Tropical timber trade policies : what impact will eco-labeling have?

About 20 percent of the total production of tropical timber is traded internationally. But for Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and some countries in West-Central Africa, tropical timber trade accounts for more than 50 percent of production. Although the tropical timber trade has often been blamed for deforestation, the authors find that it contributes much less to deforestation than do poor policies for the production of tropical timber. Lack of tenure rights, short and uncertain logging concessions, low stumpage values, and inadequate monitoring of logging activities are among the major policy failures that help deplete the tropical forests. Trade policies, often identified as an instrument for enforcing environmental objectives internationally, are inefficient instruments for correcting domestic distortions, and in the case of tropical timber trade, may affect the environment perversely. Export and import restrictions ultimately depress the value of an already underpriced resource - the forest. Restrictions on log exports, for example, encourage wasteful processing of logs. Unless sound forest management policies are enforced domestically, the net effect could even be an increase in the rate of deforestation. Import restrictions may have a marginal impact, since trade accounts for less than 20 percent of production and most of the tropical timber is imported in Asia, where such restrictions currently do not exist. Even if import restrictions had a significant impact, it would be in a reduction in value of tropical logs that would make alternative uses of the forest lands more profitable - so the rate of deforestation might not be reduced. Eco-labeling's main strength is its capacity to discriminate (through market signals) in favor of timber produced under sound environmental practices. By contrast, bans and boycotts have an indiscriminate, perverse impact. But if eco-labeling is imposed unilaterally by a subset of countries, its effectiveness will be doubtful. It will lead to trade diversion and potentially perverse environmental results, not to mention an increase in GATT trade disputes. Even if eco-labeling is adopted by all importing countries, there could still be trade diversion in tropical timber products because some consumers may not prefer certified timber, given its higher price. Eco-labeling programs should be designed so that producers see them not as a nontariff barrier but as an instrument for capturing the rents associated with prevailing environmental concerns in the developed world. Consumer education is important to the success of such programs, and eco-labeling programs should be designed accordingly.Environmental Economics&Policies,Forestry,Silviculture,Forests and Forestry,Economic Theory&Research

Is there a commercial case for tropical timber certification?

The authors estimate the potential commercial benefits that tropical timber producing countries could enjoy by adopting timber certification schemes. Such benefits are crucial for encouraging the supply of certified timber. Timber certification is a reality: various countries and organizations have launched initiatives for it. The initial response among producing countries was less than positive, but some have come to realize its potential benefits and have begun to adopt timber certification schemes. Tropical timber trade accounts for only a small fraction of tropical timber production, and most of that trade is concentrated among developing countries in Asia and Japan - markets where demand for certified timber is currently weak. Only a small part of the trade reaches the eco-sensitive markets of Europe and the United States, where there is demand for certified timber. Developing countries can benefit commercially from timber certification in two ways: through the"green premium"(consumers'willingness to pay a premium for certified timber"and by averting losses of market share in the tropical timber market from not having timber certified. Based on surveys, on discussions with nongovernmental organizations, on market participants and analysts, and on estimates of price elasticity, the authors develop a scenario for estimating the potential commercial benefits from adopting timber certification. Under this scenario, benefits would not exceed US$500 million a year (roughly 4 percent of all tropical-timber-related revenues earned by developing countries). Timber certification is not expected to provide significant commercial benefits to developing countries in the near future. But timber certification could provide significant rents to individual firms that develop market niche strategies. And producing countries that pursue certification may enjoy longer-term social, economic, and environmental benefits by adopting the better forest management practices required for timber certification.Environmental Economics&Policies,Silviculture,Agribusiness&Markets,Roads&Highways,Forests and Forestry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Forestry,Silviculture,Agribusiness&Markets,Roads&Highways

Triplectic Quantization of W2 gravity

The role of one loop order corrections in the triplectic quantization is discussed in the case of W2 theory. This model illustrates the presence of anomalies and Wess Zumino terms in this quantization scheme where extended BRST invariance is represented in a completely anticanonical form.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

DRYING STUDY OF EUCALYTPTUS STAIGERIANA LEAVES BY MONITORING THE HUMIDITY OF THE DRYER DISCHARGE

The drying phenomenon can be treated as simultaneous heat and mass transfer in both the light and heavy phases. In the present case, the phenomenons evolution is normally observed through the heating of and moisture removal from the heavy phase. On the other hand, while the material is heating, the light phase is cooling and humidifying. The goal of the present work is to present discharge air humidification curves as a function of the drying time for Eucalyptus staigeriana leaves drying experiments. For the air humidification measurements, a dry bulb thermocouple and relative humidity transducer were installed at both the dryer inlet and outlet. The dryer was linked to a data acquisition system, which recorded the dry bulb temperature and the relative humidity with time. These data were later used to calculate the air moisture content at the dryer inlet and outlet. The data obtained by this methodology are compared with the ones from drying kinetic (moisture content removing of the heavy phase along time), acquired by the evolution of wet material weight through the use of an analytical scale

Looking for a Map?

