What is the Role of Universities in High-tech Economic Development? The Case of Portland, Oregon, and Washington, DC

This paper focuses on two regions in the United States that have emerged as high-technology regions in the absence of major research universities. The case of Portland's Silicon Forest is compared to Washington, DC. In both regions, high-technology economies grew because of industrial restructuring processes. The paper argues that in both regions other actors—such as firms and government laboratories—spurred the development of knowledge-based economies and catalysed the engagement of higher education institutions in economic development. The paper confirms and advances the triple helix model of university–government–industry relationships and posits that future studies have to examine degrees of university-region engagement.

Knowledge for sustainable development in the Tajik Pamir Mountains

The paper presents the results of a multi-year baseline study project in which 10 sectors ranging from agriculture to natural hazards were assessed by a transdisciplinary Swiss–Tajik research team. This knowledge base was enhanced in a development strategy workshop that brought together stakeholders from the local to the international levels. The methodology applied was found appropriate to initiate a broad reflection and negotiation process among various stakeholder groups, leading to a joint identification of possible measures to be taken. Knowledge—and its enhancement through the involvement of all stakeholder levels— appeared to be an effective carrier of innovation and changes of attitudes, thus containing the potential to effectively contribute to sustainable development in marginalized and resource-poor mountain areas.

Irrigation development in Eritrea: potentials and constraints: Proceedings of the workshop of AEAS and SLM Programme Eritrea

Development of irrigation, which is of crucial importance in Eritrea, is perceived by many as the main technique for improving the precarious food security situation in this Sahelian country in the Horn of Africa. The present publication presents the outcome of a nationwide workshop held in 2003, which brought together administrators, scientists, and members of public development agencies and NGOs. These workshop participants presented experiences, lessons learnt, and ideas about how to move forward in relation to development of irrigation in Eritrea. Specifically, the publication deals with the following broad themes, lessons learnt, and experiences in Eritrea: · spate irrigation systems and measurement of performance, as well as experience with modernisation of spate irrigation systems in Eritrea · small-scale irrigation systems and their potentials and pitfalls, including development of low-cost micro irrigation · climate and irrigation, including rainfall forecasts · socio-economic aspects of irrigation, including gender questions, institutional requirements, and irrigation and livelihoods The publication contains an extensive summary in the Tigrinya language, in order to facilitate access to the key findings by local non-English-speaking stakeholders in irrigation development.

Amadir: Livelihood and Resource Management in an Eritrean Highland Community: A development baseline

This publication presents the results of a study conducted in 2003 in Amadir, a village in the Central Highlands of Eritrea. It gives an overview of the natural resource base, livelihoods, farm management, and institutions that are important to the local community. The report concludes with a chapter on options for development as discussed with the village community and local administration. This report supports Eritrea's efforts to promote rural development. It contains an extensive summary in Tigrinya, as well as a large-scale satellite image and a large-scale land use map of the study area. The appendix presents a summary of the methods used in the study.

Endogenous Development as a Social Learning Process

The author perceives endogenous development as a social learning process, which is constructed by all actors involved. To enhance social learning, a methodology called Autodidactic Learning for sustainability is used, in which the perception of both local actors and external actors are highlighted. Reflecting on differences, conflicts and common interests leads to highly motivated debate and shared reflection, which is almost identical with social learning, and flattens the usual hierarchy between local and external actors. The article shows that the energies generated through collective learning can trigger important technical, social and political changes, which take into account the multiple dimensions of local reality.

Between Conservation and Development: Concretizing the First World Natural Heritage Site in the Alps Through Participatory Processes

This article presents an empirical interdisciplinary study of an extensive participatory process that was carried out in 2004 in the recently established World Natural Heritage Site “Jungfrau–Aletsch– Bietschhorn” in the Swiss Alps. The study used qualitative and quantitative empirical methods of social science to address the question of success factors in establishing and concretizing a World Heritage Site. Current international scientific and policy debates agree that the most important success factors in defining pathways for nature conservation and protection are: linking development and conservation, involving multiple stakeholders, and applying participatory approaches. The results of the study indicate that linking development and conservation implies the need to extend the reach of negotiations beyond the area of conservation, and to develop both a regional perspective and a focus on sustainable regional development. In the process, regional and local stakeholders are less concerned with defining sustainability goals than elaborating strategies of sustainability, in particular defining the respective roles of the core sectors of society and economy. However, the study results also show that conflicting visions and perceptions of nature and landscape are important underlying currents in such negotiations. They differ significantly between various stakeholder categories and are an important cause of conflicts occurring at various stages of the participatory process.

