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Developing Annuities Markets: The Experience of Chile is part of a multicountry World Bank project analyzing the market for retirement products. Among countries that have reformed their pension systems since the early 1990s, the Chilean case has emerged as the most relevant for drawing policy lessons on the role of the private sector in the provision of retirement income for two reasons: the depth, sophistication, and efficiency of the country's retirement products market, and the fact that this market was successfully developed from scratch by a middle-income country. The book examines in detail Chile's efforts to build a sound regulatory framework for the payout phase, concluding that a market for annuities and other retirement instruments can be built from a low base, while also identifying the reform agenda that policy makers need to implement to maximize benefits for their retiring populations. "This book provides a rigorous analysis, supported by a careful data examination, of the annuity market in Chile. It should be a must-read for policy makers involved in pension reforms." Solange Bernstein, Director, Superintendency of Pension Funds, Chile"This volume offers a fascinating in-depth study of the Chilean annuity marketplace, a topic of direct interest to developing and developed nations as they prepare to design and regulate financial markets for the decumulation phase of life." Olivia S. Mitchell, Executive Director, Pension Research Council, The Wharton School.

In the Brazilian Amazon, forest conservation has relied on the presence of 'traditional communities' and Indigenous peoples to secure legally demarcated protected areas from deforestation and biodiversity degradation. Facing pressures for land-use change from a rapidly encroaching frontier of resource extraction and commodity production, there is no guarantee that Indigenous peoples or traditional communities will continue to occupy these forests or continue to fulfill the role of forest protectors except under certain conditions. In this article, we detail the case of the extractive reserves of the Terra do Meio and consider what conditions would be needed for traditional communities to continue to occupy and protect protected areas. Employing an agrarian political ecology approach, we draw on years of ethnographic research in this area to argue that forest peasant livelihoods, which revolve around the forest areas of use, produce both ecological and cultural diversity in the forest. We term this socio-ecological arrangement the productive system of the colocação, the system and geographies of forest peasant livelihoods that upholds and is upheld by diverse socio-ecological relationships. Contemporary forest conservation regimes, however, have largely failed to incentivize and value these forest peasant livelihoods in ways that would sustain them in the face of commoditizing frontier pressures. Any mechanisms that pay for forest conservation should remunerate communities for their entire socio-ecological relationships, those relationships that are upheld through forest peasant livelihoods, not simply their products. We propose an approach to valuing forest communities' socio-environmental services, and we argue that such valuation would be more effective for conservation and cultural/ecological diversity than existing proposals for payments for ecosystem services (PES).

Bell pepper is a vegetable-fruit of great economic importance in Brazil. Crop production demands adequate water supply, nutrients, and light. The objective of this study was to evaluate gas exchange (net photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, transpiration, internal carbon concentration and instantaneous carboxylation efficiency) and dry mass accumulation in leaves and roots under fertigation with nitrogen and potassium. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design in a factorial scheme (4 × 4) with four replications and a total of 64 experimental units. Treatments consisted of a combination of four nitrogen doses (0; 73.4; 146.8 and 293.6 kg ha-1 of N) with four doses of potassium (0; 53.3; 106.7 and 213.4 kg ha-1 of K). An infrared gas analyzer (IRGA) coupled with a light source (irradiation of 600 µmol m-2 s-1) was used for the evaluation of gas exchange. There was a significant interactive effect of N and K on net photosynthesis and leaf and root dry mass. Root dry mass was the variable that best expressed this interaction. Physiological variables measured were more responsive to nitrogen fertilization than to K fertilization. The optimum values of stomatal conductance, transpiration, internal carbon concentration and carboxylation efficiency were obtained with the application of nitrogen doses between 147 and 294 kg ha-1.

Water management has a direct impact on plant development, and under deficit conditions, it often results in reduced yields. Silicon (Si), however, has the potential to alleviate stress and enhance plant performance under unfavorable conditions. This study aimed to analyze the performance of tomato plants cultivated under different water replacement depths and forms of silicon application. The experiment was laid out in a completely randomized design with a 2 × 4 factorial arrangement represented by two water replacement depths (60% and 100% of crop evapotranspiration - ETc) and four forms of silicon application (without application, soil application - full dose, soil application - split dose, and foliar applications). Four replications were used. The plants were cultivated in a protected environment using drip irrigation for water replacement, and silicon oxide served as the source of the element. The analyzed parameters included daily evapotranspiration, leaf spectral reflectance, mass accumulation (root, stem, and leaf), yield indices (fruit weight, plant yield, and defective fruits), water productivity, and post-harvest fruit weight loss. The imposition of water deficit (60% of ETc) in tomato leads to reduced crop development and yield, with the effects partially mitigated by the application of silicon. Conversely, under conditions of adequate water replacement (100% of ETc), silicon application contributes to increased development and yield of tomato. The application of silicon in the soil, whether in a full or split dose, demonstrates a more favorable response in vegetative indices and yield for tomato.