First Published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The unprecedented changes in the world, on account of climate change and growing demands of human population, pose serious challenge in managing the ecosystem related services of the country. The three countries, which are likely to be worst affected on account of increased vulnerability due to reduced ecosystem resilience are Brazil, China and India. This publication springs from an effort to analyze the driving forces, pressures and state of forests in the three countries, with special reference to policies addressing the natural resource management. The described frame work of DPSIR model has been used to compare and analyze the state of forests among the three countries to address the priorities for assessment, planning, management and action. The book would bring insight to managers, resource users and policy makers to review existing procedures and improve responses in the respective countries.

This collection brings together accomplished and emerging scholars who are researching and working for grassroots social change throughout Africa and Asia. The essays within are sourced from a series of seminars held during the founding African Peace Research and Education Association Conference at the Economic Community of West African States Parliament in Abuja, Nigeria. The book draws strategic lines of connection between diverse peoples on the two most populous continents. Looking at contemporary Gandhian, Chinese, armed guerrilla, insurrectionist, state-supported, and civil resistance movements, each essay reviews recent attempts at peace-building, while also placing modern efforts in traditional, historic, indigenous contexts.

Given the lack of adequate universal social welfare for those unable to find jobs in the salaried formal sector, the livelihoods and well-being of most poor people depends heavily on their asset base. This includes their ability to access and accumulate assets, obtain decent returns from these assets, and use their asset base to manage risks. 'Assets, Livelihoods, and Social Policy' discusses the diverse strategies adopted by people in different contexts to accumulate assets through migration, housing investments, natural resources management, and informal businesses. An asset-based social policy can strengthen asset accumulation strategies as well as help the poor overcome the constraints of unfavorable institutional environments. To a considerable extent, asset accumulation strategies depend on the agency exercised by people themselves through individual or collective action. At the same time, the status of policies and institutions can enable or hinder these strategies and affect livelihood outcomes. In synthesis, the case studies lead to the differentiation among three different types of policies: - policies that affect outcomes by directly influencing access to assets by the poor such as land, housing, natural resources, or credit. - policies and public investments that change the nature of returns on assets such as investments in rural roads, agricultural inputs, and market development. - policies that transform the value of assets held by the poor by virtue of administrative decisions that increase or reduce value such as re-classification of land from arable or pasture to protected lands, land use regulations affecting resource use, or modification in regulations governing labor rights or migration. The chapters, originally commissioned to re-examine major gaps in knowledge and development practice ten years after the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development, are authored by leading scholars from economics, anthropology, sociology, geography, and development studies. This book is part of a new series, New Frontiers in Social Policy, which examines issues and approaches to extend the boundaries of social policy beyond conventional social services toward policies and institutions that improve equality of opportunity and social justice in developing countries. Other titles in the series include Inclusive States: Social Policy and Structural Inequalities, and Institutional Pathways to Equity: Addressing Inequality Traps.

China’s trade patterns are evolving. While it started in light manufacturing and the assembly of more sophisticated products as part of global supply chains, China is now moving up the value chain, “onshoring” the production of higher-value-added upstream products and moving into more sophisticated downstream products as well. At the same time, with its wages rising, it has started to exit some lower-end, more labor-intensive sectors. These changes are taking place in the broader context of China’s rebalancing—away from exports and toward domestic demand, and within the latter, away from investment and toward consumption—and as a consequence, demand for some commodity imports is slowing, while consumption imports are slowly rising. The evolution of Chinese trade, investment, and consumption patterns offers opportunities and challenges to low-wage, low-income countries, including China’s neighbors in the Mekong region. Cambodia, Lao P.D.R., Myanmar, and Vietnam (the CLMV) are all open economies that are highly integrated with China. Rebalancing in China may mean less of a role for commodity exports from the region, but at the same time, the CLMV’s low labor costs suggest that manufacturing assembly for export could take off as China becomes less competitive, and as China itself demands more consumption items. Labor costs, however, are only part of the story. The CLMV will need to strengthen their infrastructure, education, governance, and trade regimes, and also run sound macro policies in order to capitalize fully on the opportunities presented by China’s transformation. With such policy efforts, the CLMV could see their trade and integration with global supply chains grow dramatically in the coming years.