scholarly journals Popular and Solidarity Economy: Policies and Realities in the Local Context—The Case of the Agricultural Productive Associations of El Valle, Ecuador

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 13469
Author(s):  
Gliceria Gómez-Ceballos ◽  
Juan Pablo Vázquez-Loaiza ◽  
Dora Priscilla Herrera-Torres ◽  
Ana Julia Vega-Luna
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Solidarity Economy ◽  
Ancestral Knowledge ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Associative Potential

The popular and solidarity economy (EPS) emerges as an alternative approach to poverty aligned with the principles of sustainable development; in this sense, some countries in the region have adopted policies for its growth and development, among them Ecuador. The experience of a rural community was shown; the objective of the study was to identify the factors that hinder the achievement of better efficiency indexes, regarding the implementation of policies at the local level, with respect to rural productive associations. The case of the agricultural productive associations located in the parish of El Valle, Cuenca, Ecuador, was studied. The type of research was mixed: quantitative to support the information extracted from the instruments applied and derive the pertinent analysis and qualitative to collect primary information from the actors involved in the study. We used the action research model through the use of surveys, interviews and focus groups. The key contribution of this work was to making visible and understanding the needs of the rural communities of the sector from their development perspectives, respecting their ancestral knowledge and articulating from the academy the private–public action for the generation of policies for governance, effective application of democracy and promotion of the technical and associative potential of the agroecological productive units. The results show regularities in terms of their socioeconomic situation, their mode of action and the impact caused on their productive dynamics by the atomized decisions of local actors in the exercise of governance. These fail to articulate the implementation of policies at the territorial level to the detriment of their effectiveness and efficiency and, therefore, do not bring about substantial changes in their levels of dependence and dynamics of productive activity—diagnostic components that will be used for the formulation of joint multilevel policies.

scholarly journals Local Knowledge about Ecosystem Services Provided by Trees in Coffee Agroforestry Practices in Northwest Vietnam

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 486
Author(s):  
Mai Phuong Nguyen ◽  
Philippe Vaast ◽  
Tim Pagella ◽  
Fergus Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Tree Species ◽  
Market Access ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Coffee Agroforestry ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Agroforestry Practices

In recent decades in northwest Vietnam, Arabica coffee has been grown on sloping land in intensive, full sun monocultures that are not sustainable in the long term and have negative environmental impacts. There is an urgent need to reverse this negative trend by promoting good agricultural practices, including agroforestry, to prevent further deforestation and soil erosion on slopes. A survey of 124 farmers from three indigenous groups was conducted in northwest Vietnam to document coffee agroforestry practices and the ecosystem services associated with different tree species used in them. Trees were ranked according to the main ecosystem services and disservices considered to be locally relevant by rural communities. Our results show that tree species richness in agroforestry plots was much higher for coffee compared to non-coffee plots, including those with annual crops and tree plantations. Most farmers were aware of the benefits of trees for soil improvement, shelter (from wind and frost), and the provision of shade and mulch. In contrast, farmers had limited knowledge of the impact of trees on coffee quality and other interactions amongst trees and coffee. Farmers ranked the leguminous tree species Leucaena leucocephala as the best for incorporating in coffee plots because of the services it provides to coffee. Nonetheless, the farmers’ selection of tree species to combine with coffee was highly influenced by economic benefits provided, especially by intercropped fruit trees, which was influenced by market access, determined by the proximity of farms to a main road. The findings from this research will help local extension institutions and farmers select appropriate tree species that suit the local context and that match household needs and constraints, thereby facilitating the transition to a more sustainable and climate-smart coffee production practice.

scholarly journals Skellig Centre for Research and Innovation - Learning Connections 2019 Conference

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Gascoigne ◽  
◽  
Clíodhna O’Callaghan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Rural Community ◽  
Local Level ◽  
County Council ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Satellite Campus ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Level Institution ◽  
The Impact

