Pub Date : 2025-11-06DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107225
Jackline Wahba
This paper examines the role of return migration in economic development. It documents the various measures of return migration and their limitations. It discusses the impacts of return migration on entrepreneurship, investment, human capital accumulation, and the transfer of knowledge and norms. It also reviews the challenges and debates surrounding the contributions of return migration to the economic development of countries of origin.
{"title":"Return migration and economic development: opportunities and challenges","authors":"Jackline Wahba","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107225","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107225","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the role of return migration in economic development. It documents the various measures of return migration and their limitations. It discusses the impacts of return migration on entrepreneurship, investment, human capital accumulation, and the transfer of knowledge and norms. It also reviews the challenges and debates surrounding the contributions of return migration to the economic development of countries of origin.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107225"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145475328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-04DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107224
Diana Suhardiman , Saw Sha Bwe Moo , Chaya Vaddhanaphuti , Paul Sein Twa
This paper studies Karen Indigenous approaches in forest fire governance, contextualized in rotational farming practices and embedded in Karen communities’ cultural norms, values, and life philosophy. It presents the Kaw way of governing as Karen communities’ strategies to sustain their livelihoods and key element to tackle the problem of uncontrollable forest fires. Putting firebreak application as Karen communities’ Indigenous knowledge, it challenges the dominant narrative of the politics of blame, which positions burning from rotational farming, also known as swidden agriculture, as a key decisive factor causing (uncontrollable) forest fires and the transboundary haze and air pollution problem. We argue that rather than viewing burning from rotational farming practices as the source of problem, policy makers should embrace Karen communities’ Indigenous knowledge surrounding firebreak application as a central part of the solution in regional forest fire governance. It compares Karen communities’ knowledge and cultural practices surrounding the organization and application of firebreaks in the Salween Peace Park, Kawthoolei, Karen State, Myanmar, with the way farmers applied prescribed burning in Mae On District of Chiang Mai Province in Northern Thailand.
{"title":"Firebreaks as indigenous knowledge system and cultural practice: an emerging counternarrative in forest fire governance","authors":"Diana Suhardiman , Saw Sha Bwe Moo , Chaya Vaddhanaphuti , Paul Sein Twa","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107224","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107224","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies Karen Indigenous approaches in forest fire governance, contextualized in rotational farming practices and embedded in Karen communities’ cultural norms, values, and life philosophy. It presents the <em>Kaw</em> way of governing as Karen communities’ strategies to sustain their livelihoods and key element to tackle the problem of uncontrollable forest fires. Putting firebreak application as Karen communities’ Indigenous knowledge, it challenges the dominant narrative of the politics of blame, which positions burning from rotational farming, also known as swidden agriculture, as a key decisive factor causing (uncontrollable) forest fires and the transboundary haze and air pollution problem. We argue that rather than viewing burning from rotational farming practices as the source of problem, policy makers should embrace Karen communities’ Indigenous knowledge surrounding firebreak application as a central part of the solution in regional forest fire governance. It compares Karen communities’ knowledge and cultural practices surrounding the organization and application of firebreaks in the Salween Peace Park, Kawthoolei, Karen State, Myanmar, with the way farmers applied prescribed burning in Mae On District of Chiang Mai Province in Northern Thailand.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107224"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145475327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-04DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107221
Gerardo Damonte, Isabel E. Gonzales, Nicola Espinosa
The Peruvian state has implemented innovative regulations and participatory processes to establish co-management systems in marine protected areas. Following global trends, state conservation agencies seek to establish agreements with local producers to regulate fishing activities and achieve sustainable economic growth. Yet despite efforts to regulate fishing and aquaculture activities within protected areas, unregulated production continues to increase, threatening sustainable efforts amid increasing market opportunities for fish products. Why are institutional regulatory innovations failing to achieve their objectives?
This article argues that the implementation of co-management policies has led to the empowerment of local producers who combine formal and informal extractive activities that threaten coastal-marine ecosystems, configurating a socio-ecological trap. It shows how the implementation of institutional innovations for collaborative co-management has not taken into account locally legitimated, institutionalised practices that deviate from or contradict state regulations. Formalised fishers have resorted to combining formal and informal activities, fostering a process of institutional hybridisation to increase their production in response to market opportunities, while local state officials open up spaces for negotiating certain rules and sanctions in the reproduction of institutional hybridity.
