The impact of shifting cultivation in the forestry ecosystems of timor-leste

Every year thousands of hectares of forest are destructed as a result of the practice of swidden agriculture, shifting cultivation or "slush and burn" causing changes in forest ecosystems. In Timor- Leste shifting cultivation is still practiced nowadays as a form of subsistence agriculture. Swidden agriculture is characterized by slash and burn clearing, by a rotation of fields rather than of crops, and by short periods of cropping (1-3 years) alternating with long fallow periods. Based on the characterization of shifting cultivation in two Sucos of Bobonaro district, a reflection is made on the impact of this practice in the sustainable development of forest ecosystems of Timor- Leste. Primary data collection was performed using a questionnaire survey of farmers practicing shifting cultivation. The questionnaire characterized shifting cultivation, and asked farmers’ opinion on slash and burning of forest areas and on the importance of forests. According to the results obtained, in most situations the existing vegetation before the slash was composed of dense forest, the slash is made by the family group, the majority of farmers have been doing the “slush and burn” for more than ten years and the size of the plots where slash is made is less than 2 hectares. The materials resulting from the slash are used for firewood, building materials and fencing. The burning of vegetable residues is done before planting and soil preparation and sowing is done with a lever. Land and forest, despite having an individual use, have a tenure regime of ownership and access in which its nature of common pool good prevails. Every year thousands of hectares of forest are destructed as a result of the practice of swidden agriculture, shifting cultivation or "slush and burn" causing changes in forest ecosystems. In Timor-Leste shifting cultivation is still practiced nowadays as a form of subsistence agriculture

Human Rights as a Tool for Sustainable Development

In poor as much as in rich countries there is a fear that environmentally sustainable development might be contradictory to development in general and equitable development in particular. There could be indeed a contradiction between environmental and social sustainability, too much care for the environment eventually leading to forgetting about the people. The purpose of this paper is to explore institutional principles and tools that allow the conciliation between environmental and social sustainability. In this respect we will present human rights based political economy as an institutional tool of this sort. We will show how a human-rights based political economy could at the same time respect ecological sustainability and social equity. One of the reasons for that consists in the fact that within a human-rights based political economy, welfare is not the result of economic growth, as within traditional political economy, but of justice. The main objectives of development will be attained, therefore, not through growth but through redistribution of resources or of access to resources. In this paper more specific aspects will be presented by examining the human right to work and the human right to water. Regarding the human right to work the main aspect which will be stressed is that within a human rights frame full employment becomes disconnected from both growth and labour market deregulation. It will be shown that traditional policies not only do not solve unemployment but are also not environmentally and socially sustainable. The only policy that is not contradictory with either human rights and de-growth is work sharing by decreasing the length of the work day. When properly enforced this policy has, indeed, historically shown to be the only one that has created jobs. Regarding the right to water, the point is that democratic and human rights oriented exploitation and distribution policies of water are both more sustainable and more equitable than those that intend to transform water into a private good as any other and, thus, promote commodification and privatisation of resources. This way of controlling water exploitation and distribution not only may relieve pressure from the resource but also alleviate deprivation of poorer families, conciliating, therefore, environmental and social sustainability.

The Political Economy Of The Human Right To Water

Water being essential to human survival, a political economy directed to satisfying human basic needs, should be especially concerned with the issue of water availability and distribution. Why is there such inequality in its distribution? 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: 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, 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 ability 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 as well as 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. Second, by putting emphasis on the market as the default regulation institution, mainstream economics also hinders the human right to water because on one hand 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, Right to Water, Economic Theory, Market.

