Climate change threatens food security and livelihoods throughout the world. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, developed countries have committed to providing additional resources for adaptation to climate change in developing countries. This thesis explores how this finance can be most effective. Importantly, a multi-level case study approach was adopted because this enabled institutional arrangements for adaptation finance to be explored at multiple scales (international, national and local-level). The national case study of Bangladesh was selected as a country highly vulnerable to climate change impacts including sea level rise and intense cyclones, whilst a local-level case study was also selected in coastal Kalapara. A criteria-based framework for analysis was adopted to analyse the three levels. At the local-level, day labourers, many of whom owned no land, were found to be particularly vulnerable to food insecurity. There was evidence of climate-related poverty traps and many households found it extremely difficult to recover from severe cyclones. However, a recent community-based adaptation project had engaged with local government and built infrastructure to protect croplands. At national-level, priorities aligned well with those identified in the local case study, but concerns were expressed regarding national ownership and capacity. At international-level, concerns were expressed about the lack of transparency and stakeholder engagement in decision-making on climate finance. There seemed to be more progress against criteria of ownership and equity at local-level. A set of policy recommendations have been developed, including the need to mainstream gender into adaptation planning at all levels, and the need for climate funds to engage more fully with local government. Future research is required on how to strengthen synergies between adaptation and mitigation, whilst exploring a wider range of case studies could provide useful insights for the Green Climate Fund.

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This thesis critically examines the increasing complexity and diversity of market access issues for agricultural food products from developing countries (DCs) to the European Union (EU). Agriculture is the sector which receives the most protection from the EU and the trade-distorting measures, employed by the EU to protect its own agricultural market, affect opportunities for DCs in agricultural food trade. These measures are also opposed to the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) objective of a “fairer and more open multilateral trading system” between the WTO member countries. The EU post-colonial history with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries has also influenced the rules enforced by the EU for the import of certain agricultural commodities. However this relationship, as well as the operation of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, has been subject to a number of sustained attacks as a result of WTO commitments. Therefore, this thesis will conduct an examination of the EU’s legal obligations under the WTO and their impact on agricultural food trade. The continuing change in EU market access conditions, subject to the legal trade rules established by the WTO, requires an in-depth analysis in order to inform DCs as to how to adapt to these changes as they take place. In this context, the thesis examines the legal trade relationship to date between the EU and the Caribbean region of the ACP Group, which has been selected as the case study, within the “Fortress Europe” of agriculture. Two commodities, sugar and bananas, will be given particular attention in the thesis because of their high sensitivity in agricultural trade and the level of contention that these provoke between the EU and DCs in international trade disputes. This is evidenced by the number of cases and the length of disputes brought within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the WTO. As these commodities are of crucial importance to particular DCs, the thesis focuses its analysis on the perspective and experience of two developing Caribbean countries in particular, Guyana and Jamaica.

Farmers’ perceptions of changes in their climate are inextricably linked to the livelihood decisions that they make and their ability to bolster their adaptive capacity and reduce their vulnerability to climate variability and change. Yet research has shown that smallholder farmers’ experiences and interpretations of climate variability and change do not translate into perceptions that accurately align with the climate record and thus have considerable consequences for their ability to adapt and reduce their vulnerability to climatic stresses and shocks. Moreover, research has tended to concentrate on farmer’s experiences of weather and climate as the principal factor in the construction of their perceptions, whilst overlooking the role of non-climatic factors. The study takes a social constructivist approach and gendered perspective to investigate farmer perceptions of climate variability and change in the communal areas of agro-ecological zones II and III of Zimbabwe, the climatic and nonclimatic factors that lead to the gendered construction of perceptions and the relationship that exists between farmers’ perceptions and those held by research, development and extension actors. Utilizing a mixed methods approach that integrated participatory research tools, a farmer questionnaire, in-depth interviews with farmers and a range of actors and historical climate analysis, the study found no significant change in long-term rainfall trends, but clearly significant increases in temperatures were observed. Farmer’s perceptions of temperature aligned more closely with the climate record than their perceptions of changes in rainfall parameters. Importantly, farmer’s perceptions of changes in rainfall and temperature parameters and overall belief that the climate is changing were significantly gendered, with male farmers’ perceptions tending to be more heightened and negative than those of female farmers, whose overall perceptions tended to align more closely with the climate record. Findings emphasize a number of cognitive mechanisms and mismatches that distort, amplify and attenuate farmer’s experiences of weather and climate and contribute to heightened negative perceptions of climate variability and change. The study demonstrates that these experiences contribute to farmer belief that the climate is changing to a far lesser extent than was originally assumed and that perceptions of temperature change play no statistically significant role in the construction of overall farmer belief that that the climate is changing. Further, findings illustrate the tendency of farmers to attribute changes in the environment and farming system directly to changes in climatic parameters, overlooking a host of non-climatic stressors that have complex and interrelated impacts on the communal farming system. Notably, changes in communal demographics and the broader economic environment have the ability to impact the manner in which farmers perceive weather and climate, with these factors contributing significantly to the construction of farmer belief that the climate is changing. Additionally, the role of weather and climate information was explored, demonstrating that male farmers had greater access to and trust in formal sources of information and consequently had greater exposure to inaccurate climate forecasts and emerging climate change narratives, leading to heightened expectations of climatic change. Findings demonstrate the centrality of gender in determining the ability of individuals to interact with and process experiences of weather and climate, weather and climate information, normative perceptions and mythologies that exist around past climate and agricultural production. Lastly, findings demonstrate that the absence of accurate and timely historical and short-term weather and climate information increases the potential for farmer (mis)perceptions to be incorporated into the perceptions held by research, development and extension actors, increasing the likelihood that actors will transfer misperceptions back to farmers in the work they carry out, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of misperception that contributes to farmer’s heightened negative perceptions of climate variability and change. The study highlights the importance of provision of timely historic and short-term weather and climate information to farmers and actors, as a means of reducing farmer misperception and increasing their capacity to make appropriate livelihood decisions that will reduce their vulnerability to climatic variability and change.

