Productive Diversification and Sustainable Use of Complex Social-Ecological Systems: A Comparative Study of Indigenous and Settler Communities in the Bolivian Amazon

Agricultural and forest productive diversification depends on multiple socioeconomic drivers—like knowledge, migration, productive capacity, and market—that shape productive strategies and influence their ecological impacts. Our comparison of indigenous and settlers allows a better understanding of how societies develop different diversification strategies in similar ecological contexts and how the related socioeconomic aspects of diversification are associated with land cover change. Our results suggest that although indigenous people cause less deforestation and diversify more, diversification is not a direct driver of deforestation reduction. A multidimensional approach linking sociocognitive, economic, and ecological patterns of diversification helps explain this contradiction.

CAP Reform vs WTO: Crop Diversification or Crop Rotation? : Legal opinion prepared by Dr. Christian Häberli at the request of APRODEV, the Association of World Council of Churches related Development Organisations in Europe

The European Commission’s proposals for the Legislative Framework of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the period 2014-2020 include, inter alia, the introduction of a “strong greening component”. For the first time, all EU farmers in receipt of support are to “go beyond the requirements of cross compliance and deliver environmental and climate benefits as part of their everyday activities crop diversification as a contribution to all EU farmers in receipt of support go beyond the requirements of cross compliance and deliver environmental and climate benefits as part of their everyday activities.” In a legal opinion prepared at the request of APRODEV, the Association of World Council of Churches related Development Organisations in Europe (www.aprodev.eu), Christian Häberli examines the WTO implications of this proposal, as compared with an alternative proposal to rather link direct payments to crop rotation. The conclusions are twofold: 1. Crop rotation is at least as likely to be found Green Box-compatible as crop diversification. Moreover, it will be more difficult to argue that crop diversification is “not more than minimally production-distorting” because it entails for most farmers less cost and work. 2. Even if (either of the two cropping schemes) were to be found “amber”, the EU would not have to relinquish this conditionality. This is because the direct payments involved would in all likelihood not, together with the other price support instruments, exceed the amount available under the presently scheduled maximum.

Parallel adaptations to nectarivory in parrots, key innovations and the diversification of the Loriinae

Specialization to nectarivory is associated with radiations within different bird groups, including parrots. One of them, the Australasian lories, were shown to be unexpectedly species rich. Their shift to nectarivory may have created an ecological opportunity promoting species proliferation. Several morphological specializations of the feeding tract to nectarivory have been described for parrots. However, they have never been assessed in a quantitative framework considering phylogenetic nonindependence. Using a phylogenetic comparative approach with broad taxon sampling and 15 continuous characters of the digestive tract, we demonstrate that nectarivorous parrots differ in several traits from the remaining parrots. These trait-changes indicate phenotype–environment correlations and parallel evolution, and may reflect adaptations to feed effectively on nectar. Moreover, the diet shift was associated with significant trait shifts at the base of the radiation of the lories, as shown by an alternative statistical approach. Their diet shift might be considered as an evolutionary key innovation which promoted significant non-adaptive lineage diversification through allopatric partitioning of the same new niche. The lack of increased rates of cladogenesis in other nectarivorous parrots indicates that evolutionary innovations need not be associated one-to-one with diversification events.

Process and pattern in cichlid radiations - inferences for understanding unusually high rates of evolutionary diversification

The cichlid fish radiations in the African Great Lakes differ from all other known cases of rapid speciation in vertebrates by their spectacular trophic diversity and richness of sympatric species, comparable to the most rapid angiosperm radiations. I review factors that may have facilitated these radiations and compare these with insights from recent work on plant radiations. Work to date suggests that it was a coincidence of ecological opportunity, intrinsic ecological versatility and genomic flexibility, rapidly evolving behavioral mate choice and large amounts of standing genetic variation that permitted these spectacular fish radiations. I propose that spatially orthogonal gradients in the fit of phenotypes to the environment facilitate speciation because they allow colonization of alternative fitness peaks during clinal speciation despite local disruptive selection. Such gradients are manifold in lakes because of the interaction of water depth as an omnipresent third spatial dimension with other fitness-relevant variables. I introduce a conceptual model of adaptive radiation that integrates these elements and discuss its applicability to, and predictions for, plant radiations.

Quinoa production in the Nor Lipez province (Bolivia): Gender roles in export-led agriculture and challenges for research on rural employment

The recent increase in prices and production of quinoa have had important effects on the employment structures and livelihoods of rural communities in the Nor Lipez Province (Bolivia). The "quinoa boom" resulted in significant changes in household incomes and in gender roles in the context of increasing market integration. The nature of these changes however is not easy to grasp, as new official narratives on gender and on traditional systems of labour divisions and shared access to land have surfaced since the election of Evo Morales (2006) and the adoption of a new constitution (2009). Furthermore, rural employment is found to be much more diverse than the term suggests. Women have always participated in the production of quinoa when it was widely considered as a subsistence crop. Our research takes place in the Nor Lipez Province, Bolivia with exploratory studies that were conducted in January and February 2015 in 8 rural communities of quinoa producers. Preliminary results suggest positive effects for local women in that they managed to earn additional income which might have contributed to their empowerment. This article will present both preliminary results, challenges for gender-oriented research in Bolivia and the methodology aiming to capture changes at the individual, the household and the community level through a survey that will be conducted from September to November 2015 in 500 households.

Ability to Work and Employment Rates in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-1-Infected Individuals Receiving Combination Antiretroviral Therapy: The Swiss HIV Cohort Study

Background.  Limited data exist on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals' ability to work after receiving combination antiretroviral therapy (cART). We aimed to investigate predictors of regaining full ability to work at 1 year after starting cART. Methods.  Antiretroviral-naive HIV-infected individuals <60 years who started cART from January 1998 through December 2012 within the framework of the Swiss HIV Cohort Study were analyzed. Inability to work was defined as a medical judgment of the patient's ability to work as 0%. Results.  Of 5800 subjects, 4382 (75.6%) were fully able to work, 471 (8.1%) able to work part time, and 947 (16.3%) were unable to work at baseline. Of the 947 patients unable to work, 439 (46.3%) were able to work either full time or part time at 1 year of treatment. Predictors of recovering full ability to work were non-white ethnicity (odds ratio [OR], 2.06; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.20-3.54), higher education (OR, 4.03; 95% CI, 2.47-7.48), and achieving HIV-ribonucleic acid <50 copies/mL (OR, 1.83; 95% CI, 1.20-2.80). Older age (OR, 0.55; 95% CI, .42-.72, per 10 years older) and psychiatric disorders (OR, 0.24; 95% CI, .13-.47) were associated with lower odds of ability to work. Recovering full ability to work at 1 year increased from 24.0% in 1998-2001 to 41.2% in 2009-2012, but the employment rates did not increase. Conclusions.  Regaining full ability to work depends primarily on achieving viral suppression, absence of psychiatric comorbidity, and favorable psychosocial factors. The discrepancy between patients' ability to work and employment rates indicates barriers to reintegration of persons infected with HIV.