Climate variability has major impacts in many parts of the world, including Australia. Developments in understanding of the El Nino - Southern Oscillation Phenomenon have introduced some skill in seasonal to inter-annual climate forecasting. Can this skill be harnessed to advantage? Or do we just continue to observe these impacts? How does a decision-maker managing an agricultural or natural ecosystem modify decisions in response to a skillful, but imprecise, seasonal climate forecast? Using Australian experience as a basis, this book focuses on these questions in pursuing means to better manage climate risks. The state of the science in climate forecasting is reviewed before considering detailed examples of applications to: farm scale agricultural decisions (such as management of cropping and grazing systems); regional and national scale agricultural decisions (such as commodity trading and government policy); and natural systems (such as water resources, pests and diseases, and natural fauna). Many of the examples highlight the participatory and inter-disciplinary approach required among decision-makers, resource systems scientists/analysts, and climate scientists to bring about the effective applications. The experiences discussed provide valuable insights beyond the geographical and disciplinary focus of this book. The book is ideally suited to professionals and postgraduate students in ecology, agricultural climatology, environmental planning, and climate science."

Gestures of Conciliation examines the ideas, assumptions and theories that underpin how leaders of parties in intractable conflicts begin and sustain a process of peacemaking by offering to their adversaries 'olive-branches' - in more modern terms symbolic gestures, concessions, tension-reducing moves or confidence-building measures. It discusses means of overcoming political and psychological barriers to accurate communication, trust-building, domestic consensus formation, and 'ripe' conditions for conciliation, suggesting practical guidelines for accommodation.

Most recent works about the efforts of local communities caught up in a civil war have focused on their efforts to remain places of security and safety from the violence that surrounds them-neutral peace communities or zones. This book, in contrast, focuses on local peace communities facing new challenges and opportunities once a peace agreement has been signed at the national level, such as those in South Africa, the Philippines, Burundi, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the present peace process in Colombia between the FARC and the Colombian Government. The communities' task is to make a stable and durable peace in the aftermath of a violent civil war and a deal on which local people have usually had little or no influence. Such agreements seek to involve them in both short and longer term peace-building, and expect local communities to cope with problems of armed ex-combatants, IDPs and refugees, law and order in the absence of much state presence, high unemployment and the need for widespread and massive reconstruction of physical infrastructure damaged or destroyed during the war. How local communities have coped with the demands of "peace" is thus the theme that runs through each of these individual chapters, written by authors with direct experience of grassroots communities struggling with such "problems of peace."

The 2007-9 financial crisis threatened economic disaster on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, but rapid state action prevented the widely feared devastation. The German response was considerably more generous to banks than the American or British bailouts. Drawing on interviews and primary sources in government, private firms, and media, Mitchell explains how the structure of national financial systems and interbank relationships produced extensive private rescues and pressure on different states. Mitchell explores the different responses and results in Germany, the UK and the US using a combination of detailed case study analyses of the three countries' responses to the crisis and a quantitative analysis of patterns of state responses to financial crises. This book will be essential reading for scholars and advanced students of political economy, comparative politics, economic sociology, economics, and public policy.

This volume searches for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to beset peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society, with a singular focus on the role of legitimacy. Many peacebuilding efforts are hampered by their inability to gain the support of those they are trying to help at the local level, or those at regional, national or international levels; whose support is necessary either for success at the local level or to translate local successes to wider arenas. There is no one agreed-upon reason for the difficulty in translating peacebuilding from one arena of action to another, but among those elements that have been studied, one that appears understudied or assumed to be unimportant, is the role of legitimacy. Many questions can be asked about legitimacy as a concept, and this volume addresses these questions through multiple case studies which examine legitimacy at local, regional, national and international levels, as well as looking at how legitimacy at one level either translates or fails to translate at other levels, in order to correlate the level of legitimacy with the success or failure of peacebuilding projects and programs The value of this work lies both in the breadth of the cases and the singular focus on the role of legitimacy in peacebuilding. By focusing on this concept this volume represents an attempt to build beyond the critical peacebuilding approach of deconstructing the liberal peacebuilding paradigm to a search for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to plague peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, development studies, security studies and International Relations.

