Nature and landscape sustainability in Portuguese rural areas: Which role for farming external benefits valorisation?

Traditional farming systems are declining rapidly in Portugal. These labour intensive and low productivity systems are incompatible with depopulation and ageing of rural areas. This lack of socio-economic sustainability endangers nature and landscape conservation. Agri-environmental measures, applied in European Union since 1994, can be seen as potential answer to that problem in the Portuguese case. But to be effective, these measures need to be part of an integrated strategy directed to mitigate depopulation. The NGOs and the official organisations related to nature and landscape conservation are aware of that and acknowledge it in the National Strategy for Nature and Biodiversity Conservation. This decline in the farming external benefits supply happens simultaneously with the increasing of its demand. General public, of all ages and socio-economic strata, wants rural nature and landscape conservation for use and nonuse purposes. Contingent Valuation studies conducted in the North of Portugal (Santos, 1997; Madureira, 2001) show a positive willingness to pay of visitors and general public to assure traditional agrarian landscape conservation. To preserve the rural cultural heritage is the main reason presented by the public to stand for landscape maintenance. Official data on land use and demographic trends, data on touristic demand for rural areas and empirical evidence on public preferences for rural nature and landscape attributes are used to witness these different directions in supply and demand for farming external benefits. A closer look to this divergence is taken for the case of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro. This Region contains various typical landscapes where farmer’s action shaped nature in a singular way. This feature attracts many tourists and visitants, which number is expected to grow, specially for Douro vineyards classified as Humanity Patrimony. But all of these landscapes are, to a more or less extent, risking being abandon or restructured to allow mechanisation. Afforestation it is also becoming an alternative pattern in soil occupation at the Region. Thus, this Region exemplifies very well the social and political choices that come up in the context presented in this communication: (1) Which landscapes to preserve? How much of it? And (2) How to do it? Use Beneficiary Pays Principle or Provider Gets based mechanisms? The first questions are mainly social issues, making evident the importance of getting information on public preferences for related political decisions. The second group asks for political choices, where the main challenge is to define and implement solutions capable of tuning in societal choices with local population and economic agents aspirations and resources. Without these solutions traditional landscape will disappear. Some face that as inevitability. But should it be so? The general public seems to disagree with that. And increasing touristic demand indicates opportunities for local development through farming external benefits valorisation. Bringing evidence and discussion on these questions is the main purpose of this communication.

Can Healthier Food Demand be Linked to Farming Systems’ Sustainability? The Case of the Mediterranean Diet

Promoting healthier diets is strategic to solve the global societal challenge of excessive and unhealthy calorie intake that causes obesity and overweight and is responsible for chronic diseases that burden healthcare systems. The relationship between food and personal health is well established and in recent years it has originated a number of dietary recommendations from the World Health Organisation (WHO) focused on encouraging healthier diets. The environmental impact of food intake and of particular diets is a growing research area. However, neither researchnor public policies, in particular, have been able so far to establish a link between promoting healthier diets and their impact on enhancing environmentally healthier farming systems and the sustainability of rural landscapes. This paper addresses this gap by presenting a multidisciplinary literature review which combines evidence from nutrition and health sciences with that from environmental, agrarian and sustainability studies on the impacts of foods and dietary patterns on the environment, ecosystems and rural landscape. This integrate d review,complemented with data analysis, highlights the Mediterranean diet as a healthier dietary pattern whose promotion could be beneficial to recover or maintain the sustainability of Mediterranean rural landscape. Hence, the second part of the paper focus on discussing the role of public policies in enabling the link between enhancing healthier diets and healthier farming systems in order to sustain rural landscapes since these play a key role in the sustainability of Mediterranean rural areas

Evidence on how urban gardens help citizens and cities to enhance sustainable development. Review and bibliometric analysis

