Reproducción campesina y conocimiento local en contextos de fragilidad social y ambiental : Estrategias familiares y comunitarias en la cordillera del Tentzo, México

El artículo presenta resultados de investigación realizada en la localidad de San Antonio Juárez, municipio de Tzicatlacoyan, en el estado de Puebla, México. El objetivo fue conocer las estrategias de reproducción de los grupos domésticos campesinos, asentados en entornos ambientales adversos, que presentan restricciones severas para el desarrollo de la agricultura. A partir de técnicas cualitativas y cuantitativas, se pudo constatar la presencia de estrategias de reproducción distinta, a nivel de barrio, basada en el conocimiento local, la división genérica del trabajo y la organización a nivel de grupo doméstico y comunidad.

Reproducción campesina y conocimiento local en contextos de fragilidad social y ambiental : Estrategias familiares y comunitarias en la cordillera del Tentzo, México

El artículo presenta resultados de investigación realizada en la localidad de San Antonio Juárez, municipio de Tzicatlacoyan, en el estado de Puebla, México. El objetivo fue conocer las estrategias de reproducción de los grupos domésticos campesinos, asentados en entornos ambientales adversos, que presentan restricciones severas para el desarrollo de la agricultura. A partir de técnicas cualitativas y cuantitativas, se pudo constatar la presencia de estrategias de reproducción distinta, a nivel de barrio, basada en el conocimiento local, la división genérica del trabajo y la organización a nivel de grupo doméstico y comunidad.

Reproducción campesina y conocimiento local en contextos de fragilidad social y ambiental : Estrategias familiares y comunitarias en la cordillera del Tentzo, México

El artículo presenta resultados de investigación realizada en la localidad de San Antonio Juárez, municipio de Tzicatlacoyan, en el estado de Puebla, México. El objetivo fue conocer las estrategias de reproducción de los grupos domésticos campesinos, asentados en entornos ambientales adversos, que presentan restricciones severas para el desarrollo de la agricultura. A partir de técnicas cualitativas y cuantitativas, se pudo constatar la presencia de estrategias de reproducción distinta, a nivel de barrio, basada en el conocimiento local, la división genérica del trabajo y la organización a nivel de grupo doméstico y comunidad.

Macro-epibenthic communities, bathymetry and enviromental information at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula

The Southern Ocean ecosystem at the Antarctic Peninsula has steep natural environmental gradients, e.g. in terms of water masses and ice cover, and experiences regional above global average climate change. An ecological macroepibenthic survey was conducted in three ecoregions in the north-western Weddell Sea, on the continental shelf of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Bransfield Strait and on the shelf of the South Shetland Islands in the Drake Passage, defined by their environmental envelop. The aim was to improve the so far poor knowledge of the structure of this component of the Southern Ocean ecosystem and its ecological driving forces. It can also provide a baseline to assess the impact of ongoing climate change to the benthic diversity, functioning and ecosystem services. Different intermediate-scaled topographic features such as canyon systems including the corresponding topographically defined habitats 'bank', 'upper slope', 'slope' and 'canyon/deep' were sampled. In addition, the physical and biological environmental factors such as sea-ice cover, chlorophyll-a concentration, small-scale bottom topography and water masses were analysed. Catches by Agassiz trawl showed high among-station variability in biomass of 96 higher systematic groups including ecological key taxa. Large-scale patterns separating the three ecoregions from each other could be correlated with the two environmental factors, sea-ice and depth. Attribution to habitats only poorly explained benthic composition, and small-scale bottom topography did not explain such patterns at all. The large-scale factors, sea-ice and depth, might have caused large-scale differences in pelagic benthic coupling, whilst small-scale variability, also affecting larger scales, seemed to be predominantly driven by unknown physical drivers or biological interactions.

