Poor Countries Research Articles

Climate agreements and carbon intensity: Towards increased production efficiency and technical progress?

Dozens of studies point to evidence of significant reductions in carbon emissions driven by climate agreements, such as the Paris climate agreement. However, these studies fail to answer a pertinent question, that is, are global carbon emission reductions due to reduced production activities or are production processes becoming more efficient as less carbon is emitted per unit output due to technical progress? Such an understanding is important to evaluate the tension between environmental quality and economic growth. Therefore, drawing on difference-in-differences approaches, our results suggest a significant decline in global carbon emission intensity due to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which is estimated at a 4.1% reduction on average over the sample period. Our evidence also shows that while some countries may be too poor to generate meaningful outcomes from climate agreements, the associated rate of reduction in carbon intensity in others tends to decline above a certain income threshold. These results imply that although there has been a worldwide increase in production efficiency and technical progress, at least owing to the Paris climate agreement, reaching net zero carbon emissions globally requires new approaches, especially for the very poor countries relative the ones at the top of the income ladder.

Phase I randomized, observer-blinded, placebo-controlled study of a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine PTX-COVID19-B

Access to vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 virus was limited in poor countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, a low-cost mRNA vaccine, PTX-COVID19-B, was produced and evaluated in a Phase 1 trial. PTX-COVID19-B encodes Spike protein D614G variant without the proline-proline (986–987) mutation present in other COVID-19 vaccines. The aim of the study was to evaluate safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of PTX-COVID19-B vaccine in healthy seronegative adults 18–64 years old. The trial design was observer-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled, and tested ascending doses of 16-µg, 40-µg, or 100-µg in a total of 60 subjects who received two intramuscular doses, 4 weeks apart. Participants were monitored for solicited and unsolicited adverse events after vaccination and were provided with a Diary Card and thermometer to report any reactogenicity during the trial. Blood samples were collected on baseline, days 8, 28, 42, 90, and 180 for serum analysis of total IgG anti-receptor binding domain (RBD)/Spike titers by ELISA, and neutralizing antibody titers by pseudovirus assay. Titers in BAU/mL were reported as geometric mean and 95% CI per cohort. After vaccination, few solicited adverse events were observed and were mild to moderate and self-resolved within 48 h. The most common solicited local and systemic adverse event was pain at the injection site, and headache, respectively. Seroconversion was observed in all vaccinated participants, who showed high antibody titers against RBD, Spike, and neutralizing activity against the Wuhan strain. Neutralizing antibody titers were also detected against Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants of concerns in a dose dependent manner. All tested doses of PTX-COVID19-B were safe, well-tolerated, and provided a strong immunogenicity response. The 40-µg dose showed fewer adverse reactions than the 100-µg dose, and therefore was selected for a Phase 2 trial, which is currently ongoing.Clinical Trial Registration number: NCT04765436 (21/02/2021). (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04765436).

How much do development partners invest in disaster risk reduction? A data analysis

SummaryMotivationMost weather‐related disasters occur in the world's poorest countries, which have the least capacity to cope. Due to the absence of a clear classification of DRR aid, donors and recipient countries have not known the amount of DRR aid flowing or its effectiveness in terms of supporting disaster risk management in developing countries.PurposeIn 2018, the OECD DAC created a new policy marker for DRR to help donor countries to monitor and report the progress made on mainstreaming DRR into their development activities. Drawing on this DRR marker, this study identifies trends and patterns as well as limitations in the DRR mainstreaming process to guide donor countries to successfully deliver the DRR goals.Methods and approachWhen reporting to the OECD DAC, donors are asked to provide information on the purpose of individual projects/programmes, and screen against all policy markers in the reporting system. Using this data, this study conducted an in‐depth analysis of donor countries' development portfolios to provide a comprehensive and granular picture of the funding streams and practices concerning DRR.FindingsThis study revealed that current spending on DRR remains a tiny fraction of total development aid. Even after the creation of the DRR marker, which raised donors' awareness of the importance of integrating DRR into development planning, no substantial increase in DRR funding has been made. This implies that most official development assistance from DAC members still fails to consider DRR in any meaningful way.Policy implicationsImportant areas for improvement include a more comprehensive understanding of disaster risk, increased funding for activities that principally target DRR, financial stability, and further integration of DRR and climate change adaptation into development projects.

Sharing the decarbonisation effort: getting Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East countries on the road to global carbon neutrality

ABSTRACT To achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals of keeping the global temperature rise well below 2 °C, or even better below 1.5 °C, relative to pre-industrial levels by the end of this century, countries need to make fair and ambitious contributions to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Here, three clusters are proposed that encompass fourteen approaches derived from three main equity principles to determine equitable national emission allocations in the year 2030 for the seventeen countries in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region. The allocations are compared with the Nationally Determined Contributions of each country in order to assess the degree to which current EMME climate change mitigation targets are sufficient. The results suggest two approaches that may be considered both realistic and fair, although with the caveat that both rich and poor EMME countries may still have reason to resist the allocations indicated by these approaches. One of these two approaches relates to the principle of responsibility and the other relates to a combination of capability and responsibility. Both require emissions in the EMME region to drop by nearly 50% by 2030 as compared to 2019 levels so as to be in line with a 1.5 °C warming scenario.

