Suchergebnisse

Soğuk Savaşın sona ermesi ve Sovyetler Birliği'nin dağılmasından sonra aktörlerin bölgeye ilgisi, temelde enerji kaynakları ve bölgesel sorunlar nedeniyle artmaktadır. Bölgeye ilgisi artan ve çeşitli ekonomi, hukuki ve politika araçları ile aktif olmaya çalışan AB yeni bir dönüşüme uğramıştır. 1993 yılında Maastricht Anlaşmasıyla siyasi birlik yapısına kavuşan AB, dış politika ve güvenlik konularında yeni bir çalışmanın içerisine girmiştir. Özellikle Avrupa'nın doğusunda ve Güney Kafkasya'da yeni ülkelerin bağımsızlıklarını ilan etmesi, genişleme sürecinde olan AB için bir güvenlik sorunu oluşturmuştur. Azerbaycan ve Hazar Denizi zengin enerji kaynaklarına sahip olmasından dolayı enerji ithalatı (özelliklede doğalgaz) 'larda olan ve 2030'lu yıllarda civarında olacağı değerlendirilen AB için cazibe haline gelmiştir. AB 2007 yılı genişlemesiyle (Romanya ve Bulgaristan'ın üyeli) birlikte Güney Kafkasya ülkeleri ile komşu olmuştur. Tabii bu ülkelerle ilişkilerini geliştirmek maksadıyla hukuki zemini oluşturan Ortaklık ve İşbirliği Anlaşmaları ve Politik zeminini oluşturan Avrupa Komşuluk Politikaları vasıtasıyla bölgede etkin bir rol oynamak istemektedir. Özellikle 1990'lı yıllarda uygulamaya çalıştığı projelerde başarısız olan AB, bölge ülkeleri için düzenlediği ilerleme raporlarındaki gelişmeler neticesinde desteklerini arttırmaktadır. Doğrusunu söylemek gerekirse, ne kadar reform o kadar mali destek deyimi yerinde olacaktır. Bu çalışmayı, AB eurometer anket programına göre 2015 yılı güz döneminde Azerbaycan'da yaptığım çeşitli yaş ve meslek grupları arasında yaptığım anket çalışması değerlendirme aşamasında tezi desteklemiştir. ; The end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union after the collapse of the region of interest of actors is growing because of basic energy resources and regional issues. Regional interest in the growing and diverse economy, trying to be active with the legal and policy tools the EU has undergone a new transformation. In 1993 gained the political union structure with the Maastricht Treaty, the EU has entered into a new work on foreign policy and security issues. In particular, the declaration of independence of new countries in the east of Europe and the South Caucasus, have created a security problem for the EU is in the process of expansion, Azerbaijan and Caspian Sea energy imports due to its rich energy resources (especially natural gas), which in 46% and 2030 l in the years has become an attraction for the EU considered to be around 70%. EU enlargement in 2007 (Romania and Bulgaria members) have been together with the neighboring countries of South Caucasus. Needless to develop relations with these countries constitute the legal basis for the purpose of forming the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement and the political ground is willing to play an active role in the region through the European Neighbourhood Policy. Especially for projects that failed to work in practice in the 1990s, the EU supports the development as a result of the increase in organized progress reports for their country. Obviously it will be the reform of financial support statement in place. This thesis was supported by the arguments I made in the evaluation phase of a survey among various age groups and professions EUROMET EU 2015 survey by the fall semester of my program in Azerbaijan.