Skellig Centre for Research & Innovation (Skellig CRI) is a unique partnership between Kerry County Council, University College Cork and South Kerry Development Partnership focused on the regeneration of Cahersiveen on the Skellig Coast in County Kerry, Ireland. This town faces extensive and long-term challenges demographically, economically and socially. These challenges are impacting on the identity and sense of viability of the area (Kerry County Council, 2015) The objective of Skellig CRI is to jointly establish a higher education satellite campus being an incubation hub for research, innovation and entrepreneurialism based in Cahersiveen, County Kerry. It is a space that fosters collaboration, community building, and a higher education research spirit. This Centre promotes local level collaboration with national and international research communities, emulating in a local context the impact of a third level institution on a rural community.

Border Permeability And Drivers Of Cross-Border Cooperation In The Turkish And Eu Border Region

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cigdem Varol ◽  
Emrah Söylemez
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Dynamic Feature ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
National Border ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross Border Cooperation

<p>With the impact of globalization, increasing flows of social, economic and political relations have begun to redefine the state borders which causes the rising of new border identities. By this redefinition process, European Union (EU)'s external wall forming the boundaries with the neighbourhood countries have also begun to be rebuilt at local and regional level. Throughout this process, new frontier identities are formed with a degree of permeability where the state’s security policies act as the prior issue in the international relations.</p><p> </p><p>Border permeability, that contains grey values varying from closeness to full openness, defines the degree of permeability according to the size, shape and direction of the flows. Dynamic feature of the flows converts border space into a subject of continuous social, economic and political movement. In such places, actors leading the flows appear as the basic elements of permeability and they can be described as economic, political and socio-cultural agents. At the edge of supranational and national border, actors use networks, which are connected to both local and regional levels, in order to build up cross-border cooperation in different aspects. In this context, border regions transform into a space, where local actors develop methods to overcome the restrictiveness of constraints for the flows among the supranational and the national borders.</p><p> </p><p>This paper aims to evaluate the permeability between EU supranational border and Turkish national border and to define the new cross-border cooperation formed by the social, economic and political flows of the actors. In this context, the permeability and the new border identity will be assessed through three type of administrative body (supranational, national EU and national non-EU) by using the national and local level data supported by EU cross-border programmes and by in-depth interviews conducted at various actors including national institutions, local organizations and NGOs in Turkey.</p>

scholarly journals Using Human Rights for Development: a Fiji Case Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mary Llewellyn-Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Development ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Local Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Development Institutions ◽  
Legal Accountability ◽  
Donor Agencies ◽  
The Impact

<p>Over the past decade there has been a marked shift towards human rights in the policy of multilateral development institutions, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and government donor agencies. 'Rights-based' development - in which development and poverty alleviation is viewed through a human rights lens - has become the language of choice among the international development community. As their proponents argue, rights-based approaches to development bring a degree of legal accountability to the alleviation of poverty, turning it from an act of charity to one of social justice. While this shift towards human rights is well documented at the global level, less is known about the understanding and use of human rights for development by NGOs at the local level. By focusing on a particular local context - Fiji - this research investigates how local NGOs understand and use human rights for development, and aims to identify the main challenges surrounding the use of human rights at this level. The findings from interviews with representatives of Fijian NGOs suggest that while human rights are being successfully applied to development in Fiji, they also face some challenges. Two of the most significant challenges are the politicised gap between human rights and development organisations and resistance to human rights on cultural grounds. These challenges demonstrate the impact local social, political and cultural contexts can have on the implementation of global ideas, and have numerous implications for the successful application of rights-based approaches to development at the local level.</p>

scholarly journals NEW TOOLS FOR NEW URBAN SPACES? ANALYSES OF PLANNING AND PARTICIPATION TOOLS AND THEIR PERFORMANCE IN (POST)TRANSITIONAL PERSPECTIVE

