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Coastal regions worldwide have been focal points for migration as well as affected by environmental changes for a long time. In the debate on climate change and migration coastal regions are among the “hot spot” areas that are supposed to be prone to “climate migration” in the near future. The paper analyses the situation in two different regional settings and advocates for a sound regional perspective on the relationship of environmental change and migration. Based on the conceptual framework of migrant trajectories, the paper shows how popu­lations in Keta (Ghana) and Semarang (Indonesia), affected by similar environmental changes such as flooding and erosion, react quite differently in terms of migration and mobility. The regional perspective as well as each region’s past experiences with migration and environmental changes shows to be crucial in order to understand current reactions to environmental degradation. The Keta setting represents a typology that pronounces migration trajectories as part of long-standing interregional and international migration, the Semarang setting, however, may be classified as a rather typical modernization-induced migration scheme, linked to rapidly growing urbanisation, with “trapped populations” on the one hand and in-migration of migrant workers on the other hand.

The study was designed to assess the impact of participation of Port Harcourt indigenous women in poverty eradication programmes in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study used questionnaires to elicit responses from 385 indigenous women randomly selected in a multi-stage technique. Descriptive statistics and t-test were used to analyze the data collected. Results showed that majority (58.3%) of the women were members of a cooperative society, 63.5 percent were members of community-based organizations (CBO) while 60.9 percent were members of “Esusu” (rotator credit schemes). About 66.3 percent of the women had engaged in jobs aimed at poverty alleviation. Only 6.0 percent identified that they were not members of any poverty alleviation programmes (PAP) by government. It was found that after joining the PAP, 75.5 percent of them experienced an increase in income of 36.6 percent. Significant differences existed in the income of the women after joining poverty alleviation programmes. It was therefore recommended that more programmes designed to alleviate poverty in Rivers State should target indigenous women; government should also establish entrepreneurship capacity-building programmes to enable women to bring out their optimal input while participating in the poverty eradication programmes. Consilience, No 14 (2015): Issue Fourteen: 2015

This article points out that the expansion of aggregate demand in the US during the nineties was structured in a highly unusual way. There was a progressive tightening of the fiscal stance, so growth had to be powered by a uniquely rapid growth of private expenditure in excess of disposable income. This process was intrinsically unsustainable because it required very heavy borrowing, which caused a rise to record levels in debt/income ratios. If aggregate demand is to grow at an adequate rate in the medium term, there will have to be a large further fiscal relaxation. Yet fiscal policy alone cannot solve the problem because there has been a growing deficit in the balance of payments which will have to be corrected at some stage. The implications for the rest of the world of continued recession in the US could be very serious. JEL Codes: E32 PSL Quarterly Review, V. 54, N. 219 (2001)

Improving living standards amidst falling oil prices among countries relying heavily of an ample supply of oil presents numerous challenges. Therefore the relationship associated with oil price changes with identifiable metrics that explain standards of living becomes critical. The management of wealth; sustaining a standard of living; peculiarities of oil trade; oil price determination; and management and the uncharacteristic application of supply and demand are presented. Since aspects of the world oil market remain unclear and opaque, society is in need of credible research and verifiable theory. Data relating to Kuwait over a 32-year period (1983 – 2014) were obtained. Five independent variables: investment growth; inflation; percentage change in price per barrel; unemployment; and percent change in the number of incarcerations are regressed with a change in real GDP (dependent variable). Finally, to determine the robustness of the model, the Durbin-Watson test was used. The coefficient of determination (r2) suggests that 66.24% of variations in lifestyle can be explained by variations in the five independent variables (p<0.01). Standards of living can be sustained by increasing growth in investment, decreasing inflation, decreasing unemployment and incarcerations and most important increase in price of oil. This study places Kuwait as a proxy for the Gulf Countries and should ideally be extended to the other five Gulf Countries. Comparative studies over multiple periods of time ought to be undertaken to measure the robustness of differing sustainability measures. Consilience, No 15 (2016): Issue Fifteen: 2016