Los procesos de construcción de la Unión Económica y Monetaria (UEM) y de la ampliación de la Unión Europea (UE) de 15 a 25 miembros se han desarrollado sin un esquema mínimo institucional en lo que se refiere a las políticas presupuestarias comunes. El logro del Mercado Único Europeo y la introducción de la moneda única dieron la primacía a la idea de que, junto a una política monetaria independiente aplicada por el Banco Central Europeo, la coordinación de las políticas presupuestarias descentralizadas podría asegurar las condiciones económicas óptimas para la UEM. La ampliación de la Unión Europea a los países de la Europa central y del este (PECE) ha ampliado la heterogeneidad de los miembros de la Unión. En este artículo, examinaremos el tema de la convergencia entre los países del Sur y de la Europa central y del este, intentando comprobar si la ampliación de Europa a los PECE es probable que aumente las asimetrías. Esta tendencia se refuerza por los patrones de la inversión extranjera directa (IED) en los PECE, la cual tiende a concentrase en un pequeño número de países y en apenas una o dos regiones dentro de cada país. La política de cohesión de la UE debe afrontar este reto. Por último, examinamos la política regional europea tal y como se está actualmente renegociando e intentaremos plantear algunas orientaciones para que resulte ventajosa para todos los Estados miembros en una UE ampliada. ; The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) construction as well as the European Union (EU) enlargement from 15 to 25 members have taken place within a minimum institutional framework as regards common budgetary policies. The achievement of the Single European Market and the introduction of the single currency gave primacy to the idea that, beside an independent monetary policy implemented by the European Central Bank, the coordination of decentralized budgetary policies could ensure optimum economic conditions for the EMU. The European Union's enlargement to Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) has increased the heterogeneity of the community's members. In this article, we will examine the convergence issue between Southern and Eastern and CEEC, trying to check whether Europe's enlargement to CEEC is likely to increase asymmetries that are already quite significant between Southern European countries and the rest of the Union. This trend is reinforced by the patterns of foreign direct investments in the CEEC which tend to concentrate in a small number of countries and in only one or two regions within these countries. The EU cohesion policy has to face with this challenge. Lastly, we examine Europe's regional policy as it is being renegotiated and try to lay down some orientations so that it should be profitable to the cohesion of all member states in an enlarged Union.

Fiorenza Micheli . et al. -- 17 páginas, 7 figuras, 3 tablas ; Spatial prioritization in conservation is required to direct limited resources to where actions are most urgently needed and most likely to produce effective conservation outcomes. In an effort to advance the protection of a highly threatened hotspot of marine biodiversity, the Mediterranean Sea, multiple spatial conservation plans have been developed in recent years. Here, we review and integrate these different plans with the goal of identifying priority conservation areas that represent the current consensus among the different initiatives. A review of six existing and twelve proposed conservation initiatives highlights gaps in conservation and management planning, particularly within the southern and eastern regions of the Mediterranean and for offshore and deep sea habitats. The eighteen initiatives vary substantially in their extent (covering 0.1–58.5% of the Mediterranean Sea) and in the location of additional proposed conservation and management areas. Differences in the criteria, approaches and data used explain such variation. Despite the diversity among proposals, our analyses identified ten areas, encompassing 10% of the Mediterranean Sea, that are consistently identified among the existing proposals, with an additional 10% selected by at least five proposals. These areas represent top priorities for immediate conservation action. Despite the plethora of initiatives, major challenges face Mediterranean biodiversity and conservation. These include the need for spatial prioritization within a comprehensive framework for regional conservation planning, the acquisition of additional information from data-poor areas, species or habitats, and addressing the challenges of establishing transboundary governance and collaboration in socially, culturally and politically complex conditions. Collective prioritised action, not new conservation plans, is needed for the north, western, and high seas of the Mediterranean, while developing initial information-based plans for the south and eastern Mediterranean is an urgent requirement for true regional conservation planning ; The workshop in which this work was initiated was funded by The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (www.ceed.edu.au). The Greek television channel SKAI (www.skai.gr/tv/) covered workshop participants' accommodation. The Biodiversity Research Group provided the workshop with consumables. FM acknowledges the support of the Pew Marine Trust and the Oak Foundation. SG was supported by the project "NETMED" cofinanced by the European Union and the Greek State. MC was funded through the Ramon y Cajal fellowship program of the Spanish Government. DK was funded through the MedPAN Network (www.medpan.org). SF was also supported by the European Community's 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement No. 287844 for the project 'Towards COast to Coast NETworks of marine protected areas (from the shore to the high and deep sea), coupled with sea-based wind energy potential (COCONET)'. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript ; Peer reviewed