The research is based on a qualitative case study of the Paracas National Reserve (PNR), the oldest coastal marine protected area in Peru. It focuses on the analysis of two activities that the state is attempting to co-manage: giant kelp collection and scallop aquaculture. Based on interpretative approaches and qualitative research methods, the data collection techniques included archival review, interviews, and non-participant observation.
{"title":"Trapped institutional change: the quest for regulating fishing activities in protected areas","authors":"Gerardo Damonte, Isabel E. Gonzales, Nicola Espinosa","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107221","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107221","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Peruvian state has implemented innovative regulations and participatory processes to establish co-management systems in marine protected areas. Following global trends, state conservation agencies seek to establish agreements with local producers to regulate fishing activities and achieve sustainable economic growth. Yet despite efforts to regulate fishing and aquaculture activities within protected areas, unregulated production continues to increase, threatening sustainable efforts amid increasing market opportunities for fish products. Why are institutional regulatory innovations failing to achieve their objectives?</div><div>This article argues that the implementation of co-management policies has led to the empowerment of local producers who combine formal and informal extractive activities that threaten coastal-marine ecosystems, configurating a socio-ecological trap. It shows how the implementation of institutional innovations for collaborative co-management has not taken into account locally legitimated, institutionalised practices that deviate from or contradict state regulations. Formalised fishers have resorted to combining formal and informal activities, fostering a process of institutional hybridisation to increase their production in response to market opportunities, while local state officials open up spaces for negotiating certain rules and sanctions in the reproduction of institutional hybridity.</div><div>The research is based on a qualitative case study of the Paracas National Reserve (PNR), the oldest coastal marine protected area in Peru. It focuses on the analysis of two activities that the state is attempting to co-manage: giant kelp collection and scallop aquaculture. Based on interpretative approaches and qualitative research methods, the data collection techniques included archival review, interviews, and non-participant observation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107221"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145475325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-03DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107223
Isaac K. Ofori
This study advances the economic development and wellbeing scholarship through three key contributions. First, we show how distributional energy justice (hereafter: energy justice) affects inclusive human development (IHDI) in Africa. Second, we demonstrate how climate readiness moderates the effect of energy justice on IHDI. Third, we provide new evidence on how the joint effect of energy justice and climate readiness differs across low- and high-income African countries. We make these contributions using macro data for 36 African countries from 2010 to 2020. The results reveal that energy justice promotes IHDI. The contingency analysis also demonstrates that climate readiness is a critical complementary mechanism for amplifying the impact of energy justice on IHDI. Notably, across the economic, social, and governance perspectives of climate readiness, the results show that the moderating effect of governance readiness is striking. Evidence from sensitivity analysis also indicates that economic and governance readiness conditions energy justice to enhance IHDI in both high- and low-income African countries; however, these gains become elusive for the latter once social readiness is considered. These findings underscore the urgent need for investments in energy justice and climate readiness to foster IHDI in Africa.
{"title":"Distributional energy justice and the inclusive human development Agenda in Africa","authors":"Isaac K. Ofori","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107223","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107223","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study advances the economic development and wellbeing scholarship through three key contributions. First, we show how distributional energy justice (hereafter: energy justice) affects inclusive human development (IHDI) in Africa. Second, we demonstrate how climate readiness moderates the effect of energy justice on IHDI. Third, we provide new evidence on how the joint effect of energy justice and climate readiness differs across low- and high-income African countries. We make these contributions using macro data for 36 African countries from 2010 to 2020. The results reveal that energy justice promotes IHDI. The contingency analysis also demonstrates that climate readiness is a critical complementary mechanism for amplifying the impact of energy justice on IHDI. Notably, across the economic, social, and governance perspectives of climate readiness, the results show that the moderating effect of governance readiness is striking. Evidence from sensitivity analysis also indicates that economic and governance readiness conditions energy justice to enhance IHDI in both high- and low-income African countries; however, these gains become elusive for the latter once social readiness is considered. These findings underscore the urgent need for investments in energy justice and climate readiness to foster IHDI in Africa.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107223"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145475326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-30DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107215
M.L. Gravesen , P. Albrecht , M. Yding
This article develops the three concepts global green scarcity imaginaries, greening frontiers, and green conflicts, to revisit the resource–conflict debate in Africa under contemporary climate and biodiversity crises. Earlier debates contrasted resource abundance with scarcity linked to environmental stress, weak governance, and social fragmentation, yet tended to treat scarcity as a material fact. We argue instead that scarcity is increasingly imagined and politicized. Global green scarcity imaginaries frame ecosystems, resources, and time as vanishing, legitimizing urgent interventions in the name of planetary survival. These imaginaries produce greening frontiers: future oriented spaces where conservation, renewable energy, and carbon sequestration reconfigure land rights and governance, often in regions long cast as marginal. Within these frontiers, competing claims and exclusions generate green conflicts: disputes that arise not despite but because of sustainability projects, often manifesting as slow violence. Drawing on cases from across Africa, this article and the special issue it introduces examine how narratives travel across scales to intersect with local struggles, reshaping conflict dynamics in drylands and beyond. By setting these new concepts against earlier framings, we show how climate and biodiversity crises transform scarcity into urgent planetary claims that risk reproducing inequality and conflict under the guise of green transition.
