Sylvia Szabo

Helpage International

The impacts of climate change on people’s livelihoods have been widely documented.¹ It is expected that climate and environmental change will hamper poverty reduction, or even exacerbate poverty in some or all of its dimensions. Changes in the biophysical environment, such as droughts, flooding, water quantity and quality, and degrading ecosystems,...

This study examines the association between intensity of COVID-19 spread and causing factors across climatic regions using Boosted Regression Tree algorithm. The results show that average temperature and average relative humidity are the major contributors in explaining the differentials of COVID-19 transmission in temperate and subtropical regions...

Thailand’s agricultural production has played a major role in enhancing the sustainability of domestic food supplies and successful international exports. However, agricultural production and farm productivity remain relatively low, especially in rapidly ageing high out-migration areas and among small-scale farmers. In this study, we use new househ...

Using the most recent 2018 Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) survey data, this study aimed to examine the key determinants of cognitive impairment (CI) and to explore the inequalities and geographic differences of CI amongst the South Korean elderly population. The findings show that being super-aged, poor general health, and lack of exerc...

The COVID-19 outbreak has contributed to a tremendous global decline in international trade flows. The rapid spread of the disease and the control measures implemented by governments to contain the virus have led to serious consequences for the global economy. The pandemic has affected the international movement of people, goods, and services. Curr...

While evaluation of research-to-policy projects is a fundamental aspect of measuring the impact of new knowledge, limited studies have examined evaluation methods in such projects, as well as how the evaluation can generate learning to facilitate the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study conducted a systematic litera...

Evaluation plays a crucial role in determining the outcomes and impact of international development projects. By applying strict evaluation criteria, it becomes clear whether the project was effective and what specific change it contributed to. Existing studies emphasized the importance of project evaluation, however there are limited systematic re...

Introduction: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2019, public policy debate has been increasingly focusing on developing and implementing new disease prevention measures based on tracking of geographical location, in particular during the quarantine period. Limited studies have so far investigated possible public acceptance of...

Delta regions occupy a small proportion of the earth’s surface area, yet they are home to more than 500 million people. While numerous regional studies have examined the prevalence and the determinants of food security in specific delta and coastal regions, there is still a paucity of systematic analysis on the food security indicators commonly use...

Key messages • Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in 70 years. • Most older people in Sri Lanka do not have adequate social protection and are struggling to survive. • Older women are at greater risk than men, because they are more often widowed and live alone, and because of gender disadvantages that tend to accumulate over the life cou...

While the linkage between poverty and climatic hazard outcomes is well documented in the development agenda along with the role of disaster risk financing, dynamic subnational-level statistical assessment of causal effects of formal insurance on climatic hazard outcomes has been scarce to date. This paper investigates the relationship between insur...

Objective To examine the association between remittances and food security in Bangladesh, controlling for other key factors. Design The secondary data analysis was performed on the most recent (2016) nationally representative Household Income and Expenditure Survey. We used logistic regression models to measure the association between food securit...

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 219 million people are reported to have been infected while more than four million deaths have been recorded across the globe. However, the degree of the spread varies from one country to another. Government actions and preventive measures are regarded as vital to mitigate the spread of this disea...

While there is some emerging evidence regarding the relationship between the COVID-19 related policy interventions and trade volumes, there is limited evidence examining the relationships between trade volumes and household welfare or the impact of the pandemic on household welfare. This study aims to fill the gap by applying statistical modelling...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Solow-Swan's proposition that poorer countries grow faster than richer countries causing declining income disparities across countries. The role of coffee trade in income convergence is also analysed to enrich our understanding of whether traditional cash export crops, like coffee, contribute signific...

While Korean unification remains one of the most significant issues in inter-Korean and international affairs with significant implications in terms of territorial order and geopolitics, little is known about the perception of the likelihood of Korean unification, especially amongst the elderly population. Yet, the proportion of this population in...

In this paper, we introduce hsR maps and ahsR maps from almost quaternionic Hermitian manifolds into Riemannian manifolds as a generalization of almost h-conformal semi-invariant submersions and conformal semi-invariant Riemannian maps. We give some examples of these maps and study their properties: the geometry of foliations, the integrability of...

The Himalayan region faces significant challenges in groundwater resource management due to the relief, precipitous slope, and rocky surface, leading to a lower infiltration into subsurface groundwater. Moreover, the region faces significant challenges due to the decline in its quantity and deterioration in quality, exacerbated by urbanisation, lan...

While there is some emerging evidence regarding the relationship between the COVID-19 related policy interventions and trade volumes, there is limited evidence examining the relationships between trade volumes and household welfare or the impact of the pandemic on household welfare. This study aims to fill the gap by applying statistical modelling...