The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of farm-level data collected in a survey of 464 Polish farms in 2000. Performance indicators of farms in three Polish voivodships are compared with farm accountancy data from two German Länder. The results show that Polish farms were much less profitable than their German counterparts. The gap in income levels is much higher between persons employed in the agricultural sector than between average working persons in the two countries. Living standards within the Polish farm sector decline from the north-west to the south-east. The analysis suggests that the lower profitability of farms is a consequence of pronounced structural deficiencies due to a quite unfavourable workforce-land ratio on Polish farms and hardly a result of lower product prices. Serious technical and economic inefficiencies in the production process become visible in the data. There is a generally conservative attitude among farmers that prefers the continuation of farming over leaving the sector. Nevertheless, income from agriculture is to a substantial extent complemented by off-farm employment in the southern regions. Formal education of farm managers and access to finance appeared not to be crucial for their economic success in the past, although especially the most profitable farms in the north did not obtain as much credit as desired. Our overall conclusion is that Polish farms currently are in the midst of a regional, economic, and social differentiation process fuelled by huge imbalances in terms of income levels between rural and urban population groups. This process is however seriously slowed down or even halted by a number of effective institutional barriers, particularly with regard to rural labour markets. These barriers should be properly addressed by a formulation of future policies in order to avoid further social frictions in the course of the Polish EU accession. ; Der Beitrag stellt die Ergebnisse einer Analyse von einzelbetrieblichen Kennzahlen vor, die im Rahmen einer Befragung von 464 polnischen Landwirten im Jahre 2000 erhoben wurden. Die Analyse stützt sich auf den Vergleich von landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben in drei polnischen Woiwodschaften und zwei deutschen Bundesländern. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die polnischen Betriebe deutlich geringere Gewinne erzielen als ihre deutschen Vergleichspartner. Der Unterschied im Einkommensniveau zwischen Beschäftigten in der Landwirtschaft ist wesentlich höher als der zwischen durchschnittlichen Arbeitnehmern in beiden Ländern. Das Einkommensniveau innerhalb des polnischen Agrarsektors sinkt vom Nordwesten zum Südosten des Landes. Die Analyse legt nahe, dass die geringere Rentabilität der Betriebe in Polen in erster Linie auf Strukturdefizite als Konsequenz eines ungünstigen Verhältnisses zwischen Arbeitskraftbesatz und Nutzfläche zurückgeht und kein Resultat unterschiedlicher Produktpreisniveaus ist. Die Daten weisen weiterhin auf deutliche technische und wirtschaftliche Ineffizienzen im Produktionsprozess hin. Polnische Landwirte zeigen eine allgemein konservative Haltung, sie ziehen eine Fortsetzung der Tätigkeit als Landwirt einer außerlandwirtschaftlichen Beschäftigung vor. Dennoch werden vor allem in den südlichen Regionen landwirtschaftliche Einkommen weithin durch nichtlandwirtschaftliche Einkommensquellen ergänzt. Die formale Ausbildung der Landwirte sowie Zugang zu Krediten erwiesen sich in der Vergangenheit als überwiegend nicht entscheidend für den wirtschaftlichen Erfolg, obwohl besonders die rentabelsten Betriebe im Norden des Landes nicht in der Lage waren, Kredite im gewünschten Umfang zu erhalten. Wir ziehen als allgemeine Schlussfolgerung, dass sich die polnischen Betriebe inmitten eines regionalen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Ausdifferenzierungsprozesses befinden, der in erster Linie durch die großen Unterschiede im Einkommensniveau zwischen ländlichen und städtischen Bevölkerungsgruppen verursacht wird. Allerdings wird dieser Prozess durch effektive institutionelle Hindernisse, besonders im Hinblick auf den ländlichen Arbeitsmarkt, stark verlangsamt oder sogar zum Stehen gebracht. Diesen Hindernissen sollte durch künftige Politikmaßnahmen angemessen begegnet werden, um weitere soziale Verwerfungen im Laufe des polnischen EU Beitritts zu vermeiden.

