Understanding trait preferences of different actors in the banana value chain may facilitate the selection and adoption of new cultivars. We systematically reviewed the scholarly and gray literature on banana trait preferences, with specific attention to studies that document gender-differentiated traits. Of 44 publications reviewed, only four reported gender-specific trait preferences, indicating a significant gap in the literature. The review found that banana farmers, irrespective of gender, value similar characteristics that are related to production constraints, income enhancement, consumption, and cultural or ritual uses. Farmers (as producers, processors, and consumers) often prefer traditional cultivars because of their superior consumption attributes, even if new cultivars have better agronomic and host plant resistance characteristics. Potential differences between trait preferences of farmers and other actors in the value chain should be accounted for to enhance marketing potential. Gender-specific research along the banana value chain and engaging users at the initial stages of breeding can ensure that new cultivars are acceptable to users and may improve adoption. Interdisciplinary teamwork is essential for an efficient and effective breeding program.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is designed to reduce global CO 2 emissions while transferring technology and investment to developing countries. Little evaluation has been conducted, however, regarding the efficiency of outcomes and co-benefits or the social costs generated by carbonmitigation projects. This article presents a comparative case study of two carbonoffset projects funded by fossil-fuel based power generation companies in the United States: the first forestry project funded explicitly to offset greenhouse gas emissions, in Guatemala, and the first rural solar electrification-carbon offset finance agreement, in Sri Lanka. We demonstrate that achieving offset targets and development-related benefits from CDM projects cannot be assumed, and that social equity can be negatively impacted by CDM-type projects. As such, future offset agreements and post-Kyoto climate negotiations would benefit from closer attention to issues of context, transparency, and social equity in order to minimize the social costs of carbon emissions trading.

The girl child increasingly is at the centre of development programming. We draw on Slavoj Žižek's notion of fantasy to show how and, more importantly, why girl-centred initiatives reproduce the shortcomings of women and gender-focused programmes before them. Through an analysis of three girl-centred campaigns, we illustrate how experts identify and diagnose girls' problems and prescribe solutions that not only circumscribe girls' futures, but are also counterproductive. We argue that even as campaigns try to integrate lessons learned from earlier gender and development initiatives, the critical reflection that a Žižekian approach promotes would better enable development actors to reformulate campaigns and fundamental campaign assumptions.

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The term resilience has saliency in the scholarship and policy on post-disaster management and disaster-risk reduction. In this paper, we assess the use of resilience as a concept for post-disaster reconstruction in Puerto Rico and offer a critique of the standard definition. This critique focuses on the primacy of Puerto Rico’s colonial relations with the United States meshed with decades of political mismanagement of the island’s economic and natural resources by local authorities and political parties. For resilience to be a useful conceptual device, we argue for decolonizing resilience and show the relevance of such an argument through a case study of the island’s coffee-growing region. Decolonizing resilience exposes power inequities and the individuating nature of post-disaster reconstruction to illustrate how collective action and direct participation of local actors and communities carves out autonomous spaces of engagement. Decolonizing resilience necessitates a contextualized analysis of resilience, taking into account “the politics of resilience” embedded in the island’s colonial history and the policy bottlenecks it creates.