The role of traditional land use systems in the well-being of rural Timor-Leste

Natural ecosystems and traditional land use systems have an important role in the life and well being of the rural population of Timor-Leste. Our objectives are: 1) to analyse the different functions that natural ecosystems and land use systems supply to the rural populations of Timor-Leste, identifying the goods and services produced and their economic value; 2) to relate the services produced by land use patterns with Timor-Leste rural population well being; and 3) to discuss the impacts of the present situation and to foresee changes on the well being of rural Timor-Leste. This paper is based on a multidisciplinary approach incorporating contributions from several fields of knowledge, and uses documentary sources, field observations and interviews. The land use patterns identified in Timor-Leste are: natural and semi-natural ecosystems, subsistence agriculture, sacred, housing, basic infrastructures and industries and services. These land use patterns produce a set of goods and which are essential for the survival and well-being of Timor-Leste rural communities. Key-words: Timor-Leste, natural ecosystems, land, well being, developmen

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE HUMAN RIGHT TO WATER

A água é essencial à sobrevivência humana. Uma economia política humanizada, isto é dirigida para a satisfação das necessidades básicas, deve preocupar-se com a questão da disponibilidade e distribuição de água. No que diz respeito à satisfação das necessidades básicas, podemos afirmar que é relativamente fácil e barato fornecer água para todos. Porque razão, então existe uma desigualdade na distribuição? Esta desigualdade representa uma violação séria de um direito humano, como será desenvolvido à frente, e não deverá ser tolerada. Este artigo trata do papel que a economia desempenha no desigual exercício do direito humano de acesso à água potável. Este artigo examina como o discurso da economia dominante pode entrar em conflito com os direitos humanos em geral, e o direito à água em particular. No âmbito da teoria económica dominante, a satisfação de necessidades implica a utilização de conceitos como preço, oferta, procura, custos e benefícios, e por conseguinte a questão é capacidade de pagar ou poder de compra. Com os direitos, o assunto é diferente, sendo a questão principal, o critério de acordo com o qual um indivíduo está habilitado a usufruir dos direitos, não podendo por isso ser utilizado o critério do poder de compra. Para a economia é perfeitamente admissível excluir do acesso à água aqueles que não têm capacidade de pagar, violando princípios básicos dos direitos humanos. A economia dominante ao pôr toda a ênfase no mercado como a instituição reguladora, torna invisível o direito humano à água. Por um lado o mercado é ineficiente em atingir uma cobertura universal de água potável e por outro lado o mercado é uma instituição que não presta contas e a satisfação dos direitos humanos precisa por princípio de ser submetido ao controlo democrático. ---------------------------------------------Water being essential to human survival, a humane political economy, in other words a political economy directed to satisfying human basic needs, should be especially concerned with the issue of water availability and distribution. In what the satisfaction of basic needs is concerned, one could fairly safely state that it is relatively easy and cheap to provide access to water to everybody. Why is there such inequality in its distribution then? This inequality represents a serious violation of a human right, as it will be developed in the paper, and, therefore, should not be tolerated. The issue this paper wishes to address concerns the role played by economics in the unequal assertion of every people’s human right to clean water. First of all, what are we talking about when we talk about economics? A rapid overview can identify at least twenty schools of economic thought, from neoclassic to evolutionary, from Marxist to post-Keynesian. If one had to be accurate, a paper on the impact of economics on the human right to water human rights would, then, have to be divided in at least twenty chapters. The sort of economics we will be referring to in this paper results from a considerably narrower point of view, though. Economics, here, will be mainstream economics, the school of thought which dominates not only within the academia, but also within the political cabinets and the media. More specifically, this paper will examine how mainstream economics discourse can be conflictive with human rights in general and the right to water in particular. First of all, within mainstream economic analysis satisfying wants implies the use of concepts like prices, supply and demand, or cost and benefit, and therefore, the issue is capability to pay, in other words purchasing power. With rights, on the other hand, the issue is quite different; the heart of the matter here concerns entitlement, the criteria according to which an individual should qualify to enjoy rights, purchasing power being obviously excluded, and the consequences of the use of such criteria. Therefore it is perfectly admissible for economics to exclude from access to water those that do not have the capability to pay violating the basic principles of human rights. Secondly by putting emphasis on the market as the default regulation institution mainstream economics also hinders the human right to water because on the one hand the market is inefficient in reaching universal coverage of water supply and on the other hand it is an unaccountable institution and human rights purveyors need by principle to be submitted to democratic control.Human rights, Water, Market, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Competitive Advantages as a Complete Mediator Variable in Strategic Resources, Dynamic Capabilities and Performance Relations in the Car Sales Sector

