published_or_final_version / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning

This investigation is concerned with perceived detrimental aspects of land use and the desirability of extending government participation in land use goals. Interviews with 179 persons were conducted. The data reveal a possible direct relationship between social class and the acceptance of land use and economic controls. The project endorses the following proposals: Local regulations should require housing developers to provide the streets and utilities and to dedicate land for parks and schools. Taxation should be used as a regulatory tool for the attainment of public policy objectives. A federal commission is needed to encourage comprehensive land management programs. It is also suggested that future land management questionnaires should use random samples and ask questions about specific land use problems.

Sustainable development is a multi-faceted and complex proposition, investigating such a goal required a grounded study capable of analysing real world issues. Managing such a highly diverse region as Western Sydney with its multiple demands is complicated by the plethora of government administration agencies. Contemporary land use planning policies and decisions appear frequently at odds with community values and aspirations for the region. Evidence presented in this research suggests a declining natural resource base that manifests itself in an insidious cost impost to the public sector while the benefits accrue to the private sector.Eventual developments in the resolution and maintenance of the functional integrity of the natural systems in Western Sydney may demand a major paradigm shift in economic and social policy. This research suggests that a precautionary based approach to thresholds of harm in the Western Sydney region is long overdue. Tools developed in this study appear capable of clarifying the evident land use planning paradoxes and may assist in negotiating sustainable outcomes by fostering a collaborative learning process between decision makers, experts and the community. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study determines and predicts multi-temporal Land-Use-Land-Cover Change (LULC) in a peripheral urban landscape over a 22 year period in relation to the study area‘s greenery. A change detection analysis using post classification Maximum Likelihood algorithm on three multispectral SPOT-4 images was used to determine land-cover transformation. To predict future land coverage, a Land-Cover Change Modeler (LCM) and a Markov Chain were used. Results show that between the year 2000-2006, 2006-2011 and 2000-2011 the study area experienced varied changes in the different LULCs. Built-up areas increased by 10.08%, 3.15% and 13.23% in 2000-2006, 2006-2011, and 2000-2011 respectively. Areas covered by thicket decreased by 0.59% in 2000-2006 but increased by 0.56%, 0.07% in 2006-2011 and 2000-2011 respectively. Forest land-cover increased by 2.59% in 2000-2006, 2.82% in 2006-2011, and 5.41% in 2000-2011. Grassland declined by 8.46% and 2.64% in 2000-2006 and 2000-2011 respectively while degraded grassland declined by 3.62%, 12.45% and 16.07% in 2000-2006, 2006-2011, and 2000-2011 respectively. Projection results indicate a consistent pattern of growth or decline to those experienced between 2000-2011. This study provides insight into LULC patterns within the eThekwini metro area and offers invaluable understanding of the transformation of the urban green spaces. Key words: Land-Use-Land-Cover Change, Change detection, Land-Cover Change Modeler, Markov Chain Process, Land-Cover Change Prediction. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

Investment and trade flows across East Asia during the last three decades have fostered the development of production networks and economic integration. However, only since the turn of the century, have East Asian countries begun to institutionalize such integration through free trade agreements (FTAs). With the exception of Japan, the literature portrays East Asian FTAs as driven by political elites on primarily foreign policy motivations and with marginal participation of businesses in their formulation and utilization. Most of these narratives have, however, overlooked endogenous sources of trade preferences, shortcoming that this Thesis attempted to correct by analyzing how FTAs fit within the strategies of states and firms. The project investigated the mutual interaction between evolving trends within East Asian production networks and states’ and firms’ preferences on FTA liberalization using as case studies the bilateral FTAs negotiated by Thailand and Malaysia within the context of key production networks, particularly the automotive industry. Research involved extensive process-tracing through semi-structured interviews and trade data analyses. The main findings of this dissertation were: 1) Compared to multilateral liberalization, greater technical complexity and easier assessment of impacts in bilateral FTA negotiations resulted in more intense government-business consultations and corporate lobbying. Successive FTA negotiations strengthened the technical capacities of bureaucrats and firms and prompted the emergence of new institutional structures for intermediation and coordination among all actors; 2) Sectors that had successfully lobbied ex-ante for FTA liberalization and/or benefited from unilateral liberalization schemes have made extensive utilization of FTAs; 3) Governments and firms in both countries sought and extracted selective rents in FTAs to improve their relative position not only with respect to states and firms outside the bloc but also inside, and; 4) The interplay between overlapping FTA areas and the investment sunk in them shaped governments’ and firms’ positions on further FTA liberalization.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Published Article / Along the path of water flowing in a river basin are many water-related human interventions that modify the natural systems. Rainwater harvesting is one such intervention that involves abstraction of water in the upstream catchment. Increased water withdrawal at upstream level is an issue of concern for downstream water availability to sustain ecosystem services. The Modder River basin, located in the central South Africa, is experiencing intermittent meteorological droughts causing water shortages for agriculture, livestock and domestic purpose. To address this problem a technique was developed for small scale farmers with objective of harnessing rainwater for crop production. However, the impact of a wider adoption of this technique by farmers on the water resources has not been quantified. In this regard, the SWAT hydrological model was used to simulate the impact of such practice on the water resources of the river basin. The scenarios studied were: pasture (PAST), conventional agriculture (Agri-CON) and agriculture using rainwater harvesting (Agri-IRWH). The result showed that the highest mean monthly direct flow was obtained on Agri-CON land use (18 mm), followed by PAST (12 mm) and Agri-IRWH land use (10 mm). The Agri-IRWH scenario reduced runoff by 38% compared to Agri-CON, which justifies its intended purpose. On the other hand, it was found that the Agri-IRWH contributed to more groundwater recharge (40 mm) compared to PAST (32 mm) and Agri-CON (19 mm) scenarios. Although, there was a visible impact of the rainwater harvesting technique on the water yield when considered on a monthly time frame, the overall result showed that there was a substantial benefit of using the rainwater harvesting technique for agricultural production (Agr-IRWH) without impacting significantly on the mean annual water yield.

