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Tobacco use is associated with an annual global economic cost of two trillion dollars and mortality of half of its regular users. Tobacco leaf cultivation is the starting point of the tobacco cycle. Tobacco farming employs millions of small-scale tobacco farmers around the globe, most of whom are out growers who rely on the tobacco industry. This paper aims to map the regions of greatest tobacco production globally (i.e., the US, Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, and Zambia) and tobacco use rates in these locations. Smoking rates were higher in those areas, except for India, where important population subgroups reported an upward trend for tobacco smoking. In general, there was a relationship between tobacco farming and tobacco smoking. Tobacco farming may lead to a higher risk of tobacco use and lower adherence to tobacco control policies. Therefore, promoting viable alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers must have dual benefits. Additionally, specific health prevention policies might be necessary for those populations reporting higher tobacco use and lower perception of tobacco-related health risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of an increasing scientisation of political processes, epistemic communities have been identified as a unique category of social actors, who exclusively rely on their knowledge resources to shape the preferences of decision-makers. Whereas most authors expect that an expert-driven policy process facilitates the implementation of technically complex policies, critical scholars hint to an evolving technocracy, whose scientific dogmatism may end up in policies that aggravate social problems. In this paper, these countervailing assumptions are empirically assessed for the epistemic community on biodiversity and its role in Brazil and India. At least in this case, it seems that the impact experts' influence depends on the configuration of the policy arena. If experts are institutionally compelled to debate their positions with potential critics, the members of an epistemic community seem to engage in a rather deliberative discourse that widens the policy space for all stakeholders involved. Under the conditions of an elitist closure, however, policy experts seem to adapt to the preferences of the most powerful actors but refrain from any critical self-reflection that might seriously challenge their own convictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using policy cycle model as a heuristic, this article studies Indian, Brazilian, and South African engagement with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) by (a) comparing NAMA policy process and (b) identifying factors driving or limiting the framework’s domestic application. India largely remained uninterested in NAMAs, Brazil aligned its domestic climate policy and NAMAs, while South Africa had a more nuanced engagement when formulating NAMAs. Four factors influenced these countries’ NAMA engagements: the level and necessity of international support, the availability of domestic policy provisions to tackle climate change, the domestic institutional capacity to coordinate interministerial functioning, and the role of individuals in the institutional apparatus. As an international climate policy framework, studying NAMA engagement provides learnings for nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement for designing the instrument, ensuring clarity on support provisions for ratcheting up ambitions, and enhancing institutional capacity, to expedite transition from policy formulation to implementation and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is intended to support discussions about how to effectively address domestic and sexual violence. It proposes the following key strategies: expanding beyond police, courts, and prisons; adopting upstream approaches to address the social, structural, institutional, and historical drivers of violence; and using evidence-based strategies to prevent violence from happening in the first place. Comparing the United States, South Africa, India, and Brazil, the article makes the case that advocates working to address domestic and sexual violence have relied too heavily on criminal legal sanctions. Not only does this result in unmet needs of both survivors and their communities but it also expands the repressive powers of police and prosecutors and contributes to steadily growing levels of incarceration. The article concludes by calling for services that better meet the needs of survivors and for the rapid scale-up of prevention strategies, both evidence-based interventions and legal and policy approaches that address the root causes of men's violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The standard approach to modelling the relationship between world and producer prices of coffee does not incorporate the effects of changing government policies and market structures. These changes have led to large structural breaks in the relationship between the prices implying the standard estimates are biased. We model coffee prices in Brazil, Guatemala and India allowing for the structural breaks and show that the liberalisation of coffee markets has benefited producers substantially both in terms of a higher share of the world price of coffee and higher real prices. This suggests that calls to re-regulate coffee markets may be misplaced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]