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Tian S, Xu Y, Wang Q, Zhang Y, Yuan X, Ma Q, Feng X, Ma H, Liu J, Liu C, Hussain MB. The effect of optimizing chemical fertilizers consumption structure to promote environmental protection, crop yield and reduce greenhouse gases emission in China. Sci Total Environ 2023; 857:159349. [PMID: 36240923 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159349] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/03/2022] [Revised: 09/14/2022] [Accepted: 10/06/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
To ensure food security, simultaneously achieving environmental protection and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction has become a significant challenge in the sustainable development of China's chemical fertilizers (CFs) industry. Hence, this work attempt to construct a multi-objective optimization model (MOOM) based on crop yield, environment protection, and GHG emissions to adjust and optimize China's CFs structure (nitrogen, phosphate, potash, and compound fertilizers). The findings revealed that it's impossible to achieve the coordinated development of the three objectives only through the adjustment of CFs structure. Different optimization measures were sequentially integrated with the MOOM to innovatively obtain the most suitable optimization schemes and the quantitative adjustment interval (which was compared with those in 2018) of the CFs structure. The following are the specific conclusions. First, compared with 2018, the appropriate increase interval for the total CFs consumption was 9 %-21 %, in which the proportion intervals of nitrogen, phosphate, potash, and compound fertilizers were 18 %-25 %, 12 %-18 %, 7 %-12 %, 48 %-60 %, respectively. Second, the reduction ranges of environmental impact and GHG emissions were 1.1 %-12 % and 12.2 %-16.4 %, respectively, under the optimal scheme (combination of the synergy of organic fertilizer substitution and technology improvement with the MOOM), and the growing range of crop yield was 0.2 %-52 %. The main contribution of this work is to build a methodology system for the adjustment and optimization of CFs consumption structure. The findings of the study could be used by the government to develop relevant policies and by other sectors to perform multi-objective optimization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shu Tian
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China
| | - Yue Xu
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China
| | - Qingsong Wang
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China.
| | - Yujie Zhang
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China
| | - Xueliang Yuan
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China
| | - Qiao Ma
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China
| | - Xiufen Feng
- Shandong Labor Vocational and Technical College, No.800 Haitang Road, Changqing District, Jinan, Shandong Province, China
| | - Haichao Ma
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China
| | - Jixiang Liu
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China
| | - Chengqing Liu
- Institute for Carbon Neutrality, Shandong Normal University, 88 Wenhuadong Road, Jinan, Shandong 250014, China
| | - Muhammad Bilal Hussain
- National Engineering Laboratory for Reducing Emissions from Coal Combustion, Engineering Research Center of Environmental Thermal Technology of Ministry of Education, Shandong Key Laboratory of Energy Carbon Reduction and Resource Utilization, Research Center for Sustainable Development, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, China
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Reinsberg B, Stubbs T, Bujnoch L. Structural adjustment, alienation, and mass protest. Soc Sci Res 2023; 109:102777. [PMID: 36470630 DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2022.102777] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2022] [Revised: 07/10/2022] [Accepted: 07/23/2022] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is (in)famous for its structural adjustment programs, which provide fresh credit for borrowing governments in exchange for market-liberalizing policy reforms. While studies have documented a causal relationship between structural adjustment and political instability, scholarly understanding of the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain perfunctory. The received wisdom is that IMF policy conditions generate material hardship which then drives political instability. We advance an additional pathway-that instability is also prompted by alienation effects related to the foreign imposition of policies. Drawing on a sample of up to 168 countries between 1980 and 2014, we test for the presence of both mechanisms. Our results suggest that there are alienation effects, indicated by a persistent protest-inducing impact of IMF program participation when controlling for market-liberalizing conditions, and especially when programs are concluded by left-wing governments and non-repeat borrowers. We also find evidence of hardship effects, indicated by a positive relationship between the intensity of fiscal austerity required and the number of protests. Our findings have important implications for the relationship between structural adjustment, contentious politics, and the role of international organizations in domestic policy reform.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bernhard Reinsberg
- University of Glasgow, School of Social and Political Sciences, United Kingdom; Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, UK.
