This thesis explores the variety of barriers to accessing microfinance that people with disabilities in Uganda experience. The research is based upon both quantitative and qualitative data collected in the capital Kampala in 2014, and comprises of 223 questionnaires with people who have a permanent physical disability and 26 interviews with representatives of both microfinance institutions and disabled persons organisations in Uganda. Analysis of the quantitative data suggests that people with disabilities are able to access credit from formal financial providers such as commercial banks, microfinance institutions and savings and credit cooperatives, but at lower rates than the national average. Despite dominant narratives of microfinance which promote it as means to reduce financial exclusion, just 5% of the survey sample of people with disabilities had gained access to credit through a microfinance institution. The thesis goes on to examine the multitude of factors which impact the ability of people with disabilities to access such services, including the affordability of credit, the design of financial products, physical accessibility, social discrimination and self-exclusion. It also provides an assessment of the ways in which such barriers may be reduced, for example, through the employment of field agents, greater utilisation of mobile money platforms and the design of specific products targeted at people with disabilities. In addition, the research considers the impact that commercialisation has had on the microfinance sector in Uganda, and in particular the effect a move to a for-profit model has had on the accessibility of microfinance for people with disabilities. The thesis concludes by offering specific recommendations to reduce barriers to access, including collecting increased levels of data on current usage of small-scale loans by people with disabilities, strengthening relationships between disability organisations and microfinance institutions, and more rigorous enforcement of the existing Federal disability legislation in Uganda.

This thesis explores the origins and logic of the interplay between landscape and public policy in the Caribbean island of Tobago. Tobago is the location of the world's oldest protected tropical forest, established in 1763. This was the first but by no means the last occasion when particular policies have been formulated to regulate the relationship between land, commerce and people in Tobago. The thesis traces the emergence of particular ethics of land use and property in the Tobago from 1763 up to the present day and their interplay within the logic of policy. The central research aim was to analyse the disjuncture between the intention of government development plans in Tobago, and the actual outcome of those plans for the people and landscape. This was approached both by ethnographic field study, and by archival and oral historical work that could discern the historical development of the language of modern policy. The project involved the writing of an environmental history of Tobago and an ethnographic account of debates and trends in contemporary environment and development policy in Tobago. The fieldwork revealed many gaps in the existing literature with respect to Caribbean environmentalism and the history of Caribbean landscapes. The detailed archival research, coupled with a revised theoretical frame that it supports, should reframe and improve modern debates concerning environment and tourism. Drawing together the findings of the thesis research is intended to help form a new understanding of the origins of contemporary Caribbean policy processes, the beliefs from which they derive, the debates they generate and their interaction with the physical environment.

This thesis examines the interrelationship between migration and gender, exploring the migration trajectory of Ghanaians in London from their motivation to migrate, their settlement patterns and their transnational activities. The study specifically investigates two main questions: firstly, if and how patriarchal gendered ideologies and relations are influenced by the new migration space and how gender interacts with other social differences (e.g. class, nationality, education, legal status) to reconfigure gendered patterns of behaviour in the country of destination? Secondly, how do gender ideologies and practices influence the maintenance of transnational links with migrants' home country and vice versa? The study adopts a multi-sited ethnographic approach to gain an insight into the experiences of migrants. It demonstrates that paid employment, contextual factors and social differentials simultaneously reinforce and transform patriarchal gender relations in different social spaces. The thesis argues that the international division of labour, institutional challenges and socio-economic factors in the new social space of London provide different dilemmas for migrants. These opportunities and constraints lead to contestations and renegotiations which require that migrants reconcile earning with caring. This in turn leads to changes in the relative power and status of women and men in the host country. This study distinguishes the factors leading to gains and losses; shows that Ghanaian migrants are gendered actors; and contributes to disaggregating the persistence or transformations in patriarchal gender relations. The man's position as the breadwinner is often significantly challenged undermining his patriarchal authority in the household. Ghanaian women on the other hand have often been able to gain new access to resources, make life choices and participate in decision making in the households thereby being empowered across space and time. The study contributes to current understanding of empowerment processes by focusing on the role of men in this process, maintaining that socio-cultural and economic factors impact the lives and activities of male and female migrants differentially, reconfiguring patriarchal hierarchies and levelling power relations and decision making processes to more egalitarian patterns. It also argues that the formation of transnational families as a result of ‘split marriages' and children being sent back to the origin country for fostering leads to different gendered outcomes for migrant and non-migrant women, men and children. The study shows that responsibility for production, reproduction and socialisation is divided across national borders, with the performance of financial, emotional and practical support, decision making patterns and power relations negotiated in the transnational social space. The study contributes to deepening understanding of the critical nature of the interplay of the private and public spheres in gender dynamics and its interrelationship with migration, and also demonstrates that childcare has a significant impact on the caring and earning roles of parents, the organisation of households and enhancement of gender equality.