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Pollution is in vogue and this thesis deals with some aspects of pollution as well as waste management. The background and causes of today's problems are examined and the legal situation discussed. The nature of the material under discussion and its effects on the environment are established. Chapters 4 to 7 deal, in detail, with the methods for disposal and/or treatment and/or use of the material. Chapter 8 attempts to de-limit the size of the problem and Chapter 9 examines the consequences of bad or no management. The perspective of agricultural wastes in the Agricultural environment and in the National environment is then ascertained in Chapters 10 and 11. These latter two Chapters may, perhaps, be the most important as personal, subjective opinion from various sources is introduced. The facts established in the previous Chapters are used to determine the seriousness of the problems under discussion and the remedial actions that are available are examined from a cost/benefit basis. The benefits are subjective. The final Chapter is simply labled "The Future" and contains the inherent dangers of prediction. Agriculture deals with natural resources and re-cycling of wastes is essential to the industry's success. Depletion of a resource may produce problems, as may an imbalance. This thesis concerns an imbalance; it is easy to ignore the situation as if it didn't exist.

The exceptional vulnerability of river deltas to climate change and development pressures means there is an urgent need to implement systemic adaptation actions. One of the most important cases is the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). This thesis performs a novel application of a system dynamics methodology to evaluate the VMD’s dyke network as a hard adaptation to changes in the region’s hydrological conditions. In doing so it makes a methodological and case study contribution to an emerging research body on the evaluation of adaptation action. Policy analysis and stakeholder consultation are first performed to elucidate the drivers behind the policy to heighten the VMD’s dyke network. A farmer survey is then executed within the rice-growing community in order to quantify the socioeconomic impacts of the adaptation. Finally, a system dynamics model is built to explore the dynamics controlling the impacts of the adaptation and the efficacy of alternative policies for the local agricultural system. A key original theme running through this thesis is its consideration of the socioeconomic role of fluvial sediment in the system. The principle finding, on which both the model and survey agree, is that the switch to high dyke compartments in the VMD(the adaptation) is exacerbating the divide between land-rich and land-poor farmers through the promotion of triple-cropping and sediment exclusion. Factors including the loss of free sediment-bound nutrients for fertilisation, and increasing fertilisation demands, reduce the resilience of poorer farmers to increasing and unpredictable fertiliser prices. The policy currently recommended by the provincial governments to encourage sediment accretion and mitigate the rate of relative sea-level rise is to advocate triennial inundation of paddies. The data presented herein suggest such a policy is sub-optimal,further increasing the risk of debt for smaller-scale farming operations. The testing of various different success criteria weightings did, however, suggest that the less rigid policy of allowing sporadic floodplain inundation and sediment deposition during intense flooding events is preferable to most stakeholder groups.

