Namibia’s community based natural resource management program (CBNRM) integrates local participation in rural development and biodiversity conservation. This effort was launched through key legislation that devolved the right to manage wildlife and other renewable resources on communal lands from the state to community level conservancies. Local participation is dependent upon the capacity of the locals to self mobilize and establish conservancies, plan and implement their programs, and monitor and evaluate their progresses and impacts. Accordingly, this study examines the role of capacity development (CD) in CBNRM, particularly its processes, products, performance, and permanence at the individual, organizational (conservancy), and community levels. The research was carried out using interviews and participatory self-assessment exercises with various conservancy stakeholders. This study uncovers why and how capacity development has to be based on local realities and aspirations where capacity users need to have ownership of the process through partnerships with service providers in order to enhance endogenous capacity. However, such notion of “partnership” between CD stakeholders is challenging to translate into reality in the face of power imbalances, where government and NGOs are continuously influenced and coerced by donor interests, where NGOs are considered stronger than the government because they control more financial and human resources, and where conservancies tend to report upwards to NGOs and government instead of their constituents. Moreover, this research reiterates that CD has to be holistic enough to incorporate individual, organizational, and community level changes in order to create sustainable capacities and prevent problems of elitism, manipulation, and dependency on few individuals. With respect to CBNRM, the research argues that its basic premise of diversifying rural livelihoods using incentives to bring about sustainable resource management can only be achieved when conservancies have the capacity to create representative and participatory democratic processes, and when they are able to generate equitable and reliable tangible benefits with manageable costs to their constituents. As seen in this study, when such governance and benefit sharing structures are in place, they enhance local participation by promoting political empowerment, trust, ownership, and positive attitude towards living with wildlife. However, if such conditions are not met, local participation is reduced, while intra-community conflicts from marginalization to nepotism and members’ dissatisfaction and disinterest are inevitable. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

With the advent of telecommunication technology, the need to transport multimedia content is increasing day by day. Successful video transmission over the wireless network faces a lot of challenges because of the limited resource and error prone nature of the wireless environment. To deal with these two challenges, not only the video needs to be compressed very efficiently but also the compression scheme needs to provide some error resilient features to deal with the high packet loss probability. In this thesis, we have worked with the H.264/ Advanced Video Coding (AVC) video compression standard since this is the most recent and most efficient video compression scheme. Also H.264 provides novel error resilient features e.g. slicing of the frame, Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO), data partitioning etc. In this thesis, we investigate how to utilize the error resilient schemes of H.264 to ensure a good quality picture at the receiving end. In the first part of the thesis, we find the optimum slice size that will enhance the quality of video transmission in a 3G environment. In the second part, we jointly optimize the data partitioning property and partial reliability extension property of the new transport layer protocol, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). In the third and last part, we focus more on the network layer issues. We obtain the optimum point of application layer Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Medium Access Control (MAC) layer retransmission in a capacity constrained network. We assume that the bit rate assigned for the video application is more than the video bit rate so that the extra capacity available can be used for error correction. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

This study examines the changing context and implications for evaluation practice of social program and service delivery devolved to small nonprofit and grassroots organizations. The setting is explored through a critical reflection-on-practice of over twenty years experience conducting evaluation. Using a multiple case study approach, the dissertation examines nine broad themes through two broad composite scenarios and twenty-five detailed vignettes that portray the challenges of working as a consultant with and for small nonprofit and grassroots organizations as they grapple with growing demands for accountability through evaluation. The multiple case study analysis is complemented by an analysis of case studies in two broad areas of literature; one on the impacts of devolution in the nonprofit sector, and the other examining recent trends in evaluation conducted in challenging settings, including community-based and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The five broad themes addressed through the case studies and literature on devolution are: 1) accountability, 2) capacity, 3) mandate drift, 4) competition, and 5) complexity. The four broad themes addressed through case studies and literature on evaluation are: 1) theory-based evaluation, 2) inclusiveness (participatory approaches), 3) the changing and multiple roles of evaluators, and 4) the use of dialogue, deliberative and democratic approaches in evaluation practice. The study contends that the ‘rough ground’ of nonprofit settings provides a useful lens for understanding broader challenges and trends in evaluation practice; that evaluators provide more than just technical skills and knowledge, but undertake important roles in linking communities, mediating among stakeholders, fostering dialogue and deliberation about programming, and mitigating some of the more egregious impacts of devolution experienced by nonprofit and grassroots organizations. By acknowledging and supporting the development of such roles and responsibilities, the profession and evaluators working in these settings can provide meaningful contributions to public discourse about the nature of accountability, the broad context of social programming, the complex capacity challenges being faced by nonprofit organizations, and the role of evaluation in exacerbating or potentially mitigating such effects. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

