Fisheries and poverty reduction.

This paper offers an assessment of the mainstreaming of fisheries in national development plans and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers within the Asia-Pacific region. Fisheries and aquaculture in the region make a significant contribution to world fisheries production. Importantly, those directly involved in the sector are predominantly small-scale artisanal producers, a group traditionally regarded as extremely vulnerable in poverty terms. Therefore, mainstreaming – integrating a sector into every stage of the national policy process – may have important welfare implications for those drawing livelihoods from the industry. This paper examines the significance of fisheries and aquaculture to developing Asia-Pacific economies, and evaluates the extent to which the sector has been mainstreamed in national development and poverty reduction strategies using a content analysis framework. We conclude that the representation of fisheries issues, the recognition of sectoral poverty, policy responses, and stakeholder representation, is typically greater than in other fish producing regions, and there are many examples of best practice.

This research paper analyzes the implementation of economic subsidies for public energy services in the Argentine Republic between 2003 and 2023.During the 1990s, the State Reform Law significantly shifted public policies toward privatization. Considering the subsidy system introduced in Argentina following the 2001 economic crisis, these subsidies emerged as a tool to prevent tariff increases in sectors that are economically strategic and socially sensitive.Initially applied during a severe economic crisis, the subsidies aimed to guarantee electricity and gas access and consumption for the population. In a second phase, they were directed at subsidizing supply to encourage hydrocarbon production.In energy-related debates, a crucial dimension is often overlooked: the relationship between the distribution of energy subsidies and access to energy (electricity, natural gas, and bottled gas).Generally, access to energy services—essential for poverty reduction and improving conditions for the most socially vulnerable groups—receives little attention in official government policies. In national development plans and poverty reduction or energy strategies across a wide range of Latin American and Caribbean countries, the link between subsidies and energy access is often absent (ECLAC, 2009, p. 07).In this context, the analysis offers a discussion tool grounded in empirical evidence, focusing on the changes, continuities, and main challenges surrounding the energy subsidy paradigm. Energy policy, like all public policy, involves a set of decisions, actions, and governmental measures aimed at managing the energy sector.

Poverty is an important human rights concern. Human rights are claims that people have for social arrangements to guarantee their substantive freedoms; poverty reflects failures in these social arrangements and in the actions of duty bearers. It is the poorest people in society --- those with low incomes, education, insecure health, and political power --- who are most vulnerable to severe abuse of their human rights in multiple areas. At the same time, it is lack of human rights protection that leaves people vulnerable to falling into economic and social destitution. Poverty is both a cause and consequence of human rights abuse and lack of protection. Yet human rights agendas are rarely explicitly built into national strategies for poverty reduction. This paper is a consolidated report of a study commissioned by OHCHR on developing a conceptual framework for integrating human rights into national strategies for poverty reduction and identifying operational priorities. It builds on and takes further the 2003 OHCHR conceptual framework on human rights and poverty reduction strategies authored by Hunt, Nowak and Osmani. It incorporates a human rights analysis of poverty reduction policies of Guatemala, Liberia and Nepal. The paper argues that human rights perspectives contribute new approaches in normative, analytical and instrumental dimensions of poverty reduction strategies. First, it brings a strong and explicit normative framework legitimized by the backing of international law that emphasize principles of equality, non-discrimination and concern for the most vulnerable, and a social justice agenda to policy priorities. Second, human rights perspectives introduce new analyses to the causes of poverty - focussing on institutionalized discrimination, lack of political voice, institutional failures to guarantee human rights including weak protection for civil and political rights. Third, human rights have instrumental (not just intrinsic) value for poverty reduction; human rights empower poor people through the power of legal protection for human rights --- civil, political, economic, social and cultural --- of poor people as well as through the power of ideas that legitimize the claims of poor people to surmount obstacles in their lives.

The Building Biocarbon and Rural Development in West Africa Programme aims to demonstrate the multiple developmental and environmental wins that result from a high value biocarbon approach to climate change and variability in large landscapes principally in Mali, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The Programme will also build local institutions and capacity to be able to sustain the benefits in the sites and will establish linkages with related initiatives to jointly build national and regional capacity to scale up the approaches into other programmes and projects. The themes of the Programme are very closely linked to Finland's international development priorities and are closely aligned with the priorities expressed in its national poverty reduction and climate change adaptation strategies. Furthermore, the Programme aims to generate critical information that can fill the global knowledge gaps on how to better link climate change mitigation and adaptation thrusts and how to make these actions work effectively to enhance the livelihoods of rural communities. (2015)

The link between biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation has been the subject of heated debate for the last decade. One thread of this multi-faceted issue has been concerned with a perceived lack of attention to biodiversity conservation within the international development agenda following the prioritization of poverty reduction—particularly, the emphasis on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and on national poverty reduction strategies. In this paper I explore whether biodiversity has indeed “fallen off” the development agenda, as critics claim, by reviewing the policies of official development assistance agencies and national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs).

