Targeting deforestation rates in climate change policy: a "Preservation Pathway" approach

We present a new methodological approach to incorporating deforestation within the international climate change negotiating regime. The approach, called "Preservation Pathway" combines the desire for forest preservation with the need to reduce emissions associated with forest loss by focusing on the relative rate of change of forest cover as the criteria by which countries gain access to trading preserved forest carbon stocks. This approach avoids the technically challenging task of quantifying historical or future deforestation emission baselines. Rather, it places emphasis on improving quantification of contemporary stocks and the relative decline in deforestation rates necessary to preserve those stocks. This approach places emphasis on the complete emissions trajectory necessary to attain an agreed-upon preserved forest and as such, meets both forest conservation and climate goals simultaneously

A Rational Deconstruction of Landin's SECD Machine with the J Operator

Landin's SECD machine was the first abstract machine for applicative expressions, i.e., functional programs. Landin's J operator was the first control operator for functional languages, and was specified by an extension of the SECD machine. We present a family of evaluation functions corresponding to this extension of the SECD machine, using a series of elementary transformations (transformation into continu-ation-passing style (CPS) and defunctionalization, chiefly) and their left inverses (transformation into direct style and refunctionalization). To this end, we modernize the SECD machine into a bisimilar one that operates in lockstep with the original one but that (1) does not use a data stack and (2) uses the caller-save rather than the callee-save convention for environments. We also identify that the dump component of the SECD machine is managed in a callee-save way. The caller-save counterpart of the modernized SECD machine precisely corresponds to Thielecke's double-barrelled continuations and to Felleisen's encoding of J in terms of call/cc. We then variously characterize the J operator in terms of CPS and in terms of delimited-control operators in the CPS hierarchy. As a byproduct, we also present several reduction semantics for applicative expressions with the J operator, based on Curien's original calculus of explicit substitutions. These reduction semantics mechanically correspond to the modernized versions of the SECD machine and to the best of our knowledge, they provide the first syntactic theories of applicative expressions with the J operator

Towards structured state threading in prolog

It is very often the case that programs require passing, maintaining, and updating some notion of state. Prolog programs often implement such stateful computations by carrying this state in predicate arguments (or, alternatively, in the internal datábase). This often causes code obfuscation, complicates code reuse, introduces dependencies on the data model, and is prone to incorrect propagation of the state information among predicate calis. To partly solve these problems, we introduce contexts as a consistent mechanism for specifying implicit arguments and its threading in clause goals. We propose a notation and an interpretation for contexts, ranging from single goals to complete programs, give an intuitive semantics, and describe a translation into standard Prolog. We also discuss a particular light-weight implementation in Ciao Prolog, and we show the usefulness of our proposals on a series of examples and applications, including code directiy using contexts, DCGs, extended DCGs, logical loops and other custom control structures

Into the Woods: Toward a Material Poetics of the Tropical Forest in Philippine Literature

This study considers how the tropical forest as a material and discursive space mediates the ways in which history is imagined in Philippine literary texts and literary production. Mobilizing ideas from new materialism, material poetics, and tropicality, the paper looks at generative moments from indigenous and revolutionary literature—two broad traditions whose conditions of possibility are inextricably linked with the materiality of the tropical forest and thus inevitably evince the structuring force of such nonhuman agencies and subjectivities. By disclosing how the “more than human” is constitutive of history and historical subject formation, it seeks to foreground the agency of Philippine forests in actively and collaboratively contesting the catastrophic violence of capital and state-making on people and the natural world

Niche construction as a theoretical tool in the ethnographic analysis from a naturalistic perspective

In this work, we intend to move discussion forward on the heuristic role of the concept of niche construction for the review of the human/environment dichotomy by considering the interaction between biotic and abiotic components inspecific environments. We will examine an ethnographic case study which explores the perception of the landscape and its use by different human groups (Mbyá-Guaraní and descendants of European colonos) that inhabit a territory withcommon biophysical features: The Paranaense forest in Northeastern Argentina. According to these narratives, the consideration of the monte is closely related to the modes of interaction with the natural environment resulting from theirdaily subsistence practices. This comparative study shows how the monte has been differentially built and valued in the course of this interaction.Fil: Crivos, Marta Alicia. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Laboratorio de Investigaciones en Etnografía Aplicada; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Lamas, Susana Gisela. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Área Antropológica; ArgentinaFil: Dressino, Vicente. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Área Antropológica; Argentin

Singer’s Notion of Speciesism: A Case for Animal Rights in Ejagham Culture

This work is an examination of Peter Singer’s notion of speciesism: case for animal rights in Ejagham culture. It primarily deals with an evaluation of the phenomenon of animal rights from the standpoint of Peter Singer’s notion of speciesism. Singer’s notion of speciesism deals with the moral obligation humans owe to animals as against the bias or prejudice that humanity has greater moral worth than non-human animals. Most opponents of speciesism contend that, animals are not members of the moral community as such humans have no moral obligation to them. Contrary to this view, proponents of speciesism argue that animals are capable of suffering and should be considered morally. Thus, the emphasis here is that just like many societies of the world, the Ejagham people are guilty of speciesism. Among the several ways by which speciesism is practiced, this work identifies hunting, deforestation, bush burning and fishing as ways by which the Ejagham people are guilty. Using the tool of critical analysis, evaluation and prescription, this work submits that animals have interest, as such, should be granted rights

Ecological resources within Advaita Vedanta

The world, in which we live, stands at a precipice. Ecological disasters now threaten the very existence of human civilization. The so called shallow\u27 environmental initiatives that continue to dominate the political and social landscape have proved ineffective in dealing with this problem. It is crucial that all of humanity actively embrace radical change in regards to how we go about our lives. No where is this more apparent than in the Indian subcontinent. Two radical ecologies that have emerged from the West, Deep Ecology and Social Ecology, offer a vision as to the nature of that change. This document examines Advaita Vedanta, the dominant form of Hinduism, in order to identify those aspects of the religion that facilitate radical ecological change among believers. Activists working in the subcontinent can then utilize these aspects of Advaita to engage the Indian population regarding ecological matters in a Hindu way