Many households in less developed countries suffer from food insecurity which is unreliable access to a sufficient quantity of nutritious food. It is a major cause of malnutrition, and may lead to reduced worker capacity and low productivity. This study examines the impact of nutrient intake on the productivity of rice-producing households in Thailand. There are three objectives: first, to analyse the relationship between nutrient intake and labour productivity; second, to examine factors affecting the nutrition-labour productivity relationship; and third, to study the links between nutrition, labour productivity and food security. Agricultural household models are used to examine decision-making behaviour, namely production, consumption, and labour allocation. The efficiency wage hypothesis is also examined where an increase in nutrient consumption increases labour productivity. Accordingly, labour is determined by caloric consumption, and nutrition affects productivity. The empirical study adopts econometric methods with data from Thailand's Socio-Economic Survey for 2011 for 2,781 rice-farming households. A semi-log wage equation and a Cobb-Douglas production function are estimated; and a logit model is used to examine the determinants of food security on the production-consumption relationship. Results from the wage equation show that increasing consumption of calcium, vitamin A, vitamin C and iron increase household income, while increasing calorie intake reduces income. An increase in the consumption of grains and starches reduces income, whereas extra consumption of meat and poultry, fruits, vegetables and nuts lead to an increase in income. Male household heads earn more than female heads. Higher levels of education, age, the dependency ratio, and farm size increase income. In the production function, all nutrients affect farm productivity positively which supports the efficiency wage hypothesis. The logit results show that income, education, food expenditure, owning livestock, production for own-consumption, farm size, fertiliser use, and the use of family labour improve food-security; while household size, the dependency ratio, and total household expenditure do not. In conclusion, enhancing micronutrient intake is an investment for improving productivity. The Thai government should focus on building awareness of nutrition in diet and provide dietary guidelines. Food quality and safety standards should be promoted to improve accessibility to nutritious foods. Policies on vitamin and mineral fortification of processed foods, including cooking oils, flours, salt, and sweetness additives, could be designed to improve nutrient-content.

Within the dairy industry there is no unique maintenance policy designed to handle all the tasks or situations, so a reactive maintenance of “the right strategy in the right situation” policy has been adopted. This thesis provides an online, automated software platform capable of assessing machine health to facilitate a change from the current reactive maintenance policy to a condition based maintenance policy. Multiple different decision making methods were considered for the system, such as neural networks, expert systems and fuzzy systems and were discounted. Several advantages of Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA) over these methods made it an obvious choice for the decision-making technique embedded in the condition monitoring system. For example, the output of DRSA takes the form of logic statements or rules, which need no interpretation from experts or specialists, they are simple to implement in terms of computation complexity, and they can address hesitancy, ambiguity and vagueness in the data and in the preferences of the classes by the distinction of different kinds of decision rules. Implementing DRSA in a three phase, multi-criteria, iterative, classification framework, has been proposed. During the first phase historical, live industrial data is used as a learning set for the DRSA, and a set of conditional statements are generated to classify data. The second phase validates the conditional statements generated, using a combination of automatic and manual techniques. Finally the third stage of the process is to classify, current, unseen real machine data. The novelty in this thesis lies in the implementation of a condition based monitoring system in the dairy industry, in the decision making technique used to assess the health of the machine, and that in the decision made on the health of the machine occurs after the data has been statistically analysed. During the initial data collection and algorithm development phase of the project 18 potential major breakdowns were identified and avoided, a saving of £3.6 M to the dairies. During the final stages of the project using the DRSA algorithms within the automatic software, a further 4 faults that could have led to major breakdowns were identified.

Despite the existence and application of mandatory agri-environmental policy for many decades, significant environmental sustainability issues remain attributable to the agricultural sector. Participatory types of extension practices seem to have a potential for assisting extension organisations to enhance the supports provided to farmers in relation to meeting the requirements of these policies. To test this idea, this thesis used a learning process approach for exploring the interplay between farmer subjectivities, the European Union’s policy of cross compliance and the extension practices of Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority of the Republic of Ireland. Three learning sub-systems were employed in the investigation. The first used the principles of Participatory Action Research for revealing stakeholders’ perceptions of Teagasc’s cross compliance extension service. This process resulted in the attainment of rich insights about extension practices, however it also revealed that a significant number of farmers were experiencing social difficulties with the application and enforcement of cross compliance. To better understand the implications of these subjectivities, a second sub-system was created to learn about farmers’ experiences of the policy. This process surfaced diverse insights about farmers’ personal experiences of cross compliance. A final sub-system employed systems thinking and practice for appraising the utility of the learning arising from the previous sub-systems for improving interactions between farmers, extension organisations and cross compliance. The combined findings suggest a considerable potential for extension organisations to use participatory practices for developing rich understandings of farmers’ preferences for mandatory agri-environmental policy and its related extension practices. A limitation in realising participant preferences is that extension organisations have little influence over the application and enforcement of mandatory agri-environmental policy. Overcoming this participatory barrier will require continued collective learning targeted at understanding how stakeholders can work together to develop agri-environmental policies that are socially, financially and environmentally sustainable.