Modeling the interplay between land use, bioenergy production and climate change

Land use has become a force of global importance, considering that 34% of the Earth’s ice-free surface was covered by croplands or pastures in 2000. The expected increase in global human population together with eminent climate change and associated search for energy sources other than fossil fuels can, through land-use and land-cover changes (LUCC), increase the pressure on nature’s resources, further degrade ecosystem services, and disrupt other planetary systems of key importance to humanity. This thesis presents four modeling studies on the interplay between LUCC, increased production of biofuels and climate change in four selected world regions. In the first study case two new crop types (sugarcane and jatropha) are parameterized in the LPJ for managed Lands dynamic global vegetation model for calculation of their potential productivity. Country-wide spatial variation in the yields of sugarcane and jatropha incurs into substantially different land requirements to meet the biofuel production targets for 2015 in Brazil and India, depending on the location of plantations. Particularly the average land requirements for jatropha in India are considerably higher than previously estimated. These findings indicate that crop zoning is important to avoid excessive LUCC. In the second study case the LandSHIFT model of land-use and land-cover changes is combined with life cycle assessments to investigate the occurrence and extent of biofuel-driven indirect land-use changes (ILUC) in Brazil by 2020. The results show that Brazilian biofuels can indeed cause considerable ILUC, especially by pushing the rangeland frontier into the Amazonian forests. The carbon debt caused by such ILUC would result in no carbon savings (from using plant-based ethanol and biodiesel instead of fossil fuels) before 44 years for sugarcane ethanol and 246 years for soybean biodiesel. The intensification of livestock grazing could avoid such ILUC. We argue that such an intensification of livestock should be supported by the Brazilian biofuel sector, based on the sector’s own interest in minimizing carbon emissions. In the third study there is the development of a new method for crop allocation in LandSHIFT, as influenced by the occurrence and capacity of specific infrastructure units. The method is exemplarily applied in a first assessment of the potential availability of land for biogas production in Germany. The results indicate that Germany has enough land to fulfill virtually all (90 to 98%) its current biogas plant capacity with only cultivated feedstocks. Biogas plants located in South and Southwestern (North and Northeastern) Germany might face more (less) difficulties to fulfill their capacities with cultivated feedstocks, considering that feedstock transport distance to plants is a crucial issue for biogas production. In the fourth study an adapted version of LandSHIFT is used to assess the impacts of contrasting scenarios of climate change and conservation targets on land use in the Brazilian Amazon. Model results show that severe climate change in some regions by 2050 can shift the deforestation frontier to areas that would experience low levels of human intervention under mild climate change (such as the western Amazon forests or parts of the Cerrado savannas). Halting deforestation of the Amazon and of the Brazilian Cerrado would require either a reduction in the production of meat or an intensification of livestock grazing in the region. Such findings point out the need for an integrated/multicisciplinary plan for adaptation to climate change in the Amazon. The overall conclusions of this thesis are that (i) biofuels must be analyzed and planned carefully in order to effectively reduce carbon emissions; (ii) climate change can have considerable impacts on the location and extent of LUCC; and (iii) intensification of grazing livestock represents a promising venue for minimizing the impacts of future land-use and land-cover changes in Brazil.

Factors affecting farmers’ decisions on utilization of rice straw compost in Northeastern Thailand

Rice straw is used in Northeastern Thailand as an alternative to organic fertilizer for crop production. This enables farmers to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers which leads to a decrease in production costs. In spite of the beneficial effects in agricultural production, rice straw compost cannot be produced in large amounts because the burning of rice straws is a common farming practice. The decisions of farmers who use rice straw compost have been investigated by interviewing 120 households belonging to the members of an organic fertilizer user group using a household questionnaire. The study was conducted to evaluate the factors that affect the use of rice straw compost in Khon Kaen Province in Northeastern Thailand. Results of the logit model showed that the farmers’ education, number of rice straw compost trainings in which the farmer participated, lack of knowledge about technology, insufficient labour and difficulty in making rice straw compost had a significant impact on the farmer’s decision to use rice straw compost. Difficulty in making rice straw compost appeared to be the root cause because the procedure of making rice straw compost is complex and labour intensive. Repeated trainings thus, will have a positive and significant influence on farmers’ adoption of the technology. Training provides more knowledge and will presumably change the perception of the farmers towards new technologies and the awareness of positive effects of rice straw compost utilization.

