Student Network for Human Security (SNHS) Blog

This interesting news here, thanks to professor Saito, from El Salvador (good luck in your new post!)

In advance of this weekend’s G-20 summit on financial markets in Washington, D.C., the Secretary-General has sent a letter to leaders of those countries. In it, he underlines the need to prevent the financial crisis from becoming a human crisis that could assume overwhelming political and security dimensions. One important way of doing this will be by meeting existing commitments on aid, he says.

Reforms cannot be restricted to financial sector regulation alone, the Secretary-General adds. They must also deal with the broader challenges for human security, including climate change, conflict prevention and the eradication of poverty. An early resolution of issues holding up the Doha trade round would also be a significant contribution to overcoming the crisis.

“These broad challenges can only be met through a reinvigorated and inclusive multilateralism,” the Secretary-General says. “The United Nations has much to contribute and remains the anchor of such a system.”

Yesterday, we have one enlightening lecture by one of our colleagues from Environmental Studies, Mr. Matheaus K. KAUTI, 3rd year PhD student. The following is the abstract that very kindly introduced during the seminar session. Thank you so much!

The Government of Kenya, with assistance from World Bank and IMF, instituted neo-liberal economic and structural adjustment programs with a view to address and stimulate the declining trend in economic growth through the 1980s and 1990s. Implementation of the programs negatively affected smallholder farmers’ production due to cost of agricultural inputs and consumer goods rising faster than the prices of agricultural produce. Concurrently, effects of the variability of climate and precipitation patterns intrinsically and fundamentally link in shaping Kenya’s smallholders vulnerability.

This study is about coping and adaptation processes by smallholder farmers in Kenya in the context of these changes. It is premised on the detection of dynamic changes in livelihood strategies through understanding the ways in which households and communities cope and adapt under conditions of crisis, risk and uncertainty using the case of crop variety selection. Drawing data from 40 households in two case study sites located in Central Kenya, I take a longitudinal perspective in identifying patterns of crop selection and deselection and contextualize the emerging patterns within the mediating forces affecting smallholder farmers decision-making.

I reveal variations of patterns in chronological sequencing of crop variety selection both within crops and between households over time. These patterns are substantiated by investigation of a myriad of considerations by farmers in crop selection and deselection. I classify these into five explanatory elements which interplay in influencing smallholder farmers’ decision-making. Results indicate that in addition to geographical-environment (climate) and agronomical-botanical (plant characteristics) considerations, economic (commercial) rationalization is becoming an influential factor in the recent past. A tendency towards diversification and market-oriented production system i.e. switch from long maturing to early maturing crops that can generate income all year round is evident. This is necessitated by demand for cash income due to inflation pressures and elimination of subsidies as a result of economic liberalization policies. Of less importance to farmers are social-cultural and agricultural extension services considerations.

The study demonstrates that crop variety selection as a coping and adaptation strategy is an outcome of factors and processes that interact at a given place and time, these include geography and/or agro-ecology, agronomic (botanical), economic (commercial), socio-cultural background and historical processes. I therefore, argue for a holistic place-based approach at both household-level and regional-level in understanding of location-specific context of the human-environment system interaction in which rural livelihoods of smallholders in Kenya take place. Even though the study is limited to local scope and subject matter of crop selection, the results presented underscore the significance of understanding indigenous coping and adaptive capabilities in facilitating and informing targeting of interventions designed to improve people’s livelihoods.

Stay tuned for coming seminars.

This case, briefly presented in October 25th edition of the Economist, is the example of an already known ailment of business' ethic failures, with the complicity of the state. From time to time, thanks to the technology advance and public awareness proper of the first world, some materials or products are found to have a deleterious impact on human health or the natural environment. An immediate ban on the commercialization of the substance will follow, plus a long process of epidemiological research and, probably, some kind of compensation. Yet, that is far to be the end of the story. Beyond the ethical problem behind compensation - how much is human life worth? - and internal struggle, there is always the problem of companies survival.

Apart from subsidies, which always distort the pollution problem because instead of "polluters pay" it becomes "taxpayers pay", there is always the option to take the problem somewhere else. It was a shameless business during eighties and early nineties, when hazardous waste was traded between rich countries and corrupt governments in the LDCs. Then Basel convention entered into force in 1992, and nowadays such problems rarely appear in the headlines - though the problem of electronic garbage remains an issue.

The problem regain public attention later inside the agricultural sector. Herbicides baned by health authorities in rich countries were exported to developing countries, which later could not export their production to the countries that sold them the poison, because the products had traces of the substance (Notwithstanding the reasons for the prohibition in the origin nation).

Yet, Canadian position on the Asbestos industry, with the largely accepted carcinogenic effects the material has, is closer to a criminal act. There might be some discussion about whether it is or not buyer's problem to take the risk of using the hazardous material. One project of Japanese international cooperation in the 80s was blocked by NGOs because it included a lot of strong agrochemicals to a tropical country in Southeast Asia, but because of the weather protection clothes were unbearable. But, beyond technical discussion, is this the attitude expected for the number one defender of the Responsibility to Protect?

OAGS