This paper offers a comprehensive review on a bibliometric analysis of the published research on the most recent generation of urban gardens. Urban gardens have been part of the cities ever since; however, the present paper focus on the latest wave of this type of garden, that has been triggered by individual bottom-up initiatives driven by sustainability-related motivations, which have an impact on cities’ sustainable development. Its aim is to deliver an overview of the published scientific literature and to comprehensively review the evidence it provides on the role of urban gardens in Sustainable Development. A bibliometric analysis has been carried out using the Vosviewer software and searching the Web of Science database for ‘urban gardens’, ‘community gardens’ and ‘allotments’ as keywords. A narrow selection of the most co-cited publications on urban gardens pointed to four major strands of research grouped into four clusters. The first cluster (‘Citizens’) groups evidence on urban gardens and ‘People, lifestyle and sense of community’. Citizens are found to be major triggers of urban gardens initiatives, driven by ‘motivations, purposes and benefits’ that are explored by a second strand of literature captured by the second cluster, the ‘Drivers’ cluster. A third group of publications addresses urban gardens in the context of the sustainable development of cities. The ‘Cities’ cluster shows how urban gardens contribute to urban sustainability as well as some aspects that can hinder it, namely not being acknowledged by local public policies and urban planners, while being neglected by urban planning policies framework. Finally, the fourth cluster (‘Soil’) refers to sustainability shortcomings of urban gardens resulting from their being situated in vacant land that is only available due to soil contamination, which is related with its lack of institutional recognition. We were able to conclude the studies conducted are directly related to sustainable development and there are direct and necessary relationships between the three pillars and the literature on urban gardens that has been published in recent years. Besides, little importance has been given to this whole urban garden issue, not only because most of the studies reviewed in this work are case studies, but also because there is still much economic pressure affecting the sustainability pyramid.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

IL NETWORKING COME STRUMENTO MULTI SCOPO PER LE ORGANIZZAZIONI INNOVATIVE NELLE AREE RURALI

This paper builds on the findings of a survey to the innovative organizations located in Portuguese rural areas. This survey has been underlined and applied in the context of the project RUR@L INOV. The paper has two goals: to explore how networking is used by rural-based organizations and, second, to discuss how networking could be promoted by public policy to boost collaborative innovation. The evidence presented and discussed indicates that networking is used by rural-based innovators as a multi-purposed tool including the establishment of networks to obtain scale/scope effects and/or access local, mostly intangible, resources of rural areas. However, conventional innovation networks, usually led by RD units or top-associations don’t appear as a significant resource for most of the innovators. Probably, due to the organizations smallness, the high qualification of innovation leaders, together with their entrepreneurial attitude, these innovators search for knowledge and other resources by their own means and initiative. Nevertheless, this entrepreneurial attitude towards knowledge, information and skills demand could be shared by other, both existing organizations and new-entrants in the rural economies, through new networking models led by the innovators. DOI: http://dx.medra.org/10.19254/LaborEst.11.0

Protesting or justifying? A latent class model for contingent valuation with attitudinal data

This article develops a latent class model for estimating willingness-to-pay for public goods using simultaneously contingent valuation (CV) and attitudinal data capturing protest attitudes related to the lack of trust in public institutions providing those goods. A measure of the social cost associated with protest responses and the consequent loss in potential contributions for providing the public good is proposed. The presence of potential justification biases is further considered, that is, the possibility that for psychological reasons the response to the CV question affects the answers to the attitudinal questions. The results from our empirical application suggest that psychological factors should not be ignored in CV estimation for policy purposes, allowing for a correct identification of protest responses

Networking as Multi-Purposed Tool for Innovative Organizations in Rural Areas

Abstract. This paper builds on the findings of a survey to the innovative organizations located in Portuguese rural areas. This survey has been underlined and applied in the context of the project RUR@L INOV. The paper has two goals: to explore how networking is used by rural-based organizations and, second, to discuss how networking could be promoted by public policy to boost collaborative innovation. The evidence presented and discussed indicates that networking is used by rural-based innovators as a multipurposed tool including the establishment of networks to obtain scale/scope effects and/or access local, mostly intangible, resources of rural areas. However, conventional innovation networks, usually led by R&D units or top-associations don't appear as a significant resource for most of the innovators. Probably, due to the organizations smallness, the high qualification of innovation leaders, together with their entrepreneurial attitude, these innovators search for knowledge and other resources by their own means and initiative. Nevertheless, this entrepreneurial attitude towards knowledge, information and skills demand could be shared by other, both existing organizations and new-entrants in the rural economies, through new networking models led by the innovators