| | - Thomas Stubbs
- Royal Holloway (University of London), Department of Politics and International Relations, United Kingdom; Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, UK
| | - Louis Bujnoch
- University of Glasgow, School of Social and Political Sciences, United Kingdom
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Forster T, Kentikelenis AE, Stubbs TH, King LP. Globalization and health equity: The impact of structural adjustment programs on developing countries. Soc Sci Med 2019; 267:112496. [PMID: 31515082 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112496] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2018] [Revised: 07/15/2019] [Accepted: 08/15/2019] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Among the many drivers of health inequities, this article focuses on important, yet insufficiently understood, international-level determinants: economic globalization and the organizations that spread market-oriented policies to the developing world. One such organization is the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provides financial assistance to countries in economic trouble in exchange for policy reforms. Through its 'structural adjustment programs,' countries around the world have liberalized and deregulated their economies. We examine how policy reforms prescribed in structural adjustment programs explain variation in health equity between nations-approximated by health system access and neonatal mortality. Our empirical analysis uses an original dataset of IMF-mandated policy reforms for a panel of up to 137 developing countries between 1980 and 2014. We employ regression analysis to evaluate the relationship between these reforms and health equity, taking into account the non-random selection and design of IMF programs. We find that structural adjustment reforms lower health system access and increase neonatal mortality. Additional analyses show that labor market reforms drive these deleterious effects. Overall, our evidence suggests that structural adjustment programs endanger the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals in developing countries.
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Affiliation(s)
- Timon Forster
- Berlin Graduate School for Global and Transregional Studies, Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Alexander E Kentikelenis
- Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy.
| | - Thomas H Stubbs
- Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK
| | - Lawrence P King
- Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, USA
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Forster T, Kentikelenis AE, Reinsberg B, Stubbs TH, King LP. How structural adjustment programs affect inequality: A disaggregated analysis of IMF conditionality, 1980-2014. Soc Sci Res 2019; 80:83-113. [PMID: 30955563 DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.01.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/26/2018] [Revised: 12/18/2018] [Accepted: 01/10/2019] [Indexed: 05/22/2023]
Abstract
This article highlights an important yet insufficiently understood international-level determinant of inequality in the developing world: structural adjustment programs by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Studying a panel of 135 countries for the period 1980 to 2014, we examine income inequality using multivariate regression analysis corrected for non-random selection into both IMF programs and associated policy reforms (known as 'conditionality'). We find that, overall, policy reforms mandated by the IMF increase income inequality in borrowing countries. We also test specific pathways linking IMF programs to inequality by disaggregating conditionality by issue area. Our analyses indicate adverse distributional consequences for four policy areas: fiscal policy reforms that restrain government expenditure, external sector reforms stipulating trade and capital account liberalization, financial sector reforms entailing inflation-control measures, and reforms that restrict external debt. These effects occur one year after the incidence of an IMF program, and persist in the medium term. Taken together, our findings suggest that the IMF's recent attention to inequality neglects the multiple ways through which the organization's own policy advice has contributed to inequality in the developing world.
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Affiliation(s)
- Timon Forster
- Berlin Graduate School for Global and Transregional Studies, Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
| | | | - Bernhard Reinsberg
- Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
| | - Thomas H Stubbs
- Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK
| | - Lawrence P King
- Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, USA
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Stubbs T, Kentikelenis A. International financial institutions and human rights: implications for public health. Public Health Rev 2017; 38:27. [PMID: 29450098 PMCID: PMC5810098 DOI: 10.1186/s40985-017-0074-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/04/2017] [Accepted: 11/07/2017] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Serving as lender of last resort to countries experiencing unsustainable levels of public debt, international financial institutions have attracted intense controversy over the past decades, exemplified most recently by the popular discontent expressed in Eurozone countries following several rounds of austerity measures. In exchange for access to financial assistance, borrowing countries must settle on a list of often painful policy reforms that are aimed at balancing the budget. This practice has afforded international financial institutions substantial policy influence on governments throughout the world and in a wide array of policy areas of direct bearing on human rights. This article reviews the consequences of policy reforms mandated by international financial institutions on the enjoyment of human rights, focusing on the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. It finds that these reforms undermine the enjoyment of health rights, labour rights, and civil and political rights, all of which have deleterious implications for public health. The evidence suggests that for human rights commitments to be met, a fundamental reorientation of international financial institutions' activities will be necessary.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Stubbs
- Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- Department of Politics & International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
| | - Alexander Kentikelenis
- Trinity College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Thomson M, Kentikelenis A, Stubbs T. Structural adjustment programmes adversely affect vulnerable populations: a systematic-narrative review of their effect on child and maternal health. Public Health Rev 2017; 38:13. [PMID: 29450085 PMCID: PMC5810102 DOI: 10.1186/s40985-017-0059-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2017] [Accepted: 06/20/2017] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
Structural adjustment programmes of international financial institutions have typically set the fiscal parameters within which health policies operate in developing countries. Yet, we currently lack a systematic understanding of the ways in which these programmes impact upon child and maternal health. The present article systematically reviews observational and quasi-experimental articles published from 2000 onward in electronic databases (PubMed/Medline, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar) and grey literature from websites of key organisations (IMF, World Bank and African Development Bank). Studies were considered eligible if they empirically assessed the aggregate effect of structural adjustment programmes on child or maternal health in developing countries. Of 1961 items yielded through database searches, reference lists and organisations' websites, 13 met the inclusion criteria. Our review finds that structural adjustment programmes have a detrimental impact on child and maternal health. In particular, these programmes undermine access to quality and affordable healthcare and adversely impact upon social determinants of health, such as income and food availability. The evidence suggests that a fundamental rethinking is required by international financial institutions if developing countries are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals on child and maternal health.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael Thomson
- 1School of Social Sciences, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
| | - Alexander Kentikelenis
- 2Trinity College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.,3Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Thomas Stubbs
- 4Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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Basu S, Carney MA, Kenworthy NJ. Ten years after the financial crisis: The long reach of austerity and its global impacts on health. Soc Sci Med 2017; 187:203-207. [PMID: 28666546 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.06.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/16/2017] [Accepted: 06/19/2017] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Sanjay Basu
- Medicine, Stanford University, United States.
