boost related to their ingredient profile of caffeine, taurine, herbal extracts, and vitamins. Research suggests that energy drink formulations, in addition to increasing energy utilization, may also improve mood, enhance physical endurance, reduce mental fatigue, and increase reaction time. However, in most cases, the corresponding mechanisms of action are not clear. In addition, concerns have been raised over their safety and with a currently weak regulatory environment, efforts need to be made to ensure consumer safety. The objective of this article is to review the current U.S. energy drink market with emphasis on its market size, target demographic, active ingredients, potential benefits, safety, and regulations. Introduction Energy drinks refer to beverages that contain, besides calories, caffeine in combination with other presumed energy-enhancing ingredients such as taurine, herbal extracts, and B vitamins. They first appeared in Europe and Asia in the 1960s in response to consumer demand for a dietary supplement that would result in increased...
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...Edited by Kristen Walker Painemilla, Anthony B. Rylands, Alisa Woofter and Cassie Hughes Edited by Kristen Walker Painemilla, Anthony B. Rylands, Alisa Woofter and Cassie Hughes Conservation International 2011 Crystal Drive, Suite 500 Arlington, VA 22202 USA Tel: +1 703-341-2400 www.conservation.org Editors : Kristen Walker Painemilla, Anthony B. Rylands, Alisa Woofter and Cassie Hughes Cover design Paula K. Rylands, Conservation International : Layout: Kim Meek, Washington, DC Maps [except where noted otherwise] Kellee Koenig, Conservation International : Conservation International is a private, non-profit organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501 c (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. ISBN 978-1-934151-39-6 © 2010 by Conservation International All rights reserved. The designations of geographical entities in this publication, and the presentation of the material, do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of Conservation International or its supporting organizations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Any opinions expressed in this publication are those of the writers, and do not necessarily reflect those of Conservation International (CI). Suggested citation: Walker Painemilla, K., Rylands, A. B., Woofter, A. and Hughes, C. (eds.). 2010. Indigenous Peoples and Conservation: From Rights to Resource Management. Conservation...
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