Building local institutional capacity to implement agricultural carbon projects: participatory action research with Vi Agroforestry in Kenya and ECOTRUST in Uganda
Background ::: Smallholders have begun to take advantage of a growing pool of investment in climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, early movers in this area are working to develop innovative models that will allow projects to be financially sustainable and scalable while benefiting local actors. This study focuses on two of these projects in East Africa, managed by Vi Agroforestry in Kenya and ECOTRUST in Uganda. They engaged in a participatory action research process to identify ways that local actors could take on expanded roles within the projects.
The evolution of the university in New Zealand from its beginnings in a new colony in the mid-1800s was strongly influenced by happenings elsewhere in the British Empire. This chapter describes that history, maps the increasing demand for higher education in the 1960s, outlines the neoliberal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, and then considers the performance-based funding environment of the twenty-first century. Laying out the historic contexts that have helped shape the current university environment in which early career academics are immersed, the chapter also identifies recent trends and policy changes affecting New Zealand universities and academics. It emphasises how different an environment the twenty-first century New Zealand university is from the ones in which many current academic leaders were themselves trained.