Are we using the most appropriate methodologies to assess the sensitivity of rainforest biodiversity to habitat disturbance?

Accurately assessing how biodiversity responds in the Anthropocene is vital. To do so, a number of indicator taxa are commonly used to monitor human-impacted forests and the subsequent recovery of their biodiversity. This makes monitoring more economically feasible, yet only valuable if the responses observed truly reflect the status of biodiversity. Many challenges exist for getting this monitoring right, including choosing the most effective indicators and ultimately choosing the most appropriate methods to capture trends. We have reason to believe that the methods currently used to assess humanimpacted tropical forest might be misrepresenting trends related to the degree of impact of disturbance to biodiversity and to the value of secondary forests for biodiversity conservation. Using recent case studies that assessed butterflies, we challenge the paradigm that fruit-baited butterfly traps are the best method for assessing human-impacted tropical forests, and that their use solely along the forest floor is underestimating the impacts to biodiversity in tropical forests. We suggest that alternative or additional methods could provide a more representative picture of the overall butterfly biodiversity responses to human-impacted tropical forests and that similar assessments of other groups and methods should be carried out

Financial Innovation Today: Towards Economic Resilience

A new report into the UK’s burgeoning alternative finance industry is calling on the Government to underwrite consumers’ investments in the sector in a bid to encourage wider participation. The UK is the home of Europe’s rapidly-growing “AltFin” movement – encompassing peer-to-peer lending, community share schemes and crowdfunding. Fast becoming a major player in the financial sector, it was valued at £3.2 billion in 2015 – almost five times the 2013 figure. In what is the first independent qualitative evaluation of the sector, Dr Mark Davis from the University of Leeds interviewed companies at the vanguard of the movement to understand their motivations. This report, Financial Innovation Today: Towards Economic Resilience, examines the sector’s role in democratising finance and building economic resilience

¿“Crowdfunding” como finanzas democráticas? Comprender cómo y por qué los inversores del Reino Unido confían en estos mercados [Crowdfunding as democratic finance? Understanding how and why UK investors trust these markets]

Can crowdfunding contribute to the rebalancing of the financial system via democratising investment? This paper begins to respond to this question by establishing how and why investors place trust in these markets. We offer two contributions. First, to theoretical debates on democratic finance; and second, to a more empirical body of cross-disciplinary research into popular investment via a qualitative analysis of 52 original interviews with investors in six UK crowdfunding markets. Our data is taken from a project with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to enhance investor protection in these markets. Using an economic sociology approach, we find that investors: mobilise embedded networks to establish trust in crowdfunding; are motivated by expectations of ‘blended returns’; prefer automated investment tools if they lack experience; and typically invest with funds they have earmarked as being prepared to lose. We conclude that enhanced investor protection is required for crowdfunding to help democratize finance

An option for measuring maternal mortality in developing countries : a survey using community informants

Peer reviewedPublisher PD