Global Rangeland Primary Production and Its Consumption by Livestock in 2000–2010

It has been increasingly accepted that park management policies in some countries should allow for limited access to park resources by the local people to meet their subsistence and cultural needs. However, too much access to the natural resources of a park may simply cause people to rely on the park resource and manage their own lands less intensively than hitherto.The issue of illegal livestock-grazing and fodder-cutting in Royal Chitwan National Park (RCNP) by local people is examined. The study area was comprised of 16 village units having an estimated population of 148, 404 people in 21, 621 households. Despite the presence of a large number of armed guards, the data from interviews with farmers indicated that illegal livestock-grazing and fodder-cutting in RCNP were prevalent. In the spring season, grazing intensity on the Park was higher than in other seasons, whereas cutting of fodder was intense in both winter and spring seasons.The actual monitoring of 11 patches (totalling 365 ha) of grasslands or savanna for a calendar year inside the Park but near its boundary, indicated that illegal grazing averaged 4.1 head per ha (3.0 cattle, 0.9 buffalo, and 0.2 sheep/goats). In addition, the livestock biomass was found to be increasing by 2.36% per annum in Park-adjoining villages. There is some evidence that villagers adapt their livestock practices in response to the availability (illegal) of grazing in, and fodder-removal from, the Park.The pressures for illegal access to park resources will continue to grow and eventually will exceed the capacity of the resource to recover from harvest. The best approach to resolve this illegal livestock grazing issue is neither strict protection nor widely-expanded access. The Park should consistently work to induce a gradual behavioural change, on the part of the farmers, to stall-feed livestock from fodder originating from their own farms and/or from community plantation.

SummaryTheme conflicts of interest is one of the major reasons for concern local government, regional and central administrative and criminal legal implications aiming to uphold the integrity and decisions objectively. Also, most obviously, conflicts of interest occur at the national level where political stakes are usually highest, one of the determining factors of this segment being the changing role of the state itself, which creates opportunities for individual gain through its transformations.

<p>The paper challenges the mainstream stance in the study of applied ethics<br />in international development. Applied ethics is positioned at the macro-social level<br />of global ethics while a specific codification is attempted by formulating international development based on its structural synthesis, in a threefold level: First, the structural synthesis –associated with the framework of existing international development policy–can be found in the ‘market relations’. Second, the analysis specifies the policies applied at the national level and the role of nation-state policy. Third, the paper criticizes the international development institutions’ policies. In each of the levels mentioned above, the analysis reveals the fundamental policy theory issues of neoclassical economics, as the intellectual defender of free market economics.</p>

Public policy formation and implementation for career guidance provision are complex issues, not least because in most countries career guidance is a peripheral part of legislation for education, employment, and social inclusion. Policy solutions are compromises by nature. Regulations and economic incentives are the main policy instruments for career guidance provision, but there is often incoherence between the intentions of the regulations and the economic incentives provided for policy implementation. The intermediary organizations that serve to implement policy add significant variability to policy effects. International bodies and organizations have shown significant interest in the role of career guidance in education and employment policies through the undertaking of policy reviews, the formulation of recommendations for career guidance, and, in some cases, providing economic incentives to support their implementation. However, there is a dearth of evaluation studies of policy formation and implementation at the national level.

This chapter explores a number of key issues: the role of competence and capacity, advance directives, and decisions made for others. It analyses the ways these are treated in the United States and in selected European jurisdictions. National-level capacity legislation and human rights norms play a central role in Europe, which means that healthcare decisions in situations of impaired capacity operate in accordance with a national standard. In the United States, the legal framework is more state-based (rather than federal), and the courts have played a significant role, with both common law and legislation varying considerably across jurisdictions. Despite these differences, this chapter identifies some similar legal principles which have developed.

Wood pastures are home to a variety of species, including the dung beetle. Dung beetles are an important functional group in decomposition. Specifically, in terms of livestock manure, they not only contribute to nutrient cycling but are key players in supporting human and animal health. Dung beetles, however, are declining in population, and urgent recommendations are needed to reverse this trend. Recommendations need to be based on solid evidence and specific habitats. Herein, we aimed to investigate the role of an intermediate habitat type between forests and pastures. Wood pastures are key areas for dung beetle conservation. For this reason, we compared dung beetle assemblages among forests, wood pastures, and grasslands. We complemented this with studies on the effects of dung type and season at three Hungarian locations. Pitfall traps baited with cattle, sheep, or horse dung were used in forests, wood pastures, and pasture habitats in spring, summer, and autumn. Dung beetle assemblages of wood pastures showed transient characteristics between forests and pastures regarding their abundance, species richness, Shannon diversity, assemblage composition, and indicator species. We identified a strong effect of season and a weak of dung type. Assemblage composition proved to be the most sensitive measure of differences among habitats. The conservation of dung beetles, and the decomposition services they provide, need continuous livestock grazing to provide fresh dung, as well as the maintenance of wood pastures where dung beetle assemblages typical of forests and pastures can both survive.