Considering Efficacy of an Outdoor Environmental Education Program: Facilitating Elementary Students’ Environmental Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviours

Various sources have sought to consider the educational interventions that foster changes in perception of and attitudes toward nature, with the ultimate intent of understanding how education can be used to encourage environmentally responsible behaviours. With these in mind, the current study identified an outdoor environmental education program incorporating these empirically supported interventions, and assessed its ability to influence environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours. Specifically, this study considered the following research questions: 1) To what degree can participation in this outdoor education program foster environmental knowledge and encourage pro-environmental attitudes and self-reported pro-environmental behaviours? 2) How is this effect different among students of different genders, and those who have different prior experiences in nature? Two motivational frameworks guided inquiry in the current study: the Value-Belief-Norm Model of Environmentalism (VBN) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The study employed a quantitative survey methodology, combining contemporary data measuring knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours with archived data collected by program staff, reflecting frequency of environmentally responsible behaviour. Further, a single qualitative item was included for which students provided “the first three words that [came] to mind when [they] think of the word nature.” Terms provided before and after the program were compared for differences in theme to detect subtle or underlying changes. Quantitative results indicated no significant change in student knowledge or attitudes through the outdoor environmental education program. However, a significant change in self-reported behaviour was identified from both the contemporary and archived data. This agreement in positive findings across the two data sets, collected using different measures and different participants, lends evidence of the program’s ability to encourage self-reported pro-environmental behaviour. Further, qualitative results showed some change in students’ perceptions of nature through the program, providing direction for future research. These findings suggest that this particular outdoor education program was successful in encouraging students’ self-reported environmentally responsible behaviour. This change was achieved without significant change in knowledge or environmental attitudes, suggesting that external factors not measured in this study might have played a role in affecting behaviour.

Reconceptualising International Intervention: Statebuilding, ‘Organic Processes’ and the Limits of Causal Knowledge

This article examines the transformation in the conceptual understanding of international intervention over the last two decades. It suggests that this conceptual shift can be usefully interrogated through its imbrication within broader epistemological shifts highlighting the limits of causal knowledge claims: heuristically framed in this article in terms of the shift from policy interventions within the problematic of causation to those concerned with the management of effects. In this shift, the means and mechanisms of international intervention have been transformed, no longer focused on the universal application of Western causal knowledge through policy interventions but rather on the effects of specific and unique local and organic processes at work in societies themselves. The focus on effects takes the conceptualisation of intervention out of the traditional terminological lexicon of International Relations theory and instead recasts problems in increasingly organicised ways, suggesting that artificial or hubristic attempts at socio-political intervention should be excluded or minimised.

Territorial administrative reorganization as a strategy for optimizing the structure of local government

Through the tough economic and social situation and the lack of values that has been experienced in recent years, local governments especially in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain have been forced to strongly consider the structure and size of their public sector. Despite some initiative to reduce the number of municipalities and provinces, little substantive progress has been made in improving the management of the local public Administration during this crisis. In this study a territorial administrative reorganization is proposed as a strategy to optimize the structure of local government, analyzing the Spanish situation in general, and an autonomous community in particular.

Ocean sprawl: challenges and opportunities for biodiversity management in a changing world.

The last few decades have seen rapid proliferation of hard artificial structures (e.g., energy infra-structure, aquaculture, coastal defences) in the marine environment: ocean sprawl. The replacement of natural, often sedimentary, substrata with hard substrata has altered the distribution of species, particularly non-indigenous species, and can facilitate the assisted migration of native species at risk from climate change. This has been likened to urbanization as a driver of global biotic homogenization in the marine environment—the process by which species invasions and extinctions increase the genetic, taxonomic, or functional similarity of communities at local, regional, and global scales. Ecological engineering research showed that small-scale engineering interventions can have a significant positive effect on the biodiversity of artificial structures, promoting more diverse and resilient communities on local scales. This knowledge can be applied to the design of multifunctional structures that provide a range of ecosystem services. In coastal regions, hybrid designs can work with nature to combine hard and soft approaches to coastal defence in a more environmentally sensitive manner. The challenge now is to manage ocean sprawl with the dual goal of supporting human populations and activities, simultaneously strengthening ecosystem resilience using an ecosystem- based approach.

Of Marx and Makers: an Historical Perspective on Generative Justice

In Marxist frameworks “distributive justice” depends on extracting value through a centralized state. Many new social movements—peer to peer economy, maker activism, community agriculture, queer ecology, etc.—take the opposite approach, keeping value in its unalienated form and allowing it to freely circulate from the bottom up. Unlike Marxism, there is no general theory for bottom-up, unalienated value circulation. This paper examines the concept of “generative justice” through an historical contrast between Marx’s writings and the indigenous cultures that he drew upon. Marx erroneously concluded that while indigenous cultures had unalienated forms of production, only centralized value extraction could allow the productivity needed for a high quality of life. To the contrary, indigenous cultures now provide a robust model for the “gift economy” that underpins open source technological production, agroecology, and restorative approaches to civil rights. Expanding Marx’s concept of unalienated labor value to include unalienated ecological (nonhuman) value, as well as the domain of freedom in speech, sexual orientation, spirituality and other forms of “expressive” value, we arrive at an historically informed perspective for generative justice. 