This edited volume examines Basic Human Needs theory and interactive problem solving, looking at recent developments in thinking about both and how these might affect peacebuilding in contemporary conflicts of the twenty-first century. The era in the immediate aftermath of World War II was, paradoxically, a time of great optimism in parts of academia. There was, especially in the United States and much of Europe, a widespread belief in the social sciences that systematic scholarly analysis would enable humanity to understand and do something about the most complex of social processes, and thus about solving persistent human problems: unemployment, delinquency, racism, under-development, and even issues of conflict, war and peace. This book examines the evolution of the Basic Human Needs theory and is divided into two key parts: Basic Human Needs in Theory and Basic Human Needs in Practice. Exploring this theory through a wide range of different lenses, including gender, ethics and power, the volume brings together some of the leading scholars in the field of peace and conflict studies and draws upon research both past and present to forecast where the movement is headed in the future. This book will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, conflict resolution, psychology, security studies and IR.

This first-of-a-kind collection brings together in one volume the strongest available evidence of successful transfer effects from unofficial third-party work to official peacemaking. Using comparative case analysis from several real-world interventions, Paving the Way offers insights into the conditions and qualities of successful programs of interactive conflict resolution from experts in the field. Editor Ronald J. Fisher has assembled a collection of seminal case studies that illustrate interactive approaches to conflict resolution from the Malaysia-Indonesia conflict in the 1960s to the Peru-Equador peace process of the late 1990s. Integrating theory, research, and practice, the cases posit that interactive conflict resolution can make a significant, and sometimes essential, contribution to the resolution of protracted and violent identity conflicts. The methods and solutions offered in Paving the Way will serve as best practices for those in the field and as training tools and resources for scholars and policymakers.

This first-of-a-kind collection brings together in one volume the strongest available evidence of successful transfer effects from unofficial third-party work to official peacemaking. Using comparative case analysis from several real-world interventions, Paving the Way offers insights into the conditions and qualities of successful programs of interactive conflict resolution from experts in the field. Editor Ronald J. Fisher has assembled a collection of seminal case studies that illustrate interactive approaches to conflict resolution from the Malaysia-Indonesia conflict in the 1960s to the Peru-Equador peace process of the late 1990s. Integrating theory, research, and practice, the cases posit that interactive conflict resolution can make a significant, and sometimes essential, contribution to the resolution of protracted and violent identity conflicts. The methods and solutions offered in Paving the Way will serve as best practices for those in the field and as training tools and resources for scholars and policymakers.

The Beat Generation questioned mid-twentieth century America and sought the margins of society. This book analyzes the literature and lifestyles of the Beat authors Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg in regard to Victor Turner's anthropological studies. The Beats separated from society by willingly entering the rites of passage. Liminal symbolism is apparent in their literature such as in movement, time, space, pilgrimages, and monstrosities. In their liminal stage, they established "communitas" and developed anti-structure. They questioned society and made proposals to change it in their liminoid literature. The Beats shared similarities with previous countercultures, and they influenced the following Hippie Generation.

It is conventional wisdom among scholars, policymakers, and other observers that crises are one of the primary drivers of European integration. However, while many crises have indeed spurred deeper integration, there is also no shortage of crises that failed to produce meaningful deepening, or even led to disintegration. The literature on European integration has to date failed to develop a theory to identify ex ante which crises are most likely to produce integrating reform. Crises and Integration in European Banking Union addresses that gap, building a theory of how the combination of crisis severity and origin indicates whether a crisis will produce deep reform, modest reform, or a persistence of the pre-crisis status quo. Mitchell does so by examining the relative impact of a series of crises on the centralization of European financial regulation in the 21st century, including the 2007-09 Banking Crisis, 2010-14 Debt Crisis, the Brexit shock, and the 2020-21 COVID-19 Pandemic. It thus also makes an important contribution to the literature on European financial regulation and the steps needed to complete a European banking and capital markets union. The volume not only addresses a significant theoretical gap, but also provides a foundation for policymaking in response to future crises by building a framework to identify which challenges are most likely to provide an opportunity for deeper integration.