The role of COVID‐19 in worsening the debt sustainability in developing economies – The case of Ghana and Kenya

AbstractThe SARS‐CoV‐2 coronavirus pandemic has raised public debt sustainability issues, especially for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC). Developing countries with limited fiscal space have had to take on significant external debts to help deal with the negative effects of the pandemic. This has led to further increases in the debt levels of these countries, with the potential to trigger a debt default. Addressing these issues, this study uses a framework for fiscal policy and public debt sustainability analysis. The results confirm the impact of the SARS‐CoV‐2 coronavirus pandemic on the debt levels of Ghana and Kenya. This study recommends the creation of domestic fiscal buffers and fiscal space toward the attainment of long‐term debt sustainability, contrary to the popular view of offering debt relief to these countries.

Tax competition with asymmetric endowments in fossil resources

This paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of strategic interactions of governments on global markets for fossil resources and for capital. We analyze carbon taxes and subsidies and their impact on national welfare in a two country model with markets for capital and fossil resources, and asymmetric resource endowments. Resource poor countries have an incentive to tax the use of fossil fuels to appropriate the resource rent. Resource rich countries subsidize fossil fuel use to attract production factors in order to increase national income. We have two main results. First, we demonstrate that capital mobility has a taming effect on the incentives to tax and to subsidize resources. When taxing resources not only affects the international resource market, but also the international capital market, taxation is more distortionary and is thus more costly to governments. Second, while early studies of asymmetric tax competition found that small countries in terms of population are winners of tax competition, we show that with asymmetric resource endowments but a symmetric population size, there are no winners. Then, the Nash equilibrium of carbon tax competition is the least desirable outcome in terms of social welfare. A game structure similar to a Prisoner’s Dilemma emerges and cooperation makes Pareto improvements over the Nash equilibrium possible.

The relationship between education and economic growth: A cross-country analysis

This study investigates the effects of education on economic growth in 89 low, middle, and high-income countries using an index of human capital developed by Penn World Table and economic growth data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. This study specifies a growth accounting empirical model to examine the effects of education on economic growth. Using systems Generalized Method of Moments estimation technique on annual data covering the periods from 2002 to 2020, the results show that education significantly enhances economic growth. On average, an increase in the education index by 0.1 increases the growth of real GDP per capita by 0.8 percentage points. The results also show that education does have higher returns for low- and middle-income countries compared to high-income countries. The results of this study lend credence to the argument that poor countries should focus and pool adequate resources towards education as a means to achieving growth.

Aviation carbon transfer and compensation of international routes in Africa from 2019 to 2021

As an underdeveloped region, the aviation industry in Africa is developing rapidly, and its carbon emissions play an essential role in achieving carbon neutrality in the aviation industry in underdeveloped areas. However, the problem of carbon transfer caused by passenger flow on international routes has not been addressed, especially in Africa. This paper first calculates the CO2 emissions of African international routes from 2019 to 2021 based on the Modified Fuel Percentage Method (MFPM) and the ICAO standard methods. Then, we measure African routes’ carbon transfer and carbon compensation. The most carbon transfer routes between African countries and from countries outside Africa to African countries are from Ethiopia to Kenya and from Honduras to Ghana. Relatively poor countries bear a significant amount of carbon transfer.

Review of “Seeking Western Men: Email-order Brides Under China’s Global Rise”

The book Seeking Western Men: Email-order Brides Under China’s Global Rise written by Monica Liu examines the evolving “mail order bride” industry in a major Chinese city within the larger economic context of China’s rise from a poor agrarian country into the world’s second largest economy after the United States. This is an important empirical study of the “mail order bride” industry within China that provides an intervention into the literature regarding international dating and marriage. Previous studies of the phenomenon in China did not include the in-depth ethnographic data that this book provides. Based on Monica Liu’s positionality as a Chinese–American who spoke the language of her participants, she was able to get a much richer and deeper ethnographic account of various Chinese women’s experiences in comparison with previous studies that largely conducted interviews via letters, such as Nicole Constable’s (2003) seminal work on the topic, entitled Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography and Mail Order Marriages. By being so embedded in the Chinese context, Liu can highlight the different class norms and habitus of Chinese women who seek American men for marriage at international email dating agencies.