{"title":"Scarcity reimagined: global green imaginaries, frontier-making, and resource conflict in Africa","authors":"M.L. Gravesen , P. Albrecht , M. Yding","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107215","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107215","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article develops the three concepts global green scarcity imaginaries, greening frontiers, and green conflicts, to revisit the resource–conflict debate in Africa under contemporary climate and biodiversity crises. Earlier debates contrasted resource abundance with scarcity linked to environmental stress, weak governance, and social fragmentation, yet tended to treat scarcity as a material fact. We argue instead that scarcity is increasingly imagined and politicized. Global green scarcity imaginaries frame ecosystems, resources, and time as vanishing, legitimizing urgent interventions in the name of planetary survival. These imaginaries produce greening frontiers: future oriented spaces where conservation, renewable energy, and carbon sequestration reconfigure land rights and governance, often in regions long cast as marginal. Within these frontiers, competing claims and exclusions generate green conflicts: disputes that arise not despite but because of sustainability projects, often manifesting as slow violence. Drawing on cases from across Africa, this article and the special issue it introduces examine how narratives travel across scales to intersect with local struggles, reshaping conflict dynamics in drylands and beyond. By setting these new concepts against earlier framings, we show how climate and biodiversity crises transform scarcity into urgent planetary claims that risk reproducing inequality and conflict under the guise of green transition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107215"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145425126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-28DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.106978
Rebecca Hanson , Dorothy Kronick
Official vigilantism, or police officers’ extralegal punishment of perceived offenses, is often understood as the product of a repressive state. We show that official vigilantism can also arise in reaction to a state deemed insufficiently repressive. When criminal justice reform strengthens protections for suspects or defendants, police can turn to extralegal punishment as a substitute for newly disallowed tools of legal punishment. We investigate this dynamic in a case study. When Venezuela implemented criminal procedure reform in 1999, we find, some officers responded by killing those whom they could no longer arrest or detain. We then discuss the conditions under which rights-oriented reform can spark official vigilantism.
{"title":"Official vigilantism","authors":"Rebecca Hanson , Dorothy Kronick","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.106978","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.106978","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Official vigilantism, or police officers’ extralegal punishment of perceived offenses, is often understood as the product of a repressive state. We show that official vigilantism can also arise in reaction to a state deemed insufficiently repressive. When criminal justice reform strengthens protections for suspects or defendants, police can turn to extralegal punishment as a substitute for newly disallowed tools of legal punishment. We investigate this dynamic in a case study. When Venezuela implemented criminal procedure reform in 1999, we find, some officers responded by killing those whom they could no longer arrest or detain. We then discuss the conditions under which rights-oriented reform can spark official vigilantism.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 106978"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145425125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-28DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107213
Maria Pereira , Graça Miranda Silva , Filipe Coelho
Our study analyses the role of both private and public debt, in conjunction with other financial and institutional factors, in shaping environmental performance (EP). Prior research on debt and EP has yielded inconclusive results and neglected the role of private debt and the interplay of various intervening factors. We address these gaps by applying Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to data from 59 countries. We find multiple pathways to achieving both high and non-high EP, highlighting the lack of a single best approach. Additionally, the results denote that high (non-high) public or private debt does not constrain a high (non-high) EP. The findings also demonstrate that no single financial means, including either type of debt or GDP alone, is necessary by itself for achieving high EP; rather, a combination of at least two financial means is necessary for such an outcome. Relatedly, the absence of all financial means is not sufficient to achieve non-high EP. Moreover, the role of debt on EP tends to depend on the other factors with which it is combined. Finally, financial means must be combined with different mixes of institutional factors for achieving a high and a non-high EP. Hence, our results reconcile previously mixed findings by indicating that the role of private and public debt on EP is contingent on other factors. This underscores the importance of considering the complex interplay between factors influencing environmental outcomes. Accordingly, this research offers insights into theory and informs policy decisions targeting both economic growth and environmental sustainability.