Converting Ontologies into DSLs

This paper presents a project whose main objective is to explore the Ontological-based development of Domain Specific Languages (DSL), more precisely, of their underlying Grammar. After reviewing the basic concepts characterizing Ontologies and Domain-Specific Languages, we introduce a tool, Onto2Gra, that takes profit of the knowledge described by the ontology and automatically generates a grammar for a DSL that allows to discourse about the domain described by that ontology. This approach represents a rigorous method to create, in a secure and effective way, a grammar for a new specialized language restricted to a concrete domain. The usual process of creating a grammar from the scratch is, as every creative action, difficult, slow and error prone; so this proposal is, from a Grammar Engineering point of view, of uttermost importance. After the grammar generation phase, the Grammar Engineer can manipulate it to add syntactic sugar to improve the final language quality or even to add semantic actions. The Onto2Gra project is composed of three engines. The main one is OWL2DSL, the component that converts an OWL ontology into an attribute grammar. The two additional modules are Onto2OWL, converts ontologies written in OntoDL (a light-weight DSL to describe ontologies) into standard OWL, and DDesc2OWL, converts domain instances written in the DSL generated by OWL2DSL into the initial OWL ontology

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

How does web 2.0 influence marketing

Currently people have been developing ways to “block” attempts of contact by companies, in order to market their products and services. In the recent decades many techniques have been refined and used to exhaustion, such as call centers, direct sales, promotions and events, among others. All off these attempts to approach the client have resulted in the saturation of the traditional marketing techniques, even existing controversial laws such as “Do Not Call” for telemarketing, anti-spam, web and satellite radio and TiVO in the United States of America; it basically records and removes TV ads from the persons favorite programs. It is then necessary to find new ways of approaching the client, who is also becoming more selective and increasingly concerned with effective management of his time. The exponential development of information technologies has given rise to innovative channels of communication between businesses and customers, and a recent phenomenon that is the case of Web 2.0, which is revolutionizing the dynamic world of business and social relationships. The purpose of the thesis is to explain the concept of Web 2.0, and explain how it is an effective way to communicate with customers, especially in companies that do not have a large advertisement budget. In order to better understand the use of Web 2.0 and its tools, it will be elaborated a case study based on a small and emerging company that portraits this situation, and how it took advantage of Web 2.0 tools to better understand the consumers needs and how should it operate in its own market.Actualmente as pessoas têm vindo a desenvolver maneiras de bloquear as tentativas de contacto por parte das empresas, na tentativa de comercializar seus produtos e serviços. Nas ultimas décadas muitas técnicas foram criadas, aperfeiçoadas e utilizadas até à exaustão, como é o caso de: Call centers, vendas directas, promoções e eventos, entre outros. Todas estas tentativas de aproximação do cliente resultou na saturação das técnicas tradicionais de marketing, tendo mesmo sido criadas controversas leis como o “Do Not Call” para telemarketing, anti-spam, rádio por satélite e Internet, livres de publicidade, e o TiVo nos Estados Unidos da América que grava e remove os anúncios de TV das pessoas programas favoritos. Dada a actual situação é necessário encontrar novas formas de abordar o cliente, que também está se tornando mais selectivo em como despende a sua atenção, e cada vez mais preocupados com a gestão eficaz do seu tempo. O desenvolvimento exponencial das tecnologias da informação deu origem a canais inovadores de comunicação entre empresas e clientes, e um fenómeno recente, que é o caso da Web 2.0, que está a revolucionar de forma dinâmica o mundo de negócios e as relações sociais. O objectivo deste estudo é de explicar o conceito de Web 2.0, e como pode ser uma forma eficaz das empresas comunicarem com os clientes, principalmente com um baixo orçamento para marketing. A fim de melhor compreender o uso da Web 2.0 e suas ferramentas, será elaborado um estudo de caso baseado empresa que retrata esta mesma situação e como utilizou a Web 2.0 para entender melhor as necessidades dos consumidores e como deve operar no mercado

The Inverse Problem of Variational Calculus with Non-holonomic Constraints

nuloWe will discuss some new results for the inverse problem ofVariational Calculus. We will consider problems with functionals given by action forms of order greater than one and subject to non-holonomic constraints