Without contention, aerial surveying has been one of the most fundamental and effective tools in archaeological research. The mapping of cropmarks using aerial surveys, which appear over buries features, has revealed tens of thousands of new archaeological sites in Britain in the last few years. Cropmarks have most commonly been found when the weather is dry and in areas where soils drain quickly, causing crops to come under stress due to a lack of water. This knowledge informs archaeologists in the planning of surveys. However, targeting these areas in dry conditions introduces bias into the dataset and the rate of new discoveries is slowing. This research assesses the underlying geotechnical characteristics of soils within and adjacent to buried ditches at four field trial sites, to increase the understanding of why these cropmarks form and the conditions in which they appear. Analysis methods using existing archaeological and geotechnical data have been proposed to increase the knowledge of the conditions in which cropmarks form. The methods have been tested and the results showed that cropmarks formed in areas of clay-dominated soils in wet conditions, and cropmarks were recorded across a much wider range of soil-water conditions than was expected from current knowledge.

Renewable energy is a serious alternative to deliver the energy needs of an increasing world population and improve economic activity. Wind energy provides better environmental and economic benefits in comparison with the other renewable energy sources. Wind energy is capable of providing 72 TW (TW = 10^12 W) of electric power, which is approximately four and half times the world energy consumption of 15.8 TW as reported in 2006. Since power output extracted from wind turbines is proportional to the square of the blade length and the cube of the wind speed, wind turbine size has grown rapidly in the last two decades to match the increase in power output. As the blade length increases, so does its weight opening up design possibilities to introduce hybrid glass and carbon fiber composite materials as lightweight structural load bearing alternatives. Herein, we investigate the feasibility of introducing modular composite tubulars as well as hybrid sandwich composite skins in the next generation blades. After selecting a target energy output, 8 MW with 80 m blade, airfoil geometry and the layup for the skin as well as internal reinforcements are proposed. They are incorporated into the computational blade via linear shell elements for the skin, and linear beam elements for the composite tubulars to assess the relationship between weight reduction and structural performance. Computational simulations are undertaken to understand the static and dynamic regimes; specifically, displacements, stresses, and vibration modes. The results showed that the composite layers did not exhibit any damage. However, in the balsa core of the sandwich skin, the von Mises stress exceeded its allowable at wind speeds ranging from 11.0 m/sec to 12.6 m/sec. In the blades with composite tubular reinforcement, two different types of damage are observed: a. Stress concentrations at the tubular-skin attachments, and b. Highest von Mises stress caused by the flapping bending moment. The vibration studies revealed a strong coupling mode, bending and twist, at the higher natural frequencies of the blade with tubular truss configuration. The weight saving measures in developing lighter blades in this study did not detract from the blades structural response for the selected load cases.

