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42. The European Trade Policy in the time of Covid-19: Adaptation or change of paradigm?
- Author:
- Danièle Hervieu-Léger
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Robert Schuman Foundation (RSF)
- Abstract:
- Crises reveal the state of a policy, reveal its ambiguities, strengths and shortcomings, and sometimes force a redefinition or clarification of its guiding principles to ensure its sustainability, if not its survival. Although at the height of the crisis, there is a reflex to completely overhaul what already exists, the constants and structuring considerations quickly tend to dampen the ardour for reform.
- Topic:
- Reform, European Union, Trade, COVID-19, and Adaptation
- Political Geography:
- Europe
43. Assessing Capacity of Urban Climate Governance: A Case from Turkish Metropolitan Municipalities
- Author:
- Nazli Yildirim
- Publication Date:
- 10-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Academic Inquiries
- Institution:
- Sakarya University (SAU)
- Abstract:
- Emission control and reduction initiatives required to achieve low carbon society necessitate collaboration and capacity building vertically and horizontally between the public and non-public authorities at the international, national and local level. In particular, measures taken at local level are important on the issue of climate change. To this end, this paper examines local climate protection initiatives of the metropolitan municipalities in the framework of modes of governance including self-governance, provision, enabling and regulation in Turkey. In metropolitan cities, content analysis was conducted to the Municipalities' Annual Action Reports and Strategic Plans including different urban policy sectors in order to determine the achievement level of local climate protection actions. The study concludes that the local climate change mitigation activities are frequently implemented by provision modes in the sector of urban infrastructure and transportation in the Turkish metropolitan municipalities.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Government, Governance, Urban, and Adaptation
- Political Geography:
- Turkey and Middle East
44. User-Centred Design and Humanitarian Adaptiveness
- Author:
- Sofya Bourne
- Publication Date:
- 04-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- Gathering and acting on feedback from affected communities is a key means to identify potential triggers for change during the design and implementation of humanitarian programmes. This study is focused on user-centred design (UCD), an approach often used outside the humanitarian sector to design products and services that are tailored to the needs and preferences of end-users and are created with the users’ involvement in the design process. Because UCD is meant to facilitate a structured, quick, and iterative design process that is oriented towards the perspectives of users, it has the potential to help humanitarian organisations design programmes that are more responsive to the needs of affected people, i.e. more user-centred, which in turn could support greater adaptiveness of humanitarian programmes. But can the benefits of UCD hold when this approach is applied in the context of the contemporary humanitarian system? This case study seeks to explore the utility, applicability and effectiveness of UCD in supporting humanitarian adaptiveness, and to understand whether UCD can enable humanitarian actors to be more adaptive, or whether these organisations need to have well-developed adaptive capabilities to be able to apply UCD in a way that facilitates different types of adaptiveness in their responses.
- Topic:
- Accountability, Participation, Adaptation, WASH Projects, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
45. Signals of Adaptive Social Readiness as a Cornerstone and a Driving Force of Russian Authoritarianism
- Author:
- Iwona Massaka
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Nowa Polityka Wschodnia
- Institution:
- Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
- Abstract:
- The aim of this article is to show the relationship between, the features (in cultural, sociological and political science terms) exhibited by contemporary Russian society and the political regime (in holistic terms by J. Linz), that existed in the Russian Federation (in the years 2007–2015). We assume that an evolution from stable contemporary Russian society to amalgams system combining elements of authoritarianism with dictatorship has taken place during this period. We point out the essential features that constitute the nature of Russian society and social behavior of political importance. Referring to the theory of “the state in society” by D. Migdal, We put the thesis that it is just the Russian way of thinking resulting in certain behavior, that causes the permanence of contemporary Russian society with a tendency to move on the line continuum toward totalitarianism. Proving that Russian society is not a civil society, but a state society, we determine the structure, the role and the modes of operation of Russian intra-system opposition.
- Topic:
- Communications, Culture, Authoritarianism, Society, and Adaptation
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Eurasia
46. Dynamic gridlock: Adaptive humanitarian action in the DRC
- Author:
- Alice Obrecht
- Publication Date:
- 02-2018
- Content Type:
- Case Study
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- Humanitarian actors are increasingly responding to more complex situations, such as protracted conflict and high-risk cyclical natural disasters. They face continually changing, uncertain and long term crises, which is a stark contrast to the shorter term rapid-onset situations - such as flooding or earthquakes - that the humanitarian system was built around. How can they adapt the response they deliver in these changing environments? As part of an ALNAP research project addressing this increasingly important issue of adaptive and flexible humanitarian action, this country study focuses on how agencies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are responding to a complex and protracted crisis. The country has been in a perpetual state of sporadic conflict for the last twenty years, with huge numbers of people displaced and a chronic absence of adequate infrastructure or government response to address its people’s needs. Humanitarians are working in an environment that is continually changing, as many small-to-mid-level, complicated crises arise in different parts of this vast country on a weekly basis. Through interviews with international and local agencies, ALNAP Senior Research Fellow Alice Obrecht maps how programmes and donors have tried to adapt in a setting of complex protracted conflict.