Bibliography and photographs of a display of government documents from Minnesota State University, Mankato.https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/lib-services-govdoc-display-maps/1000/thumbnail.jp

Utilização do sistema fonte pontual na aplicação de cinco lâminas de irrigação e da fertirrigação em trigo.

Um sistema de irrigacao por aspersao denominado fonte pontual foi utilizado para estudar o efeito da lamina de irrigacao sobre a produtividade de trigo, apresentando bons resultados. O efeito de uma, duas e tres aplicacoes de nitrogenio apos o plantio, via fertirrigacao, e de cinco laminas de irrigacao sobre a produtividade e os fatores de producao do trigo foi testado. O numero de aplicacoes de nitrogenio proporcionou melhoras significativas no peso hectolitrico, no peso de mil graos e na facilidade de colheita, nao apresentando, entretanto, diferenca significativas na produtividade de graos

Efeito da frequência de coleta de adultos da broca-do-rizoma-da-bananeira, em isca tipo 'queijo' , sobre o número de insetos coletados.

Verificar o efeito da frequencia de coleta (diária e semanal) de adultos da broca-do-rizoma-da-bananeira, em isca de pseudocaule tipo 'queijo' sobre o número de insetos coletados.bitstream/CNPAT-2010/9616/1/Ct-111.pd

Relevant Parameters for the Mechanochemical Synthesis of Bimetallic Supported Catalysts

Mechanochemical synthesis for the preparation of bimetallic catalysts is gaining increasing interest, and in recent years, some important milestones have been reached. However, the complexity of mechanochemically prepared bimetallic supported catalysts still leaves many open questions that need a systematic approach to be solved. In this work, we summarize our experience of mechanochemically milling bimetallic catalysts, introducing some key parameters that should be taken into account, particularly the thermal stability and hydrophilicity of precursor salts, and the effect of the milling order, highlighting the differences with wet synthesis methods. Finally, we will provide some suggestions on the application of the design of experiments approach to the rationalization of the milling procedure for the preparation of supported bimetallic catalysts

Mtss1 promotes cell-cell junction assembly and stability through the small GTPase Rac1

Cell-cell junctions are an integral part of epithelia and are often disrupted in cancer cells during epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which is a main driver of metastatic spread. We show here that Metastasis suppressor-1 (Mtss1; Missing in Metastasis, MIM), a member of the IMD-family of proteins, inhibits cell-cell junction disassembly in wound healing or HGF-induced scatter assays by enhancing cell-cell junction strength. Mtss1 not only makes cells more resistant to cell-cell junction disassembly, but also accelerates the kinetics of adherens junction assembly. Mtss1 drives enhanced junction formation specifically by elevating Rac-GTP. Lastly, we show that Mtss1 depletion reduces recruitment of F-actin at cell-cell junctions. We thus propose that Mtss1 promotes Rac1 activation and actin recruitment driving junction maintenance. We suggest that the observed loss of Mtss1 in cancers may compromise junction stability and thus promote EMT and metastasis

Impacts of additional noise on the social interactions of a cooperatively breeding fish

Anthropogenic noise is a global pollutant known to affect the behaviour of individual animals in all taxa studied. However, there has been relatively little experimental testing of the effects of additional noise on social interactions between conspecifics, despite these forming a crucial aspect of daily life for most species. Here we use established paradigms to investigate how white-noise playback affects both group defensive actions against an intruder and associated within-group behaviours in a model fish species, the cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher. Additional noise did not alter defensive behaviour, but did result in changes to within-group behaviour. Both dominant and subordinate females, but not the dominant male, exhibited less affiliation and showed a tendency to produce more submissive displays to groupmates when there was additional noise compared to control conditions. Our experimental results therefore indicate the potential for anthropogenic noise to affect social interactions between conspecifics and that there can be intraspecific variation in the impacts of this global pollutant.Spreadsheet of study results includes four excel tabs, corresponding to each of the main elements of the manuscript: defensive actions against intruders, within-group affiliation displayed, within-group aggression displayed, and within-group submission displayed. DF = dominant female, DM = dominant male, S = subordinate. Funding provided by: European Research CouncilCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781Award Number: 682253To investigate the influence of additional noise on territory defence and associated within-group behaviour, we gave 16 groups of daffodil cichlids (Neolamprologus pulcher) two treatments each in a repeated-measures design: during the simulated territorial intrusion of a rival female, there was playback of either white noise (additional noise) or silence (loudspeaker turned on but not playing any sound, as a control). We video-recorded all trials and scored behaviours using the ethogram from Braga Goncalves et al,. 2020. For each 10-min intrusion period, we scored defensive behaviours for each category of individual (DM, DF, SF) and the total amount received by the intruder. We also scored all affiliation and aggression displayed to other group members by each category of individual during the intrusion period. We examined the effect of additional noise on the total defensive effort against the intruder; we then determined whether the non-significant treatment difference was consistent across all three individual categories or if there were counterbalancing effects between group members. Second, we investigated the effect of additional noise on the overall amount of within-group aggression, affiliation and submission exhibited; we used the sequential Bonferroni correction as there was a separate test for each behaviour. For those behaviours found to be significantly different between treatments (affiliation and submission; see Results), we determined which group members were driving the differences