The Impact of Electricity Sector Privatisation on Employees in Argentina and Brazil

This book investigates country-specific responses to privatisation by examining two of the most important Latin American examples of the 1990s, the Argentine and the Brazilian programmes, and one essential public service sector, electricity. In doing so, it aims to: identify the impact of privatisation on electricity sector employees in Argentina and Brazil during the 1990s; explore how the impact came about; and analyse the reasons for this impact. A multi-dimensional perspective provides a comparative analysis of privatisation processes, regulatory contexts, and results, striving to capture the phenomenon by combining insights from political and economic analysis.

Cultivating the City: Infrastructures of abundance in urban Brazil

Urban agriculture, if it is to become integrated into the city, needs landscape architectural thinking in order to be woven into the larger urban fabric. Thinking at the scale of ecosystems running through a city creates a framework for spatial change; thinking in assemblages of stakeholders and actors creates a framework for social investment and development. These overlapping frameworks are informed and perhaps even defined by the emergent field of landscape democracy. Cultivating the City is a prospective design project seeking to embody landscape democratic principles. The intention is to reclaim the meaning of landscape as the relationship between people and place, both shaping each other. The design in question is a proposed network of urban agriculture typologies in Porto Alegre, Brazil. These hypothetical designs, emphasizing agroforestry with native species, serve as a basis for dialogue between potential stakeholders and as catalysts for future projects. This landscape architecture project sets out to be a mediator in processes of spatial evolution in order to envision just and sustainable urban landscapes.

The work of psychologists in social policy in Brazil

This study verses on the meeting of psychology with the social policy area. The objective is to discuss how psychologists that work in the Basic Health Units and in the Social Assistance Reference Centers experience their daily practices. Using the interview and participant observation methods, we investigated the modes of action of 13 psychologists involved in these service units. The results indicate that because these contexts are adverse to the traditional forms of action, many professionals experience daily strangeness and discomfort, resulting from their encounters with limiting situations of difficult management. Furthermore, we observed practices and experiences that were marked by feelings of compassion, pity, and resentment. We consider, finally, that the encounter between psychology and social policies requires flexibility in traditional acting modes as well as the pursuit of strategies that consider cultural contexts characteristics, avoiding capture, fatigue and saturation process that stifle the worker.

Social participation and protagonism: Reflections fron the Conference of the Rights of Children’s and adolescent in Brazil

This paper examines the children and young people's participation and protagonism rights based on the Conferences on Children and Adolescents Rights' experience in Brazil, based on childhood sociology. Conferences' documents were consulted on the Brazilian government websites. These study findings revealed that young people's participation has increased in the last conferences. However, it is necessary to promote a systematic and genuine participation through democratic relations construction in all development contexts where childrenand adolescent live in order to modify their life and society participative practices.

Behavior analysis in Brazil

La historia del análisis del comportamiento en Brasil comenzó con la visita de Fred S. Keller a la Universidad de São Paulo en 1961, cuando él era un académico de la Fundación Fullbright; en aquella época, Keller presentó los trabajos de Skinner a los psicólogos brasileños. Su primer asistente fue Carolina Martuscelli Bori, en aquel entonces una psicóloga social influenciada por el trabajo de Kurt Lewin. Orientada inicialmente por Keller, Carolina Bori fue la principal fuerza de difusión del análisis del comportamiento en Brasil, comenzando con el curso de psicología en la Universidad de Brasilia, en el cual, durante agosto de 1964, se dictó el primer curso de Análisis Experimental de la Conducta. La mayoría de los analistas del comportamiento de hoy en día fueron directa o indirectamente estudiantes de Carolina Bori. Actualmente varios programas de psicología en el país ofrecen cursos de análisis del comportamiento

Solid waste management in metropolitan areas: barriers and opportunities for intermunicipal arrangements in Brazil

Municipal solid waste issue has acquired a growing importance into urban management discussions, particularly in metropolitan areas. Although metropolitan regions were created for integrating public functions of common interest, it appears that the structures, in general, are limited to planning  activities. In this context, the democratization process occurred in Brazil during 1980’s led to the  strengthening of inter-municipal arrangements of voluntary cooperation, acquiring great expressiveness  in metropolitan areas, responsible for 60% of waste generated in Brazil. However, despite the  consortia emergence as an alternative management of metropolitan territory, its process of setting up and operation is not free of challenges and dilemmas. This paper starts with the hypothesis that  inter-municipal consortia in metropolitan areas have high strength asymmetry and weak regional  identity among municipalities, conditions that tend to create barriers to its concretization. In this  context, this research aim  to develop a comparative study of inter-municipal arrangements for solid  waste management in the metropolitan areas of Curitiba (pr), Belo Horizonte (bh) and Salvador  (ba), by identifying influence degree of regional identity and strength asymmetry in these arrangements. The multiple case study reveals an inverse proportionality relationship between regional  identity and strength asymmetry among the municipalities, deeply influenced by political interinstitutional  arrangement and the metropolitan area in which they are is inserted.

