53,932 research outputs found

    Sustainability and Well-Being: The Perception of Younger Generations and Their Expectations

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    The paper aims at analyzing the level of knowledge and the perception of the concepts of sustainability and well-being of high school students in Tuscany. It is an explorative study carried out during specific events held in high schools with the support of the teachers; during the events, students were asked to fill a questionnaire designed to elicit their relation with these topics as well as the level of involvement of their families. The results provide an interesting starting point for a debate about what the expectations of younger generations are and what we can do to match them. The debate moves from the assessment of the importance of sustainability and well-being indicators and the relevance of perceived threats. Moreover, the results put the role of institutions (and in particular that of public schools) under scrutiny to develop the level of awareness and to promote knowledge transfer

    The Analysis of Existing Experience for the Ethnobotanical Information System

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    Ethnobotanical researches reflect the conventional learning of a region. Over the previous decade, medical plants which used for healing indigenous people has become a significant notion among the people and impacted improvement of scientific and ethnobotanical knowledge and investigations of eliminating health problems. A public database has been based on data assembled from various verifiable sources, including journals, travel records, and treatises on therapeutic plants, composed by explorers, botanists, doctors, researchers who went to the nations during the most recent three centuries. In addition, ethnobotanical data depicted in chronicled natural accumulations and in Ancient and Medieval writings from the inquired district have been incorporated into the database. The databases have to be sufficiently adaptable to illustrate a valuable tool for analysts who need to store and analyze present and past ethnobotanical data from the researched location. The ethnobotanical researches are improved in Azerbaijan day by day. The database is used for informing people about some national plants which are growing in the different region of Azerbaijan. The ethnobotanical databases from different countries are analyzed in this article.There are used some special methods for comparing the differences among these databases as data mining and text mining. As a first step the suitable databases are gathered for our investigation, then are defined the best information systems that are used in many countries\u27 biologists and scientists and the end is observed advantages and disadvantages of all existing ethnobotanical databases which we researched. The features of information systems are evaluated. The results demonstrated each of databases has its very own quality, but none has turned a standard form for universal research. The reason is very basic: none of these databases enable specialists to include their own information. There is also illustrated sample structure, main tables and key components of the ethnobotanical database.The obtained results, while a few ethnobotanical databases existing, none are satisfactory answers for worldwide work, and none enable analysts to include their very own information. There is a need brought together all essential properties of existing databases, and creating a free database that encourages ethnobotanical research. Due to the rise and quick improvement in the field of data advances, it has now turned out to be conceivable to digitize, oversee and make ethnobotanical information accessible to a more extensive gathering of people

    Quality of Life in Europe: Empirical evidence

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    This report is one of the outputs resulting from Workpackage 4, "Social and professional integration" of the WALQING project, SSH-CT-2009-244597 (www.walqing.eu).

    Small enterprise growth and the rural investment climate : evidence from Tanzania

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    This paper analyzes characteristics of nonfarm enterprises, their employment growth patterns, and constraints in doing business in rural Tanzania. Using unique survey data, the authors describe a low-return sector struggling to compete in a difficult business environment. However, about one-third of rural enterprises are growing fast. Most enterprises engage in agricultural trade. Due to a rapidly growing agricultural sector in recent years, limiting demand-side constraints, rural enterprise constraints in Tanzania mainly operate from the supply side. This suggests that, in particular, access to finance, road infrastructure, and rural cell phone communication is correlated with employment growth. A major finding is that subjective and objective measurements of business constraints are broadly comparable. The authors discuss a number of factors that would help to unleash the full potential of private sector-led growth in rural areas. The findings show that marginal improvements in the rural investment climate matter for growth.Access to Finance,Rural Poverty Reduction,Microfinance,Banks&Banking Reform,

    Monitoring land use changes using geo-information : possibilities, methods and adapted techniques

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    Monitoring land use with geographical databases is widely used in decision-making. This report presents the possibilities, methods and adapted techniques using geo-information in monitoring land use changes. The municipality of Soest was chosen as study area and three national land use databases, viz. Top10Vector, CBS land use statistics and LGN, were used. The restrictions of geo-information for monitoring land use changes are indicated. New methods and adapted techniques improve the monitoring result considerably. Providers of geo-information, however, should coordinate on update frequencies, semantic content and spatial resolution to allow better possibilities of monitoring land use by combining data sets

    Determination of yield and erosion damage functions using subjectively elicited data: application to smallholder tea in Sri Lanka

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    Tea has been Sri Lanka’s major export earner for several decades. However, soil erosion on tea‐producing land has had considerable on‐site and off‐site effects. This study quantifies soil erosion impacts for smallholder tea farms in Sri Lanka by estimating a yield damage function and an erosion damage function using a subjective elicitation technique. The Mitscherlich‐Spillman type of function was found to yield acceptable results. The study indicates that high rates of soil erosion require earlier adoption of soil conservation measures than do low rates of erosion. Sensitivity analysis shows the optimum year to change to a conservation practice is very sensitive to the discount rate but less sensitive to the cost of production and price of tea.Crop Production/Industries,

    Small Enterprise Growth and the Rural Investment Climate: Evidence from Tanzania

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    This paper analyzes characteristics of nonfarm enterprises, their employment growth patterns, and constraints in doing business in rural Tanzania. Using unique survey data, the we describe a low-return sector struggling to compete in a challenging business environment. However, about one-third of rural enterprises are growing fast. Most enterprises engage in agricultural trade. Due to a rapidly growing agricultural sector in recent years, limiting demand-side constraints, rural enterprise constraints in Tanzania mainly operate from the supply side, suggesting that in particular access to finance, road infrastructure, and rural cell phone communication is associated with employment growth. A major finding is that subjective and objective measurements of business constraints are broadly comparable. We discuss a number of factors that would help to unleash the full potential of private sector-led growth in rural areas. Marginal improvements in the rural investment climate matter for growth.Labor markets; rural investment climate; enterprise growth; Tanzania

    Degradation of water resources in rural Burkina Faso: drivers, local perceptions and solutions.

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    Burkina Faso reformed its water management institutions and adopted integrated water resources management (IWRM) for more than two decades, yet the country still suffers from weak institutions and ineffective implementation of water management reforms. The key institutional question is: “How can IWRM reforms be adapted to increase effectiveness and sustainability of water management, and improve livelihoods of rural populations through increased participation of local stakeholders?” A key practical issue related to this bigger institutional question is to understand the barriers to adoption of good land and water management measures by riparian farmers and other land/water users, and the mechanisms to induce behavioral change among these users. Knowledge gaps exist in understanding the local perceptions and preferences of alternative management measures, and the incentive mechanisms to induce behavioral change. The aim of this study, which was part of a 3-year project entitled ‘Participatory planning for more inclusive and sustainable water management in rural Burkina Faso’, was to understand the perceptions, preferences and willingness of farmers and other land/water users to adopt environmentally friendly land and water management measures. The study also examined potential mechanisms that could induce riparian economic actors to adopt such measures
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