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Among natural disasters, drought affected the most people worldwide during the past few decades (Obasi, 1994). Since the late 1970s, there has been a shift in El Niño-Southern Oscillation toward more warm events, closely related to a worldwide trend for intensified drought (Dai, Trenberth, & Karl, 1998). In particular, this trend was manifested as widespread droughts during 1999–2002 in the northern hemisphere (Lotsch, Friedl, Anderson, & Tucker, 2005), including Asia, and notably in Mongolia (Nandintsetseg, Shinoda, Kimura, & Ibaraki, 2010; Shinoda, Ito, Nachinshonhor, & Erdenetsetseg, 2007). The decade of 2000s has experienced increased vegetation degradation and wind erosion that resulted from decreased summer precipitation in wide areas of East Asia (Kurosaki, Shinoda, & Mikami, 2011a; Kurosaki, Shinoda, Mikami, & Nandintsetseg, 2011b). Furthermore, in general, projections of climate models have suggested that the frequency and intensity of extreme weathers will likely increase in the future (IPCC WG I, 2007). Given this background, it is vital to make an assessment of socioeconomic impacts of the extreme weathers and to develop proactive approaches to mitigating such impacts.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the money attitudes among students at English-language business schools in the transitioning Central Asian nations of the former USSR, namely, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

The survey was carried out in 2017, using previously established measures of Love of Money survey questionnaire. Over 300 undergraduate students in English-language business degree programs in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan participated in the survey. A few hypotheses were tested using three-way MANOVA to test the influence of three factors (country, gender and student years). In addition, post hoc analysis, and one- and two-way ANOVA methods were used for multiple comparisons.

The results showed evidence of increasing convergence among students who are farther along in the program. Some statistically significant differences were also found, mainly in regard to gender differences in money attitudes across countries and student levels. The results of statistical analysis suggest a need for further research on attitudes and values related to money in the modern nation states of Central Asia.

This study is one of first attempts to study the values and attitudes regarding money among the first generation of business students who were born and grew up after their respective countries gained independence. The findings imply the development of a relatively homogeneous labor pool for business organizations across regions that are characterized by increasing differentiation among countries within the region.

As the Communist influence in the world subsides, the threat of low‐intensity conflict increasingly becomes a major concern to those involved in maintaining world security and peace. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union have been accompanied by shifts in alignments, the emergence of old conflicts and new tensions, and an increase in Third World agitation. These events all serve to create these low‐intensity conflicts, which may take the form of guerrilla warfare, coups d'etat, ethnic violence, terrorism, resistance movements, or insurgency. Terrorism by itself is the objective of many forms of violence prevalent in today's world, including drug‐related incidents and incidents involving street gangs, hate groups, violent activists, and separatist organizations, as well as state‐sponsored actions in places such as Central and South America, the Middle East, and Libya. Conflict within areas may create situations that have far‐reaching consequences.

At the same time, new military and political factors have emerged, which determine the strategy of the Russian defense industry, rates of its development, and change of the structure. On February 8, of the current year, the chief of Pentagon, R. Gates spoke at a session of the Committee for the Armed Forces of the Chamber of Representatives of the Congress, declaring that USA should be ready to possible military conflicts with other countries including Russia and China: “We need the whole spectrum of war facilities for army involving conflicts, since we do not know what could happen in such places as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and other.”¹ As a result, the USA military policy is encircling Russia with antimissile defense systems. They are supposed to install a powerful radar in the Czech Republic and shaft-basing missiles in Poland. A superpowerful floating radar is to be transferred from Hawaii islands to Aleut islands, etc. Thus, the whole territory of Russia will be surrounded with radar-missile complexes. These activities will produce an increased attention to elaboration and manufacturing of constituents of the antimissile defense system and by-pass systems, possible withdrawal from the Treaty on conventional weapons in Europe and the Treaty on medium-range strategic missiles etc., which may change the direction and paces of development of the defense industry.

This paper addresses a highly under-research question of employee voice in Belarus using labour process theory, specifically, Ramsay’s (1977) cycles of control theory to assess the evolution of voice at transitional periphery. Using the sample of 10 industrial enterprises, the paper explores the degree of management control over formal voice and the role of trade unions in defending of independent voice at the collective level. Informal voice at the individual level is also analysed. The findings demonstrate that the degree of direct control over formal voice in Belarus exceeds that in the Soviet Union due to suppression of independent trade union voice. The loss of workers’ control over the labour process has led to decreasing informal voice at the individual level. However, the earlier argument on workers’ patience is not supported due to a growing number of organised workers protests.

Agriculture accounts for most of the land use in Uzbekistan, and is consequently the main determinant of environmental quality. As a result, due to the excessive use of production inputs and irrigation, land is widely degraded in Uzbekistan. This chapter explores characteristics and changes in land use, agricultural production, soil ecosystems, and water availability, and their effects on both soil degradation and limits on sustainable development in different agro-ecological zones of Uzbekistan. Secondary data from various sources was collected and processed, and descriptive statistical methods were used to analyze trends, causes, and effects of land degradation. Zones with lower land quality have higher water-use indicators. There is a positive correlation between the land grade and fertilizer application coefficients. Agriculture from the east zone showed sustainable water consumption, the highest average land-quality grade, and has the highest fertilizer-use coefficient. The downstream west zone has the highest water-use and the lowest fertilizer-use indicators. The analysis revealed a great potential for water saving in the west and southeast agricultural zones of Uzbekistan.

The present chapter has reviewed the opportunities and limitations of the Russian Federation to situate as a leading international destination. There are significant methodological and conceptual issues during the assessment of the world countries and regions safety level. They are caused by lack of the universal assessment method of such risks, incompleteness of the risk criteria taken into consideration, subjective assessment factors, and occasional substitution of the risk factors with the political–competitive ones. Still, the safety issue is one of the most important for a modern tourist. The available information resources, providing their own safety level assessment of the world countries and regions for travellers, differ between them in terms of the selected categories, specified safety levels of the countries and regions and also in terms of understanding and details of the travel risk notion itself. But the greatest challenge for an ordinary tourist, who does not have experience in searching specialised information, is to become familiar with these information resources.