The paper offers an assessment of the mainstreaming of fisheries in Latin American national development plans and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, World Bank Country Assistance Strategies and EU Country Strategy papers. Although fisheries are not one of the region's most important industries, it does make a major contribution to world fisheries production and includes a number of internationally significant producers. More importantly, those directly involved in the sector are predominantly small-scale artisanal producers, a group traditionally regarded as vulnerable to poverty. Therefore, mainstreaming – the integration of a sector into every stage of policy processes to address cross-sectoral issues such as poverty reduction – may have important welfare implications for those drawing livelihoods from the industry. The extent of mainstreaming, examined by a content analysis of development plans, is compared to the economic and social significance of fishing. The paper concludes that fisheries are under...

The report is organized as follows. Chapter one sets out the strategic context for Iraq, including the evolving political situation, macroeconomic context, and poverty and social conditions. Chapter two analyzes the trends in, and composition of, public expenditure, both from economic and functional perspectives. This chapter discusses the efficiency of public expenditure in Iraq (that is, through benchmarking as well as direct output comparisons) and identifies, on the basis of analysis, key sectors for further in-depth assessment for the second phase. It also looks at revenue management issues drawing on the Country Economic Memorandum (CEM). Chapter three examines strategic prioritization and budget execution issues in Iraq. In particular, it reviews the national development priorities, as articulated in the National Development Plan (NDP) and poverty reduction strategy (PRS), and examines the strategic orientation of public expenditures, that is, to what extent public expenditure priorities relate to Iraq’s development plan. This chapter also focuses on public investment in Iraq, analyzes key issues against efficient and effective use of investment budget, and proposes actions for an effective Public Investment Management (PIM) system. Chapter four analyzes efficiency of public spending in electricity sector and discusses public service delivery issues while chapter five focuses on efficiency and equity issues in public expenditure on health.

How can we conceptualise the politics of aid and account for the effects of internationally-driven poverty reduction policies in the Global South? This Working Paper offers a conceptual framework that goes beyond two common assumptions in the academic literature as well as advocacy and activist milieux: on the one hand, the idea that one-size-fits all international recommendations and PRSPs are imposed on recipient governments; on the other hand, the idea promoted by the World Bank and shared by most donors that Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are efficient when “owned” by the recipient government. To do so, the Working Paper takes the case of Mali in the 2000s and presents the uses and trajectories of PRSPs in this West African country. The Working Paper distances itself from the two notions of imposition and “ownership” and takes recipient agency seriously. It offers an analytical framework to analyse the politics of aid and poverty reduction in aid-dependent countries which borrows from the notion of “appropriation”. It argues that the PRSPs in Mali have been successfully appropriated by public actors, i.e. political leaders, public servants and civil society representatives. This Working Paper shows how, in over one decade, the PRSP has shifted from being a “World Bank thing”, i.e. a mere conditionality to comply with, to being treated by public actors as the “reference framework”. This has happened through modalities and processes of appropriation that differed from the scenario initially envisaged by the World Bank but has ensured that the PRSP has become truly Malian, i.e. embedded in the country’s socio-political fabric.

Abstract: The formulation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) is one of the main conditions for concessional lending by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to developing countries. Nevertheless, while evidence indicates that the fisheries sector can contribute (often markedly at the local level) to improved livelihoods and the achievement of food security in Africa, the sector is often neglected in PRSPs. This article focuses on the 29 African states that have currently produced a PRSP, highlighting those nations for whom the fisheries sector has been a significant motor of economic growth or likely poverty refuge. It then analyses the extent to which the fisheries sector is incorporated into national PRSPs. Results of a mapping exercise demonstrate that while the sector is significant (in either growth or poverty terms) in 12 states, the sector was effectively mainstreamed in only three national PRSPs (Ghana, Guinea and Senegal).

