Sudhir Chella Rajan

A nation endowed with mineral wealth is far less privileged than one might imagine, especially if it is unlucky enough to be in an already underdeveloped region. Consider a poor country in Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa, with a history of exploitation by colonial rule and local elites, caught up in vicious circles of institutional decline, having inadequate access to healthcare, education and jobs, and already wholly dependent on foreign exchange revenue from marginal earnings from agricultural commodity exports. The sudden discovery of significant quantities of mineral resources under its control will jolt its political and economic elites into reorganizing themselves into stewards of an extractive economy that relies primarily on external expertise to manage investments, technology and planning. For speedy production of the resource and transfer into global commodity markets, large global corporations are brought in whose revenues may well exceed the country’s domestic output. The contracts will almost undoubtedly have terms that are unfavorable to the public interest, but advance the private interests and power of a small elite network of public officials, local oligarchs, and representatives of the resource extraction industry.

The Farmer Producer Company (FPC), a subset of the Farmer Producer Organization (FPO), is an important institutional form designed to organize farmer groups towards better coordinated farming and marketing. In the Indian context, as FPCs have emerged as new forms of members-led agribusiness, their ability to identify prevailing social ties and tap them effectively towards business growth needs to be better understood. Although social capital is studied broadly for its potential to drive organizational performance, it has been poorly researched in farmer collectives such as FPCs. The current work examines the effect of social capital on benefits and business performance at the level of member groups in FPCs. An empirical analysis was conducted in which two FPCs, which differed significantly in their mobilization strategies, farming methods, and supply chain linkages, were surveyed. Data collected from the surveys were visualized and clustering analysis was carried out using Self Organizing Maps (SOM), an unsupervised Artificial Neural Network (ANN) tool. Insights from clustering reveal the importance of pre-existing social ties, leadership, participation in group activities and the geographical affinity of groups in benefits realization and business performance of FPCs. The importance of bottom-up approaches in establishing robust supply chain linkages in emerging FPCs was keyed out through this work. The inferences through SOM, distilled strategies for FPCs' stakeholders in prioritizing interventions for member groups and in generating broader implications for policy makers accounting social capital in new institutional models.

Climate change induced sea-level rise poses serious threats to coastal regions across the world and the communities in the low-lying coastal regions are at high risk. Building capacities of coastal communities to adapt to sea-level rise are increasingly high priorities for low-lying coastal regions. Climate services are believed to be a powerful mechanism to build capacities of communities, particularly at the local level. It focuses on the connection between climate science and public demand for information and services. In this context, this chapter emphasizes the importance of community-based climate services that build the capacities of local communities to prepare, manage and adapt to rising sea-levels. This study has put forth three research questions such as (1) what services do the coastal communities require; (2) how these services need to be delivered; (3) what are all the roles of climate services that can help in building capacities of coastal communities and involve them in the community-based adaptation decision-making process? This study has adopted the methodology following the recommendations and guidelines of the UNFCCC, the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) and Fifth Assessment Report of IPCC, on climate information and services. As a result, this study has introduced BASIEC (Building capacities for Adaptation to Sea-level rise through Information, Education and Communication for coastal communities), a coastal climate service framework for community-based adaptation to rising sea-levels. The framework emerges from theoretical and empirical knowledge of community-based climate services and offers a holistic approach for integrating information, communication and education through the lens of climate change and sea-level rise. Thus, it provides a systematic starting point and guidance for local level coastal climate policy planners, decision-makers, researchers, local communities and others who hold a stake on coastal climate services for community-based adaptation to changing climate in general and sea-level rise in particular.

With millions of refugees pouring into countries in Europe, renewed attention is being paid to those who are displaced. This article combines some of the current lessons learned from Europe with previous studies on migration related to climate change and provides recommendations to be included in policy. Preparation in advance, regional agreements, and mechanisms for better integration of those who are displaced are highlighted.

Periurban bypasses are enclaves that appear to be left behind of conventional spatial and technological processes. With the focus on cities and their development, the hinterland serves as a resource that barely makes its appearance in mainstream policy debates. Hidden even further in the periurban are areas whose inhabitants are marginalised in many ways. Developing an ethical framework for assessing periurban bypasses is rendered difficult by the complexity of attribution of harm to particular agents. Nevertheless, by using multiple modes of interpretation and assessment of periurban bypasses, it is possible to create ethical profiles that identify social agents and elite networks for generating these harms.

Resource-rich countries are plagued by macroeconomic crises known as 'Dutch Disease', which is associated with the inflation of local currencies on account of a large influx of foreign exchange and a dip in labor supply for non-traded goods. In developing countries, the historical context of state formation is often such that the revenues generated by natural resource exports bolster the stability of authoritarian regimes, and the dominant state actors consolidate their power by managing boom-bust cycles to avert crises. In the context of oil resources, with their special geopolitical significance, relevance for the environment, and enclave character, the primary producers face even more challenges, especially if they are relatively new players and are buffeted by geopolitical power games. Using Mexico, Venezuela and Angola as paradigmatic cases, the relevance of outside forces, domestic policies, and the opportunistic forms of engagement with external power chosen by local actors that produced tragic outcomes in each of these instances are examined. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Low-lying coastal cities are chronic to the bleakness of the coastal hazards and climate change exacerbates these hazards into multifold. Sea-level rise (SLR), intensified storms and storm surges, etc. will have a profound impact on coastal regions and coastal communities. In particular, densely populated coastal cities are at high risk to the impacts of changing climate and rising sea-levels. However, adaptation is considered as one of the appropriate methods to address these challenges and community-based adaptation (CBA) of urban regions is seldom discussed and warrants urgent attention. Grounding on these premises and based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 11-Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 13-Climate Action), this paper explores CBA through the lens of climate change and SLR of the hazard prone coastal city such as Chennai city (India). In this context, this paper reviews the nature of Chennai city’s exposure and vulnerability to coastal hazards and outlines the impacts and challenges of a changing climate and rising sea-levels. This study has made based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodology in which primary and secondary sources are tapped for information and perspectives and secondary literatures are collected based on keyword search technique. The findings outline (a) Chennai city is vulnerable to coastal natural hazards and climate change; (b) SLR poses serious threats to Chennai city’s coastal infrastructures, coastal natural resources and coastal communities; (c) Adaptation is considered as one of the suitable response strategies to SLR and CBA warrants urgent attention. Importantly, this study introduces “CBACCS (Community Based Adaptation for Chennai city to Climate change and Sea-level rise)” approach and emphasizes the need of CBA for Chennai city to address these challenges. Thus, the information gleaned from this study will provide insights to local level policy planners, decision makers and research penchants to understand and address CBA for coastal cities like Chennai through the lens of climate change and SLR.