Month: January 2025

Reflections on Trends, Challenges and Opportunities of LIS Research in South Africa. A Contextual Discourse

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Abstract

Library and Information Science, along with research in the domain, is rapidly changing in South Africa. Building on related studies and my experiential knowledge as a LIS academic for more than three decades, this paper reflects on the changing trends challenges and opportunities of library and information science research in South Africa to inform future developments in the discipline for strategic interventions. A phenomenological design is used for self-reflection together with a content analysis by bibliometric and review of related studies to inform and shape the content of this paper. The reviewed studies by publication count analysis reflect average presence and visibility of LIS academics in popular international indexing databases that are known for indexing the largest number of research as a whole and LIS, as most research output still occur in local journals that are not indexed by the global databases. LIS research publication trends show insignificant incremental growth while research is slowly shifting to non-traditional LIS research subjects which are technology driven. While research collaboration in LIS in South Africa has grown admirably well beyond 50% and is steadily expanding, most collaborations still occur within institutions, which is contrary to global trends. Challenges relate to LIS research capacity building, insufficient visibility of LIS academics/faculties as a whole and on university or institutional websites, inter-institutional and inter-national research collaboration as well as indexing gaps, rendering searching cumbersome. The research development and support in South Africa offer wonderful opportunity to research sustainability and growth. The paper provides some insight for LIS research development in South Africa. The findings may also interest research in LIS outside the region.

Climate Crisis: Systemic Aspects of De-Carbonization and Macro-financial Requirements

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Abstract

Urgent de-carbonization means a massive systemic change that requires a coherent approach for spurring global investments while reorientating them toward Emerging Market and Developing Economies (EMDEs). Both issues require a macroeconomic rebalancing with geographical and geopolitical impacts. Available model-based scenarios are dangerously misleading because they rely upon implicit assumptions that ignore the permacrisis with its growing uncertainty and the systemic and governance issues that plague the present unsustainable economic order. After giving the order of magnitude of the huge amounts of urgent investments required by global de-carbonization, this chapter warns against “greenwishing” (the illusion that low-cost solutions are at hand) and, more precisely, against two major flaws in the current financial system. First, even with a CO2 tax in view, private yields are unable to reorient investments to de-carbonization on time. Second, the asymmetric International Monetary System is unable to ensure the capital inflows necessary to close the estimated funding gap in the EMDEs. This assessment implies the need for a multilateral intervention at two levels: (i) to compensate today’s private yields in investments that abate greenhouse gases, because CO2 taxation, which needs to be slowly progressive, is unable to compensate ex ante the too high uncertain expectations on de-carbonization investments; and (ii) to issue a safe asset at the multilateral level, creating a global Lender-of-Last-Resort able to manage global liquidity, solving the Triffin Dilemma.