Global Control of African swine fever. A GF-TADs initiative – 2020 annual report

The current African swine fever epizootic is a major global crisis, directly and indirectly impacting the pig industry and rural communities worldwide. In 2019, FAO and the OIE designated ASF as a global priority transboundary animal disease under the GF-TADs, and in July 2020 they released a jointly developed programme to control the disease worldwide – ‘Global Control of African Swine Fever: A GF-TADs Initiative’ (The Global Initiative). In 2020, ASF virus continued to spread and the COVID-19 pandemic impacted field activities. However, global, regional and national stakeholders strove to maintain momentum in the control of ASF, in line with the objectives of the Global Initiative. Despite difficulties, some countries managed to eliminate the disease from their territories, indicating that ASF control is feasible with current tools. The Global Initiative identifies coordination at regional and global levels as key to enhancing national control programmes. It allows countries with similar socio-economic and epidemiological situations to share information, challenges and best practices, and to discuss regional solutions and approaches to enhancing control.

Informal Regional Institutions and National Resilience

With the apparent demise of globalization, many states are turning to regional solutions to achieve trade and development goals while institutional structure is fundamental to the strategic and managerial operations of such associations. This study seeks to understand the strategic costs and benefits, as well as the management opportunities and challenges, of a regional institution that maintains an informal structure while specifically examining the relationship between informal regional structure and member (national) resilience. This investigation develops a resilience framework and tests it against a unique structural form, the Pacific Alliance (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru), which operates without incorporation as a legal entity, without a centralized budget, and without a secretariat. This study reasons that an informal regional institution supports national resilience through an adaptation strategy but not an adaptability strategy and concludes that an informal regional model appears to support continual national development through the adoption of member ‘best practice'.

Os Desafios dos Hospitais Perante a COVID-19 e a Gripe Sazonal Durante o Outono-Inverno de 2020/2021

The possibility of a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic coexisting with a simultaneous epidemic of influenza and the co-circulation of other seasonal respiratory viruses sets the stage for a perfect storm. Preparing for the Autumn-Winter of 2020/2021 is complex, requiring centralized guidance but local and regional solutions, with strong leadership and a high level of coordination. It is essential to act upstream of hospitals in order to reduce demand on emergency departments, minimizing the risk of transmission that occurs there and the team overload, as well as downstream to ensure capacity for hospitalization and in the hospital itself to optimize resources and organization. The failure of this plan will create unbearable pressure on hospital care. The authors describe the challenges lying ahead for hospitals and the most important measures that should be included in this plan to prepare the Autumn-Winter of 2020/2021 in Portugal.

Consensus Building among Multi-stakeholders in Intercity Cooperation: Drivers and Challenges in the Case of Kitakyushu and Davao

Cities emerged as international agents and started engaging in intercity cooperation as a mechanism to address global challenges through regional solutions and also join resources to tackle local challenges and fulfill their management responsibilities. Collaborative planning to improve environmental conditions is one of the possible scopes for international cooperation, as stakeholders can share multiple information, knowledge, technologies, and governance experience. However, despite the benefits in a multi-stakeholder scheme, building consensus in such a diversified setting is a complex, time-consuming process, to reach a shared understanding about a certain problem and possible ways to address it.During the last decade, the Japanese government, one of the largest world’s donors of gross ODA, has been increasing the funding activities to promote intercity collaboration for the development of more sustainable societies, engaging multiple stakeholders for a wide diversity of projects. This research had selected three international projects in Davao, supported by Kitakyushu, and identified four groups of major drivers and challenges (communication, political and institutional, financial, and technical) that can either foster or hinder consensus building among multi-stakeholders in the context of intercity cooperation for collaborative environmental planning.

Tshisekedi will struggle to ease Congo insecurity

Significance Although all reaffirmed their willingness to strengthen regional capacities to combat insecurity, the summit communique was long on expressions of solidarity and short on pledges of action. However, Tshisekedi’s focus on regional solutions to DRC’s security dilemmas is unlikely to fade, not least because he has few other cards to play. Impacts If Tshisekedi cannot reverse the trend of rising violence, his chances of a second term look bleak. Complex relations among regional actors will complicate cooperation, not least as few are interested in stability in DRC for its own sake. Even so, robust regional mechanisms could help manage conflict both within DRC and among regional actors.

SENSIBLE EARTHQUAKES 2013 in MOLDOVA: August 11 with КР=11.8, October 6 with КР=14.1, October 15 with КР=12.3 (Romania–Moldova)

The article presents instrumental and macroseismic data on earthquakes of the Carpathian region in 2013, felt on the territory of the Republic of Moldova. Three earthquakes, with an intermediate focal depth, occurred in the Vrancea zone: August 11 with h=93 km, КР=11.8; October 6 with h=140 km, КР=14.1; Octo-ber 15 with h=144 km, КР=12.3. Also in 2013, a swarm of small earthquakes was recorded, near Galati (Ro-mania) and Giurgiulesti (Moldova). The swarm arose September 23, its shocks were recorded for two months. More than 370 seismic events happened, of which three had КР  11 (September 29, 30, and Octo-ber 4 with КР=11.2, 10.9, 10.6). The intensity of shaking reached 5. For earthquakes, September 29, 30 and October 4 regional solutions for the focal mechanism from the Mostryukov and Petrov catalog (GO "Borok" IPE RAS) were received. The event of August 11, 2013, with КР=11.8, occurred at a depth of 93 km on the northeastern margin of the focal zone of Vrancea, felt at the epicenter with intensity I=4. In Chisinau, only some people felt weak shocks (I=2). The two largest earthquakes of 2013 occurred on October 6 at 01h 37m (КР=14.2, mb=5.3, I0=6) and on October 15 at 19h 33m (КР=12.3, mb=4.8), in the central part of the focal zone Vrancea. Between these events, three more earthquakes were noted with ML=3–3.5. However, the most extensive macroseismic manifestations arose from the main shock – October 6, which caused shaking in the territory of four states – in Romania, in the north of Bulgaria, in the south-west of Ukraine, and in Moldova. The reason for such a significant spread of tremors lies in a large focal depth of 140 km. But for the same reason, the intensity of the macroseismic impact did not exceed I=5 in Romania and I=4–5 in Moldova and Ukraine. As a result, a map of the intensity distribution of the October 6 earthquake is given, built on the basis of data processing in 104 locations. Various solutions for the focal mechanisms of intermediate earthquakes in 2013 are presented. The consistent manifestation of a swarm of crustal earthquakes and a number of earthquakes of intermediate depth confirms the unity of tectonic processes in the Carpathian region. The accumulated seismic stresses were preliminarily realized in the form of crustal shocks, then powerful discharge occurred in the Vrancea region, which interrupted a series of events associated with Sfintul-Gheorghe and Peceneaga–Camena faults.