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Illicit Activities (illicit + activity)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences60%

Selected Abstracts

Satellite sleuthing: does remotely sensed land-cover change signal ecological degradation in a protected area?

DIVERSITY AND DISTRIBUTIONS, Issue 2 2009
T. A. Waite
ABSTRACT Aim, We evaluate whether remotely sensed land-cover change within a newly protected area signalled human-driven ecological degradation. Vegetation density changed in a quarter of pixels during the first 13 years (1986,1999) following the sanctuary's formal enclosure, with many patches showing a decrease in density. We use on-the-ground data collected in 2006 in 132 random plots to explore whether these changes in vegetation density reliably signalled latent shifts in local diversity of woody plants and whether they could be attributed to illicit activities including fuel wood collection and livestock grazing. Location, Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary, Rajasthan, India. Results, Species richness, species sharing, species assemblages, and incidence of invasive and useful species were statistically similar among plots in which vegetation density had decreased, increased or remained similar. Likewise, intensity of disturbance associated with human activities was similar across these plot types. Main conclusions, Our data provide no clear evidence that local changes in vegetation density signalled latent shifts in local diversity of woody plants. They also fail to reveal any clear association between local changes in vegetation density and human-related activities. Finding no evidence that land-cover change led to biotic erosion, we reflect on the utility of resource-use bans in protected areas, particularly those embedded within historically coupled human-nature systems. [source]

Tailored for Panama: Offshore Banking at the Crossroads of the Americas

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2002
Barney Warf
With the steady integration of a deregulated world of hypermobile capital, offshore banking has become an increasingly significant part of the geography of international finance. Many interpretations tend to treat offshore banking centres as identical sites of investment that can be easily substituted for one another by completely mobile, fungible capital. This paper explores the nature of offshore banking in one largely overlooked centre, Panama. It charts the historic context that led to the creation of Latin America's most important centre of international banking, emphasizing the unique qualities that stand in contrast to hyperglobalist interpretations, including the Canal and the role of the US dollar. Second, it summarizes the regulatory changes initiated in the face of global neoliberalism, including the absence of a central bank and recent reforms designed to attract foreign capital. Using primary and secondary data, the paper maps Panama's growing role as a net capital exporter, charting domestic and foreign loan markets. Finally, it also addresses the trade,offs between confidentiality, and transparency in the context of illicit activities frequently alleged to occur in offshore banking centres, which in Panama revolve around drug trafficking and money laundering. It concludes by noting that even in an ostensibly seamless world, offshore banking exhibits the place,based embeddedness of financial capital within local institutional relations. [source]

Transnational organized crime in West Africa: the additional challenge

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 6 2007
ANTONIO L. MAZZITELLI
Despite its vast natural and human resources and the undisputed progress made in the last decade towards the establishment of democratic culture and governing systems, West African countries continue to occupy the bottom ranks of the UN Human Development Index. Similarly, many of them score poorly in World Bank and Transparency International indexes that measure good governance. The international mass media have recently highlighted the role played by the West African region in the transatlantic cocaine trade, as well as in the flow of illegal migrants to Europe. Drugs and migrants are, however, just two of the numerous illicit activities that feed the growth of local and transnational criminal organizations, and the establishing of a culture of quick and easy money that is progressively eroding the foundations of any sustainable and well balanced socio-economic development. The pervasive power of the corruption of criminal organizations, coupled with a general crisis by state actors in the administration of justice and enforcement of the rule of law, contribute towards the progressive diminishing of the credibility of the state as the institution entrusted with the prerogatives of guaranteeing security (of people and investments) and dispensing justice. In this context, the case of Guinea Bissau is probably the clearest example of what West African states may face in the near future if the issues of justice and security are not properly and promptly addressed. If primary responsibilities lie with West African governments and institutions, the international community as a whole should also review its approach to development policies by not only mainstreaming the issues of security and justice in their bilateral and multilateral agendas, but also by making it an essential cornerstone of policies and programmes aimed at supporting good governance and the establishment of states ruled by the law. [source]

Nation-building and informal politics

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 192 2008
Victor T. Le Vine
Among the problems that confront nation-builders in new states is dealing with their country's informal sector and its politics, manifest not only in the informal economy of markets and hidden transactions, but also its traditional authority systems, networks of patronage, bonds of ethnic and other parochial identities, and illicit activities, including corruption and criminal organisations. Some of these aspects of the informal sector have survived from pre-independence or colonial periods. Others, like kleptocracy and the criminalisation of the state, are outgrowths of the new state and its leadership cadre. These problems largely arise in the so-called juridical state, the legal-rational construct of new statehood, and reflect the failure, or unwillingness of the managers of the new state to move beyond the juridical state to the empirical state, that is, to nationhood and a generalised national identity and citizenship. [source]

On Public Toilets in Beijing

JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 4 2000
Tim C. Geisler
Public Toilets in China, as in most parts of the world throughout history, are stigmatized as unclean, associated with illicit activity, and joked about. But they were conceived by the Communists in China as symbols of cooperative living. Although they still pose grave sanitation problems, they exemplify communist ideals of simplicity, functionalism, and working-class sensibilities. They employ sound architectural principles of lighting, ventilation, and urban situation, and are playful in design. Communist Urbanism, defined as the spatial order of communal living, reserves a place of honor for the public toilet. [source]