Históricamente la región ha comenzado a construir sus caminos de integración a partir de la segunda postguerra mundial. Hoy resulta impactada por la lógica de la globalización, el mercado y el derrotado Proyecto ALCA que se transforma, apareciendo parte de su lógica en el conjunto de proyectos impulsados por el GEF del Banco mundial desde los 90': Plan PueblaPanamá; Acuífero Guaraní e IIRSA. Mientras tanto hoy, desde esos caminos de Integración Regional, la UNASUR asume los desafíos de defensa, energéticos y ambientales. Nuestra idea es comprender y analizar las políticas surgidas del debate institucional en UNASUR sobre integración y recursos naturales, refiriéndonos a sus capacidades, perfil de compromisos y conflictos. Todo esto desde las Relaciones Internacionales como disciplina y asumiendo una metodología cualitativa con preguntas que surgen de un criterio fenomenológico e inductivo que tiene en el concepto de "integralidad" un sostén que sintetiza las temáticas consideradas. Así, partimos de la constatación de que, tras ser fundada y diseñada por el Banco Mundial, lo que conocemos como IIRSA (Iniciativa de Infraestructura Sudamericana) ha sido tomada e impulsada públicamente desde la región en el Primer Encuentro de Presidentes de Suramérica llevado a cabo en Brasilia en agosto de 2000. Sin embargo, es recién en 2009 que UNASUR la absorbe como un todo en COSIPLAN y construye una propuesta de desarrollo en infraestructura que muchas veces genera conflictos tanto con el consenso democrático cuanto con el medioambiente. ; Historicanente the region has begun to build their paths of integration from the second post-war world. Today is impacted by the logic of globalization, the market and the defeated FTAA project that is transformed, appearing part of its logic in all GEF projects promoted by the World Bank since the 90's: Puebla-Panama Plan; Guarani Aquifer and IIRSA. Meanwhile today, from these paths of Regional Integration UNASUR it assumes the challenges of defense, energy and environmental. Our idea is to understand and analyze the policies arising UNASUR institutional debate on integration and natural resources, referring to his abilities, commitments and conflicts profile. All this from the International Relations as a discipline and assuming a qualitative methodology with questions arising from a phenomenological and inductive criterion that takes the concept of "integrity" a bra that synthesizes consideradas. Así topics, we start with the observation that, after be founded and designed by the World Bank, what is known as IIRSA (Initiative for South American Infrastructure) has been taken publicly and driven from the region in the First Meeting of South American Presidents held in Brasilia in August 2000. However, It is only in 2009 that absorbs UNASUR as a whole COSIPLAN and builds a proposed infrastructure development often leads to conflicts with both the democratic consensus as to the environment. ; Fil: Seitz, Ana Emerica. Universidad del Salvador; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina

The resource nexus: a new approach / Raimund Bleischwitz, Holger Hoff, Catalina Spataru, Ester van der Voet, Stacy D. VanDeveer -- The wider environmental angle: Natural capital, ecosystem services, and biodiversity - resolving complexity and resilience issues / Kaysara Khatun and Gloria Salmoral -- Scales and the nexus / Corey Johnson and Stacy D. VanDeveer -- Security, climate change and the nexus / Bassel Daher, Sanghyun Lee, Rabi H. Mohtar, Jeremiah O. Asaka and Stacy D. VanDeveer -- Life cycle assessment, life cycle sustainability analysis and the resource nexus / Ester van der Voet, Jeroen B. Guinée -- Linking society and nature: material flows and the resource nexus / Anke Anke Schaffartzik and Domink Wiedenhofer -- Resource footprints / Stefan Giljum, Martin Bruckner and Stephan Lutter -- The role of environmentally extended input-output analysis in assessing nexus problems / Arnold Tukker and David Font Vivanco -- Criticality assessment / Gavin M. Mudd -- A framework of methods to address the resource nexus from an industrial ecology point of view / Ester van der Voet -- Modelling transformations - ecosystem services assessment as a tool for integrating environmental and social impacts / Perrine Hamel, Benjamin Bryant, Becky Chaplin-Kramer and Adrian Vogl -- Modelling practices at different scales from local to global / Enrique Kremers, Andreas Koch and Jochen Wendel -- Global change and K-waves: exploring the pattern of the future / Markku Wilenius -- Foresight and scenarios: selected practices to assess the Nexus / Gerd Ahlert, Martin Distelkamp and Mark Meyer -- Macro-economic modelling with extensions into the Nexus / Alvaro Calzadilla and Ramiro Parrado -- Towards a next generation of Integrated Dynamic Approaches to model the five-nodes (water-energy-land-food-materials) nexus / Catalina Spataru -- Nexus in an uncertain world: a non-equilibrium perspective / Shilpi Srivastava and Jeremy Allouche -- Mining and the Resource Nexus / David Humphreys -- Scarcities and a new resource curse: the supply of resources and nexus challenges / Raimund Bleischwitz and Jun Rentschler -- International commodity trade: some stylized facts / Vincenzo de Lipsis, Paolo Agnolucci and Raimund Bleischwitz -- Rare earth elements from a resource nexus perspective / Eva Barteková -- Governing the resource nexus: the significance of land in the global south / Julia Tomei and Darshini Ravindranath -- The water-energy-food nexus in China / Philip Andrews-Speed and Carole Dalin -- The energy - materials nexus / Ester v.d Voet, René Kleijn and Gavin M. Mudd -- Unconventional oil and gas production and the Nexus / Tim Boersma and Philip Andrews-Speed -- A resource nexus pathway to feed Africa: opportunities, challenges and policy options / Timothy O. Williams, Fred Kizito and Marloes M. Mul -- The five node resource nexus in the Ocean Realm / Tundi Agardy -- Urban metabolism, new urban governance / Corey Johnson -- Eco-innovation and decoupling ¿ between ambitions and evidence for eco-innovation delivering on the resource nexus challenges / Michal Miedzinski, Will McDowall and Raimund Bleischwitz -- Green Chemistry: Opportunities from food supply chain waste / Avtar Matharu, Eduardo Melo and Joseph A Houghton -- The energy-water nexus: policy and technological innovation in California / Blas L. Perez Hernandez -- The UN, Global Governance and the SDGs / Maria Ivanova and Natalia Escobar-Pemberthy

