Open Access

Biodiversity is quickly diminishing across the planet, primarily owing to human pressures. Protected areas are an essential tool for conserving biodiversity in response to increasing human pressures. However, their ecological effectiveness is contested and their capacity to resist human pressures differ. This dissertation aimed to assess the ecological effectiveness of different protection levels (from strict to less strictly protected: national park, game reserve, forest reserve, game-controlled area, and unprotected areas) in biodiversity (both mega diverse butterflies and mammals), maintaining habitat connectivity, and reducing anthropogenic threats at the wider landscape in the Katavi-Rukwa Ecosystem of southwestern Tanzania. To achieve this overarching goal, I employed an interdisciplinary approach. First, I analyzed butterfly diversity and community composition patterns across protection levels in the Katavi-Rukwa Ecosystem. I found that species richness and abundance were highest in the game reserves and game-controlled areas, intermediate in the forest reserves, national park and unprotected areas. Species composition differed significantly among protection levels. Landscape heterogeneity, forest cover, and primary productivity influenced species composition. Land-use, burned areas, forest cover, and primary productivity explained the richness of species and functional traits. Game reserves hosted most indicator species. Second, I modelled the spatial distribution of six large mammal target species (buffalo Syncerus caffer, elephant Loxodonta africana, giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis, hartebeest Alcelaphus buselaphus, topi Damaliscus korrigum, and zebra Equus burchellii) across environmental and protection gradients in the Katavi-Rukwa Ecosystem. Based on species-specific density surface models, I found relatively consistent effects of protection level and land-use variables on the spatial distribution of the target mammal species: relative densities were highest in the national park and game reserves, intermediate in forest reserves and game-controlled areas and lowest in un-protected areas. Beyond species-specific environmental predictors for relative densities, our results highlight consistent negative associations between relative densities of the target species and distance to cropland and avoidance of areas in proximity to houses. Third, I examined temporal changes in land-use, population densities and distribution of six large mammal target species across protection levels between 1991 and 2018. During the surveyed period, cropland increased from 3.4 % to 9.6 % on unprotected land and from ≤0.05 % to <1 % on protected land. Wildlife densities of most, but not all target species declined across the entire landscape, yet the onset of the observed wildlife declines occurred several years before the onset of cropland expansion. Across protection levels, wildlife densities occurred at much greater densities in the national park and game reserves and lowest in the forest reserves, game-controlled areas and unprotected areas. Based on logistic regression models, target species preferred the national park over less strictly protection levels and areas distant to cropland. Because these analyses do not support a direct relationship between the timing of land-use change and wildlife population dynamics, other factors may account for the apparent ecosystem-wide decline in wildlife. Fourth, I quantified land-use changes, modelled habitat suitability and connectivity of elephant over time across a large protected area network in southwestern Tanzania. Based on analyses of remotely-sensed data, cropland increased from 7% in 2000 to 13% in 2019, with an average expansion of 634 km2 per year. Based on ensemble models, distance from cropland influenced survey-specific habitat suitability for elephant the most. Despite cropland expansion, the locations of the modelled elephant corridors (n=10) remained similar throughout the survey period. According to ecological knowledge, nine of the modelled corridors were active, whereas one modelled corridor had been inactive since the 1970s. Based on circuit theory, I prioritize three corridors for protected area connectivity. Key indicators of corridor quality varied over time, whereas elephant movement through some corridors appears to have increased over time. Overall, this dissertation underpins differences in ecological effectiveness of protected areas within one ecosystem. It highlights the need to utilize a landscape conservation approach to guide effective conservation across the entire protection gradient. It also suggests the need to enforcing land use plans and having alternative and sustainable forms for generating income from the land without impairing wildlife habitat.

In May 2020, the arrest and killing of George Floyd were followed by an uproar that reached far beyond Minneapolis (Taylor 2021). Under the “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) movement, people unitedly demonstrated against police brutality and systemic racism in the U.S. Though racially motivated police violence did not end with George Floyd. The incident contributed to a more visible reality of a judicial and societal system built upon racism. In 1989, legal scholars developed the Critical Race Theory to recognise and examine racism embedded in the legal system. However, racism is not only found in legal studies but is also ingrained in and reproduced by schools. Scholars indicate that the educational system in the U.S. is now more segregated and unequal than ever. Also, topics such as racism, Whiteness, and White-supremacy are underrepresented in schools and teacher education (Milner Ⅳ, Deans Harmon, and McGee 2022, 364). If and how a CRT perspective should be taught in schools depicts a current controversy between politics, teachers, and parents.

