Background: This thesis presents three research papers that evaluate the current tools and methods used to assess the availability of health resources and services during humanitarian emergencies. Methods: A systematic review of peer-reviewed and grey literature was conducted to locate all known health facilities assessment tools currently in use in low- and middle-income countries. The results of this review were used to generate a framework of essential health facilities assessment domains, representative of seven health systems building blocks. Using this framework, a field-based evaluation of tools used to assess the availability of health resources and services in emergencies in Haiti and the Darfur states of Sudan was conducted. The collected assessment tools from these countries were compared against the framework from the systematic review, as well as the Minimum Standards for Health Action in the Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response, and the Global Health Cluster’s Set of Core Indicators and Benchmarks by Category. A coding system was developed using all of these frameworks that enabled the comparison of the assessments collected in both countries. Field-based interviews were conducted with key informants using a convergent interviewing methodology, to gain perspectives on data collection and the use of evidence in formulating health systems interventions in emergencies. Results: 10 health facility assessments were located in the systematic review of the literature, generating an assessment framework comprised of 41 assessment domains. Of the included assessments, none contained assessment criteria corresponding to all 41 domains, suggesting a need to standardize these assessments based on a structured health systems framework. In Haiti and Sudan, a total of 9 (Haiti, n=8; Sudan, n=1) different assessment tools were located that corresponded to assessments of the availability of health resources and services. Of these, few collected data that could reasonably have corresponded to the different assessment domains of the health facilities assessment framework or the Sphere Standards, nor could many have provided the necessary inputs for calculating the Global Health Cluster’s indicators or benchmarks. The exception to this was the one tool located in Sudan, which fared reasonably well against these criteria. The interviews with participants revealed that while evidence was viewed as important, systematically-collected data were not routinely being integrated into program planning in emergency settings. This was, in part, due to the absence of reliable information or the perceived weaknesses of the data available, but also due uncertainty as to how to best integrate large amounts of health system data into programs. Conclusions: Greater emphasis is needed to ensure that data on the availability and functionality of health services during major emergencies is collected using methodologically-sound approaches, by field staff with expertise in health systems. There is a need to ensure that baseline data on the health system is available at the outside of emergency response, and that humanitarian health interventions are based on reliable evidence of needs and capacities from within the health system.

The thesis focuses on theoretical and empirical analysis of economic growth and its implications for economic and social development of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The thesis proceeds from the assumption that economic growth is the necessary (but not sufficient) condition for economic, social and human development of societies and nations. In context of the LDCs, this assumption can be modified: it is assumed that it has been the low average rate of growth in the long-run that is associated with the complex social and economic issues of LDCs. The primary objective of the thesis is to verify this association within the LDCs, then to investigate factors that have been the major determinants for economic growth in (African) LDCs. From the perspective of theory the thesis is grounded in theories and models of economic growth that are crucial for researching factors of growth and its implications for development. The thesis focuses also on in-depth analysis of the LDCs both from the classification and statistical perspectives. The latter one is based on comparisons with selected groups of states within the World economy.

The thesis analyzes two forms of International Development Cooperation, particularly Microfinance and Interregional Cooperation. The goal is to stress these forms and find suitable models for their application in the Czech environment.

Globalization has brought increased opportunities for educators to collaborate across borders, sharing everything from curricula, teaching practices and educational standards to learning technologies, institutional structures and organizational policies. In the literature, this is often referred to as educational transfer, or the borrowing and lending between educational systems from different countries or cultures. Today, institutions that share between educational systems—whether schools, community groups, development organizations, corporations or governments—are so ubiquitous that some may think of it as a natural, inevitable and benign process. Yet as perspectives shared in this study illustrate, for many in-field practitioners, transfer can be challenging, have processes and outcomes that are not always clear or beneficial, and be fraught with many problems. This study examines the perspectives and problems of hosts when Western educators and development practitioners work within their postcolonial communities. Drawing on concepts, methods and strategies from postcolonial and critical education theory, this study examines how transfer can perpetuate historically inherited patterns of Western imperialism to answer the question, as educational borrowers and lenders, how do we know we are or aren’t neocolonial actors when transferring Western education into postcolonial countries, and what can we do to help ensure that we aren’t? Using a mix of grounded theory, narrative inquiry and action research, this study draws on data from interviews, narratives and group discussions that were collected between 2014 and 2019 from over 33 participants representing visiting and hosting volunteers and staff at three universities in Ghana and Vietnam. The results demonstrate that although their specific problems are individual and varied, hosting professionals can struggle with similar themes like Eurocentrism, developmentalism, inequality, harm and racism, requiring practitioners to use additional evaluation methods besides traditional needs assessments and outcomes-based program evaluations to decolonize their work. In addition to theorizing how practitioners might improve transfer evaluation, the study also examines how hosts and visitors might develop more critical awareness of neocolonial patterns and better support decolonial goals like participant consent, self-determination and empowerment. To this end, the study shares postcolonial perspectives, theoretical models and piloted problem reduction strategies to help future transfer practitioners develop deeper and more critical understandings of educational transfer. / Graduate / 2021-12-03