Abstract Agriculture is the main source of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), which are the nutrients accelerating the eutrophication of waters in Finland. Hence, mitigation measures are needed to reduce the nutrient loading from the arable land. Since Finland's accession to the EU in 1995 and the subsequent adaptation to its agri-environmental policy, constructed wetlands (CWs) have been one of the mitigation measures for which farmers may receive agri-environmental subsidies. The aim of this study was to find out how efficiently such CWs are able to retain the loading and how they should be designed and dimensioned in order to optimize their performance. Particular attention was paid to CW hydrology and hydraulics, since the dynamics of the water flowing through a CW is the major factor governing retention. Water quality and flow measurements were made in three CWs located in agricultural watersheds in southern Finland during 1999-2002. Hydraulic properties were examined in 2 of the CWs by simulations with 2-dimensional hydrodynamic and water quality models. According to the calculations of material fluxes, the maximum annual retention was 72% for solid material (TSS), 67% for total P and 40% for total N. The lowest retentions were slightly negative, because the CW with the smallest CW-to-watershed area ratio (0.5% in the Alastaro CW) sometimes acted rather as a source than a sink of nutrients. The highest percent retentions were found in the Hovi CW with the largest CW-to-watershed area ratio (5%). In terms of mass per CW area, the Hovi CW retained 25 kg of total P and 300 kg of total N per one hectare per one year. In the Hovi CW also dissolved reactive P retention was high (49% in situ and 34% in laboratory microcosm experiments), obviously due to high contents and low P saturation of Al and Fe oxides of the CW soil. The basic underlying reason behind the high retentions of both dissolved nutrients and particulate matter in the Hovi CW was the long water residence time coupled with high hydraulic efficiency. In the deep part of the Hovi CW, near-bottom increase of dissolved O2 was found in phase with diurnal temperature changes. The oxygen transport by this kind of convective circulation of CW water inhibited near-bottom anoxia and thus decreased the risk of P desorption. According to the hydrodynamic simulations coupled with simulated tracer tests made for the Hovi CW, a 40% improvement in hydraulic efficiency was achieved by baffles directing the main flow to optimally exploit the CW area. The rectangular, elongated shape of the Alastaro CW also showed fairly high hydraulic efficiency. Hydrodynamic simulations were also coupled with a sediment transport model, which proved to be a useful method in predicting the change of TSS concentrations in CWs. Hourly datasets of inflow and outflow revealed high attenuation of runoff peaks in the well-designed and -dimensioned Hovi CW. The hourly outflow modeled with the reservoir routing method corresponded to the observed with a reasonable accuracy. When carefully designed, painstakingly implemented and wisely located, CWs may – even in cold climate – efficiently contribute to agricultural water pollution control.

"This article presents a narrative of the unfolding of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) since the theory was first formulated in 1986. The first part recapitulates the foundations of the theory, and documents the spread of the SDT to the point that it now covers most European populations. Also for Europe, it focuses on the relationship between the SDT and the growing heterogeneity in period fertility levels. It is shown that the current positive relationship between SDT and TFR levels is not a violation of the SDT theory, but the outcome of a 'split correlation' with different sub-narratives concerning the onset of fertility postponement and the degree of subsequent recuperation in two parts of Europe. The second part of the article addresses the issue of whether the SDT has spread or is currently spreading in industrialized Asian countries. Evidence gathered for Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan is presented. That evidence pertains to both the macro-level (national trends in postponement of marriage and parenthood, rise of cohabitation) and the micro-level (connections between individual values orientations and postponement of parenthood). Strong similarities are found with SDT patterns in Southern Europe, except for the fact that parenthood is still very rare among Asian cohabiting partners." (author's abstract)

A
little-noticed act from last year has helped to facilitate Republican Gov. Jeff Landry's
request to increase efficiency in how Louisiana handles its natural resources, including
the possibility that tens of billions of dollars will be spent more wisely over
the coming decades.