Many dynamics are reshaping the global macroeconomics and finance. This cumulative dissertation empirically examines the impacts of two major global dynamics, the disaster risks and the China’s rise, on the global economy. Chapter 1 introduces the motivation and summarizes the dissertation. Chapter 2 investigates how geopolitical risks affect financial stress in the whole financial system and its sub-sectors (banking, stock, foreign exchange, bond) of major emerging economies. Chapter 3 shows how different disaster risks (financial, geopolitical, natural-technological) can explain the returns and risk premiums of stock and housing in advanced economies between 1870 and 2015. Chapter 4 examines how the rise of China is contributing to higher economic growth in emerging economies, especially after the Global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Chapter 5 illustrates how a close trade and investment relation with China has helped African countries to reduce poverty and to improve their income distribution.

The significance of selecting suitable talent A company’s success is significantly influenced by the professionalism and quality of decision-making, especially selecting decisions to hire suitable talent. The term “talent” can be taken to mean as someone who has talent (talent as the sum of one’s abilities) and someone who is a talent. Leadership talent makes a difference in organizational success, has the potential to succeed as a leader, and thus will hold corresponding pivotal positions. In this book, we focus on the selection and acquisition of leadership talent, since such talent is more difficult to find in the market and, at the same time, more challenging to select. Selecting these talented individuals is one of the most critical components of effective organizations. Hardly any other corporate decision has such significant effects on corporate success as talent selection. Recruiting and personnel selection are also the first steps in promoting capability building and creating successful teams. For example, Warren Buffet, renowned for his investing prowess, says, “I have only two jobs. One is to attract and keep outstanding managers to run our various operations”. This highlights the need for an effective and efficient personnel selection process and to improve the diagnostic performance of such procedures. In addition, the increasing diversity of applicants, global competitiveness, and the lack of qualified personnel in specific labor and job markets also increase the importance of high-quality personnel selection processes.

Human activities have become a major driver of global change, so that global society and economy are facing consequences such as climate change, increasing scarcity of resources, environmental pollution and degradation as well as disturbances of ecosystem functioning and services.In order to meet these main challenges in an appropriate way, adequate starting points and solutions must be pursued at all levels to shift the current socio-economic pathway from an unsustainable to a safe operating and thus sustainable development within the planetary boundaries. One of the application concepts in industrial contexts is Industrial Symbiosis (IS), which deals with the set-up of advanced circular/cascading systems, in which the energy and material flows are prolonged for multiple material and energetic (re-)utilization within industrial systems in order to increase resource productivity and efficiency, while reducing environmental impacts. The overarching goal of the research project was to identify and develop approaches to enable the evolution of Industrial Symbiosis (IS) in Industrial Parks (IPs). Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is a collaborative cross-sectoral approach to connect the resource supply and demand of various industries in order to optimize the resource use through exchange of materials, energy, water and human resources across different companies, while generating ecological, technical, social and economic benefits. Many Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools have been developed to facilitate IS, but they predominantly focus on the as-is analysis of the IS system, and do not consider the development of a common desired target vision or corresponding possible future scenarios as well as conceivable transformation paths from the actual to the defined (sustainability) target state. This gap shall be addressed in this work, presenting the software requirements engineering results for a holistic IT-supported IS tool covering system analysis, transformation simulation and goal-setting. This study also aims to present the conceptual IT-supported IS tool and its corresponding prototype, developed for the identification of IS opportunities in IPs. This IS tool serves as an IS facilitating platform, providing transparency among market players and proposing potential cooperation partners according to selectable criteria (e.g. geographical radius, material properties, material quality, purchase quantity, delivery period). Therefore a quantitative indicator system was compiled and recurring patterns were identified to utilize this knowledge in the comprehensive IT-supported IS tool. So this IS tool builds the technology-enabled environment for the processes of first screening of IS possibilities and initiation for further complex business-driven negotiations and agreements for long-term IS business relationships.