Fostering sustainable urban development in Nakuru, Kenya Rift Valley

The town of Nakuru—Kenya's fourth largest town—lies in a unique setting in the Great Rift Valley. Recent developments on the Menengai Crater, the Mau Escarpment, and the Bahati Highlands exemplify the impacts of poorly planned urban growth on mountain ecosystems. The Nakuru Local Urban Observatory (LUO) project was initiated by the Municipal Council of Nakuru in January 2003, in collaboration with the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Berne and the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG), and with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The project aims to provide a framework for sustainable urban development practices by building technical skills and improving participation by local stakeholders in decision-making processes. The potentials of information technology (IT) are being tapped to provide up-to-date information to decision-makers and democratize access to information, in order to improve public participation. The overall objective is to find ways of achieving better urban management in order to mitigate non-sustainable development trends in the town and its surroundings.

Diploma: Facilitación del desarrollo local y la gestión sostenible de los recursos naturales: Módulo I: Apoyando Innovaciones Locales

Pilot workshop of the instrument "Promoting Local Innovations", realized in Tungasuca, Peru, on 19-24 April, 2004.

Holocene vegetation development in the catchment of Sagistalsee (1935 m asl), a small lake in the Swiss Alps

Pollen and plant macrofossils were analysed at Sägistalsee (1935 m asl), a small lake near timber-line in the Swiss Northern Alps. Open forests with Pinus cembra and Abies alba covered the catchment during the early Holocene (9000–6300 cal. BP), suggesting subcontinental climate conditions. After the expansion of Picea abies between 6300 and 6000 cal. BP the subalpine forest became denser and the tree-line reached its maximum elevation at around 2260 m asl. Charcoal fragments in the macrofossil record indicate the beginning of Late-Neolithic human impact at ca. 4400 cal. BP, followed by a extensive deforestation and lowering of the forest-limit in the catchment of Sägistalsee at 3700 cal. BP (Bronze Age). Continuous human activity, combined with a more oceanic climate during the later Holocene, led to the local extinction of Pinus cembra and Abies alba and favoured the mass expansion of Picea and Alnus viridis in the subalpine area of the Northern Alps. The periods before 6300 and after 3700 cal. BP are characterised by high erosion activity in the lake's catchment, whereas during the phase of dense Picea-Pinus cembra-Abies forests (6300–3700 cal. BP) soils were stable and sediment-accumulation rates in the lake were low. Due to decreasing land-use at higher altitudes during the Roman occupation and the Migration period, forests spread beween ca. 2000 and 1500 cal. BP, before human impact increased again in the early Middle Ages. Recent reforestation due to land-use changes in the 20th century is recorded in the top sediments. Pollen-inferred July temperature and annual precipitation suggest a trend to cooler and more oceanic climate starting at about 5500 cal. BP.

The open cut: Mining, transnational corporations and local populations

The rapid expansion of the mineral and metal mining sector in the past decade was accompanied by an increase in social conflicts. What are the impacts of large-scale mining operations? What are the strategies used by transnational corporations to gain access to underground resources and legitimize their activities? And how do local and indigenous communities confronted with mining react to, negotiate with and resist these activities? This book covers 13 case studies of copper, gold, uranium and other mining operations, situated in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Switzerland. With an extensive introduction to the subject and a systematic comparison across mining operations in different phases of development and social contexts, it serves as a primer and reference book for activists, students and researchers alike.

Development and characterization of chemical cochleostomy in the Guinea pig

OBJECTIVES Creation of an atraumatic, hearing-preservation cochleostomy is integral to the future of minimally invasive inner ear surgery. The goal of this study was to develop and characterize a novel chemical approach to cochleostomy. STUDY DESIGN Prospective animal study. SETTING Laboratory. METHODS Experimental animal study in which phosphoric acid gel (PAG) was used to decalcify the otic capsule in 25 Hartley guinea pigs. Five animals in each of 5 surgical groups were studied: (1) mechanically opening the auditory bulla alone, (2) PAG thinning of the basal turn otic capsule, leaving endosteum covered by a layer of bone, (3) micro-pick manual cochleostomy, (4) PAG chemical cochleostomy, exposing the endosteum, and (5) combined PAG/micro-pick cochleostomy, with initial chemical thinning and subsequent manual removal of the last osseous layer. Preoperative and postoperative auditory brainstem responses and otoacoustic emissions were obtained at 2, 6, 10, and 16 kHz. Hematoxylin and eosin-stained paraffin sections were compared. RESULTS Surgical and histologic findings confirmed that application of PAG provided reproducible local bone removal, and cochlear access was enabled. Statistically significant auditory threshold shifts were observed at 10 kHz (P = .048) and 16 kHz (P = .0013) following cochleostomy using PAG alone (group 4) and at 16 kHz using manual cochleostomy (group 3) (P = .028). No statistically significant, postoperative auditory threshold shifts were observed in the other groups, including PAG thinning with manual completion cochleostomy (group 5). CONCLUSION Hearing preservation cochleostomy can be performed in an animal model using a novel technique of thinning cochlear bone with PAG and manually completing cochleostomy.