This paper analyses banking and borrowing of carbon emission rights within the framework of a simple, integrated assessment model. Breaking the world economy in just two regions it will be shown: (1) Increasing when-flexibility in greenhouse gas abatement through banking and borrowing of carbon emission permits has a positive effect on welfare for regions with a poor endowment in carbon emission rights, but negatively affects rich-endowed regions. (2) Intergenerational fairness advocates intertemporal flexibility in greenhouse gas abatement, irrespectively of the initial allocation of carbon right. (3) Changing the degree of whenflexibility has only a small impact on global climate damages. (4) This is in contrast to the observation that the initial allocation of carbon emission rights has a significant impact on atmospheric carbon.

The paper examines the prospects of tourism product diversification in the tourism industry of Botswana. The government of Botswana is faced with the challenge of diversifying the economy and tourism has been proposed as one of the key clusters to lead the needed diversification. Tourism in Botswana is largely wildlife based. A review of tourism diversification discourse suggests that it improves destination competitiveness, overcomes the issues of seasonality and distributes tourists to other areas thereby ensuring industry sustainability. The methodological approaches to the study blended a mix of extensive literature reviews, document analysis, primary data collection through open ended and closed questionnaires to provide a balanced examination of the challenges and the opportunities of tourism product diversification. We conclude that there is need to diversify the tourism industry in Botswana through events, culture and sports tourism. Though sustainability and competitiveness are common objectives for tourism diversification, the stakeholders in Botswana regard it as an avenue to create employment for the local community and alleviate poverty. The study therefore recommends that the government, together with key stakeholders invest in the events industry, upgrade sports facilities and work with communities to reposition the local culture as a key tourism asset.

This study explores the relationship between leisure tourism and sustainable livelihoods from a visitors’ perspective. Quantitative research methods were employed in collecting data from (n) 369 respondents within the precincts of a number of waterfronts in the Eastern Cape Province. Using exploratory factor analysis and analysis of variance the study finds a generally positive perception of leisure tourism impacts on sustainable livelihoods. The main implication of this study is that there is an increasing awareness among people that the benefits of leisure tourism come at a cost. This study contributes to existing literature highlighting the imperative to narrow the gap between leisure tourism and sustainable livelihoods from the unique perspective of the Eastern Cape Province.

This study presents the insightful and comprehensive empirical evidence on the impact of income and institutional governance on climate change based on panel data of 203 countries for time series of 1996 to 2017. We have divided the countries into sub-samples of 34 low-income, 101 middle-income and 68 high-income countries by following the World Bank country classification. Econometric analysis is carried out by employing the fixed-effect model in order to incorporate the unobserved heterogeneity among countries, and instrumental variable technique generalised method of moments is applied to tackle the issue of endogeneity. The major contribution of this study involves providing the new empirical evidence on the non-linear impact of institutional governance on CO2 emissions (a proxy of climate change) and conditional impact of income and institutional governance on these emissions. Findings of the present study indicate that there is a robust inverted-U shape relationship between institutional governance and CO2 emissions in all income groups of countries. We have termed this curve as Environmental Governance Curve (EGC).

The aim of this paper is to facilitate informed choice about indicators of economic sustainability and intergenerational fairness and decisions about their uses. We focus on four issues. First, we found that the same type of indicator measured at different levels – such as the general government, the (market) economy or the total economy, which includes both the market economy and the household economy – often leads to different conclusions. Second, sustainability analysis is frequently built on exogenously set age limits even though it is obvious that old age does not everywhere start at age 65; it did not always start there where it does today; and most likely it will not start there in the future. Third, we use our taxonomy of more than 80 indicators to spot holes, shortcomings and absences. Fourth, we show some structural differences between indicators of sustainability and fairness. Intergenerational Justice Review, Vol 11, No 2 (2017): Measuring Intergenerational Justice for Public Policy