The building of a democratic developmental state has dominated discourse in South Africa recently, resulting in the establishment of the National Planning Commission that has adopted the National Development Plan 2030 as a blueprint for the country’s development plans. Acknowledging the strategic role that the state is set to play in building and enhancing the institutional and technical human capacity, this expectation has been compounded by challenges such as a lack of appropriate institutional capital, a human capital that lacks capacity, and relevant technical skills. These challenges have brought the discourse on the developmental role of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) to primacy. During Apartheid, the SOEs were utilised as tools that drove the country’s industrialization efforts. In South Africa, SOEs also stimulated economic activity in strategic sectors such as energy generation, synthetic fuel development, rail and road development and management. Fortunately, the political economy that guided the SOEs during Apartheid was developmental. The 21st Century developmental states such as South Africa have to contend with the reality that this century has ushered in a new frontier of opportunities and challenges. In this context, the SOEs should be viewed as fundamental pillars for the achievement of the national development agenda. A developmental state without the active participation of SOEs in innovation, research and development, building of institutional and technical capacity, building of economic infrastructure, it is bound not to succeed in its plans for national development. The 21st Century has ushered in a world anchored around information and communication and technological innovations, the SOEs should be at the cutting edge of technological innovation benefitting the country through its capacity building efforts. Consistent with the National Development Plan, a highly competent human capital ought to be developed over time. At the centre of National Development Plan 2030, should be the collaboration between educational institutions from the basic level to tertiary institutions with SOEs – this will sustain the country’s development plans in the long run.

According to the latest Education Statistics Report published by the Department of Basic Education in March 2013, there were 12 680 829 learners and students in the basic education system in 2011, who attended 30 992 education institutions and were served by 441 128 educators. The vision of the Department of Basic Education is of a South Africa in which all our people have access to lifelong learning and education and training, which will, in turn, contribute towards improving the quality of life. Ultimately this will influence the building of a peaceful, prosperous and democratic South Africa. The emphasis is on excellence. Therefore maintaining high standards of performance and professionalism is a national imperative. However, this has not always been the case in terms of performance. For more than a decade we have witnessed dismal results in literacy and numeracy. This was accompanied by a low throughput rate. Despite the poor matric, literacy and numeracy results in South Africa as well as the low throughput rate, no teacher has been formally charged for poor performance in the last two decades. South Africa’s education budget is regarded as one of the highest in the developing world. Since 1993 the education budget has also grown substantially. South Africa’s education expenditure on education has grown from R30 billion in 1994/05 to R101 billion in 2007/08. Spending on education grew even further from R207 billion in 2012/13 to a projected R236 billion in 2014/15. Additional allocations of R18.8 billion over the medium term are accommodated, including equalisation of learner subsidies for no-fee schools and expanded access to grade R.6 Over the rest of the medium-term-expenditure framework (MTEF),7 spending on education, sport and culture will amount to R233 billion in 2013/14. The investment in education has not yet yielded the desired results and the outcome of education is not in keeping with the substantial input. This crisis in education is one of the major challenges facing Government, Administrators, educators, parents and children of today. According to Spaull,9 the South African government spends the equivalent of $1225 (R12440.26)10 per child on primary education, yet accomplishes less than the government of Kenya which spends only the equivalent of $258 (R2620.80)11 per child. Various reasons such as poverty, management, leadership, imbalances of the past, two unequal education systems, poor management, training and development, non-accountability, role of government and unions, have been identified for the poor state of our education system. However, what is noticeably absent and hardly mentioned in any of the position papers, is that not a single teacher has been held accountable and dismissed for incapacity for the poor performance in the education sector. Unfortunately, there is no record in any of the provincial education departments’ annual reports that a teacher has been dismissed or at least placed on a formal programme of incapacity for poor performance. Therefore, we have to ask the question: “Are we getting value for money?".