Obesity is a metabolic disorder that results in elevated levels of free fatty acids and triglycerides in the blood circulation, which further leads to accumulation of lipids within various tissues. Like in other similar metabolic disorders, obesity is thought to be originated from structural and regulatory changes in macromolecular assemblies. This current study aims to investigate the effects of obesity on macromolecular alterations in order to characterize Berlin fat mouse inbred (BFMI) lines which arenew models for the obesity research that may contribute to understanding of spontaneous obesity without induction of a high fat diet. Attenuated Total Reflectance - Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy was used to characterize content and structure of macromolecules in male and female control (DBA/2J) and BFMI lines / namely BFMI856, BFMI860 and BFMI861, in two different adipose tissues / inguinal fat (IF) which is subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), gonadal fat (GF) which is visceral adipose tissue (VAT). Structural and compositional alterations in proteins, lipids, saturated and unsaturated lipid contents, nucleic acid, collagen and glycogen contents and variations in the lipid chain length were determined. BFMI860 and BFMI861 lines were found to be the most affected lines since they showed the indications of lipid peroxidation and insulin resistance more severely as they had lower glycogen content in all tissues and lower unsaturated lipid content especially in IF adipose tissues. Moreover, structural changes in lipids were observed especially in male GF adipose tissues of BFMI856 and BFMI861 lines. Protein content decreased significantly specifically in female IF adipose tissues but no change was observed in the structure. Furthermore, BFMI852 line was found to be affected different than other lines and had an effect on especially female IF. To conclude, obesity induced changes differ in BFMI lines according to the gender, adipose tissue type and distinctness in the strains.

These studies were conducted on several central Texas agricultural producers?? properties, the Stiles Farm Foundation, the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Texas A&M University campus. First, an experimental herbicide from Dow AgroSciences, GF-884, was evaluated for effectiveness in controlling three annual and three perennial weed species in production pasture lands and hay meadows. Several rates of GF-884 were examined and evaluated against three registered pasture products and one non-selective herbicide. Next, GF-884 was assessed for tolerance on two common bermudagrass hybrids (Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers.) at three progressive rates with and without adjuvant. Finally, the herbicides, picloram and fluroxypyr, were applied to common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.) to characterize their individual absorption and translocation and assess any influence one might have on the other. GF-884 applied at rates of 0.91 and 1.14 kg a.e./ha provided >85% and >75% control of the annual and perennial weed species evaluated, respectively. These same rates of GF-884 consistently provided control that was equivalent or better than thatachieved with the registered products. No differences were observed among treatments when shoots from the perennial species were evaluated 12 months following treatment application. The tolerance experiments utilized GF-884 at rates twice that used to evaluate weed control efficacy. These elevated rates did not result in discernable influences on yield or forage quality for either hybrid forage grass when compared to untreated areas. The efficacy and tolerance observations suggest that GF-884 applied at the highest recommended weed control rate can effectively control several annual and perennial weed species without imparting detrimental effects to the hybrid bermudagrass being produced. Finally, in the presence of fluroxypyr, 14C picloram absorption was maintained throughout all sampling intervals. Picloram applied alone, maximized 14C absorption at 6 HAT then declined significantly. At the final sampling, 14C from picloram applied alone was in greater concentration in the treated leaf and the root. Picloram significantly decreased absorption of 14C fluroxypyr. Fluroxypyr alone maintained 14C absorption throughout all samplings, whereas the combination maximized at 12 HAT. Initially, picloram limited 14C translocation, however at 6, 12, and 24 HAT this was not evident.

Environmental conservation in many parts of Africa has for a long time been a centralized matter in which resource management was dominated by the application of the fortress conservation model which posits a sharp divide between people’s livelihoods and conservation. This highly centralised approach confined environmental decision making to bureaucratic circles and excluded local actors who live within or around conservation areas from participating in the resource governance process. In addition, environmental conservation was concentrated in areas designated as protected areas while human dominated landscapes were assumed to be of marginal ecological value. Over the past three decades, however, the rise of sustainable development as a new construct for environment and resource management has seen the emergence of new conservation strategies that challenge the dominance of the fortress conservation model. In Zambia, in contrast to the exclusionary discourse associated with fortress conservation, the embracing of policies derived from the sustainable development discourse has resulted in the adoption of new conservation strategies that emphasise local actors’ participation in resource management and extend conservation policy and practice to agricultural environments. In this regard, this thesis examines the changing nature of environmental conservation in Africa, using the case of Zambia. In particular, the research questions the way in which the new strategies are being contextualized and translated into practice at the local level. It examines the extent to which the new strategies represent the realities and interests of local actors who interact with environmental resources on a day-to-day basis. Drawing on political ecology and livelihoods’ perspectives, the research uses two local level studies from Chongwe district of Zambia to examine this shift in the direction of natural resource policy and practice. By combining insights from political ecology and livelihoods thinking, it links a critical review of conservation discourse and policy with field level studies and thus provides an enhanced understanding of processes of society-environment interactions. While the findings show a definitive shift in policy rhetoric from fortress conservation to sustainable development, the translation of sustainable development initiatives into practice is fraught with both conceptual and practical difficulties, such that the initiatives are far from representing the realities and interests of local actors.

