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The study aims to analyze the impact of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) logistics-related developments on economic growth in Pakistan. The study defined a Cobb-Douglas type of research framework in which the country's real income level relates to four factor inputs, e.g., employed labor force, logistics development, financial development, and energy consumption in an economy. The study utilized the time series data set for the period 1972-2018. To estimate the long run relationship and short run adjustment mechanism, the study used Johansen's method of co-integration and error correction model. Estimated results showed that the country's logistics developments have a significant positive impact on economic growth in both the long run and the short run. It implies that China-Pakistan collaborative efforts for logistics developments will have a strong positive impact on economic growth in Pakistan.

Megaprojects are returning to play a key role in the transformation of rural Africa, despite controversies over their outcome. While some view them as promising tools for a ‘big push’ of modernization, others criticize their multiple adverse effects and risk of failure. Against this backdrop, the paper revisits earlier concepts that have explained megaproject failures by referring to problems of managerial complexity and the logics of state-led development. Taking recent examples from Kenya, the paper argues for a more differentiated approach, considering the symbolic role infrastructure megaprojects play in future-oriented development politics as objects of imagination, vision, and hope. We propose to explain the outcomes of megaprojects by focusing on the ‘politics of aspiration’, which unfold at the intersection between different actors and scales. The paper gives an overview of large infrastructure projects in Kenya and places them in the context of the country´s national development agenda ‘Vision 2030′. It identifies the relevant actors and investigates how controversial aspirations, interests and foreign influences play out on the ground. The paper concludes by describing megaproject development as future making, driven by the mobilizing power of the ‘politics of aspiration’. The analysis of megaprojects should consider not only material outcomes but also their symbolic dimension for desirable futures.

Even though information on global biodiversity trends becomes increasingly available, large taxonomic and spatial data gaps persist at the scale relevant to planning conservation interventions. This is because data collectors are hesitant to share data with global repositories due to workload, lack of incentives, and perceived risk of losing intellectual property rights. In contrast, due to greater conceptual and methodological proximity, taxon-specific database initiatives can provide more direct benefits to data collectors through research collaborations and shared authorship. The IUCN SSC Ape Populations, Environments and Surveys (A.P.E.S.) database was created in 2005 as a repository for data on great apes and other primate taxa. It aims to acquire field survey data and make different types of data accessible, and provide up-to-date species status information. To support the current update of the conservation action plan for western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) we compiled field surveys for this taxon from IUCN SSC A.P.E.S., 75% of which were unpublished. We used spatial modeling to infer total population size, range-wide density distribution, population connectivity and landscape-scale metrics. We estimated a total abundance of 52 800 (95% CI 17 577-96 564) western chimpanzees, of which only 17% occurred in national parks. We also found that 10% of chimpanzees live within 25 km of four multi-national 'development corridors' currently planned for West Africa. These large infrastructure projects aim to promote economic integration and agriculture expansion, but are likely to cause further habitat loss and reduce population connectivity. We close by demonstrating the wealth of conservation-relevant information derivable from a taxon-specific database like IUCN SSC A.P.E.S. and propose that a network of many more such databases could be created to provide the essential information to conservation that can neither be supplied by one-off projects nor by global repositories, and thus are highly complementary to existing initiatives.

The construction and development of international transport corridors have become a means of cross-border space governance, promoting the flexibility of international industrial chains and supply chains. Due to the uncertainty of cooperation, the development of international transport corridors entails a long-term and complex system of engineering. Transport corridors can generate wider economic benefits and costs through their effects on a potentially diverse set of development outcomes, such as economic growth, poverty, jobs, equity, environmental quality, and economic resilience. The focus on roads, rails, and waterways is justified, as transport corridors based on these modes have clearer potential for economic spillovers than, for example, airline routes. The current paper describes a multi-method approach involving spatial and non-spatial analysis to investigate spatial disparity along a proposed corridor and examine its integration within the existing settlement structure. The conceptual structure for the review is guided by a simple canonical model describing the policy maker’s problem in maximizing the net wider economic benefits of corridors. The meta-analysis confirms that characteristics of individual studies, as well as the placement and design of transport infrastructures, systematically influence the findings of corridor studies. It also shows that, on average, estimated impacts of corridor interventions on economic welfare and equity tend to be beneficial, while they are often detrimental to environmental quality, and possibly also to social inclusion.

Corridor development refers to the strategic planning, building, and operation of transportation infrastructure that connects key metropolitan areas within a city. This study aims to assess the effects of corridor development initiatives in Addis Ababa. Data were collected through on-site observations and interviews with key informants from relevant offices, alongside secondary data. Thematic analysis was employed to interpret the data. The study's findings indicate that corridor development initiatives have decreased traffic congestion, enhanced pedestrian and bicycle access, and improved mobility, making commuting more enjoyable and efficient. Furthermore, it promotes sustainability through improving green spaces, open public areas, and non-motorized transportation infrastructure. Overall, the study found that the corridor development project has significantly boosted the city's image. Finally, the study recommends using Addis Ababa's corridor development as a model for urban planning and financial investment in transportation infrastructure, which can enhance the city's quality of life. Besides, to address the city's mobility challenges and promote a smart city, the study advocates for implementing integrated transit systems, vehicle sharing, traffic calming measures, and parking fees as part of the city's ongoing development efforts.

