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Climate change, disaster risk, and the urban poor : cities building resilience for a changing world
Poor people living in slums are at particularly high risk from the impacts of climate change and natural hazards. They live on the most vulnerable land within cities, typically areas deemed undesirable by others and thus affordable. This study analyzes the key challenges facing the urban poor, given the risks associated with climate change and disasters, particularly with regard to the delivery of basic services, and identifies strategies and financing opportunities for addressing these risks. The main audience for this study includes mayors and other city managers, national governments, donors, and practitioners in the fields of climate change, disaster-risk management, and urban development. The work is part of a broader program under the Mayor's task force on climate change, disaster risk and the urban poor. The study is organized in four chapters covering: 1) a broad look at climate change and disaster risk in cities of the developing world, with particular implications for the urban poor; 2) analysis of the vulnerability of the urban poor; 3) discussion of recommended approaches for building resilience for the urban poor; and 4) review of the financing opportunities for covering investments in basic services and other needs associated with climate and disaster risk.
eBook
The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development
Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. Andrews argues that reforms often fail to make governments better because they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function. However, there are realistic solutions emerging from institutional reforms in some developing countries. Lessons from these experiences suggest that reform limits, although challenging to adopt, can be overcome by focusing change on problem solving through an incremental process that involves multiple agents.
eBook
Lawlessness and economics
How can property rights be protected and contracts be enforced in countries where the rule of law is ineffective or absent? How can firms from advanced market economies do business in such circumstances? In Lawlessness and Economics, Avinash Dixit examines the theory of private institutions that transcend or supplement weak economic governance from the state.
eBook
Access for all : building inclusive financial systems
Unlock the transformative power of microfinance for global poverty reduction.This insightful title explores how to build inclusive financial systems that empower the poor and drive economic growth in developing countries.Drawing on a decade of CGAP experience, it offers a comprehensive framework for expanding access to financial services for all.
eBook
Special economic zones : progress, emerging challenges, and future directions
Ask three people to describe a special economic zone (SEZ) and three very different images may emerge. The first person may describe a fenced-in industrial estate in a developing country, populated by footloose multinational corporations (MNCs) enjoying tax breaks, with laborers in garment factories working in substandard conditions. In contrast, the second person may recount the 'miracle of Shenzhen,' a fishing village transformed into a cosmopolitan city of 14 million, with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growing 100-fold, in the 30 years since it was designated as an SEZ. A third person may think about places like Dubai or Singapore, whose ports serve as the basis for wide range of trade- and logistics-oriented activities. In this book, the author use SEZ as a generic expression to describe the broad range of modern economic zones discussed in this book. But we are most concerned with two specific forms of those zones: (1) the export processing zones (EPZs) or free zones, which focus on manufacturing for export; and (2) the large-scale SEZs, which usually combine residential and multiuse commercial and industrial activity. The former represents a traditional model used widely throughout the developing world for almost four decades. The latter represents a more recent form of economic zone, originating in the 1980s in China and gaining in popularity in recent years. Although these models need not be mutually exclusive (many SEZs include EPZ industrial parks within them), they are sufficiently different in their objectives, investment requirements, and approach to require a distinction in this book.
eBook
Low-fee private schooling and poverty in developing countries
In Low-fee Private Schooling and Poverty in Developing Countries, Joanna H rm draws on primary research carried out in sub-Saharan African countries and in India to show how the poor are being failed by both government and private schools. The primary research data and experiences are combined with additional examples from around the world to offer a wide perspective on the issue of marketized education, low-fee private schooling and government systems. H rm offers a pragmatic approach to a divisive issue and an ideologically-driven debate and shows how the well-intentioned international drive towards 'education for all' is being encouraged and even imposed long before some countries have prepared the teachers and developed the systems needed to implement it successfully. Suggesting that governments need to take a much more constructive approach to the issue, H rm argues for a greater acceptance of the challenges, abandoning ideological positions and a scaling back of ambition in the hope of laying stronger foundations for educational development.
eBook
Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World
Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World offers a broad exploration of the conceptual foundations for comparative analysis of media and politics globally. It takes as its point of departure the widely used framework of Hallin and Mancini's Comparing Media Systems, exploring how the concepts and methods of their analysis do and do not prove useful when applied beyond the original focus of their 'most similar systems' design and the West European and North American cases it encompassed. It is intended both to use a wider range of cases to interrogate and clarify the conceptual framework of Comparing Media Systems and to propose new models, concepts and approaches that will be useful for dealing with non-Western media systems and with processes of political transition. Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World covers, among other cases, Brazil, China, Israel, Lebanon, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Thailand.
eBook
Law against the State
This collection of rich, empirically grounded case studies investigates the conditions and consequences of 'juridification' - the use of law by ordinary individuals as a form of protest against 'the state'. Starting from the actual practices of claimants, these case studies address the translation and interpretation of legal norms into local concepts, actions and practices in a way that highlights the social and cultural dynamism and multivocality of communities in their interaction with the law and legal norms. The contributors to this volume challenge the image of homogeneous and primordially norm-bound cultures that has been (unintentionally) perpetuated by some of the more prevalent treatments of law and culture. This volume highlights the heterogeneous geography of law and the ways boundaries between different legal bodies are transcended in struggles for rights. Contributions include case studies from South Africa, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Turkey, India, Papua New Guinea, Suriname, the Marshall Islands and Russia.
eBook
International Trade and Developing Countries
A keen analysis of how and why countries bargain together in groups in world affairs, and why such coalitions are crucial to individual developing nations. It also reveals the effects these negotiating blocs are having on world affairs.
Successful coalition building has proven to be a difficult and expensive process. Allies are often not obvious and need to be carefully identified. Large numbers do not necessarily entail a proportionate increase in influence. And the weak have the choice of teaming up against or jumping on the bandwagon with the strong. Even after it has been organised, collective action entails costs of many kinds.
This book investigates the relevance and workability of coalitions as instruments of bargaining power for the weak. More specifically, this analyzes the coalition strategies of developing countries at the inter-state level, particularly in the context of international trade.
Given the nature of this enquiry, this new study uses theoretical and empirical methods to complement each other. The theoretical approach draws from a plethora of writings: formal theories of clubs and coalitions, theories of domestic political economy and theories of international relations. The empirical analysis of comparable coalitions becomes necessary to assist in this theorising, so the greater part of the book focuses mainly (though not exclusively) on coalitions involving developing countries on the issue-area of trade in services. Through the case-studies of the Uruguay Round and an analytical overview of more recent coalitions, this text fills an important gap in the literature of international political economy and international relations where most GATT/WTO-based coalitions have eluded record.
This book will be of great interest to all students of international relations, politics and globalization.
eBook