Agricultural areas represent around 40% of the earth surface and provide a variety of products and services essential to human societies. However, with policy reforms, market liberalisation and climate change issues, continuous land use and cover change (LUCC) brings uncertainty in the quantity and quality of ecosystem services supplied for the future generations. The processes of LUCC have been explored using top-down approaches at global and regional level but more recent methods have focused on agents’ interactions at smaller scale. This approach is better suited to understanding and modelling complex socio-ecological systems, which emerge from individual actions, and therefore for developing tools which improve policy effectiveness. In recent years, there has also been increasing interest in gaining more detailed understanding of the impacts of LUCC on the range of ecosystem services associated with different landscapes and farming practices. The objectives of this thesis are: 1/ to understand and model the internal processes of LUCC at local scale, i.e. farmer behaviour, 2/ to explore heterogeneous farmer decision making and the impacts it has on LUCC and on ecosystem services and 3/ to inform policy makers for improving the effectiveness of land-related policies. This thesis presents an agent-based modelling framework which integrates psycho-social models of heterogeneous farmer decisions and an ecological model of skylark breeding population. The model is applied to the Lunan, a small Scottish arable catchment, and is empirically-grounded using social surveys, i.e. phone interviews and choice-based conjoint experiments. Based on ecological attitudes and farming goals, three main types of farmer agents were generated: profit-oriented, multifunctionalist, traditionalist. The proportion of farmer types found within the survey was used to scale-up respondent results to the agent population, spatially distributed within a GIS-based representation of the catchment. Under three socio-economic scenarios, based on the IPCC-SRES framework, the three types of farmers maximise an utility function, which is disaggregated into economic, environmental and social preferences, and apply the farm strategy (i.e. land uses, management style, agri-environmental measures) that best satisfies them. Each type of agents demonstrates different reactions to market and policy pressures though farmers seem to be constrained by lack of financial opportunities and are therefore unable to fully comply with environmental and social goals. At the landscape level, the impacts on ecosystem services, in particular the skylark local population, depend strongly on policy objectives, which can be antagonist and create trade-offs in the provision of different services, and on farmer socio-environmental values. A set of policy recommendations is offered that encompasses the heterogeneity of farmer decision-making with the aim of meeting sustainable targets. Finally, further improvements of the conceptual and methodological framework are discussed.

This thesis has three pieces of empirical studies that analyse economic inequality across social groups (castes and gender) and its impact on human capital endowments in developing countries with particular reference to Nepal. Three aspects of inequalities have been examined: disincentive in educational attainment in female arising from labour market discrimination, disproportional representation of low-caste workers in better jobs and inequity in health care utilisation and health outcomes across castes. This study contributes to the literature of economics by developing a new theory and extending existing econometric models in analysing economic inequality across social groups. The first piece of research examines the impact of marital anticipation on female education in the presence of labour market discrimination. It develops a theoretical model for jointly determining the age at marriage and female education. The model hypothesizes that as females are not rewarded in the labour market as much as men are; married women are encouraged to engage in household work as a result of the intra-household division of labour in their marital union. Thus, parental anticipation of this effect affects their daughter's age at marriage and can influence investment in girls' schooling. It then estimates the causal effect of age at marriage on education in light of the theoretical model using household data from Nepal.

The thesis firstly examines the extent to which different sources of governance activity have both changed the supply, processing and consumption of seafood in Britain and achieved its sustainability, food safety and quality over the period 1950 to 2013 and secondly reflects on the implications for agri-food and governance theories in which the UK seafood chain has not previously been considered. Using documentary sources, the compilation of a database of seafood companies and stakeholder interviews the research has reconstructed development and change over this period. In doing so it demonstrates a range of changes which can be related to different forms of governance: these include transformation of supply, diverse activities to raise sustainability, greatly improved quality and food hygiene systems and variations in consumer attitudes and practices. The thesis underlines the significance of public forms of regulation in changing the sources of supply as well as in the contested movement towards the more sustainable exploitation of fisheries, in raising food hygiene standards and in establishing the basis for nutritional advice to consumers with regard to seafood. Complementarily, the account also shows how private forms, particularly certification systems, have dominated governance of domestic aquaculture and of quality generally and how they have impacted on food safety. The thesis further examines how implementation of public governance is delegated and shared, including by analysis of various forms of mixed public and private governance, considers the various ways seafood consumption has been governed with attention both to both retailing and foodservice roles and assesses the contributions of civil society organisations. Based on these findings, the thesis argues that agri-food theories about internal supply chain functioning and the role of major retailers needs to be modified; it shows the limitations of explaining standards systems as the mode of control and the benefits of incorporating a power model of chain relationships. Further, in relation to external supply chain impacts the thesis demonstrates the need to emphasise the role of state regulation in the overall governance of food systems to a much greater extent than has usually been done hitherto. In relation to governance theory more broadly, the thesis examines the way changes in the operation of the British state have related to the seafood supply chain and the importance of examining the interests served in different types of governance with particular attention to the balance of public and private benefits resulting. The thesis thus analyses change in an important food source, illustrates how delegated state governance functions in a specific area and contributes to the theoretical basis for understanding food chains in general.