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Village economies and peasant households represent the main link between the economy and the environment in sub-Saharan Africa. The links from the macro level and down to the household level and further to the natural resource base are complex. It may therefore be difficult to predict the impact of macro policies and external shocks on the environment. This paper presents a typology of village economies and village economy-wide models. The framework is applied to a special case where a model is proposed and estimated to examine the impacts of external shocks, including structural adjustment policies, on cash-crop production and chitemene (shifting cultivation) in a remote Zambian village characterized by a missing (or negligible) labour market, input supply constraints, and credit rationing. Our findings indicate that structural adjustment policies, by decreasing the profitability of maize production, may encourage households to increase their chitemene production, resulting in more rapid deforestation.

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As populations age globally, cooperation across multi-sector stakeholders is increasingly important to service older persons, particularly those with high and complex health and social needs. One such population is older people entering society after a period of incarceration in prison. The ‘ageing epidemic’ in prisons worldwide has caught the attention of researchers, governments and community organisations, who identify challenges in servicing this group as they re-enter the community. Challenges lie across multiple sectors, with inadequate support leading to dire consequences for public health, social welfare and recidivism. This is the first study to bring together multi-sector stakeholders from Australia to form recommendations for improving health and social outcomes for older people re-entering community after imprisonment. A modified nominal group technique was used to produce recommendations from N=15 key stakeholders across prison health, corrections, research, advocacy, aged care, community services, via online workshops. The importance and priority of these recommendations was validated by a broader sample of N=44 stakeholders, using an online survey. Thirty-six recommendations for improving outcomes for this population were strongly supported. These recommendations entail two important findings about this population: (1) They are a high-needs, unique, and underserved group at risk of significant health and social inequity in the community, (2) Multi-sector stakeholder cooperation will be crucial to service this growing group.

The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral … it prepares us to live more humanely in the present, and to meet rather than to foretell, the future - Carl Becker. Becker's quote reminds us of the importance of revealing and understanding historical practices in order to influence actions in the future. There are compelling reasons for uncovering this history, in particular to better inform government policy makers and health advocates, and to address the impacts of growing community expectations to 'make the punishment fit the crime'.