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-22
Author(s):  
Anatolii MELNYCHUK ◽  
Olena DENYSENKO ◽  
Pavlo OSTAPENKO
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Current System ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Planning System ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

For a long timepost-socialist countries served as a space for interaction between multiple transformations, urban policy changes and urban planning adjustments on the one hand, and challenging institutional and socio-cultural legacy, on the other. What are the outcomes of these interactions and how the urban space is changing? How effective aretraditional (“old”) and newly established planning and participation tools? To what extent does the current system meet the expectations of different stakeholders? These are the main issues to discuss in the paper. For this aim we use the experience of Ukrainian planning system changes in (post)transitional perspective, focusing on several planning and participation tools and their performance both on the national and local level. The impact of the main planning and participation tools on the urban transformations in Ukraine is critically considered in the paper, discussing their outcomes from different perspectives. The local context of using particular tools is discussed through the cases of two cities - Kryvyi Rih and Kherson; this allows to trace the logic of the planning process and practices of urban restructuring, notably by using the tools ofparticipation. Using in-depth interview data,the paper is aimed at revealing how different stakeholders perceive the main planning and participation tools as well as evaluate their effectiveness. Thus, we rethink the changes of planning and participation tools in (post)transitional perspective, their role in urban development processes,their performance in various local contexts and also their compliance with the declared goals and interests of different stakeholder groups.

scholarly journals Climate Resilience with Traditional Wisdom in Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-39
Author(s):  
Pallavi Tiwari ◽  
Archana Kushwaha ◽  
Yogesh Kumar Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Fast Rate ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Climate Resilience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

The climate is changing at a fast rate and the impact of the same can now be felt across all the world. The worst hit is the Asian countries which are the most vulnerable when it comes to extreme events. To cope with same, local level actions are the most effective if originated from local community and local context. Traditional wisdom originates from deep cultural and environmental considerations along with generations transformation that transcends these traditional practices to a much-suited action with respect to resiliency. The paper establishes the role of such traditional practices in the achievement of climate resilience in communities. The authors draw insights from the existing indigenous practices from various Asian countries and try to analyze the various challenges and potential in adoption of such practices on larger scale. The paper concludes with recommendations to overcome such challenges.

scholarly journals Gender and Resilience to Climate Variability in Pastoralists Livelihoods System: Two Case Studies in Kenya

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 218
Author(s):  
Nancy Omolo ◽  
Paramu Mafongoya ◽  
Oscar Ngesa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Variability ◽  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Western Kenya ◽  
Ecological Zones ◽  
The Impact ◽  
North Western

Recurrent droughts due to climate change has led to vulnerability of the pastoralist communities, leading to loss of assets and food insecurity. Climate change will have different impacts on women and men’s livelihoods. Building resilience at individual, household and community level will largely depend on the suitability of interventions to the local context, particularly in relation to the social dynamics and power relations that create differences in vulnerability. Most of the research have focused on national and regional studies. The impact of climate change will not be uniformly distributed in countries within Africa or within the same country. This specific research focuses on two diverse ecological zones at the local level in the same County of Turkana in north western Kenya: agro-pastoral zone and primary pastoral zone. This paper aims to evaluate women and men’s adaptive capacity to climate variability in Turkana, north-western Kenya. It is evident that increasing resilience can be realised by reducing vulnerabilities and increasing adaptive capacity. The results revealed that agro-pastoralists are more resilient to climate change than primary pastoralists. Male headed household are more resilient than female headed households. Access to basic services is contributing more in the resilience score than assets, gender of house hold head and age. Generally, few families in this region have very high resilience score.

scholarly journals Nymph Piss and Gravy Orgies: Local and Global Contrast Effects in Relational Humor

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia S. Q. Siew ◽  
Tomas Engelthaler ◽  
Thomas Hills
Keyword(s):  
Word Pair ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Semantic Distance ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Local Contrast ◽  
Global Contrast ◽  
Letter Frequency ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
The Impact