Garden Cities: A flawed model for Ecological Urbanism?

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Garden City model has been a predominant theory emerging from Ecological Urbanism. In his book Howard observed the disastrous effects of rapid urbanization and as a response, proposed the Garden City. Although Howard’s proposal was first published in the late 1800’s, the clear imbalance that Howard aimed to address is still prevalent in the UK today. Each year, the UK wastes nearly 15 million tons of food, despite this an estimated 500,000 people in the UK go without sufficient access to food. While the urban population is rapidly increasing and cities are becoming hubs of economic activity, producing wealth and improving education and access to markets, it is within these cities that the imbalance is most evident, with a significant proportion of the world’s population with unmet needs living in urban areas. Despite Howard’s model being a response to 17th century London, many still consider the Garden City model to be an effective solution for the 21st century. In his book, Howard details the metrics required for the design of a Garden City. This paper will discuss how, by using this methodology and comparing it with more recent studies by Cornell University and Matthew Wheeland (Pure Energies); it is possible to test the validity of Howard’s proposal to establish whether the Garden City model is a viable solution to the increasing pressures of urbanization.
This paper outlines how the analysis of Howard’s proposal has shown the model to be flawed, incapable of producing enough food to sustain the proposed 32,000 population, with a capacity to produce only 23% of the food required to meet the current average UK consumption rate. Beyond the limited productive capacity of Howard’s model, the design itself does little to increase local resilience or the ecological base. This paper will also discuss how a greater understanding of the
Land-share requirements enables the design of a new urban model, building on the foundations initially laid out by Howard and combining a number of other theories to produce a more resilient and efficient model of ecological urbanism.

Stable oxygen isotopes in irish oaks: potential for reconstructing local and regional climate

The long Irish oak tree-ring chronology, developed for archaeological dating and radiocarbon calibration, is the longest of any in northwest maritime Europe, spanning most of the Holocene (7,272 years). Unfortunately, the rings widths do not carry a strong climate signal and the record hasnever been satisfactorily applied for dendroclimatic reconstruction. This pilot study explores the potential for extracting a climate signal from Irish oaks by comparing the stable oxygen isotopes ratios from 10 oak tree cores (Quercus robur and Quercus petraea L.) collected across the Armagh region of NE Ireland with local and regional climatic and stable isotopic data. Statistically significant correlations between isotope ratios and the amount of summer precipitation (r = -0.44) point to the isotopic composition of summer rainfall as the dominant signal. Including the Armagh data into an extended regional oxygen isotope series did not reduce the correlation coefficient with regional precipitation (r = -0.68, p < 0.01). Correlations of this magnitude in dendro-hydroclimatology are typically restricted to trees growing at their ecological limits. This research suggests that there is considerable potential for including living trees and ancient timbers from Ireland into a regional composite to reconstruct the summer hydroclimate of Britain and Ireland.

A Formação nas Organizações: motivação para transferir os conteúdos formativos para o local de trabalho

