Suchergebnisse

Environmental protection fund has been constituted and has been operating for gathering financial means for investing in preservation and protection of the environment in Serbia in the past seven years. The idea of creating a special fund was based on definition of particular sources of gathering funds and their dedicated investment in preservation and protection of natural goods, values and capitals. Until its recent termination in the end of 2012, the Environmental protection fund of the Republic of Serbia presented unique, specialised national financial institution through which the funds were provided for financing ecology projects. The fund was formed on the initiatives that were started during the 1990's by United Nations with a goal of supporting environmental protection investment programs. Unfortunately, the fund in Serbia had a short life so there was no creation of assumptions for the long-term empiric research of its potential role. The doubts that within the fund there were speculative financial transactions lead to political decision to terminate the fund. Later institutional solutions, however, show that the main cause of the fund termination is in conducting centralisation of gathering financial compensations for using natural values, and at the same time to lose the trail of dedicated investment of funds in environmental protection from the total amount of the budget. The Environmental protection fund was planned as non-profitable institution unlike regular investment funds. This paper first presents a short overview of ways of functioning of regular investment funds. Regardless of the fundamental differences in goals it was possible to use some of the experience in the work of the Environmental protection fund. The paper gives comprehensive presentation of the aspects of organization, business, creation of incomes as well as the fields of using the Fund's resources.

There are many advantages of solar photovoltaic technology in providing lighting for rural homes-scalability, minimal maintenance and well developed business models. This study seeks to study the impact of the transition from Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) to Light Emitting Diodes based lights (LED) on the solar home lighting system market. Changing the lighting fixtures from CFL to LED would lead to the requirement of smaller panels and batteries and consequently, a reduction in prices. Would this reduction significantly increase the adoption of these systems? Would the requirement for financing or government support change? To understand this changing landscape of the rural solar lighting industry, this study analyses the current products, distribution network, and operations of seven diverse solar firms operating in different parts of India. Four of these firms exclusively make LED based products - lanterns and small home lighting systems - and the rest have some LED based systems in their portfolio. There are several factors to be considered, product configuration, luminosity, price effects and service and maintenance. While the price reduction is found to be significant (about 20), affordability may still remain an issue for poorer households. LED lighting allows for the introduction of plug and play systems, and reduces institutional requirements for installation and maintenance. © 2013 International Energy Initiative.

The concept of integrated crop and livestock in Indonesian farming systems has actually been practiced by farmers since they familiar with farming, but they practiced the systems by traditional way, without any consideration of cost-benefit as well as environmental impact. The research on crops-livestock systems has been conducted systematically since early 1980's. The study considered many aspects in sustainability such as environmentally tolerable, socially acceptable, economically feasible and politically desirable. In late 1990's the crops-livestock systems came to a very important step with intensifying the integration between rice and cattle, in this case through optimization of the manure. The added value of organic fertilizer could reach till 40%. In dairy cattle such a technology was able to benefit Rp 11.000 per cattle per day. In this case, with LEISA (low external input sustainable agriculture) approach, any 8 − 10 liter of milk produced by a head of cattle needed feed equal to as much as 3 −4 liter of milk only. With LEISA approach the crops-livestock systems has empirically proved the ability of providing job by using the local input efficiently. In improving efficiency, the use of local resources such as local feed and local cattle need to be optimized. To develop the technology that support the concept of crop-livestock systems, the Government could help the farmers through extension so that the farmers willing to use organic fertilizer, especially manure of the cattle. The rice field in the northern part of West Java is a huge potency to produce rice straw as cattle feed. Based on the fact, the beef cattle can be developed in this area so that the manure available to fertilize the rice fields. If the crop-livestock systems is successfully developed in the area, the improve of rice production and productivity is happened, and in turn, the farmers welfare will also increase. Key words: Farming systems, crops, livestock, organic fertilizer, local resources, crop by product

Intensive agriculture, particularly in the uplands, has brought about soil erosion and/or land degradation, thus, threatening sustainability or improvement of production. Despite the presence of soil conserving technologies and environment-friendly techniques, there are factors constraining their widespread adoption such as additional labor requirements which are competitively pulled by diversifying sources of income and emerging non-farm income opportunities within or in nearby areas.

The expert contributors illustrate that sources of regional competitiveness are strongly linked with spatially observable yet increasingly flexible realities, and include building advanced and efficient transport, communications and energy networks, changing urban and rural landscapes, and creating strategic and forward-looking competitiveness policies. They investigate long-term interactions between regional competitiveness and urban mobility, as well as the connections that link global sustainability with local technological and institutional innovations, and the intrinsic diversity of spatially rooted innovation processes. A prospective analysis on networks and innovation infrastructure is presented, global environmental issues such as climate change and energy are explored, and new policy perspectives, relevant world-wide, are prescribed.

This study develops a short, general scale to measure sustainable product involvement. This is done in a Costa Rican context, via a relatively large sample, demographically similar to the national population. The study also evaluates the viability of the C-OAR-SE scaling technique for this purpose. A five-item instrument is developed, its reliability and validity psychometrically confirmed. The scale addresses the levels and types of involvement that consumers might have. It suits not only academic researchers, but also practitioners in different areas. We conclude that C-OAR-SE is a viable technique. It complements traditional psychometric methods well so as to be considered by researchers in the different fields of business.