Managing global heritage in the face of future climate change: the importance of understanding geological and geomorphological processes and hazards

It is now widely acknowledged that human adaptation of the planet is causing significant changes to the global climate, which are being felt currently and are likely to increase in the future. This is beginning to place exceptional strains on the historic environment, here defined as both above and below ground archaeological remains. Using examples from the cultural list of World Heritage Sites in mainland Britain, this paper explores how knowledge of past and contemporary geological and geomorphological processes can provide an understanding of natural hazards and risk assessment. This, in turn, can inform management strategies to allow the protection and stabilisation of sites, limit further degradation and ensure long-term sustainability. From the analysis of published documentation available from UNESCO, it appears that natural processes have not always received the attention they deserve, and in some cases appear to have been ignored. Given the complexity of future climate change and the role that natural processes will play in determining the vulnerability of individual heritage assets, it is essential that geoscientists, archaeologists and cultural heritage managers work together to develop appropriate strategies to mitigate the effects of change in the future, especially since many of the themes developed in this paper have generic applicability across a range of landscape environments.     

How Well is Aid Allocated? Descriptive Measures of Aid Allocation: A Survey of Methodology and Results

Although many factors affect which countries actually receive aid, a case can be made for evaluating donor allocative performance with respect to the average income of recipients. A number of indicators are commonly used for such an assessment. Based on criteria developed in this paper, two such indicators — Suits' index and McGillivray's adjusted performance index — are shown to be the most suitable. These indicators are used to compare the performance of bilateral donors: Denmark is found to have the most progressive aid allocation, and the USA the least progressive. The indicators are also used to assess trends in allocative performance for four donors: France, Japan, the UK and USA. There appears to have been a general worsening of allocative performance in the early 1980s, with some improvement in the later part of the decade.