This edited volume examines Basic Human Needs theory and interactive problem solving, looking at recent developments in thinking about both and how these might affect peacebuilding in contemporary conflicts of the twenty-first century. The era in the immediate aftermath of World War II was, paradoxically, a time of great optimism in parts of academia. There was, especially in the United States and much of Europe, a widespread belief in the social sciences that systematic scholarly analysis would enable humanity to understand and do something about the most complex of social processes, and thus about solving persistent human problems: unemployment, delinquency, racism, under-development, and even issues of conflict, war and peace. This book examines the evolution of the Basic Human Needs theory and is divided into two key parts: Basic Human Needs in Theory and Basic Human Needs in Practice. Exploring this theory through a wide range of different lenses, including gender, ethics and power, the volume brings together some of the leading scholars in the field of peace and conflict studies and draws upon research both past and present to forecast where the movement is headed in the future. This book will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, conflict resolution, psychology, security studies and IR.

Climate variability has major impacts in many parts of the world, including Australia. Developments in understanding of the El Nino - Southern Oscillation Phenomenon have introduced some skill in seasonal to inter-annual climate forecasting. Can this skill be harnessed to advantage? Or do we just continue to observe these impacts? How does a decision-maker managing an agricultural or natural ecosystem modify decisions in response to a skillful, but imprecise, seasonal climate forecast? Using Australian experience as a basis, this book focuses on these questions in pursuing means to better manage climate risks. The state of the science in climate forecasting is reviewed before considering detailed examples of applications to: farm scale agricultural decisions (such as management of cropping and grazing systems); regional and national scale agricultural decisions (such as commodity trading and government policy); and natural systems (such as water resources, pests and diseases, and natural fauna). Many of the examples highlight the participatory and inter-disciplinary approach required among decision-makers, resource systems scientists/analysts, and climate scientists to bring about the effective applications. The experiences discussed provide valuable insights beyond the geographical and disciplinary focus of this book. The book is ideally suited to professionals and postgraduate students in ecology, agricultural climatology, environmental planning, and climate science."

This volume searches for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to beset peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society, with a singular focus on the role of legitimacy. Many peacebuilding efforts are hampered by their inability to gain the support of those they are trying to help at the local level, or those at regional, national or international levels; whose support is necessary either for success at the local level or to translate local successes to wider arenas. There is no one agreed-upon reason for the difficulty in translating peacebuilding from one arena of action to another, but among those elements that have been studied, one that appears understudied or assumed to be unimportant, is the role of legitimacy. Many questions can be asked about legitimacy as a concept, and this volume addresses these questions through multiple case studies which examine legitimacy at local, regional, national and international levels, as well as looking at how legitimacy at one level either translates or fails to translate at other levels, in order to correlate the level of legitimacy with the success or failure of peacebuilding projects and programs The value of this work lies both in the breadth of the cases and the singular focus on the role of legitimacy in peacebuilding. By focusing on this concept this volume represents an attempt to build beyond the critical peacebuilding approach of deconstructing the liberal peacebuilding paradigm to a search for pragmatic answers to the problems that continue to plague peacebuilding efforts at all levels of society. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, development studies, security studies and International Relations.

Most recent works about the efforts of local communities caught up in a civil war have focused on their efforts to remain places of security and safety from the violence that surrounds them-neutral peace communities or zones. This book, in contrast, focuses on local peace communities facing new challenges and opportunities once a peace agreement has been signed at the national level, such as those in South Africa, the Philippines, Burundi, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the present peace process in Colombia between the FARC and the Colombian Government. The communities' task is to make a stable and durable peace in the aftermath of a violent civil war and a deal on which local people have usually had little or no influence. Such agreements seek to involve them in both short and longer term peace-building, and expect local communities to cope with problems of armed ex-combatants, IDPs and refugees, law and order in the absence of much state presence, high unemployment and the need for widespread and massive reconstruction of physical infrastructure damaged or destroyed during the war. How local communities have coped with the demands of "peace" is thus the theme that runs through each of these individual chapters, written by authors with direct experience of grassroots communities struggling with such "problems of peace."

This is an alternative guide to the wildlife and geology of Skye detailing where to see the island's lesser-known natural history. There are 20 walks based aroud Portree, Dunvegan, Broadford and Sleat together with detailed maps and quality photographs.