| | | | - Nora J Kenworthy
- School of Nursing and Health Studies, University of Washington, United States.
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Pfeiffer J, Gimbel S, Chilundo B, Gloyd S, Chapman R, Sherr K. Austerity and the "sector-wide approach" to health: The Mozambique experience. Soc Sci Med 2017; 187:208-216. [PMID: 28527534 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.05.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2016] [Revised: 04/29/2017] [Accepted: 05/03/2017] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Fiscal austerity policies imposed by the IMF have reduced investments in social services, leaving post-independence nations like Mozambique struggling to recover from civil war and high disease burden. By 2000, a sector-wide approach (SWAp) was promoted to maximize aid effectiveness. 'Like-minded' bilateral donors, from Europe and Canada, promoted a unified approach to health sector support focusing on joint planning, common basket funding, and streamlined monitoring and evaluation to improve sector coordination, amplify country ownership, and build sustainable health systems. Notable donors - including US government and the Global Fund - did not participate in the SWAp, and increased vertical funding weakened the SWAp in favor of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In spite of some success in harmonizing aid to the health sector, the SWAp experience in Mozambique demonstrates how continued austerity regimes that severely constrain public spending will continue to undermine health system strengthening in Africa, even in the midst of high levels of foreign aid with the ostensible purpose of strengthening those systems. The SWAp story provides a poignant illustration of how continued austerity will impede progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3); "Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all". However, the SWAp continues to offer an alternative model to health system support that can provide a foundation for resistance to renewed austerity measures.
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Affiliation(s)
- James Pfeiffer
- Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
| | - Sarah Gimbel
- Department of Family and Child Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
| | - Baltazar Chilundo
- Department of Community Health, University of Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique.
| | - Stephen Gloyd
- Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
| | - Rachel Chapman
- Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
| | - Kenneth Sherr
- Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
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Walker A. Narrating health and scarcity: Guyanese healthcare workers, development reformers, and sacrifice as solution from socialist to neoliberal governance. Soc Sci Med 2017; 187:225-32. [PMID: 28187906 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.01.062] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/07/2016] [Revised: 01/27/2017] [Accepted: 01/30/2017] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
In oral history interviews, Guyanese healthcare workers emphasize continuity in public health governance throughout the late twentieth century, despite major shifts in broader systems of governance during this period. I argue that these healthcare workers' recollections reflect long-term scarcities and the discourses through which both socialist politicians and neoliberal reformers have narrated them. I highlight the striking similarities in discourses of responsibility and efficiency advanced by socialist politicians in 1970s Guyana and by World Bank representatives designing the country's market transition in the late 1980s, and the ways these discourses have played out in Guyana's health system. Across diverging ideologies, politicians and administrators have promoted severe cost-control as the means to a more prosperous future, presenting short-term pains as necessary to creating new, better, leaner ways of life. In the health sector this has been enacted through a focus on self-help, and on nutrition as a tool available without funds dedicated for pharmaceuticals, advanced medical technologies, or a fully staffed public health system. I argue that across these periods Guyanese citizens have been offered a very similar recipe of ongoing sacrifice. I base my analysis on oral histories with forty-six healthcare workers conducted between 2013 and 2015 in Guyana in Regions 3, 4, 5, 9, and 10, as well as written records from World Bank and Guyanese national archives; I analyze official discourses as well as recollections and experiences of public health governance by those working in Guyana's health system.
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