This dissertation examines how simultaneous social-ecological transformations including environmental change, climate uncertainty and urbanization affect low income residents in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Low income residents often reside in informal settlements which themselves inhabit marginal spaces in the city including roof tops, riverbanks, and land on the urban periphery. In Phnom Penh, many communities in the peri-urban zone depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Yet, this way of life is being compromised by changes to weather patterns, water quality and most pressingly urban expansion, as the wetlands they use to farm are being filled with sand to create new land on which to build luxury condos and expansive shopping malls. This thesis focuses on how low income residents, in particular urban farmers on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, live with and influence the ongoing social-ecological transformations that are shaping the city. I employ a mixed qualitative and quantitative methodology, including interviews, focus groups and a household survey to examine how patterns of urbanization in the past 25 years have created situations of both social and ecological marginalization in Phnom Penh. I show how the changing legal framework of land ownership has influenced access to land and housing while analysing how urban farmers have responded to these changes. The following research questions underpinned the study: 1. How are low-income residents of Phnom Penh affected by the process of environmental change (including climate change)? How do other forms of socio-economic marginalization influence this? 2. What are the historical conditions that have shaped the present reality for low-income residents of Phnom Penh in terms of their vulnerability to environmental change? 3. How are low-income residents responding, individually and collectively, to the changes they are experiencing as a result of urbanization and environmental change? What are the outcomes of these actions? 4. How is the concept of ‘resilience’ being employed as a policy objective in Cambodia? Does the presence of a resilience agenda improve conditions for low-income residents facing challenges related to environmental change in urban areas? I combined the theoretical fields of resilience and political ecology, to take advantage of their complementary understandings of the interaction between humans and nature. This theoretical combination highlights the importance of scale, focusing on the loss of agricultural livelihoods at the village level while also acknowledging the role of national policy and politics in shaping the priorities of urban development. My use of political ecology focuses on issues of agency to show how farmers are actively employing strategies to sustain their failing crops, such as increasing the use of chemical inputs, which tragically further undermines their precarious finances as well as the ecosystem they depend on. Farmers deploy short term strategies in an effort to retain a foothold in the city in the hopes that their children will be able to leverage their education to pursue opportunities outside of farming. I further draw on discourse analysis to show how the term resilience is employed in policy and by government officials at the national level to frame climate change as a managerial problem which can be solved with technical solutions and external funding. I argue this obscures how problematic decisions such as the in-filling of urban lakes are caused, not by failures of capacity but by political priorities, aligned to the interests of wealth creation for a small elite. While resilience has been embraced as a policy priority in Cambodia, it has not translated into practices which protect urban ecosystems or lessen social inequalities.

Master of Urban and Regional Planning

<p>Food security is an increasingly important global challenge. Population increases, coupled with changing food habits, are placing significant demand on the global food supply. Without significant advances in agricultural techniques and approaches, it will be difficult to feed the global population within several decades. Aquaculture is one underutilized agricultural method which could help alleviate this impending crisis if more farmers were able to implement improved techniques. One of the primary inputs for successful aquaculture is a nutritionally complete feed. However, commercial fish feeds may be prohibitively expensive or unavailable in many locations in the developing world, reducing the ability of farmers to implement economically successful aquaculture ventures. Providing farmers with the ability to produce their own high-nutrition feeds with locally available ingredients would be a key enabler for more widespread successful aquaculture efforts. This dissertation focuses on the development and evaluation of alternative, locally sourced, inexpensive fish feeds to maximize fish production in developing countries.</p>

Can positive messaging on social media promote peacebuilding in Myanmar? It is argued that social cognitive communication campaigns reversing negative symbolic interactionism on social networks could be the answer. This paper finds that there has been only one significant campaign, MIDO’s Pan Zagar, to use positive messaging on social media. Whilst the numbers of people that engaged with it suggest that this was popular, there is not enough evidence to determine if this had any behavioural change. However, an opinion survey and interviews show that there is potential to leverage counter narratives towards building peace – especially by harnessing the popularity of the major platform Facebook to both monitor and publish content influencing people towards peaceful behaviour.

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