The new law changed, as of last
month, the name of the Department of Energy and Natural Resources by adding the
"Energy" designation. It also added some structure to it that will provide some
guardrails for a request by executive
order Landry made last week to reorganize natural resources functions from
three separate affiliated agencies and over a dozen independent commissions
into the defined functions of the department.

This law empowers Landry to solicit changes from
the department, with the first report due at the end of the month and all
wrapped up by the end of July. Likely some legislation will come forth concerning
this for the year's regular legislative session to begin Mar. 11 and to end
Jun. 3. Likely many of the entities listed in the order will be folded into
DENR management, the new law and text of the order suggests.

Output from the reports could improve administration
in a number of ways. For example, largely useless entities like the Climate
Initiatives Task Force, which produced
little in value and mostly poor policy recommendations with little scientific
merit while heavily politicized, can
be put out of its misery welcomed by citizens and taxpayers.

Other functions could benefit from streamlining.
The entities involved are governed by boards that, at best, could be made entirely
advisory, or perhaps eliminated entirely. One of the most prominent is the State Mineral and Energy
Board, whose main functions involved leasing of state lands for oil and gas
development, transferring those leases, and managing activity on others. Most
of its 11 members are appointed by the governor with Senate confirmation (the
governor and secretary, or their designees, also are members), required only to
have some connection to the energy industry, and who serve concurrently with
the governor. It uses DENR resources to do its job.

Landry hasn't made membership changes to that, perhaps
because it may face a radical overhaul as a result of his order. The majority
of states conduct these affairs within their DENR-equivalent agencies, although
some follow Louisiana's model in having appointed boards – even as often
representatives of government agencies solely comprise or make up the majority
of members – and a very few, including the large producing states of Oklahoma
and Texas, elect members. It would make more sense for the secretary, whose
department already determines tracts to be leased or transferred and
recommended parameters pertaining to that, to decide on deals and other matters
rather than political appointees.

Yet the biggest impact to the state and its
taxpayers that could come from these changes would be the consolidation of the
Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority into DENR. At present, CPRA exists
as an arm of the Governor's
Office of Coastal Activities that provides for CPRA administrative leadership.
Its board, comprised of appointees from various statewide elected and cabinet
officers and the Legislature plus regional planning agencies, provides for the
planning and execution of the coastal master plan, last updated in 2023, and
the annual plans derived from it, along with general oversight of protection and
restoration projects undertaken through CPRA.

Unfortunately, this structure has proven itself
susceptible to an ethos of climate alarmism, as
evidenced in the last two master plans. Regrettably, in formulating funding
priorities totaling $50 billion the reports rely upon the most pessimistic scenarios
driven by alarmist-based models, not by actual science. This approach can distort
the projects chosen and their priorities, risking the spending of billions on
things low in actual priority or even unnecessary while neglecting projects with
higher real payoffs, to the detriment of industry, residents, and taxpayers.

Folding governance of CPRA into DENR certainly
could encourage following the science to a higher degree and dispensing with
politicized fad and fashion that currently influences project choice, priority,
and spending decisions, both in sorting out the annual plan and in construction
of the next master plan due by 2028. The current model with its track record of
not preventing bad assumptions behind projects forwarded to the Legislature for
funding argues that a fresh approach only can improve matters, much
as this displeases the politics-as-usual crowd.

Landry is right to pursue these reforms that promise
better performance for fewer dollars. The sooner his administration can formulate
these and the Legislature acts upon them, the better for Louisiana.

