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The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that a third of all global deaths from stroke, lung cancer and respiratory diseases can be linked to air pollution. In some cities, breathing polluted air is as dangerous as smoking 25 cigarettes a day. This is a literature review that focusses on the problem of the annual haze in Northern Thailand, in order to ascertain workable policies to help alleviate this annual smog or haze. The review was conducted from over 1000 peer reviewed papers from both Scopus and the ISI databases with preference given to papers published within the past 5 years. This paper is divided into five sections. The first section deals with the cause of the haze, the technologies and models that are being developed and used to monitor and predict pollution and the meteorological conditions specific to the North of Thailand. The second section concerns the effect from air pollution on the health of the general public both from Thailand and other countries. The third section looks at policies from around the world that have been used to successfully reduce haze and smog. These include conservation agriculture, low emission zones and education methods. The fourth section suggests policies that should be implemented in the North of Thailand to help alleviate this annual problem. The overall conclusion is that the annual pollution is a complex multi-faceted problem requiring coherent policies across multiple departments, provinces and countries.

The paper examines the perceptions and attitudes of local people living next to nine exclosures in the Tigray Region in Ethiopia. Social exchange theory was used as theoretical framework and data were collected from 446 farming households. Factor analysis, multiple linear regression and binary logistic regression were applied to the data to identify factors that influenced local household heads’ perceptions of and attitudes towards existing exclosures and further expansion of exclosures. Household heads’ perceptions of exclosures could be grouped under social, economic and ecological dimensions. Some household heads expressed positive attitudes towards the existing exclosures, while some were concerned about the future expansion of the exclosures. The findings also revealed that households’ socio-economic profile, households’ knowledge about exclosures, the ecological conditions of exclosures, and the geographical attributes of exclosures all played important roles in shaping local household heads’ perceptions of exclosures. Moreover, their perceptions of exclosures were significantly correlated with tangible benefits and costs associated with exclosures. Thus, improvement in local communities’ attitudes towards and support for exclosures would follow if exclosures contributed more directly to people’s livelihoods. However, the level of support for exclosures is remarkable given the fact that they have been closed for grazing and other uses.

This study compares 11 fixed link projects in Norway, linking islands to the mainland. The fixed links substantially increase the accessibility between the islands and the mainland. Thus, interaction between the islands and the mainland increases. Large infrastructure improvements may not only affect the transport patterns but also the population and companies in the connected areas. We apply a difference-in-difference method to analyse the impacts from the increased accessibility. The findings indicate growth in housing prices, population, commuting and employment on the islands. The growth rates of these variables depend on the case characteristics. Urban cases appear to promote larger growth on the island. The contribution of this paper to the literature is that while there have been several studies that have involved single projects, a comparison of several cases that combines assessments of housing and labour markets is still rare in the literature.