BANANA BLOSSOM: NUTRITIONAL VALUE, HEALTH BENEFITS AND ITS UTILIZATION

Bananas are an attractive and low-cost food supply for poor countries, where bananas are consumed by the majority of the population. Typically, only the fruit of the banana tree is consumed, and before the fruit is cooked, the banana heart is chopped out and thrown. However, many people are unaware that the banana heart, also known as the banana blossom, has a high nutritional content and numerous health benefits. The blossom of a banana contains a lot of fiber and can be used to make fiber-rich foods. In addition, the flower includes a variety of bioactive substances, such as alkaloids, tannins, flavonoids, and phenolic compounds, all of which have anti-cancer, anti-microbial, and antioxidant activities. This plant is often used as a food additive in many Asian countries. On the other hand, the banana flower has received only sporadic attention. As a result, the aim of this review is to evaluate the nutritionally dense compact pack of banana blossoms and highlight the value-added product fortified with banana blossoms. So, these unique nutritional values of banana blossom should get maximum utilization, and incorporation of this banana blossom in food products can be performed for value addition.

Making Foreign Aid Effective Nepal's Success Stories Underscorethe Criticality of Empowerment at the Grassroots

The rationale supporting foreign aid has been that it enhances the investment capabilities of poor countries to achieve accelerated national development. But Nepal's experiences suggest that there is more to it than that. Foreign aid can be effectively delivered only if sufficient institutional preconditions are put in place in the country.

The Change of Global Temperature Affected by Global Economy

Global warming is the most serious environmental problem due to rising temperatures. Previous studies showed CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas. CO2 emission is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Humans pursue industrial growth at the expense of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Economic development is represented by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The growth of CO2 emission increases more and more and does not reach the peak. The global temperature is facing a 2˚C crisis. The global emissions and global economy have a strong indication of relative sensitivity. We found out that countries with higher GDP emit more CO2. Individuals who have higher GDP per capita emit more CO2 to the atmosphere. GDP has a positive correlation with global temperature. Climate change is one of the biggest inequalities around the world. Richer countries caused more damage to global warming, but poor countries suffer more from global warming’s damage. GDP per capita has a positive correlation with temperature and CO2 emissions. The development of a country has a trend of increasing CO2 emissions at an early stage and decreasing CO2 emissions at a later stage. Total GDP although cannot positively correlated to CO2 emissions, but multicollinearity tests proved the two variables are related.

INVESTIGATION ON THE IMPACT OF POST COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON NUTRITION AND FOOD SECURITY IN NIGERIA

The Corona virus is spreading at a very rapid pace, inflicting tremendous damage to all sectors without anyexception, but nevertheless the extent of the damage and losses resulting from the pandemic differ from onesector to another and from one country to another, but what certainly counts most to people during crises isto meet their food needs rather than any other, so the aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of nutritionand food security in post Covid 19 pandemic. The scale of this was of an international level, with specialfocus on countries suffering from food insecurity. Toward this end, data provided by the Food AgricultureOrganization (FAO), and the World Health Organization (WHO) have been analyzed, as well as studiesconducted and published on the subject. The findings indicate that Covid 19 has had a huge impact onperishable food and caused remarkable food shortages in poor countries, conflict zones and war-affectedregions. Additionally, Covid 19 threatened food security even in some developed, whereas developingcountries are the most affected due to their high dependency in securing their food supplies. Finally, basedon the findings, we have suggested some recommendations that would help boosting sustainable foodsecurity. Some of them include Government should implement more robust targeted social protectionprogrammes to improve access to healthy nutritious foods as well as ensure better protections for vulnerableand marginalized food system workers and farmers who are disproportionately affected by the crisis.

Come together? The unusual combination of precariat materialist and educated post-materialist support for an Australian Universal Basic Income

International studies using the European Social Survey (ESS) reveal higher support for Universal Basic Income (UBI) in poorer countries with less generous welfare systems, and among individuals with lower income and education, and leftist political leanings. We present data from the 2019−20 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes mirroring the ESS question. Australia falls in the middle of European opinion, with 51% supporting a UBI, increasing slightly during the onset of Covid-19. We also find higher support among two different groups: (1) those facing greater ‘material’ precarity, including younger, low-income, unemployed, suburban renters, and (2) those who have more post-materialist concerns, including Green-left voters and those favouring redistributive values. Unlike in other countries, higher education predicts more support, while homeownership predicts less. The article concludes with challenges to introducing UBI to Australia, including potentially contradictory strategies for different support bases (material vs post-material), ongoing commitments to means-testing, and negative framing in the media.

Otogenic Brain Abscess in a Child of Third World Country - A Single Stage Transcranial Transmastoid Approach: A Case Report

Brain abscess, though not rare, is an uncommon complication of otitis media. We report a case of 12 years old male for chronic ear discharge, throbbing headache and post aural swelling for three weeks. A detailed history and physical examination of the child was performed and a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan was done. A diagnosis of an intracranial abscess, secondary to the chronic otitis media was made. An emergency craniotomy with drainage of brain abscess was planned and performed by the Neurosurgeon. Otolaryngolgoist performed mastoidectomy, in the same setting. After the surgery, post-operative manage- ment was done and the patient was discharged, uneventfully. The complete management in a single sitting of primary cause and resulting complication with no added expenses is the necessity of a poor country citizen.