This ethnographic study, informed by the “cuts” of relational space and performance, chronicles the improvisation by the small UK social movement So We Stand of an expansive yet locally relevant ‘climate justice’ politics in the Central Belt of Scotland. Having been an embedded participant/observer in So We Stand (SWS) from August 2009 to November 2010, I draw from various materials – academic literature, extensive notes, interviews and the tools of applied theatre as research – to explore the organisational, temporal and spatial contours of the group’s activities, identities, ideas and affective encounters. I present this exploration as a set of thematically-linked stories. Extensive reviews of the literatures on relational space, social movements, performance and performativity first establish the theoretical conventions through which SWS’ tale is told. As we enter the ‘field’, we begin to see the processual development of SWS as a performance where affective encounters, in the generative space between declarative identities and lived practice, reshape members’ and allies’ ideas, feelings and imaginings of climate justice. Climate justice as a mesh of interlocked concerns, stemming from the extraction-exploitation nexus of the carbon economy (past and present), is spaced and placed through interactive planning and reflection practices, including an applied theatre workshop inspired by the work of social theatre maker Augusto Boal and popular educator Paolo Freire. Throughout this narrative, our attention is drawn to what has been called a “micro-geopolitics”, and the constant iterations between “holding on” and “going further” that are essential to both ontological safety and political change. In the process questions are raised and tackled about how political subjectivities emerge and come together, how ethico-political relations are actively created and sustained, and vitally, the contradiction-laden role of climate change itself, as just one player among many in the emergent performance of climate justice.

Increasing awareness about the necessity for natural resources protection represents worldwide recognition of its importance as an important tool in mainstream development. This growing recognition is accompanied by a growing awareness about the importance of activating natural resource management systems to achieve greater sustainability. At present, experiences and studies in this field show the need for the participation of all stakeholders in the processes of decision making in natural resource management. There is also a need to initiate natural resource governance that ensures effective management to benefit sustainable development, the later representing a key foundation for environmental and natural resources management. Moreover, investigations of the prospects of applying traditional knowledge systems and their integration with Western scientific knowledge produces numerous calls to revisit this knowledge where it has proven useful in environmental and natural resources management, both in theory and practice. In this spirit, this thesis investigates the effectiveness of the natural resources management system in Oman using Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar Region (AAR) as a case study, and linking this management system with the local people’s practices, which rely on their traditional environmental knowledge. Based on theories and concepts of natural resource management and sustainability, multiple research methods were used to explore the strengths and weaknesses in the system of natural resources management in the region, to analyze the advantages of traditional practices and knowledge systems, and thus, to deepen the understanding of the continuous struggle between nature and development. Results indicated that although Oman is rich in environmental policies, represented by laws and legislation that theoretically govern protection of the environment, the transformation of these policies into practice is troubled by practical obstacles. On the natural side, there are volatile climatic conditions, and on the human side, there is inefficiency of planning and a lack of means and tools to implement sustainable natural resources management programmes. Both obstacles expose environmental sustainability to uncertainty. However, as this research points out, traditional environmental knowledge and management practices systems used by local people in the AAR are characterized by useful interpretations of environmental dynamics to guide the direction of resource utilisation and management, and to address any uncertainty on the course toward sustainability.