- Topic:
- Conflict, Adaptation, Humanitarian Response, and Flexibility
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo
47. Mobilizing Knowledge To Enhance Adaptive Capacity
- Author:
- Casey Williams, Danielle Falzon, and Saleemul Huq
- Publication Date:
- 09-2018
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)
- Abstract:
- For over a decade, researchers and policymakers have considered enhancing “adaptive capacity” to be a linchpin of successful adaptation to climate change. In 2015, at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris, the international community formally asserted the importance of increasing the ability of individuals and groups to adapt to long-term changes in the climate, and committed to doing so through the Paris Agreement. Article 7 of the Paris Agreement, the “Global Goal on Adaptation” (GGA), commits signatory countries to “enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change, with a view to contributing to sustainable development and ensuring an adequate adaptation response in the context of the temperature goal.”1 There are many challenges to measuring adaptation, and there is currently no internationally accepted tool for doing so. Craft and Fisher (2018)2 identify four main challenges to measurement for the GGA: designing a system that can aggregate results; managing the dual mandate of reviewing collective progress and informing the enhancement of national level actions; methodological challenges in adaptation; and political challenges around measurement. Drawing from their insights, we construct a multi-scalar, contextually flexible, multi-method based framework for measuring one central component of adaptation: adaptive capacity.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Paris Agreement, and Adaptation
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
48. Planning for Adaptation in Bangladesh: Past, Present and Future
- Author:
- Saleemul Huq and Mizan R. Khan
- Publication Date:
- 08-2017
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)
- Abstract:
- The world community already lives in a climate changed world. However, the need to adapt to its increasing impact is extremely urgent for the particularly vulnerable countries, such as the least developed countries (LDCs), small island developing states (SIDS) and Africa. Of all these countries, Bangladesh stands unique in terms of climate impacts on a huge population of 160 million living in a small territory sandwitched between the Himalayas in the North and Bay of Bengal in the South. Obviously, Bangladesh has a huge groundswell of experiential learning from living with climate disasters for ages. This experience has been reinforced during the last decade and a half when Bangladesh started anticipatory adaptation planning, first in the form of developing the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) under the mandate of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Since then Bangladesh has accepted adaptation to climate change impacts as a national priority, with gradual integration of adaptation needs into national development planning. This Policy Brief is a stock-taking of what Bangladesh has done so far and how she can proceed with future adaptation planning.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Development, Natural Disasters, and Adaptation
- Political Geography:
- Bangladesh and South Asia
49. Diplomacy, Globalization and Heteropolarity: The Challenge of Adaptation
- Author:
- Daryl Copeland
- Publication Date:
- 08-2013
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
- Abstract:
- Globalization is the defining historical process of our times, conditioning, if not determining, outcomes across vast swathes of human activity. At the same time, a heteropolar world is emerging, one in which various and competing sources of power and influence are based more on difference than on similarity. In the face of these transformative forces, diplomacy is struggling to evolve. To date, none of the key elements of the diplomatic ecosystem – the foreign ministry, the Foreign Service, or the diplomatic business model – have adapted well, or quickly enough. If diplomacy is to achieve its full potential as a non-violent approach to the management of international relations and global issues through political communications, then radical reform will be required. These observations are particularly apt in Canada, where diplomatic performance has in recent years been troubled. The foreign ministry (formerly DFAIT), still struggling to absorb the deep cuts contained in the federal budget of March 2012, finds itself in the midst of a complicated merger with the aid agency (formerly CIDA). This unanticipated amalgamation has resulted in significant uncertainty and dislocation in both organizations, and is reminiscent of the disastrous split, and then re-integration, of the foreign and trade ministries 2004-06. Canadian public and digital diplomacy, widely considered to represent the leading edge of diplomatic practice, have been wound down as a result of the imposition of centralized control over all communications. The Foreign Service, for its part, remains locked in a protracted and acrimonious labour dispute over pay equity. Rotating strikes and working to rule have taken a toll on business and tourist arrivals, foreign student enrolment and high-level visits. In short, Canada’s diplomatic ecosystem is in a perilous state, and Canadian interests are suffering. In the age of globalization and heteropolarity, this won’t do.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Globalization, Politics, Multipolarity, and Adaptation
- Political Geography:
- Canada and North America
50. When modern science meets traditional knowledge: A multi-level process of adaption and resistance
- Author:
- Thomas R. Eimer
- Publication Date:
- 06-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
- Abstract:
- During the course of bio-prospecting and biodiversity conservation projects, scientists, researchers from the life-science industry, and environmental protection groups attempt to access indigenous and traditional communities’ knowledge of the local biodiversity. They confront these groups with the idea that their knowledge can be commercialized. Although the affected communities partly adapt to this view, they insist on their right to decide autonomously and by their own laws whether they are willing to share their knowledge. External actors, however, often reject the right of indigenous self-determination. The evolving conflicts do not only take place on a local level – varying domestic regulatory approaches also shape them. At the same time, a multitude of international organizations also address the issue of access to traditional knowledge, and their activities in turn shape interactions on a domestic and local level. In this paper, the complex interactions that are associated with the access to traditional knowledge shall be regarded as a multi-level process of adaptation and resistance. Empirically, this paper focuses on traditional knowledge policies in India and Brazil. The analysis of the interplay between local, national, and international traditional knowledge regulations in both countries shall serve to explore some possible avenues for further research on processes of adaption and resistance.
- Topic:
- Environment, Science and Technology, Conservation, Adaptation, and Traditional Knowledge
- Political Geography:
- South Asia, India, Brazil, and South America