Execução fiscal: doutrina e jurisprudência para utilização profissional

Divulgação dos SUMÁRIOS das obras recentemente incorporadas ao acervo da Biblioteca Ministro Oscar Saraiva do STJ. Em respeito à Lei de Direitos Autorais, não disponibilizamos a obra na íntegra.Localização na estante: 336.2.029.9(81)(094) Anot. M183e 3.ed.Coordenado por: Leonardo Garcia, Alessandro Dantas e Roberval Rocha

O Comportamento do Consumidor Adolescente em Relação à Escolha da IES sob a Ótica da Teoria do Comportamento Planejado

Atualmente, tem sido observada a proliferação das instituições de Ensino Superior que vêem uma oportunidade de negócio na crescente demanda por capacitação e formação profissional. Dessa maneira, a pesquisa que deu origem a este artigo se propôs a estudar elementos que efetivamente têm determinado o comportamento do consumidor adolescente em relação à sua maior ou menor aceitação diante das Instituições de Ensino Superior (IES) às vistas da Teoria do Comportamento Planejado (Theory of Planned Behavior TPB) elaborada por Ajzen e Fishbein (1985). A metodologia utilizada consistiu em uma survey e os dados foram analisados com o auxílio dos softwares SPSS e AMOS 5.0. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que a intenção de um adolescente em realizar a escolha de sua faculdade, tomando-se a cidade de Belo Horizonte como referência, pode ser mensurada através dos construtos Atitude em Relação ao Comportamento e Controle Comportamental Percebido. No entanto, o construto Norma Subjetiva, ou seja, as influências sociais, não teriam impacto significativo como preditoras do comportamento estudado. Desta forma, os resultados encontrados foram contrários aos pressupostos da TPB

Indoor air quality and atopic sensitization in primary schools: A follow-up study

Background: The onset and exacerbation of allergic diseases and asthma have been associated with poorindoor air quality (IAQ) inside classrooms.Objective: The aim was to investigate how IAQ changed in primary schools after applying indoor air qualityrecommendations, and to explore how these changes influenced allergic sensitization on children.Methods: Total volatile organic compounds, PM2.5, PM10, CO2, CO, temperature and relative humidity inthe indoor and outdoor air of 20 primary schools were measured in 2010–2012. The school staff receivedinstructions on how to improve IAQ in accordance with the SINPHONIE guidelines. Atopy status wasassessed in children attending the participating classrooms by skin prick tests and exhaled nitric oxide.A follow-up sampling campaign was performed in 2014–2015 in the same schools.Results: Indoor PM2.5and PM10concentrations were approximately 40% lower in the follow-up mea-surements (p < 0.05). There were no significant differences regarding outdoor PM concentrations.Nevertheless, PM levels from the follow-up campaign still exceeded the reference value established byPortuguese legislation. Moreover, there were no significant differences in atopic prevalence and FENOvalues between the campaigns.Conclusion: These findings suggest that adoption of the recommendations based on the SINPHONIE guide-lines was particularly successful in reducing PM2.5and PM10in primary schools of Porto. Nevertheless,the schools failed to reduce the levels of other IAQ pollutants, as well as the prevalence of atopic disease.This work was financed by the HEBE project (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000010), and by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia through the ARIA project (PTDC/DTP-SAP/1522/2012, FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028709) and through the scholarships SFRH/BD/108605/2015, SFRH/BD/112269/2015 and SFRH/BPD/105100/2014.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evaluation of environmental actions by local citizens – a choice modeling application

Little is known about citizens’ judgment of nature conservation actions financed by public funds. The present work contributes to this topic with empirical evidence coming from a Choice Modeling (CM) study designed in an innovative mode. Using the participatory budget format, a CM exercise elicited respondents’ choice between the allocation of public funds for nature conservation actions versus other actions (e.g. social or economic interventions). The case study comprises an EU-LIFE project managed by a Portuguese municipality. Results highlight the importance of awareness of and accessibility to environmental goods, as those that are more willing to pay use the area for leisure activities and have a greater knowledge about it. In addition, we suggest that CM can be used as a tool to uncover citizens’ preferences regarding public budget allocation which can contribute to a democratization of decision making at this level