Globally rising demand for cash crops such as oil palm, rubber, and cacao is driving the extensive conversion of natural rainforests in Southeast Asia with increasing speed. The consequences for humans and nature are immense and until today not thoroughly investigated. In the present thesis the impact of natural rainforest conversion into intensively managed rubber and oil palm monocultures, and smallholder rubber and cacao agroforests on carbon storage and sequestration, litter dynamics and hydraulic anatomic properties in Indonesia was assessed and quantified. To fulfill the objectives, carbon and nutrient dynamics in phytomass of lowland rainforest transformation systems in two regions of Jambi Province on Sumatra were studied, while estimators of tree productivity and hydraulic anatomy patterns were investigated in cacao agroforests in Central Sulawesi. The transformation of rainforest in our study area clearly resulted in significantly lower total carbon stocks in all investigated land-use types. According to our estimations, natural forests in this region store three times more carbon in biomass than even the extensively utilized jungle rubber system. The total carbon pools comprising aboveground tree biomass, dead wood debris as well as coarse and fine roots in rubber and oil palm monocultures consist of even less than 20 % of the natural forest C stocks they are replacing. Thus, compensating for the emitted carbon caused by land-use change on mineral soils may take hundreds of years or even be irreversible. While oil palm monocultures showed the lowest carbon stock, we have measured the highest total net primary production (NPP) values in oil palm plantations followed by natural forest, jungle rubber and rubber monocultures. However, the carbon sequestration potential is reduced by forest conversion in the long term, as removal of major NPP fractions namely oil palm fruits, rubber latex and wood occurs. Since we found the carbon residence time in biomass to be longer in natural forest and jungle rubber, the establishment of oil palm or rubber plantations on former forest land does not enhance carbon sequestration potential despite the high total net primary production of oil palms. With predicted climate change associated with increasing mean temperatures and drought events, land-use intensification with introduced cash-crops is also expected to have influence on seasonal growth responses in moist tropical lowlands even with only moderately dry seasons. We found a higher coefficient of variance (CV) following forest transformation for all examined components namely aboveground litterfall, fine root mortality, and aboveground woody production. In addition to changes in the annual net primary production, element return to the soil via aboveground litterfall was significantly reduced for C, N, Ca, Fe, Mg, Mn and S in monoculture plantations, particularly for rubber. Due to crop removal, a high demand for fertilizer use was caused, which likely leaded to significantly lower nutrient use efficiencies (NUE) for all major nutrients in oil palm plantations. Decomposition rate was reduced in oil palm plantations compared to natural forest which further decelerated nutrient cycling. Beside nutrient availability, a permanent water supply from roots to leaves is essential for effective plant growth. We found wood anatomical and derived hydraulic properties to be a good predictor for tree stem growth performance in the study on hydraulic architecture of the root, stem and branch wood in Theobroma cacao and five common shade tree species in agroforestry systems on Sulawesi. In contrast, neither wood density, nor empirically measured branch and root hydraulic conductivity, foliar delta 13C or foliar nitrogen content were good predictors for aboveground growth performance. A similar relationship was found between basal area increment and theoretical hydraulic conductivity in forest and rubber trees on Sumatra. Several wood anatomical patterns were observed to potentially follow drought adaptations strategies based on biogeographic origin. Hence, our results imply that future research on conceptual trade-offs of tree hydraulic architecture should consider that some of the long-established paradigms might not be uniformly applicable to all tree species. Overall, the results of our study suggest that where natural forest cannot be conserved, agroforestry is the better land-use option in terms of long-term carbon storage and nutrient sustainability compared to rubber and oil palm monocultures. On the other hand, higher yields of monocultures and thus a potentially better income are decreasing the attractiveness of agroforests for local owners. Further depletion of carbon storage potential in the tropical lowlands may only be mitigated in cooperation with political and local institutions in the long term. Therefore, scientific evidence on the ecological costs and benefits of land-use change like presented in this study is aimed to guide political decision-making towards a more sustainable path in forest conservation and land management.