{"title":"A fuzzy-set QCA approach exploring the role of public and private debt in shaping environmental performance","authors":"Maria Pereira , Graça Miranda Silva , Filipe Coelho","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107213","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107213","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Our study analyses the role of both private and public debt, in conjunction with other financial and institutional factors, in shaping environmental performance (EP). Prior research on debt and EP has yielded inconclusive results and neglected the role of private debt and the interplay of various intervening factors. We address these gaps by applying Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to data from 59 countries. We find multiple pathways to achieving both high and non-high EP, highlighting the lack of a single best approach. Additionally, the results denote that high (non-high) public or private debt does not constrain a high (non-high) EP. The findings also demonstrate that no single financial means, including either type of debt or GDP alone, is necessary by itself for achieving high EP; rather, a combination of at least two financial means is necessary for such an outcome. Relatedly, the absence of all financial means is not sufficient to achieve non-high EP. Moreover, the role of debt on EP tends to depend on the other factors with which it is combined. Finally, financial means must be combined with different mixes of institutional factors for achieving a high and a non-high EP. Hence, our results reconcile previously mixed findings by indicating that the role of private and public debt on EP is contingent on other factors. This underscores the importance of considering the complex interplay between factors influencing environmental outcomes. Accordingly, this research offers insights into theory and informs policy decisions targeting both economic growth and environmental sustainability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107213"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145425127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Institutions play a critical role in shaping individual and collective responses to climate change, yet little attention has been paid to understand the influence of informal institutions on climate adaptation. This research explores how rural informal institutions mediate adaptation responses of coastal communities in Bangladesh. Drawing on qualitative data collected from a fishing-dependent village in the central coastal region of Bangladesh that experienced recurrent displacement due to river erosion, the study engages with the emerging scholarship on institutional dimensions of climate change adaptation. Findings reveal that rural people predominantly rely on informal institutions such as kinship and dadon–an informal money lending system based on local networks–and patronage politics to address risks associated with riverbank erosions. While often exploitative, these informal institutions remain central to climate adaptation due to long-standing weakness of formal institutions. The analysis further suggests that an overreliance on such informal institutions may constrain the long-term adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities by reinforcing dependency and limiting transformative change. These findings provide a nuanced understanding of how informal institutions operate and interact with formal institutions in shaping adaptation outcomes.
{"title":"Kinship, dadon and patronage politics: The role of informal institutions in climate adaptation","authors":"Md. Masud-All-Kamal , S.M. Monirul Hassan , Julfiker Haidar","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107216","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107216","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Institutions play a critical role in shaping individual and collective responses to climate change, yet little attention has been paid to understand the influence of informal institutions on climate adaptation. This research explores how rural informal institutions mediate adaptation responses of coastal communities in Bangladesh. Drawing on qualitative data collected from a fishing-dependent village in the central coastal region of Bangladesh that experienced recurrent displacement due to river erosion, the study engages with the emerging scholarship on institutional dimensions of climate change adaptation. Findings reveal that rural people predominantly rely on informal institutions such as kinship and <em>dadon–</em>an informal money lending system based on local networks–and patronage politics to address risks associated with riverbank erosions. While often exploitative, these informal institutions remain central to climate adaptation due to long-standing weakness of formal institutions. The analysis further suggests that an overreliance on such informal institutions may constrain the long-term adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities by reinforcing dependency and limiting transformative change. These findings provide a nuanced understanding of how informal institutions operate and interact with formal institutions in shaping adaptation outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107216"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145425124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-27DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107214
Harry W. Fischer , Kamal Devkota , Divya Gupta , Dil B. Khatri
Vulnerability is a core concept within the environmental social sciences. Yet contemporary discussions often focus narrowly on specific kinds of risks, especially relating to climate, with particular attention to avoiding loss and harm. We recast vulnerability as an experientially grounded, cross-cutting concept by arguing for two analytical shifts. First, we decenter climate by analyzing how vulnerability unfolds across interconnected spheres of life within a broader life trajectory. Second, we argue for an understanding of vulnerability that is far more than avoiding loss but always experienced in relation to the lives people have reason to value and strive to build. We illustrate this framing by recounting three in-depth life histories complemented with observations from a broader sample of 52 households in rural Nepal, a context that has experienced significant climate, environmental, and other shocks in recent years. Our work reveals how these more dramatic events intersect with a wide range of everyday human concerns — health, labour, debt, care for loved ones, and the need for social belonging. We argue that a more experiential and cross-cutting understanding of vulnerability holds potential to support development pathways that better address people’s lived needs and aspirations in ways that recognize their sense of self and agency. More fundamentally, this framing provides insight into our shared human condition in present times, amidst mounting climate-related damages, a pandemic, wars, and continued political upheaval. If vulnerability is the propensity for loss and suffering, what lies in wait if it is to be addressed? To which future should we strive?