The contemporary food system pushes agriculture to a globalized value-chain, affecting landscapes, resource access, and institutional arrangements. Institutions operating in Africa adopt development corridors to integrate multisector investments and induce export-driven primary sector, leading to massive land deals, also known as land-grabbing. Organizations struggle to monitor land deals accurately, lacking spatial precision and contextual information for affected communities. This research examines Mozambique's Nacala Corridor, using geospatial data as a tool to detect spatial (re)configurations due to exported-oriented policies and infrastructure. Data from land conflicts databases (Land Matrix and Environmental Justice) were analyzed with remote sensing Landsat and MODIS imagery using multiple indexes, an EVI time series, and the application of the LandTrendr algorithm. The results show that the temporal and spatial analysis of remote-sensing data is in line with the major political and economic dynamics of the region. Hotspots of land cover changes were detected in the same areas where land grabbing were reported; however, reported and detected land areas did not coincide. Temporal analysis showed that institutional changes played a greater role in triggering land use changes than infrastructure implementation. We conclude that land cover modifications, conflicts, and spatial development initiatives follows policies and institutional arrangements targeting international investments.

Despite the increasing popularity of development corridors, their effectiveness in promoting regional development compared to regional roads remains uncertain. This study utilised satellite imagery to compare land use transformation within a 10km corridor effect zone along the Walvis Bay - Ndola - Lubumbashi Development Corridor (WBNLDC) and regional roads in Namibia's Zambezi Region. Overall, the Zambezi Region experienced a strong increase in built-up areas (+165%) and cultivated land (+136%) between 2000 and 2023 at the expense of forest (−18%) and grasslands (−18%). Cultivated and built-up areas expanded most intensively along regional roads, where most of the population resides, particularly after road tarring. This suggests regional roads drive land use change more effectively. The findings imply that local communities profit more from regional roads, and targeted investment in such infrastructures might be more beneficial to support the region's food basket goals and improve livelihoods rather than international corridors like the WBNLDC.

ContextWe studied current functional connectivity along a developing grassland corridor in the Midwestern U.S. and focused on connectivity for Greater Prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus cupido). Greater Prairie-chickens are an area-sensitive species that rely on grasslands and are an indicator species for the tallgrass prairie ecosystem in North America. The coordinated multi-agency Prairie Landscape Conservation Plan is one of the largest planned and implemented conservation corridors in the U.S., making this system ideal to examine factors associated with corridor functionality.ObjectivesWe examined landscape functional connectivity and factors that impact genetic structure and gene flow of Greater Prairie-chickens to identify gaps in a planned prairie corridor that is currently being implemented.MethodsWe collected feathers from 81 leks and obtained 31 hunter-harvested wings. We used a landscape genetic approach to evaluate eight hypotheses to explain functional connectivity and examine impacts of land cover and land use on isolation and genetic structure.ResultsTwo populations were most supported based on 294 unique genotypes. Functional connectivity was influenced by land use, land cover, and anthropogenic development. Good connectivity exists within the Greater Prairie-chicken range, but improvements along the corridor in the northern portion of the extant range would be beneficial.ConclusionsWe produced geographically specific recommendations as to where land management can potentially achieve the greatest impact. Our results help prioritize areas for ongoing conservation efforts, like prairie acquisition, restoration, and enhancement. Furthermore, identification of factors influencing connectivity in our study can be applied to improve conservation planning elsewhere in the tallgrass prairie ecosystem.

Biological tissue testing is inherently susceptible to the wide range of variability specimen to specimen. A primary resource for encapsulating this range of variability is the biofidelity response corridor or BRC. In the field of injury biomechanics, BRCs are often used for development and validation of both physical, such as anthropomorphic test devices, and computational models. For the purpose of generating corridors, post-mortem human surrogates were tested across a range of loading conditions relevant to under-body blast events. To sufficiently cover the wide range of input conditions, a relatively small number of tests were performed across a large spread of conditions. The high volume of required testing called for leveraging the capabilities of multiple impact test facilities, all with slight variations in test devices. A method for assessing similitude of responses between test devices was created as a metric for inclusion of a response in the resulting BRC. The goal of this method was to supply a statistically sound, objective method to assess the similitude of an individual response against a set of responses to ensure that the BRC created from the set was affected primarily by biological variability, not anomalies or differences stemming from test devices.

1. Development of transportation corridors has accelerated globally, with infrastructure projects being implemented across remote ecosystems, particularly in the tropics. Such developments can have negative impacts on wildlife and their ecosystems. The importance of wildlife crossing structures to mitigate adverse effects of such features is widely recognized, but the siting of and investment in crossing structures is contentious. Data on animal movement provide valuable, highly specific information for such processes, but can present analytical challenges and remain underutilized in planning mitigation efforts. 2. We develop two algorithms based on Integer Linear Programming to prioritize crossing points based on frequency of use or breadth of coverage among tracked individuals. These scenarios represent metrics likely to guide the planning of crossing structures, where the former may relate to the objective of minimizing vehicle-animal collisions and the latter on maintaining ecosystem connectivity. We exemplify the algorithms through application on a tracking dataset from over 150 African elephants living near the proposed Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport corridor. We explore the influence of sampling bias on outcomes and discuss considerations to guide the application process. 3. Given the generally open, unfenced nature of this ecosystem, recorded movements occurred throughout the system and a third of the corridor length in the ecosystem was intersected by recorded elephant movements. The selection of crossing structure locations and their impacts on elephants varied whether we used a subsample of elephant representative of local population density or total sample of monitored individuals. The two algorithms also selected for different crossing structure locations. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our work shows some of the challenges of using Global Positioning System telemetry in deciding where to put crossing structures and demonstrates the need to identify the type of constraints in the system and desired crossing structure characteristics a priori. We recommend managers carefully evaluate the presence of potential biases in their data. High-resolution data combined with objective prioritization methods allow reasoned planning actions, but are often lacking during critical infrastructure planning stages. Given the limited budget already allocated to mitigation measures in most proposed developments, the tools developed and applied here can facilitate effective spatial planning.