Taking the resource-based view –RBV- and the dynamic capability view –DCV- as an orientation, the main aim of this study is to develop the mediator role that competitive advantages play in the relations between strategic resources, dynamic capabilities and performance. The study takes place in a dynamic and changing sector: the sale of new cars in Portugal. The results show that (a) achieving competitive advantages, which are decisive for business results, depends on the available strategic resources and the generating of dynamic capabilities, (b) in dynamic and changing sectors strategic resources are essential to generate dynamic capabilities, (c) firms must center their attention on, more than results, the generating of sustainable competitive advantages as these act as a mediator variable of the effect of strategic resources and dynamic capabilities on performance. The data scrutiny uses structural equation modeling (SEM) through PLS as the statistical instrument. The sample comprises 89 firms which sell new cars in Portugal

Hierarchical genetic algorithms for composite laminate panels stress optimisation

IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Tokyo, 12-15 October 1999.Genetic algorithms (GAs) have demonstrated to be a powerful technique for solving optimisation problems. In this article, the problem of optimising the number of plies and their stacking sequence in the design of laminated composite panels is considered. This problem has special features that makes it different from traditional problems in which GAs have been applied, which make the problem a multiobjective optimisation one. Symmetry and equilibrium constraints have also been included in the solution. A modification of the canonical GA is needed and a new perspective for solving this problem by using GA techniques is introduced

Hydroelectric power plant management relying on neural networks and expert system integration

The use of Neural Networks (NN) is a novel approach that can help in taking decisions when integrated in a more general system, in particular with expert systems. In this paper, an architecture for the management of hydroelectric power plants is introduced. This relies on monitoring a large number of signals, representing the technical parameters of the real plant. The general architecture is composed of an Expert System and two NN modules: Acoustic Prediction (NNAP) and Predictive Maintenance (NNPM). The NNAP is based on Kohonen Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) Networks in order to distinguish the sounds emitted by electricity-generating machine groups. The NNPM uses an ART-MAP to identify different situations from the plant state variables, in order to prevent future malfunctions. In addition, a special process to generate a complete training set has been designed for the ART-MAP module. This process has been developed to deal with the absence of data about abnormal plant situations, and is based on neural nets trained with the backpropagation algorithm.Publicad

Neural network controller against environment: A coevolutive approach to generalize robot navigation behavior

In this paper, a new coevolutive method, called Uniform Coevolution, is introduced to learn weights of a neural network controller in autonomous robots. An evolutionary strategy is used to learn high-performance reactive behavior for navigation and collisions avoidance. The introduction of coevolutive over evolutionary strategies allows evolving the environment, to learn a general behavior able to solve the problem in different environments. Using a traditional evolutionary strategy method, without coevolution, the learning process obtains a specialized behavior. All the behaviors obtained, with/without coevolution have been tested in a set of environments and the capability of generalization is shown for each learned behavior. A simulator based on a mini-robot Khepera has been used to learn each behavior. The results show that Uniform Coevolution obtains better generalized solutions to examples-based problems.Publicad

An enhanced classifier system for autonomous robot navigation in dynamic environments

In many cases, a real robot application requires the navigation in dynamic environments. The navigation problem involves two main tasks: to avoid obstacles and to reach a goal. Generally, this problem could be faced considering reactions and sequences of actions. For solving the navigation problem a complete controller, including actions and reactions, is needed. Machine learning techniques has been applied to learn these controllers. Classifier Systems (CS) have proven their ability of continuos learning in these domains. However, CS have some problems in reactive systems. In this paper, a modified CS is proposed to overcome these problems. Two special mechanisms are included in the developed CS to allow the learning of both reactions and sequences of actions. The learning process has been divided in two main tasks: first, the discrimination between a predefined set of rules and second, the discovery of new rules to obtain a successful operation in dynamic environments. Different experiments have been carried out using a mini-robot Khepera to find a generalised solution. The results show the ability of the system to continuous learning and adaptation to new situations.Publicad

Neural networks robot controller trained with evolution strategies

Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Washington, DC, 6-9 July 1999.Neural networks (NN) can be used as controllers in autonomous robots. The specific features of the navigation problem in robotics make generation of good training sets for the NN difficult. An evolution strategy (ES) is introduced to learn the weights of the NN instead of the learning method of the network. The ES is used to learn high performance reactive behavior for navigation and collision avoidance. No subjective information about “how to accomplish the task” has been included in the fitness function. The learned behaviors are able to solve the problem in different environments; therefore, the learning process has the proven ability to obtain a specialized behavior. All the behaviors obtained have been tested in a set of environments and the capability of generalization is shown for each learned behavior. A simulator based on the mini-robot, Khepera, has been used to learn each behavior

Uniform coevolution for solving the density classification problem in cellular automata

Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2000). Las Vegas, Nevada (USA), July 8-12 2000.Uniform Coevolution is based on competitive evolution ideas where the solution and example sets are evolving by means of a competition to generate difficult test beds for the solutions in a gradual way. The method has been tested with the density parity problem in cellular automata, where the selected examples can biased the solutions founded. The results show a high value of generality using Uniform coevolution, compared with no Co-evolutive approaches.Publicad