Global Links
Economic Growth, Techno-fixes, and the UN: Tensions in Biodiversity and Climate Negotiations View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lauren Eastwood
Based on 15 years of participant observations in meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, the paper highlights a fundamental tension in multilateral environmental negotiations that ultimately prevents nation states from meeting targets set in these arenas. Using specific concrete examples from the deliberations, the paper illustrates the profound commitment to traditional economic growth, both as a means of realizing “development goals” and as a means of achieving positive environmental outcomes. While there is substantial evidence that this is a flawed framework, and while indicators of environmental degradation are demonstrating that things have gotten profoundly worse rather than better, nation-states’ commitments to traditional economic growth pervade the deliberations. Furthermore, critiques of these foundational assumptions are often brought to the table by more marginalized actors such as indigenous peoples and environmental NGOs.
Economics of Smallholder Farmer Coffee Storage : Feasibility Analysis for a Former Colombian Conflict Zone View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kenneth Foster
This paper focuses on the use of Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) technology for coffee on small farms globally, with a specific emphasis on post-conflict Colombia as an example application. Agricultural and rural development in Colombia have been severely affected by civil conflict. Consequently, access to improved technologies in small-scale Colombian agriculture has been limited while key resources were allocated to conflict and illicit crop production. The reopening of the Colombian countryside after the 2016 peace accords facilitates adoption of new agricultural methods and reduced reliance on violence and illicit crops. This study assesses the economic feasibility of farm-level green coffee storage using the farm decision linear programming model developed as part of the Orinoquía Initiative (Orinoquía 2017) by Sanders and Carillo Rozo (2018) specifically for the Piedemonte zone of the Orinoquía region. Two versions of the PICS technology are evaluated, considering historical seasonal price patterns, and the sensitivity of the solution to key parameters is evaluated.
Featured Is Sustainable Development Important for the European Media?: An Approach to the Amount of Content and Study of Related Topics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alberto E. Lopez-Carrion
In 2015, the United Nations promulgated the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda, an action plan with the aim of improving the lives of people and the planet itself by 2030, with the full support of the 193 member states that make up the international organisation. This research analyses the coverage given by the main media in the five most populated countries on the European continent, in a context in which numerous studies and surveys highlight that awareness of this issue is quite low. The methodology consists of using a digital newspaper library in order to quantify the amount of content disseminated since 2015 on this issue, in order to then carry out a statistical analysis of the topics most frequently cited in these news items.
