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How do civil servants in district water and sanitation departments address problems of water access in rural communities in Tanzania? What are the bureaucratic procedures they follow? How do the bureaucratic procedures around formulating budgets, managing money, and interacting with communities impede or enhance their ability to manage water projects? This report addresses these and related questions by examining the social, economic, and political contexts in which Tanzanian civil servants in the water sector work. This research focuses on civil servants employed by water and sanitation departments in district offices, where infrastructure projects are initiated and managed by engineers and technicians in coordination with the private sector and community organizations. Using qualitative research from two of these water and sanitation departments, this report shows that the institutional and bureaucratic contexts in which civil servants work redirect their attention away from maintaining existing infrastructure and towards building new water projects. The focus on new projects corresponds to their efforts to answer the objectives of higher levels of government. Improving water access depends on the shared efforts of civil servants and community groups to maintain existing projects. Civil servants' focus on new projects therefore poses a problem to ensuring that they work community organizations and maintain existing water projects.

Bureaucracy --- Civil Servants --- Stakeholder Engagement --- Water And Sanitation

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If stakeholders matter, then their impact should affect the way we plan, execute and implement projects. Most projects--and all valuable projects--have stakeholders, and require some form of stakeholder engagement. It is the engagement that needs managing, not the stakeholders, because the right type of engagement varies depending on the types of stakeholders involved and the context of the project. This book provides a stakeholder-centered analysis of projects, and explains which identification, analysis, communication and engagement models are relevant to different types of projects: from an office move, to IT enterprise changes, to transformational change of business, to complex social change. Using case studies from around the world, it illustrates what goes wrong when stakeholders are not engaged successfully, and what lessons we can learn from these examples. Three main cases are used to demonstrate the application of stakeholder analysis and modelling tools, leaving the reader with a very practical understanding of which techniques may be beneficially applied on their own projects.

Project management. --- Project management --- Program management --- Stakeholder engagement --- Stakeholder management --- Project governance --- Project communication --- Sociodynamic model --- Salience model

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Policy toward fiscal rules is an important issue in the countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia). According to a rough estimate, the countries with rules (all but North Macedonia) have complied with their debt and overall-deficit rules a little more than half the time. An online survey, conducted for this paper, suggests that public understanding of the rules is limited, which may reduce the political pressure for compliance. To get debt down to prudent levels, Albania and Montenegro will need a strong commitment to complying with their fiscal rules and will often have to do more than their deficit rules require. The following principles should guide future policy toward fiscal rules: more emphasis should be given to ensuring that fiscal rules are widely understood and enjoy the support of a broad range of stakeholders; policy toward the rules should be consistent with accession to the European Union, but the rules should be simpler than the European Union's and the debt limits lower; limits in rules should not be mistaken for targets; and public financial management should be improved to support the implementation of rules.

Debt Ceiling --- Debt Limit --- Deficit Ceiling --- Economic Policy, Institutions and Governance --- Fiscal and Monetary Policy --- Fiscal Governance --- Fiscal Policy --- Fiscal Rules --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Political Economy --- Public Financial Management --- Public Sector Development --- Stakeholder Engagement

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As humanity's current production and consumption patterns exceed planetary boundaries, many opinion leaders have stressed the need to adopt green economic stimulus policies in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This paper provides an integrated framework to design an economic recovery strategy aligned with sustainability objectives through a multi-criterion, multi-stakeholder lens. The aim is to enable decisions by policy makers with the aid of transparent workflows that include expert evidence that is based on quantitative open-source modeling, and qualitative input by diverse social actors in a participatory approach. The paper employs an energy systems model and an economic input-output model to provide quantitative evidence and design a multi-criteria decision process that engages stakeholders from government, enterprises, and civil society. As a case study, the paper studies 13 green recovery measures that are relevant for Cyprus and assesses their appropriateness for criteria related to environmental sustainability, socioeconomic and job impact, and climate resilience. The results highlight trade-offs between immediate and long-run effects, between economic and environmental objectives, and between expert evidence and societal priorities. Importantly, the paper finds that a "return-to-normal" economic stimulus is not only environmentally unsustainable, but also economically inferior to most green recovery schemes.

Climate Change --- Climate Change and Environment --- Economic Growth --- Economic Recovery --- Emissions Trading --- Energy Systems Model --- Environment --- Environmental Sustainability --- Green Growth --- Green Issues --- Input-Output Model --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis --- Paris Agreement --- Policy Formulation --- Stakeholder Engagement --- Sustainable Development Goals

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The COVID-19 pandemic is having profound effects on all dimensions of life: individual, social, cultural, and public and economic health, among others. The contribution of social sciences is very relevant in understanding this disease and pandemic as well as its effects. It is also relevant for taking measures, such as, for example, compliance with physical distance, mask-wearing, no gatherings, and information to the population in a more efficient way. This book discusses topics such as COVID-19 in a risk society and its implications; the situation of patients with diabetes in a lockdown context; the technological, pedagogical, and social challenges posed by remote teaching; and, finally, the explanation of potential contributions of several specific social sciences that can shape both the taking of measures and their fulfilment in the desired direction. The book concludes with an analysis of the underlying social, psychological, and philosophical issues that are pandemic-related and that may have a considerable impact on societies and individuals, also highlighting the situation of the most disadvantaged groups, given that pandemics tend to accentuate social inequalities.

Research & information: general --- Biology, life sciences --- Food & society --- education --- pandemic --- philosophy --- policy --- practice --- psychology --- research --- social --- COVID-19 --- diabetes --- psychosocial effects --- self-observations --- risk perceptions --- social relations --- systems theory --- qualitative research --- social sciences --- inequality --- contagion --- social distancing --- online learning --- emergency remote teaching --- technological challenges --- pedagogical challenges --- social challenges --- risk --- Anthropocene --- modernization --- globalization --- disease identity --- deliberative valuation --- informed decision making --- public engagement --- stakeholder engagement