International audience ; During the wars of the early modern age, deaths by disease tended to prevail over deaths in combat. This trend was particularly pronounced in the case of European troops operating in extra-European ecological contexts. As the pioneering works by Philip D. Curtin have shown, on this behalf the nineteenth century was a period of radical change: on the one hand, European empires expanded to Africa and Asia, on the other medical innovation transformed the epidemiological relation between Europe and the rest of the world, resulting in a clear decrease of mortality among European migrants moving to extra-European territories. In this context, the emergence of "tropical medicine" as a scientific field, the development of colonial projects and the reinforcement of military health services were deeply interconnected processes. Medical knowledge constituted a crucial resource for European powers: not only to provide for the health of their troops but also to create favourable conditions for an increasing number of settlers, entrepreneurs and civil servants. Later also improving the health of the native populations became a goal of colonial administrators, who perceived demographic growth as a crucial factor for enhancing the economic profitability of the colonies. Medicine, hygiene and (a certain) Western bodily discipline were celebrated as elements of the civilizing mission and sometimes employed as tools of social disciplining. However, it would be simplistic to interpret the history of colonial health as a unilateral transfer from European metropoles to colonized territories. The knowledge involved in the making of colonial medicine was not exclusively produced in the laboratories of tropical institutes and European hospitals: to a significant extent it was generated through social interactions in the colonies. Military doctors had limited infrastructural, pharmaceutical and human resources and often they had to cope with unknown diseases whose etiology was still an unsolved question. Thus, inter-imperial cooperation, reciprocal transfers between European and non-European actors as well as the (mostly fragmentary but sill significant) appropriation of "native" therapies played a central role in the construction of colonial medicine. On February 6, 2015, a group of scholars from France, Switzerland, Germany and Brazil met at the Château de Vincennes (the seat of the French military archives) to discuss the role of military physicians in European as well as the production and circulation of medical knowledge about tropical diseases during the long 19th century. The contributions to this meeting stretch from the Napoleonic wars in Egypt and the Caribbean to Dutch South-East Asia and the Herero-Nama Wars in German South-West Africa. A special issue of the journal "Histoire, médecine et santé" presenting the results of our work is currently in press. ; Comme l'ont montré les travaux pionniers de Philip D. Curtin, la prépondérance des morts causées par des maladies par rapport aux pertes au combat – une tendance généralisée pendant tous les conflits majeurs de l'époque moderne – fut particulièrement drastique dans le cas des troupes européennes opérant dans des contextes écologiques extra-européens. Le XIXe siècle représente, à ce propos, une période charnière, marquée par l'expansion territoriale des empires coloniaux en Afrique et Asie et, en même temps, par des développements historico-médicaux qui changèrent profondément la relation épidémiologique entre l'Europe et le reste du monde, entrainant une nette hausse des taux de survie parmi les migrants européens en Outre-Mer.L'émergence de la « médecine tropicale » comme discipline scientifique, le développement des projets coloniaux et le renforcement des services sanitaires des forces armées furent, dans ce contexte, des phénomènes profondément interconnectés. Les savoirs médicaux et les institutions sanitaires constituèrent des ressources cruciales pour les puissances européennes : non seulement pour mener des opérations militaires, mais aussi pour permettre l'implantation d'un nombre croissant de colons et administrateurs et, dans un deuxième temps, pour offrir des services sanitaires aux populations colonisées, dont le développement démographique était perçu comme une variable décisive dans la valorisation économique des colonies. Célébrées au niveau propagandiste comme éléments centrales de la « mission civilisatrice », médecine, hygiène et (une certaine) culture corporelle occidentale avaient vocation à être utilisées comme des instruments de discipline sociale.Il serait toutefois simpliste de lire l'histoire de la santé coloniale comme celle d'un transfert unilatéral de savoirs médicaux depuis les métropoles vers les colonies. Ces savoirs n'étaient pas uniquement produits dans les laboratoires des instituts de médecine tropicale et les cliniques européennes : ils étaient souvent générés par les interactions sociales dans les colonies. Dotés de ressources infrastructurelles, pharmaceutiques et humaines limitées, les officiers de santé étaient souvent obligés de faire face à des maladies qu'ils ne connaissaient pas et dont l'étiologie représentait une question irrésolue. Par conséquent les réseaux de coopération inter-impériale, les transferts entre acteurs européens et non-européens ainsi que l'appropriation (pour la plupart fragmentaire, mais néanmoins significative) de savoirs thérapeutiques "indigènes" jouaient un rôle important dans la construction de la médecine coloniale.

The article describes the process and results of the geopolitical and geoeconomic changes in the Baltic Sea region at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries. The authors assess the political, economic and military potential of individual countries and groups of countries. Ranking the selected countries and grouping them according to the similarity of their characteristics requires a variety of methods -the economic, statistical, cartographic, graphic-analytical methods, to name just a few. In the late 1980s- early 1990s, there were three socialist countries in the Baltic Sea region. They were signatories of the Warsaw Pact and members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (the Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany). The Baltic Sea region housed four market economies (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany). Only two of them were members of NATO and the EU (Germany and Denmark). At present, there are eight EU countries in the region; six of them are NATO members (Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), and the same two countries, Sweden and Finland, remain outside the bloc. Russia, the legal successor of the USSR, is neither a NATO, nor an EU member. The authors explore similarities and differences between countries of the Baltic Sea region in terms of their territory, population, GDP, foreign trade turnover and the number of regular armed forces. The article stresses the importance of international cooperation in increasing the growth rates of economic development of all countries of the Baltic Sea region.