Although the advent of new technologies and online platforms has revolutionized the face of marketing in agriculture sector, little study exists to assess the farmers’ willingness to adopt (WTA) such technologies for their products. Here, we assessed this WTA for a mobile app – the Bamboost for marketing bamboo products and determined the related f...

As of 10 July 2021, there have been over 186 million cases of COVID-19 and more than four million died as a result of this disease. The COVID-19 outbreak has also contributed to tremendous global decline in trade flows. The rapid spread of COVID-19 and the measures implemented by governments to contain the pandemic have had serious consequences for...

Thailand’s agriculture is facing an ageing workforce, which could negatively influence agricultural production. Yet, there is still limited evidence regarding the perception of the ageing agricultural labour force in the country and a lack of insights into farmers’ strategies to improve agricultural output. To fill this gap, we analysed primary dat...

The study aims to get insights into virtual land, water flows from producers' perspectives for cereal crops and trade in Bangladesh and provides insights into the carbon emissions from agriculture. For this purpose, FAO's cereals area, production and yield, food balance sheets, detailed trade matrix, GHG emissions, and population data for the year...

Energy security is one of the key priorities of the United Nations' sustainable development agenda of 2030. Limited studies have focused on accessibility, availability, and security of energy across the provinces of Vietnam using household data. The present study considers aims to fill this gap and by quantifying the level of electricity and cookin...

Agriculture, global biodiversity and distribution of species are increasingly influenced by changing climate. Assessing the future distribution of biodiversity under different climate change scenarios is an essential step towards conservation planning and policy implementations. To understand the climate change impacts, the present study used Garci...

The local population of Sundarbans, an environmentally vulnerable delta region in south-eastern India, is currently affected by combined negative impacts of cyclone Amphan and the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdown measures have created an additional burden on the health care system, while flooding during Amphan increased the risk of spreading water-b...

Energy security is one of the key priorities of the United Nations' sustainable development agenda of 2030. Limited studies have focused on accessibility, availability, and security of energy across the provinces of Vietnam using household data. The present study considers aims to fill this gap and by quantifying the level of electricity and cookin...

There is an emerging body of literature focusing on the COVID-19 livelihoods and environmental impacts, as well as the effects of the pandemics on evidence generation. However, little attention has been paid to how COVID-19 has—and is likely to continue to—affect monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) systems, specifically in the context of lar...

In recent years, the human influence on the frequency and severity of disaster events has become more evident. Multiple risks, including relative sea-level rise (SLR) and human alterations, are at risk in the tropical delta regions, rendering them increasingly vulnerable to severe flooding, cyclones, storm surges, intrusion of salinity, and other h...

Oceanic marine plastic contamination was an increasingly global issue due to increased demand. This has a significant effect not only on marine biodiversity, but also on public safety and numerous infectious diseases found in both aquatic and human species. A huge amount of money was spent worldwide on plastic waste. In the 1940s, plastics developm...

The ambition of universal health coverage entails estimation of the number, type and distribution of health workers required to meet the population need for health services. The demography of the population, including anticipated or estimated changes, is a factor in determining the 'universal' needs for health and well-being. Demography is concerne...

Thailand’s agricultural production has played a major role in enhancing the sustainability of domestic food supplies and successful international exports. However, agricultural production and farm productivity remain relatively low, especially in rapidly ageing high out-migration areas and among small-scale farmers. In this study, we use new househ...

We investigate the climatic influence on COVID-19 transmission risks in 228 cities globally across three climatic zones. The results, based on the application of a Boosted Regression Tree algorithm method, show that average temperature and average relative humidity explain significant variations in COVID-19 transmission across temperate and subtrop...

The study is the first attempt to assess the role of climatic predictors in the rise of COVID-19 intensity in the Russian climatic region. The study used the Random Forest algorithm to understand the underlying associations and monthly scenarios. The results show that temperature seasonality (29.2 ± 0.9%) has the highest contribution for COVID-19 t...

This study highlights the major players in the global food balance, potential implications of COVID-19 on global cereal supply, and SDG-2 (zero hunger). It found that developing countries, fifteen from Africa followed by ten from Latin America, six from Oceania, and four from Asia are the most vulnerable to changes food supply shocks. It concludes...

While there is increasing evidence on the trends and impacts of climate change, both globally and in Bangladesh, there is a limited quantitative analysis on the impacts of natural disasters on population health and the association with socio-economic characteristics. Using data from the ‘Bangladesh Disaster-Related Statistics-2015’, we assessed dis...