The role of proportionality and individual assessments in EU residency and welfare access cases has changed significantly over the course of the last decade. This article demonstrates how a search for certainty and efficiency in this area of EU law has created greater uncertainty, more legal hurdles for citizens, and less consistency in decision-making at the national level. UK case law illustrates the difficulty faced by national authorities when interpreting and applying the rules relating to welfare access and proportionality. Ultimately, the law lacks the consistency and transparency that recent CJEU case law seeks to obtain, raising the question of whether the shift from the Court's previous, more flexible, case-by-case approach was desirable after all.

COVID-19 spread rapidly across the world, and by March 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was identified in South Africa. Lockdown-related measures such as restricted movement and isolation were implemented to contain the virus. Combined with these measures, factors such as economic decline, job losses, and food shortages can cause numerous mental health sequelae such as depression. Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness as well as cases of suicide have been reported around the world due to the pandemic and the associated feelings of anxiety and depression. The aims of this study were to investigate levels of hopelessness and depression in a sample of health care students. A random sample of students ( N = 174) enrolled in a health sciences programme at the University of the Western Cape completed the Beck Hopelessness Scale, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, and a three-item Resilience Scale. The results revealed high levels of hopelessness and depression compared to previously reported normative data for these scales. In addition, the indirect effects of hopelessness on depression were significant, demonstrating the mediating role of resilience in the hopelessness–depression relationship. These results highlight a call for universities to take proactive measures in providing students with free and easily accessible resources to help them cope and manage stress during a traumatic event. More importantly, at a national level, preventive measures should be implemented to strengthen resilience in young adults.

The Covid-19 pandemic put a heavy burden on member states in the European Union. To govern the pandemic, having access to reliable geo-information is key for monitoring the spatial distribution of the outbreak over time. This study aims to analyze the role of spatio-temporal information in governing the pandemic in the European Union and its member states. The European Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) system and selected national dashboards from member states were assessed to analyze which spatio-temporal information was used, how the information was visualized and whether this changed over the course of the pandemic. Initially, member states focused on their own jurisdiction by creating national dashboards to monitor the pandemic. Information between member states was not aligned. Producing reliable data and timeliness reporting was problematic, just like selecting indictors to monitor the spatial distribution and intensity of the outbreak. Over the course of the pandemic, with more knowledge about the virus and its characteristics, interventions of member states to govern the outbreak were better aligned at the European level. However, further integration and alignment of public health data, statistical data and spatio-temporal data could provide even better information for governments and actors involved in managing the outbreak, both at national and supra-national level. The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) initiative and the NUTS system provide a framework to guide future integration and extension of existing systems.

The spatial annual patterns of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and precipitation-use efficiency (PUE) of the rangelands of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, a region in which several projects for ecosystem restoration had been implemented, are described for the years 1998–2007. Remotely sensed normalised difference vegetation index and ANPP data, measured in situ, were integrated to allow the prediction of ANPP and PUE in each 1 km2 of the 12 prefectures of Inner Mongolia. Furthermore, the temporal dynamics of PUE and ANPP residuals, as indicators of ecosystem deterioration and recovery, were investigated for the region and each prefecture. In general, both ANPP and PUE were positively correlated with mean annual precipitation, i.e. ANPP and PUE were higher in wet regions than in arid regions. Both PUE and ANPP residuals indicated that the state of the rangelands of the region were generally improving during the period of 2000–05, but declined by 2007 to that found in 1999. Among the four main grassland-dominated prefectures, the recovery in the state of the grasslands in the Erdos and Chifeng prefectures was highest, and Xilin Gol and Chifeng prefectures was 2 years earlier than Erdos and Hunlu Buir prefectures. The study demonstrated that the use of PUE or ANPP residuals has some limitations and it is proposed that both indices should be used together with relatively long-term datasets in order to maximise the reliability of the assessments.