Suchergebnisse

The new EU proposal (IP/10/921) states that bans on genetically modified (GM) crops should not be based on environmental and health grounds, and it proposes a set of alternative reasons -- including public order and morals -- that can be cited by member states. This reveals the increasing importance of stakeholders' attitudes in GM crops' release decisions. This article analyzes farmers' attitudes and perceptions toward GM maize based on a survey of large-area Greek farmers in Northeastern Greece. A considerable number of respondents (61%) would adopt GM maize if Greece lifts the ban on GM maize cultivation. This result opposes recent findings from countries strongly opposing GM crops (such as France and Hungary), where bans are in line with the majority view of farmers. The ban is against what the majority of large-area farmers in Greece would choose if allowed.

Some problems cannot be solved optimally and compromises become necessary. In some cases obtaining an optimal solution may require combining algorithms and iterations. This often occurs when the problem is complex and a single procedure does not reach optimality. This paper shows a conglomerate of algorithms iterated in tasks to form an optimal consortium using cluster analysis. Hierarchical methods and distance measures lead the process. Few companies are desirable in optimal consortium formation. However, this study shows that optimization cannot be predetermined based on a specific fixed number of companies. The experiential exercise forms an optimal consortium of four companies from six shortlisted competitors

Correctly pricing transport behaviour to take account of the 'external' costs such as congestion and emissions imposed on society by excessive car use has long been a tenet of effective transportation demand management. But while policy-makers have striven to increase public transport subsidies, raise petrol taxes and introduce road-user charging schemes to price the real costs of car travel properly, in most cases correcting the wider influences of the personal tax regime has begun only relatively recently. This paper is based on work undertaken for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and the Inland Revenue of the UK government, which is currently working on addressing this very issue. In addition to reporting the British situation, the paper also uses a series of case studies to outline how this same process has been approached in the USA, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway, and how successful they have been thus far with respect to transportation demand management objectives. It then draws conclusions about which direction policy-makers should be aiming for in the future. © 2006 Taylor & Francis.

Recognizing that community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approaches have had mixed success in pastoral rangelands, this paper compares five case studies—two from Kenya, two from Ethiopia and one from Tunisia—to identify aspects of social-ecological context that affect the implementation and success of CBNRM in pastoral settings. Data for each case was collected following a common protocol. Among the characteristics that emerged from our study as important were socio-political and biophysical characteristics of the wider landscape within which the community's rangeland territory is located and the extent to which that territory is circumscribed by some combination of other land uses and land tenure types, major political boundaries, and physical landscape features. The analysis of these cases suggests that where pastoralist communities coexist in large, open rangeland landscapes, rather than a narrowly community-based approach, natural resource management interventions need to be explicitly multi-level and horizontally flexible.