This PhD thesis looks at one of the most crucial determinants of state formation, quality of institutions, and social equality: institutionalised grand corruption. Institutionalised grand corruption denotes the particularistic allocation of public resources, that is violating prior explicit rules in order to benefit a closed network while denying access to all others. Emphasizing access to power and public resources deviates from traditional definitions of corruption resting on individual wrongdoing and abuse of power. The thesis makes use of large amounts of administrative data describing public procurement tenders on transaction level and links it to data on company ownership, financial accounts, and political office of company owners. By using data mining techniques it breaks away from standard, and arguably deficient, measures of quality of institutions and corruption. It proposes a complex ‘blueprint’ for measuring institutionalized grand corruption in the allocation of public resources and applies its key elements to three Central and Eastern European countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. It is emphasized that these cases are only ‘pilot’ measurements, the blueprint is applicable to practically every high and middle income country, data is typically going back in time for 6-8 years. Using such a novel indicator set allows for an unprecedented detail of analysis. Results highlight the role played by European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds in increasing the prevalence of institutionalised grand corruption. This is due to at least two factors, first, they provide additional public resources available for corrupt rent extraction; second, they change the motivations for and controls of corruption. In Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, the first effect increases the value of particularistic resource allocation by up to 1.21% of GDP, while the second effect decreases it by up to 0.03% of GDP. The latter effect is entirely driven by Slovakia; in Czech Republic and Hungary even this effect increases particularism.

Heat exposure causes several physiological and metabolic alterations. Although lipids are vital in sustaining energy production, heat-induced alterations in lipid metabolism have not been clearly established. CHAPTER 1 reviews the known metabolic alterations resulting from heat stress, with a specific focus on changes in whole-body lipid utilization and plasma lipids. CHAPTER 1also outlines the physiological changes caused by heat stress, and their role in reducing exercise performance. The study presented in CHAPTER 2 has shown that, compared to thermoneutral conditions, NEFA concentrations were 37% higher following passive heating and 34% higher following exercise in the heat, without significant changes in whole-body lipid utilization. In addition, the level of hyperthermia attained during passive pre-heating and exercise in the heat resulted in a 13% decrease in total external work and a significantly higher rate of perceived exertion. CHAPTER 3 summarizes the study results and presents the limitations and applications of the study.

As multimedia applications become more popular, wireless communication systems are expected to reliably provide increased data rates. Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technologies can meet this demand without using additional bandwidth or transmit power. MIMO is part of modern wireless communication standards. Another critical aspect of communications is to secure the confidentiality of data transmission. Cryptography accomplishes this at the upper layers of the protocol stack. At the physical layer, data travels unencrypted and can be secured by using the channel characteristics to ``hide'' data transmission from potential eavesdroppers. We consider a Gaussian MIMO wiretap channel and are looking for the maximal rate at which data can be transmitted both reliably and securely to the intended receiver: the secrecy capacity. This quantity is difficult to find analytically and is known precisely in only a few cases. This thesis proposes several numerical optimization methods, both stochastic and deterministic, to evaluate the secrecy capacity and to find the optimal transmit covariance matrix. The stochastic approaches are based on Monte-Carlo and on Differential Evolution (a genetic algorithm). The deterministic approaches are based on successive linear approximation. The accuracy of the results obtained with these methods is, in general, better than the one offered by popular numerical optimization tools such as CVX or YALMIP.

This project studied the physical and chemical effects of typical impurities on CO2 storage using both experimental approaches and theoretical simulation. Results show that the presence of typical non-condensable impurities from oxyfuel combustion such as N2, O2, and Ar resulted in lower density than pure CO2, leading to decreased CO2 storage capacity and increased buoyancy in saline aquifers. In contrast, inclusion of condensable SO2 in CO2 resulted in higher density than pure CO2 and therefore increased storage capacity. These impurities also had a significant impact on the phase behaviours of CO2, which is important to CO2 transportation. Different effects on rock chemistry were detected with experimental systems containing pure CO2, CO2 with SO2, or CO2 with SO2 and O2 under conditions simulating that in a potential storage site. An equation was proposed to predict the effects of the rock chemistry on the porosity of rocks.

