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Begin New Search Topic Development Publishing Institution Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. Inaugural Oksenberg Lecture: The United States and China: A President's Perspective. An address by Jimmy Carter

Author:
Jimmy Carter
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The Oksenberg Lectures honor the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938–2001), Senior Fellow at the Asia/Pacific Research Center, professor of political science, and a foremost authority on China.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

15. Challenges of Peri-urbanization in the Lower Yangtze region: The Case of the Hanzhou-Ningbo Corridor

Author:
Douglas Webster
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This discussion paper is based on analysis of peri-urbanization dynamics in the Hangzhou- Ningbo Corridor of the Lower Yangtze Region of China. The case-study area is of particular interest, both because of the scale of the phenomenon in the area and the fact that the corridor typifies the long-running and dynamic peri-urbanization process occurring in the Lower Yangtze Region as a whole, arguably the world's largest extended urban region (EUR). Analysis focuses on adaptation, successful and otherwise, to the severe stresses, demographic, social, and environmental, accompanying peri-urbanization. Policy implications are then drawn; anticipated future stresses in the case-study area, and by implication the larger extended urban region, are used to trigger recommendations.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
China

16. On the Edge: Shaping the Future of Peri-urban East Asia

Author:
Douglas Webster
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The term peri-urbanization refers to a process in which rural areas located on the outskirts of established cities become more urban in character, in physical, economic, and social terms, often in piecemeal fashion. Peri-urban development usually involves rapid social change as small agricultural communities are forced to adjust to an urban or industrial way of life in a very short time. High levels of migration are an important driver of social change. Rapid environmental deterioration; large-scale, often haphazard, land conversion; and infrastructure backlogs are major policy challenges associated with peri-urbanizing regions. Typically, peri-urbanization is stimulated by an infusion of new investment, generally from outside the local region in question, including foreign direct investment (FDI).
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
East Asia

17. Catch-Up; Why Poor Countries Are Becoming Richer, Democratic, Increasingly Peaceable, and Sometimes More Dangerous

Author:
Henry S. Rowen
Publication Date:
08-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
It is easy to be confused about the world's prospect. On the one hand, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire, many millions of people have been freed from economic and political shackles that had long kept them under authoritarian rule and in poverty—or at least far poorer than they should be. On the other hand, several parts of the world are beset by political turmoil and conflicts, rapid population increases, and falling incomes.
Topic:
Security, Democratization, Development, Emerging Markets, and Third World
Political Geography:
Soviet Union

18. Sankin Kotai: Institutionalized Trust as the Foundation for Economic Development in the Tokugawa Era

Author:
Jennifer Amyx
Publication Date:
06-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This article focuses on the sankin kotai, or alternate attendance, system instituted in Japan during the Tokugawa period. Most traditional accounts of the sankin kotai system–which included an important hostage element–portray it as a product of Tokugawa statecraft devised primarily for the coercion and exploitation of daimyo, or territorial lords, and control over a feudal order. In addition, these accounts tend to take the distinctive stability of this era for granted. Given the chaos and bloodshed of the "warring states" period which preceded it, however, the phenomenon of 267 years of peace deserves a stronger explanation.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Japan, Israel, and East Asia