A presente investigação pretendeu avaliar a motivação para transferir os conteúdos adquiridos em formação para o local de trabalho. A formação nas empresas assume atualmente uma especial importância, cumprindo o duplo objetivo de contribuir para o desenvolvimento pessoal e profissional dos colaboradores e, consequentemente, contribuir para a melhoria do desempenho organizacional. Partindo da escolha de uma empresa nacional do setor privado, ligada ao ramo metalúrgico, e de uma amostra de 83 colaboradores, utilizou-se como instrumento um questionário de auto-resposta. O questionário aplicado permitiu avaliar a perceção de utilidade da formação, as crenças de auto eficácia dos colaboradores, a vinculação afetiva à empresa, e a motivação para transferir os conteúdos formativos. Os principais resultados indicaram que a motivação para transferir está relacionada com a perceção de utilidade e com a vinculação afetiva. Por outro lado, os resultados não permitem afirmar com convicção que uma das condições essenciais para se sentir motivado a transferir a formação, resida nas crenças de auto eficácia. A perceção de utilidade da formação surgiu como variável que mediou a relação entre a motivação para transferir e as crenças de auto eficácia, não se tendo verificado de forma clara, o mesmo resultado para a vinculação afetiva. Os resultados obtidos nesta investigação permitem desenvolver estratégias relevantes para os responsáveis da formação nas empresas que pretendam aumentar o grau de motivação para transferir a formação para o local de trabalho. / The present research was intended to evaluate the motivation to transfer the knowledge acquired in training to the workplace. The training in the companies takes nowadays a special importance, fulfilling the double goal of contributing to the collaborators personal and professional development and, consequently, of contributing to the improvement of the organizational performance. Starting from the choice of a national private company, from the metallurgic sector, and from a sample of 83 collaborators, a self-answer quiz was used. The applied quiz allowed to evaluate the perceived usefulness of the training, the beliefs of self-efficacy of the collaborators, the affective commitment with the company, and the motivation to transfer the training knowledge. The main results indicated that the motivation to transfer is related with the perceived usefulness and with the affective commitment. On the other side, the results do not allow to declare convincingly that one of the essential conditions to feel motivated to transfer the training is founded on the beliefs of self-efficacy. The perceived usefulness of the training surged as a variable that mediated the relation between motivation to transfer and the beliefs of self-efficacy, situation that was not verified in a clear way in the case of affective commitment. The results obtained on this research allow the development of relevant strategies for the responsible for the training on the companies that want to increase the motivation degree to transfer the training to the workplace.

Creating an Empire: Local Political Change at Angamuco, Michoacan, Mexico

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Nature-based solutions to climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban areas: perspectives on indicators, knowledge gaps, barriers, and opportunities for action

Nature-based solutions promoting green and blue urban areas have significant potential to decrease the vulnerability and enhance the resilience of cities in light of climatic change. They can thereby help to mitigate climate change-induced impacts and serve as proactive adaptation options for municipalities. We explore the various contexts in which nature-based solutions are relevant for climate mitigation and adaptation in urban areas, identify indicators for assessing the effectiveness of nature-based solutions and related knowledge gaps. In addition, we explore existing barriers and potential opportunities for increasing the scale and effectiveness of nature-based solution implementation. The results were derived from an inter- and transdisciplinary workshop with experts from research, municipalities, policy, and society. As an outcome of the workshop discussions and building on existing evidence, we highlight three main needs for future science and policy agendas when dealing with nature-based solutions: (i) produce stronger evidence on nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation and raise awareness by increasing implementation; (ii) adapt for governance challenges in implementing nature-based solutions by using reflexive approaches, which implies bringing together new networks of society, nature-based solution ambassadors, and practitioners; (iii) consider socio-environmental justice and social cohesion when implementing nature-based solutions by using integrated governance approaches that take into account an integrative and transdisciplinary participation of diverse actors. Taking these needs into account, nature-based solutions can serve as climate mitigation and adaptation tools that produce additional cobenefits for societal well-being, thereby serving as strong investment options for sustainable urban planning.

Global environmental change: local perceptions, understandings, and explanations

Global environmental change (GEC) is an increasingly discussed phenomenon in the scientific literature as evidence of its presence and impacts continues to grow. Yet, while the documentation of GEC is becoming more readily available, local perceptions of GEC— particularly in small-scale societies—and preferences about how to deal with it, are still largely overlooked. Local knowledge and perceptions of GEC are important in that agents make decisions (including on natural resource management) based on individual perceptions. We carried out a systematic literature review that aims to provide an exhaustive state-of-the-art of the degree to and manner in which the study of local perceptions of change are being addressed in GEC research. We reviewed 126 articles found in peer-reviewed journals (between 1998 and 2014) that address local perceptions of GEC. We used three particular lenses of analysis that are known to influence local perceptions, namely (i) cognition, (ii) culture and knowledge, and (iii) possibilities for adaptation.We present our findings on the geographical distribution of the current research, the most common changes reported, perceived drivers and impacts of change, and local explanations and evaluations of change and impacts. Overall, we found the studies to be geographically biased, lacking methodological reporting, mostly theory based with little primary data, and lacking of indepth analysis of the psychological and ontological influences in perception and implications for adaptation. We provide recommendations for future GEC research and propose the development of a “meta-language” around adaptation, perception, and mediation to encourage a greater appreciation and understanding of the diversity around these phenomena across multiple scales, and improved codesign and facilitation of locally relevant adaptation and mitigation strategies.