Contextualizing local-scale point sample data using global-scale spatial datasets: Lessons learnt from the analysis of large-scale land acquisitions

This paper examines how the geospatial accuracy of samples and sample size influence conclusions from geospatial analyses. It does so using the example of a study investigating the global phenomenon of large-scale land acquisitions and the socio-ecological characteristics of the areas they target. First, we analysed land deal datasets of varying geospatial accuracy and varying sizes and compared the results in terms of land cover, population density, and two indicators for agricultural potential: yield gap and availability of uncultivated land that is suitable for rainfed agriculture. We found that an increase in geospatial accuracy led to a substantial and greater change in conclusions about the land cover types targeted than an increase in sample size, suggesting that using a sample of higher geospatial accuracy does more to improve results than using a larger sample. The same finding emerged for population density, yield gap, and the availability of uncultivated land suitable for rainfed agriculture. Furthermore, the statistical median proved to be more consistent than the mean when comparing the descriptive statistics for datasets of different geospatial accuracy. Second, we analysed effects of geospatial accuracy on estimations regarding the potential for advancing agricultural development in target contexts. Our results show that the target contexts of the majority of land deals in our sample whose geolocation is known with a high level of accuracy contain smaller amounts of suitable, but uncultivated land than regional- and national-scale averages suggest. Consequently, the more target contexts vary within a country, the more detailed the spatial scale of analysis has to be in order to draw meaningful conclusions about the phenomena under investigation. We therefore advise against using national-scale statistics to approximate or characterize phenomena that have a local-scale impact, particularly if key indicators vary widely within a country.

Making the most of world natural heritage - linking conservation and sustainable regional development?

Today, more than 1000 World Heritage (WH) sites are inscribed on UNESCO’s list, 228 of which are natural and mixed heritage sites. Once focused primarily on conservation, World Natural Heritage (WNH) sites are increasingly seen as promoters of sustainable regional development. Sustainability-oriented regions, it is assumed, are safeguards for conservation and positively influence local conservation goals. Within UNESCO, discussions regarding the integration of sustainable development in official policies have recently gained momentum. In this article, we investigate the extent to which WNH sites trigger sustainability-oriented approaches in surrounding regions, and how such approaches in turn influence the WNH site and its protection. The results of the study are on the one hand based on a global survey with more than 60% of the WNH sites listed in 2011, and on the other hand on a complementary literature research. Furthermore, we analyze the policy framework necessary to support WNH sites in this endeavor. We conclude that a regional approach to WNH management is necessary to ensure that WNH sites support sustainable regional development effectively, but that the core focus of WNH status must remain environmental conservation.

Present-day vegetation and the Holocene and recent development of Egelsee-Moor, Salzburg province, Austria

This paper describes the present-day vegetation, stratigraphy and developmental history of the mire of Egelsee-Moor (Salzburg, Austria; 45°45′N, 13°8.5′E, 700 m a.s.l., 15 ha in area) since the early Late Glacial on the basis of 4 transects with 14 trial borings across the peatland. We present a vegetation map of the mire, a longitudinal section through the peat body based on six cores showing the peat types, overview macrofossil diagrams of six cores showing the local mire development and two pollen diagrams covering the Late Glacial and Holocene. The chronology of the diagrams depends on biostratigraphic dating for the Late Glacial and early Holocene and radiocarbon dating for the remaining Holocene. The northern part of the mire originated through terrestrialisation of nutrient-rich, mostly inundated fen and the southern part through paludification of wet soils. The very small lake of today was a reservoir until recently for providing water-power for timber rafting (‘Holztrift’). The mire vegetation today is a complex of forested parts (mainly planted Pinus sylvestris and Thuja occidentalis, but also spontaneous Picea abies, Betula pubescens and Frangula alnus), reed-lands (Phragmites) and litter meadows (Molinietum, Schoenetum, etc.). The central part has hummock-hollow complexes with regionally rare species of transitional mires (Drosera anglica, D. intermedia, Lycopodiella inundata, Scorpidium scorpioides, Sphagnum platyphyllum, S. subnitens). The results indicate that some of the mid-Holocene sediments may have been removed by the timber-rafting practices, and that water extraction from the hydrological catchment since 1967 has resulted in a partial shift of transitional mire to ombrotrophic bog. The latter potentially endangers the regionally rare species and was used as an argument to stop further water extraction.