Institutions, trade, and development: identifying the impact of country-specific characteristics on international trade

Abstract We quantify the impact of country-specific institutions on international trade and development in a structural gravity framework. The econometric analysis offers robust evidence that stronger institutions promote trade. A counterfactual analysis reveals that the changes in institutional quality in the poor countries in our sample between 1996 and 2006 have had, via their impact on imports from rich countries, significant and heterogeneous welfare effects, varying between −2% and 5%. Our approach is readily applicable to identifying the impact of any country-specific variable on international trade in the structural gravity framework.

A prospective observational multicentric clinical trial to evaluate microscopic examination of acid-fast bacilli in sputum by artificial intelligence-based microscopy system.

Microscopy-based tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis i.e., Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) stained smear screening still remains the primary diagnostic method in resource poor and high TB burden countries, however itrequires considerable experience and is bound to human errors. In remote areas, wherever expert microscopist is not available, timely diagnosis at initial level is not possible. Artificial intelligence (AI)-based microscopy may be a solution to this problem. A prospective observational multi-centric clinical trial to evaluate microscopic examination of acid-fast bacilli (AFB) in sputum by the AI based system was done in three hospitals in Northern India. Sputum samples from 400 clinically suspected cases of pulmonary tuberculosis were collected from three centres. Ziehl-Neelsen staining of smears was done. All the smears were observed by 3 microscopist and the AI based microscopy system. AI based microscopy was found to have a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy of 89.25%, 92.15%, 75.45%, 96.94%, 91.53% respectively. AI based sputum microscopy has an acceptable degree of accuracy, PPV, NPV, specificity and sensitivity and thus may be used as a screening tool for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Fostering learning outcomes in a non-reading culture at foundational level of education: the role of information technology and pupil engagement

PurposeThis paper examines the role of Information Technology and pupil engagement in fostering learning outcomes in a non-reading culture context at foundation level of education.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted a cross-sectional survey design with quantitative approaches. A sample of 412 was drawn from a population of 1,692 Primary Schools. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed using the SPSS software.Findings Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) usage had positive and significant effects on pupil engagement and pupil learning outcomes. Pupil engagement moderated in the relationship between ICT usage and pupils' learning outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThe cross-sectional design used in data collection may not monitor learning outcomes of the given samples over a longer period of time. Future studies should consider longitudinal research designs so that the behaviors of the learners can be observed over a long period of time.Practical implicationsDeliberate efforts to advocate for and promote the use of ICTs in primary schools are important if the schools are to foster pupils' engagements and register better learning outcomes.Originality/valueThe study confirms pupil engagement as a moderator in the relationship between ICT usage and learning outcomes at foundational levels of education in a resource poor country with a non-reading culture.

Self-construals predict personal life satisfaction with different strengths across societal contexts differing in national wealth and religious heritage

ABSTRACT We explore to what extent previously observed pan-cultural association between dimensions of self-construal and personal life satisfaction (PLS) may be moderated by three national-contextual variables: national wealth, economic inequality, and religious heritage. The results showed that Self-reliance (vs. dependence on others) predicted PLS positively in poorer countries but negatively in richer countries. Connectedness to others (vs. self-containment) predicted PLS more strongly in Protestant-heritage countries. Self-expression (vs. harmony) predicted PLS more weakly (and non-significantly) in Muslim-heritage countries. In contrast, previously reported associations of self-direction (vs. reception-to-influence), consistency (vs. variability), and decontextualized (vs. contextualized) self-understanding with personal life satisfaction were not significantly moderated by these aspects of societal context. These results show the importance of considering the impact of national religious and economic context.

Social and Legal Risks of Artificial Intelligence: An Analytical Study

This study discusses the social and legal risks of artificial intelligence by referring to reliable primary and secondary sources in this field of study and analyzing the content of the collected data. Various data sources were consulted, including articles published in newspapers, international organizations’ websites, and refereed journals. The results of the study demonstrate that artificial intelligence may have negative effects if it is not used on solid ethical grounds as it may lead to taking discriminatory decisions in institutions and pose some risks in relation to users’ privacy, in addition to legal, criminal, and ethical challenges. More broadly, the study reveals that artificial intelligence is widening the gap between rich and poor countries. Therefore, institutions specialized in various fields need to specify the purpose of their efforts in the field of artificial intelligence, so they can overcome the obstacles that may face the progress of their work and the process of preserving human rights.
 
 Received: 10 January 2023 / Accepted: 20 April 2023 / Published: 5 May 2023