Background: Food insecurity is a critical public health challenge, particularly in low- and middle-income countries such as Nepal. The demographic transition has resulted in a growing population of senior citizens. However, the determinants of food insecurity among Nepali senior citizens remain unknown. This study aims to fill this gap by assessin...

The paper discuss about immediate and long term consequences of COVID-19 on population health and nutritional status in Nepal. The framework in the paper provides an illustration of the underlying factors and the potential mitigating interventions for health and nutrition outcomes.

The Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers form in the Himalaya and its catchment is shared among five countries and ultimately deposits the freshwater and sediments in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta shared between Bangladesh and India. The delta is strongly influenced by neighbouring countries' water and sediment management decisions in addition...

This study examines the association between community transmission of COVID-19 cases and climatic predictors, considering travel information and annual parasite index across the three climatic zones, i.e., tropical, subtropical, and temperate. A Boosted Regression Tree model has been employed to understand the association between the COVID-19 cases...

The coconut industry is one of the important economic sectors in the Philippines. Coconut products are the main exporting agricultural commodity in the Philippines. This paper provides an overview of the coconut supply chain in the Philippines including coconut production, export markets, and supply chain structure, as well as analysis of constrain...

The concept of complex social-ecological systems (SES) as a means for capturing system dynamics properties (e.g. interactions and feedbacks) has gained attention in policymaking and advancing evidence in understanding complex systems. In contexts with limited data, conceptual system dynamic models offer a promising entry point to overcome challenge...

Background: Food insecurity is a critical public health challenge, in particular in low and middle-income countries. Nepal, a low-income country, is undergoing rapid demographic and epidemiological transitions with a growing population of senior citizens. However, the determinants of food security status among Nepali senior citizens are still unkno...

In rapidly developing economies such as Thailand, farmers face multiple challenges preventing them from improving their livelihoods, and are therefore reverting to collective action as a means to overcome those obstacles. Community enterprises (CEs) have recently emerged as a new form of such collective action, yet there is limited evidence regardi...

Background: Food insecurity is a critical public health challenge, particularly in low and middle-income countries such as Nepal. The demographic transition has resulted in a growing population of senior citizens. However, the determinants of food insecurity among Nepali senior citizens remain unknown. This study aims to fill this gap by assessing...

Background Globally, neonatal deaths remain a major public health challenge and account for the majority of deaths occurring among children under five years of age. Despite Nepal’s significant achievements in meeting the maternal and child health targets of the Millennium Development Goals, an estimated 23,000 Nepalese children under five years die...

Rural communities in Thailand have long managed and used forest resources for their livelihoods. Using survey data collected from 400 households across two villages in northeastern Thailand, this study identifies the factors influencing household members’ participation in local community forest management (CFM) programs. Results of the logit regres...

Effective participatory management of natural resources is critical for long-term environmental sustainability and the well-being of the local population. This study used the theory of planned behaviour to examine participation in community forest management. Primary data were collected through household survey, and hypotheses were tested by using...

While the process of urbanisation has been generally perceived as positive, in recent years there has been growing evidence regarding the detrimental impacts of rapid, poorly managed urbanisation, in particular in the developing world. Many Asian countries are in the process of rapid demographic, epidemiological and socio-economic transitions and t...

Microplastic pollution of the oceanic environment has been a growing global problem due to increasing demand. It has a great impact on the marine organisms as well as on human health. Various chronic diseases detected in both aquatic organisms and human. The huge amount of money is being spent to face microplastic pollution. The mass production of...

Background: Bangladesh is one of the countries most affected by natural disasters. While there is increasing evidence on the trends and impacts of climate change, both globally and in Bangladesh, there is limited quantitative analysis on the impacts of natural disasters on population health and the association with socioeconomic characteristics. M...

A flexible meta-model, the Delta Dynamic Integrated Emulator Model (ΔDIEM), is developed to capture the socio-biophysical system of coastal Bangladesh as simply and efficiently as possible. Operating at the local scale, calculations occur efficiently using a variety of methods, including linear statistical emulators, which capture the behaviour of...

Demographic trends and projections have important implications for the use of ecosystem services and sustainability in the delta. The study area accounts for ten per cent of the national population and recently appears to have low rates of population growth. Analysis of components of population change (fertility, mortality and migration) indicates...

Background: Universal health coverage implies that people obtain the health services they need without experiencing financial hardship. While the factors contributing to catastrophic health expenditure (CHE) among households are well understood, few studies have examined this relationship in the context of environmentally vulnerable regions, such...

The dominant movement of people in the mega-deltas of Asia is from agriculture-dominated rural areas to urban settlements, driven by growing opportunities, but resulting in new human development challenges. In this context, the present study aims to investigate whether remittance income leads to enhanced multiple dimensions of well-being in sending...