Suchergebnisse

UID/SOC/04647/2013 ; We aimed to identify patterns of work value orientations in a sample of graduates from two universities in Lisbon, and assess whether differences in extrinsic and intrinsic orientations can be explained by structural determinants of material living conditions. We found three common patterns: "aspirational maximalism"; importance of the job to gain financial autonomy from parents; and greater importance of intrinsic rewards. Results suggest the variation in the importance of extrinsic and intrinsic values bears little correlation with differences in material living conditions, and that subjects tend to adjust their work value orientations to their assessment of objective employment rewards. ; publishersversion ; published

We aimed to identify patterns of work value orientations in a sample of graduates from two universities in Lisbon, and assess whether differences in extrinsic and intrinsic orientations can be explained by structural determinants of material living conditions. We found three common patterns: "aspirational maximalism"; importance of the job to gain financial autonomy from parents; and greater importance of intrinsic rewards. Results suggest the variation in the importance of extrinsic and intrinsic values bears little correlation with differences in material living conditions, and that subjects tend to adjust their work value orientations to their assessment of objective employment rewards.

This article is about Cape Verdean women who make a living through engaging in regular transnational petty trade. They buy consumer goods in West African countries, in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe, in Brazil and in the USA, to sell back in Cape Verde, either in open‐air markets or in their own shops. Women perform most of this kind of trade and they operate on the border between the formal and informal economies. Drawing on interview material, the article shows how their self‐presentation as autonomous self‐reliant economic agents relates to gender and family roles and to a strategic balance between personal freedom and embeddedness in multi‐territorialized networks.

Portugal has a unitary system in which the central government transfers funds to lower government levels for their public functions. In 2007, Portugal introduced Ecological Fiscal Transfers (EFT), where municipalities receive transfers for hosting Protected Areas (PA). We study whether introducing EFT in Portugal incentivized municipalities to designate PA and has led to a decentralization of conservation decisions. We employ a Bayesian structural time series approach to estimate the effect of introducing EFT in comparison to a simulated counterfactual time series. Quantitative results show a significant increase in the ratio of municipal and national PA designations following Portugal's EFT introduction. The analysis furthermore places emphasis on the importance of relevant municipal conservation competencies and the role of local decision makers' motivations for PA designations. Results have important implications for conservation policy-making in terms of allocating budgets and competencies in multi-level governments.

Biodiversity loss is a serious global environmental problem. Economic instruments in biodiversity policies can contribute towards reconciling the conservation costs encountered at local level with the benefits of biodiversity conservation at higher levels of governance, from regional and national levels up to the global level. This paper outlines the theoretical foundations of fiscal transfers in conservation policies and also offers a concise account of existing international experience and future prospects. The recently amended Portuguese Local Finances Law (LFL) of 2007, with its groundbreaking new article on the promotion of local sustainability, is analysed in terms of the significance of fiscal transfers for municipal budgets. It is compared with its predecessor law, highlighting changes in fiscal revenues for selected municipalities in the country in relation to their designated protected areas. The anagical fiscal transfers can be significant for those municipalities with a large proportion of land under protected status. However, because it also introduces a considerable number of changes to the Portuguese fiscal transfer scheme, the ecological impact of the new LFL is difficult to assess due to the presence of several crossover effects. The results obtained offer significant insights both for improving the Portuguese LFL and for designing new ecological fiscal transfer schemes.

Money is critical for a regenerative future. Transforming it is an unavoidable social, political, and economic endeavor that must be a global priority if we are to prevent future financial crises, reduce economic inequality and adhere to our climate agreements and sustainability goals. For this transition to occur, we urgently need new economic and monetary paradigms that address the root causes of our current unsustainability, offer a new monetary ontology and design, and, more importantly, steer our monetary regime towards the regeneration of our social, economic and ecological landscapes. We need an ecological understanding of money grounded in Ecological Economics and an Ecological Value Theory that lays down the foundations for the conscious democratization, decentralization, and diversification of money. In this work, we revisit and update the missing link between money and sustainability by proposing new ontological avenues and reviewing the design elements and degenerative processes built into the existing system. We also contribute to the development and emergence of an Ecological Monetary Economics by systematizing the ongoing monetary transition toward sustainability and by offering a set of principles drawn from the regenerative economics literature for the conscious design of monetary ecosystems that contribute positively to solving our societal challenges of the 21st century. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Money is critical for a regenerative future. Transforming it is an unavoidable social, political, and economic endeavor that must be a global priority if we are to prevent future financial crises, reduce economic inequality and adhere to our climate agreements and sustainability goals. For this transition to occur, we urgently need new economic and monetary paradigms that address the root causes of our current unsustainability, offer a new monetary ontology and design, and, more importantly, steer our monetary regime towards the regeneration of our social, economic and ecological landscapes. We need an ecological understanding of money grounded in Ecological Economics and an Ecological Value Theory that lays down the foundations for the conscious democratization, decentralization, and diversification of money. In this work, we revisit and update the missing link between money and sustainability by proposing new ontological avenues and reviewing the design elements and degenerative processes built into the existing system. We also contribute to the development and emergence of an Ecological Monetary Economics by systematizing the ongoing monetary transition toward sustainability and by offering a set of principles drawn from the regenerative economics literature for the conscious design of monetary ecosystems that contribute positively to solving our societal challenges of the 21st century. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Portugal has a unitary system in which the central government transfers funds to lower government levels for their public functions. In 2007, Portugal introduced Ecological Fiscal Transfers (EFT), where municipalities receive transfers for hosting Protected Areas (PA). We study whether introducing EFT in Portugal incentivized municipalities to designate PA and has led to a decentralization of conservation decisions. We employ a Bayesian structural time series approach to estimate the effect of introducing EFT in comparison to a simulated counterfactual time series. Quantitative results show a significant increase in the ratio of municipal and national PA designations following Portugal's EFT introduction. The analysis furthermore places emphasis on the importance of relevant municipal conservation competencies and the role of local decision makers' motivations for PA designations. Results have important implications for conservation policy-making in terms of allocating budgets and competencies in multi-level governments.

AbstractSeveral authors have described the usefulness of participatory system dynamics approaches in environmental decision‐making processes, particularly in supporting problem scoping and policy analysis. This paper explores how these approaches may be expanded to provide a coherent, deliberative platform, which structures Integrated Sustainability Assessments (ISA) of policy proposals. The proposed ISA framework forms a five‐stage feedback and learning process including scoping, visioning, model building, simulation/assessment and monitoring. We discuss these elements considering a set of best practice principles for participation in environmental assessment and decision making. Subsequently, we lay out a roadmap for implementing and testing the framework. We conclude that participatory modelling has a strong potential for supporting ISA processes. It allows stakeholders to build alternative policies, to reflect on their long‐term dynamics, and to gain insights on the interrelationships underlying persistent sustainability problems. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.