{"title":"Decentering climate in vulnerability analysis: On aspiration, striving, and the fullness of life in uncertain times","authors":"Harry W. Fischer , Kamal Devkota , Divya Gupta , Dil B. Khatri","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107214","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107214","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Vulnerability is a core concept within the environmental social sciences. Yet contemporary discussions often focus narrowly on specific kinds of risks, especially relating to climate, with particular attention to avoiding loss and harm. We recast vulnerability as an experientially grounded, cross-cutting concept by arguing for two analytical shifts. First, we decenter climate by analyzing how vulnerability unfolds across interconnected spheres of life within a broader life trajectory. Second, we argue for an understanding of vulnerability that is far more than avoiding loss but always experienced in relation to the lives people have reason to value and strive to build. We illustrate this framing by recounting three in-depth life histories complemented with observations from a broader sample of 52 households in rural Nepal, a context that has experienced significant climate, environmental, and other shocks in recent years. Our work reveals how these more dramatic events intersect with a wide range of everyday human concerns — health, labour, debt, care for loved ones, and the need for social belonging. We argue that a more experiential and cross-cutting understanding of vulnerability holds potential to support development pathways that better address people’s lived needs and aspirations in ways that recognize their sense of self and agency. More fundamentally, this framing provides insight into our shared human condition in present times, amidst mounting climate-related damages, a pandemic, wars, and continued political upheaval. If vulnerability is the propensity for loss and suffering, what lies in wait if it is to be addressed? To which future should we strive?</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107214"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145425123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-25DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107155
Nicolás Idrobo , Dorothy Kronick , Francisco Rodríguez
An article recently published in this journal claims to present statistical evidence of fraud in Bolivia’s controversial 2019 presidential election. These claims are significant not only for our understanding of a pivotal moment in Latin American politics but also because, as the authors note, their methods might inform how researchers investigate fraud in other cases. We explain why the evidence does not support the authors’ conclusions. They claim to find evidence of fraud based on: (1) a difference-in-differences, (2) a simple difference, and (3) regression discontinuity. But (1) the pre-trends are converging in the difference-indifferences, (2) there are many benign explanations for the simple difference, and (3) the regression discontinuity uses an arbitrarily chosen cutoff at which placebo outcomes are not smooth. Our objective is both to correct the record about this specific election and, more generally, to reiterate the risks of ad hoc election forensics.
{"title":"On unfounded claims of electoral fraud","authors":"Nicolás Idrobo , Dorothy Kronick , Francisco Rodríguez","doi":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107155","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107155","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>An article recently published in this journal claims to present statistical evidence of fraud in Bolivia’s controversial 2019 presidential election. These claims are significant not only for our understanding of a pivotal moment in Latin American politics but also because, as the authors note, their methods might inform how researchers investigate fraud in other cases. We explain why the evidence does not support the authors’ conclusions. They claim to find evidence of fraud based on: (1) a difference-in-differences, (2) a simple difference, and (3) regression discontinuity. But (1) the pre-trends are converging in the difference-indifferences, (2) there are many benign explanations for the simple difference, and (3) the regression discontinuity uses an arbitrarily chosen cutoff at which placebo outcomes are not smooth. Our objective is both to correct the record about this specific election and, more generally, to reiterate the risks of ad hoc election forensics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48463,"journal":{"name":"World Development","volume":"198 ","pages":"Article 107155"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145365266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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