Intra-urban space in Brazil

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Political Reform: unfinished business in Brazil after Lula?

A year away from leaving the presidency, this article analyses Lula government in light of the many corruption scandals that erupted afterwards. These events showed that despite the almost unanimous conclusion of its balance sheet, Lula government leaves a big task ahead: the political reform. Priority of the Workers’ Party during the years 1980 and 1990, and subject of many academic studies, this issue has been abandoned in the 2000s, with the accession to power of Lula Da Silva. This paper evaluates the state-of-the-art on this matter and defends the need for further consideration in light of current events, and in a broader theoretical perspective than the institutional engineering one that prevailed earlier. 

Forms of participatory democracy: an analytical framework based on the experiences of Bolivia, brazil and Colombia

Based on the experiences of Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia, the paper proposes a general analytical framework for participatory mechanisms. The analysis is oriented to detect the incentives in each system and theethics and behavior sustaining them. It investigates about the sustainability of participatory democracy, in the face of tensions with representative democracy. The article presents a theoretical framework built from theseexperiences of institutional design and political practice, and confronts it against the theoretical conceptualizationsof participatory democracy in Bobbio, Sartori, Elster and Nino, among others. In this context, different waysin which those schemes can be inserted in the political systems become apparent, along with the variables thatresult from combining elements of direct, representative and participatory democracy”

World cultural patterns : inequities in higher education and affirmative action in Brazil. 'Los patrones 'world cultural' : inequidades en la educación superior y las acciones afirmativas en Brasil'.

Monográfico con el título: 'Desde la diversidad hacia la desigualdad: ¿destino inexorable de la globalización?'. Resumen basado en el de la publicación

'To get somewhere in life' : marginalized youth people with successful trajectories of education in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. ''Llegar a algún lugar en la vida' : jóvenes marginados con éxito en sus trayectorias de educación en Río Grande del Sur, Brasil'.

Monográfico con el título: 'Desde la diversidad hacia la desigualdad: ¿destino inexorable de la globalización?'. Resumen basado en el de la publicación

The re-urbanization of the city center of Manaus , Brazil - Facing the challenges of informal settlements

Illegal occupation of urban land in Brazil is a widespread phenomenon. Slum dwellers are excluded from the attributes of urban citizenship although they provide the labor force required by low productivity urban services needed by cities. Illegal settlements generate multiple problems for the rest of the city . Its solution is of key relevance to the city in general but also provide an opportunity for the social and economic advancement of slum dwellers. The programs required to attain these results are complex and difficult to implement underscoring the challenges countries will face to attain the Millennium Development Goals of reducing the population living in slums.

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease in hemodialysis patients in southern Brazil

Introduction: Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease is the most common hereditary renal disease in humans. Objective: To examine the prevalence, clinical and laboratory characteristics of patients with polycystic kidneys and relate disease manifestations by gender. Methods: This was an observational and retrospective study. All the medical records of patients with polycystic kidneys who initiated hemodialysis between 1995 and 2012, in four centers that treat patients of the coverage area of the 15th regional health Paraná (Brazil), were analyzed. Results: The study included 48 patients with polycystic kidneys, the primary cause of stage 5 CKD. Disease prevalence was one in 10,912 people. The average age of dialysis initiation was 50.7 years and the follow-up time on dialysis until transplantation (36.5 months) was lower among men. Hypertension was the most frequent diagnosis in 73% of patients, predominantly in women (51.4%). The liver cyst was the most frequent extrarenal manifestations in men (60.0%). The death occurred in 10.4% of patients using hemodialysis, and 60% of men. The class of antihypertensive drug used was that acts on the renin-angiotensin system with higher frequency of use among women (53.3%). The post-dialysis urea was significantly higher in men. Conclusion: The prevalence of the disease is low among hemodialysis patients in southern Brazil. The differences observed between genders, with the exception of the post-dialysis urea, were not significant. The findings are different from those reported in North America and Europe.