How does the relation between two words create humor? In this paper, we investigated the effect of global and local contrast on the humor of word pairs. We capitalized on the existence of psycholinguistic lexical norms by examining violations of expectations set up by typical patterns of English usage (global contrast) and within the local context of the words within the word pairs (local contrast). Global contrast was operationalized as lexical-semantic norms for single-words and local contrast was operationalized as the orthographic, phonological, and semantic distance between the two words in the pair. Through crowdsourced (Study 1) and best-worst (Study 2) ratings of the humor of a large set of word pairs (i.e., compounds), we find evidence of both global and local contrast on compound-word humor. Specifically, we find that humor arises when there is a violation of expectations at the local level, between the individual words that make up the word pair, even after accounting for violations at the global level relative to the entire language. Semantic variables (arousal, dominance, concreteness) were stronger predictors of word pair humor whereas form-related variables (number of letters, phonemes, letter frequency) were stronger predictors of single-word humor. Moreover, we also find evidence for the specific ways in which semantic dissimilarity can increase humor, by using local contrast to defuse the impact of low-valence words by making them seem amusing, or to enhance the incongruence of highly imageable pairs of concrete words.

scholarly journals Can the External Environment Generate Better Economic Performance in Academic Spin-Offs?

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Ivano De Turi ◽  
Margaret Antonicelli
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
New Product ◽  
Process Innovation ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Process Technology ◽  
The Impact

The strategic stimulus to economic development is innovation. It was defined by Schumpeter as the commercial or industrial application of something new (product, process, production method). New product developments grew out of process innovation, particularly the development of components made from new materials, and the techniques to produce them the value of process innovation is proportional to the level of output produced by a given firm. Based on this we can distinguish two different life cycles: the life cycle of product technology and life cycle process technology. It&rsquo;s appropriate to understand if and how long these innovation processes lead to positive economic results. The innovation capabilities are the driver of long-term success. The relation should remain significant beyond short-term earnings or become even greater for earnings of a longer-term. The length of a firm&rsquo;s innovation cycle appears to be a determinant of the relationship between enhanced innovation capabilities and future earnings. The paper proposes a framework to evaluate the impact of academic spin-offs at the local level. Spin-off creation is the most complex way of commercializing academic research but has the highest potential impact on the local context. We develop a framework that takes into account the direct and indirect impacts of spin-offs. In the empirical part of the paper, we apply this framework to a sample of Italian spin-offs between 2001 and 2017. The empirical analysis shows that measured in quantitative terms, the impact of spin-offs on the local economy is quite small. Using the selected variables, It&#39;s possible to affirm that the presence of business incubators represents an element capable of positively influencing the performance of academic spin-offs.

scholarly journals Using Human Rights for Development: a Fiji Case Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mary Llewellyn-Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Development ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Local Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Development Institutions ◽  
Legal Accountability ◽  
Donor Agencies ◽  
The Impact

<p>Over the past decade there has been a marked shift towards human rights in the policy of multilateral development institutions, international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and government donor agencies. 'Rights-based' development - in which development and poverty alleviation is viewed through a human rights lens - has become the language of choice among the international development community. As their proponents argue, rights-based approaches to development bring a degree of legal accountability to the alleviation of poverty, turning it from an act of charity to one of social justice. While this shift towards human rights is well documented at the global level, less is known about the understanding and use of human rights for development by NGOs at the local level. By focusing on a particular local context - Fiji - this research investigates how local NGOs understand and use human rights for development, and aims to identify the main challenges surrounding the use of human rights at this level. The findings from interviews with representatives of Fijian NGOs suggest that while human rights are being successfully applied to development in Fiji, they also face some challenges. Two of the most significant challenges are the politicised gap between human rights and development organisations and resistance to human rights on cultural grounds. These challenges demonstrate the impact local social, political and cultural contexts can have on the implementation of global ideas, and have numerous implications for the successful application of rights-based approaches to development at the local level.</p>

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