Integrating mitigation and adaptation in climate and land use policies in Brazil: a policy document analysis

This paper investigates climate policy integration and coherence in land use policies in Brazil. Unlike other policy analyses a key aim is to assess ‘internal policy coherence’ in the climate change domain, or the extent to which positive and negative interactions between mitigation and adaptation are taken into account in policy formulation. The paper is based on a systematic content analysis of major federal level climate change and land use policies. The results indicate a stronger focus on climate change mitigation compared to adaptation in all land uses. Integrated approaches that consider mutually supportive mitigation and adaptation actions are called for in key climate change policies, but so far such linkages remain largely unexplored in sectoral policies. While some progress in this regard occurred in the agricultural sector, this has not translated into actual policy actions that are of use to small-scale producers. In the forest domain the focus remains almost exclusively on climate change mitigation. Three main recommendations are drawn. First, more knowledge about locally specific climate change impacts, resilience, capacity and measures for climate change adaptation is needed in order to increase the opportunities to pursue mutually beneficial approaches to climate change mitigation, adaptation and development, in particular in the forestry sector. Second, policy makers need to address more explicitly potential trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation in both policy formulation and implementation. Third, policy action on how to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes and avoid trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation needs to be operationalised into concrete policy objectives within sectoral policies and into practices that apply not just to agriculture and livestock systems, but to forested landscapes as well

Social Forestry - Why and for Whom? a Comparison of Policies in Vietnam and Indonesia

Community forestry or social forestry (henceforth referred collectively as SF) programs have become new modes of forest management empowering local managers and hence, allowing integration of diverse local practices and support of local livelihoods. Implementation of these initiatives, however, face multiple challenges. State-prescribed community programs, for example, will remain isolated efforts if changes in the overall economic and social governance frameworks, including the devolution of rights to local users is lacking. Financial sustainability of these measures remains often uncertain and equity issues inherent to groups and communities formed for SF, can be exacerbated. In this article, we pose the question: Whose interests do SF policies serve? The effectiveness of SF would depend on the motivations and aims for a decentralization of forest governance to the community. In order to understand the underlying motivations behind the governments' push for SF, we examine national policies in Vietnam and Indonesia, changes in their policies over time and the shift in discourses influencing how SF has evolved. Vietnam and Indonesia are at different sides of the spectrum in democratic ambitions and forest abundance, and present an intriguing comparison in the recent regional push towards SF in Southeast Asia. We discuss the different interpretations of SF in these two countries and how SF programs are implemented. Our results show that governments, influenced by global discourse, are attempting to regulate SF through formal definitions and regulations. Communities on the other hand, might resist by adopting, adapting or rejecting formal schemes. In this tension, SF, in general adopted to serve the interest of local people, in practice SF has not fulfilled its promise

Thermal expansion in small metal clusters and its impact on the electric polarizability

The thermal expansion coefficients of $\mathrm{Na}_{N}$ clusters with $8 \le N \le 40$ and $\mathrm{Al}_{7}$, $\mathrm{Al}_{13}^-$ and $\mathrm{Al}_{14}^-$ are obtained from {\it ab initio} Born-Oppenheimer LDA molecular dynamics. Thermal expansion of small metal clusters is considerably larger than that in the bulk and size-dependent. We demonstrate that the average static electric dipole polarizability of Na clusters depends linearly on the mean interatomic distance and only to a minor extent on the detailed ionic configuration when the overall shape of the electron density is enforced by electronic shell effects. The polarizability is thus a sensitive indicator for thermal expansion. We show that taking this effect into account brings theoretical and experimental polarizabilities into quantitative agreement.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, one table. Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. References 10 and 23 update

Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities as a Means to Maintain Entrepreneurial Talent in Corporations

This paper considers how to retain the right talent to support corporate entrepreneurial interests such as internal corporate ventures by taking a new look at why individuals leave corporations and become entrepreneurs. We sought to first examine why entrepreneurs leave. The job satisfaction model tests the popular belief that individuals quit due to dissatisfaction. This is compared to the person-environment (P-E) fit model that theorizes individuals are pushed away and pulled into environments that present a better fit. In all, 715 nascent entrepreneurs were compared with 399 employees by regression and graphic analyses. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we found that for these entrepreneurs, dissatisfaction does not precede the entrepreneurial exodus from established companies. Rather, the perceptions of their new venture’s competitive certainty and financial certainty pull them into new business ventures. Implications and suggestions for the managers are discussed

Thinking about growth : a cognitive mapping approach to understanding small business development

School of Managemen

Legitimacy in REDD+ governance in Indonesia

This paper addresses the question of legitimacy in REDD+ governance in Indonesia. It develops a legitimacy framework that builds on elements of Scharpf (J Eur Pub Policy 4(1):18–36, 1997) input and output legitimacy concept and the political economy lens described by Brockhaus and Angelsen (Analysing REDD+: Challenges and choices, CIFOR, Bogor, 2012). Using data collected through key informant interviews and focus groups, we identify and explore stakeholder perceptions of legitimacy. The analysis reveals a complex interplay between input and output legitimacy, finding that state, non-state and hybrid actors perceive output legitimacy (i.e. project outcomes) as highly dependent on the level of input legitimacy achieved during the governance process. Non-state actors perceive proxies for input legitimacy, such as participation and inclusion of local people, as goals in themselves. In the main, they perceive inclusion to be integral to the empowerment of local people. They perceive output legitimacy as less important because of the intangibility of REDD+ outcomes at this stage in the process. The findings also highlight the challenges associated with measuring the legitimacy of REDD+ governance in Indonesia

How to Educate Entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship education has two purposes: To improve students’ entrepreneurial skills and to provide impetus to those suited to entrepreneurship while discouraging the rest. While entrepreneurship education helps students to make a vocational decision its effects may conflict for those not suited to entrepreneurship. This study shows that vocational and the skill formation effects of entrepreneurship education can be identified empirically by drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior. This is embedded in a structural equation model which we estimate and test using a robust 2SLS estimator. We find that the attitudinal factors posited by the Theory of Planned Behavior are positively correlated with students’ entrepreneurial intentions. While conflicting effects of vocational and skill directed course content are observed in some individuals, overall these types of content are complements. This finding contradicts previous results in the literature. We reconcile the conflicting findings and discuss implications for the design of entrepreneurship courses