There is no doubt that climate change has significantly impeded poverty reduction and development efforts in many countries. Recent climate-related catastrophes have caused significant damages to developing countries and their citizens. This article analyses the nexus between climate change mitigation and its impact on Tanzania’s poverty reduction strategies. With the government’s decision to abandon poverty reduction strategies in 2011, it is vital to understand how these issues are mainstreamed in national plans. Drawing on extensive literature of secondary sources and official publications, the article demonstrates that, notwithstanding many promising features of the new national development plan, Tanzania has performed poorly within the overarching notion of mainstreaming climate change in its various national development plans. Findings further show that despite all these efforts made in previous climate change and poverty reduction strategies, Tanzania is still ill-prepared to face future climate change challenges. The article concludes that climate change issues are real and have already caused a significant setback to agricultural production and other productive sectors, posing a serious threat to human and food security. It recommends reconsidering mainstreaming climate change in development plans, adequate budgetary allocation, and establishing an effective National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) to coordinate climate-risk information at national and local levels.

<p>This economic analysis on the Ethiopian programs against poverty is focused on the comparative analysis of the Ethiopia’s national development plans and strategies or poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs). These three PRSP which are entitled the “Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Programme” (SDPRP) and spanning the three-year period (2002/03 – 2004/05), “A Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP)” covered from 2005/06-2009/10, and the current “Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP)”, 2009/10-2014/15 are compared in terms of their strategic role in achieving the national vision of the country. To found a comparative policy outcome from these PRSPs, this paper categorized in to four parts. When the first part deals with the introduction, the second part is all about the review literature of the general national development plans of the nation. The third part also involves the documentary data analysis and related theoretical findings. At the end, the researcher has tried to conclude and to recommend necessary suggestions which can serv as input for the second transformation plans (GTP1) of the nation based on the documentary data at the fourth part of this research.</p><p>Keywords: Comparative, SDPRP, PRSP, Ethiopia</p>

From Basic Needs to MDGs – Four Decades of Poverty Reduction Debates and No Progress to be Seen. MDGs and Poverty Reduction Strategies are new international efforts aimed towards the eradication of mass poverty. Some developmentalists are pleased to see the issue of poverty back on the agenda after a long period in which the neoliberal stability paradigm dominated the development debate. However, the new poverty debate does not address the root causes of mass poverty, nor is it related to the lessons learnt from perviously unsuccessful poverty reduction policies and strategies. Describing the manifold approaches during the past four decades, and the reasons for their nonacceptance or failure, the article argues that poverty cannot be reduced on a global scale, by local or national efforts within poor countries, as long as global economic trends tend to exclude a considerable share of the global labour-force. Furthermore, as long as the poor continue to have weak political voices within their countries, global poverty can not be reduced by pro-poor regulations of global economic relations. Successful poverty reduction requires a multi-level and multi-dimensional approach, one in which employment generating global trade regimes, social investment spending and political empowerment of the poor, through grass-root level interventions, would work to supplement one another.

Asian development and poverty reduction strategies: Integrating fisheries into the development discourse

MIPAA laid new grounds in response to the opportunities and challenges of population ageing in the 21st century. Addressing ageing within a framework of poverty reduction, participation, gender equality and human rights, it called for linking ageing to development and mainstreaming ageing into all policy areas, especially national development frameworks and poverty reduction strategies. Review and appraisal including monitoring of progress towards implementation of the Madrid Plan were essential for its success. Twenty years have passed since the adoption of the Plan. Reviews of progress were conducted periodically at national, regional, and global levels. Every milestone of the review process showed some important progress, but this has been uneven and not enjoyed by older persons everywhere. Over the years, many countries adopted new policies, strategies, plans, and laws related to population ageing. At every stage, major concerns included sustainability of social protection systems, the growing demand for health and care services, older workers’ participation in the labour market and empowerment of older persons. Developing national capacity was also among the chief priorities, including institutional infrastructure, human and financial resources, research, data collection and analysis, and policy development. Many governments addressed these issues in varying degrees, but challenges remain as the international community commemorates the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Madrid Plan. Lack of commitment and political will, insufficient financial and human resources, and lack of evidence-based data and research continue to be serious impediments to the full implementation of the Madrid Plan.

The Building Biocarbon and Rural Development in West Africa Programme aims to demonstrate the multiple developmental and environmental wins that result from a high value biocarbon approach to climate change and variability in large landscapes principally in Mali, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The Programme will also build local institutions and capacity to be able to sustain the benefits in the sites and will establish linkages with related initiatives to jointly build national and regional capacity to scale up the approaches into other programmes and projects. The themes of the Programme are very closely linked to Finland's international development priorities and are closely aligned with the priorities expressed in its national poverty reduction and climate change adaptation strategies. Furthermore, the Programme aims to generate critical information that can fill the global knowledge gaps on how to better link climate change mitigation and adaptation thrusts and how to make these actions work effectively to enhance the livelihoods of rural communities. (2015)