Developing countries must concurrently develop while also adapting to climate change; if not, the challenges of poverty alleviation are likely exacerbated. One response has been an emergence of literature emphasizing various approaches that address climate adaptation and development. There are approaches that focus on: climate-specific impacts, addressing underlying vulnerability of households or the resiliency of systems. Taken separately, these approaches have significant weaknesses, but a combined assessment of general and climate specific capacities at system and household scales, the adaptive development capacities framework, is promising. This framework is captured in a matrix that illustrates the presence of these capacities and thereby provides a basis for considering the relative importance and the interaction of climate-specific and general capacities at multiple scales. The framework has the potential to provide a nuanced, yet clear understanding of the extent that climate-adaptive development is occurring. This is important because there is a weak understanding of the interaction and relative importance of adaptive development capacities at multiple scales in developing countries. This thesis research sets out to operationalize the adaptive development framework (Eakin, Lemos and Nelson 2014) (when the research began, this framework had not yet been operationalized). This qualitative research project addresses this gap by focusing on coastal Cambodia. Cambodia is actively pursuing economic development through a range of policies, including developing a series of Special Economic Zones. For example, my case focuses on a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) located near the Thai border (between the border and a secondary coastal city, known as Koh Kong town) that began employing thousands of workers in 2012. At the same-time, Cambodia has ambitious climate adaptation policies, that include a coastal focus. Since the climate-adaptation and development effects of the SEZ, specifically its employment, are unknown, this case provides a strong setting for testing the adaptive development capacities framework. In this way, the SEZ is a window into better understanding the presence and interaction of adaptive development capacities across household and system scales. This thesis begins by introducing the research topic, research questions and adaptive development framework. The research methods are clearly detailed, before turning to an understanding of climate change within the context of broader environmental change in Koh Kong. Fisheries decline, coastal erosion and drinking water shortages are being driven by a series of drivers including off-shore fishing, sand-mining, mangrove loss, and urban growth in the coastal area, and these drivers are being exacerbated by the increasing effects of climate change in Koh Kong. Climate change risks include sea-level rise, increasing drought and more extreme and frequent storms. Turning to the adaptive development capacity of systems, this research uncovered no climate-specific capacities in Koh Kong’s industrial, urban and migration systems. Most problematically, the city is being developed without consideration of the climate change risks posed by sea-level rise and increased drought. This has already led to seasonal piped water shortages as the water demand pressures of factories, population growth, along with prolonged dry seasons, leads to insufficient water. The uneven quality of urban systems, and the variation in climate exposure, means that the residential location of households contributes to varying degrees of household adaptive development capacity. Although these systems lack climate-specific capacity, there is a high level of development capacity in the industrial system due to relatively high and predictable wages and a good working environment in this particular SEZ, in comparison to elsewhere in Cambodia. Linked to the strength of the SEZ as an employer, households – particularly those with females between 18-25 –are able to temporarily diversify or compliment their livelihoods from climate-exposed fisheries and farming towards the higher and more predictable wages of SEZ employment where there is minimal climate exposure. This means that although the Koh Kong’s systems lack specific climate adaptive capacity, households are able to use their agency to move towards a greater degree of adaptive development. However, not all households are able to achieve the same degree of climate adaptive capacity, and the timing of such adaptive capacity is very specific (the SEZ only hires women between 18-25). While local fishing households are optimally placed to take advantage of the proximity of the SEZ and their surplus female labour, migrant farming households face the higher costs of migration and greater female labour opportunity costs. Looking within households, the very high rate of female employment at the SEZ means that adaptive development is uneven across households. While the strengthening of household adaptive development capacity through time-sensitive SEZ employment is encouraging, in the long-term, the lack of adaptive capacity in Koh Kong’s systems could significantly limit or undermine these gains. Of concern is the pressure that industrialization, urban growth and migration are placing on Koh Kong’s urban water system, land-use practices and planning processes that are not able to address current environmental concerns, nor climate change risks. This creates the conditions for emerging vulnerabilities, and demonstrates the limits of household adaptive development capacity. These findings demonstrate the value of the adaptive development framework in articulating the forms and scales of capacity needed for adaptive development.