Suchergebnisse

Zugleich gedruckt veröffentlicht im Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin unter der ISBN 978-3-7983-2587-6. ; Die Evaluierungs-"toolbox" Eva.S dient als Instrument für Projektentwickler, zur Umsetzung von Projektideen und Networking in Praxis und Forschungsförderung zur Verarbeitung von komplexen Datenmengen. Eva.S ist ein nicht projektgebundenes Evaluierungs-System mit vielfältiger prozessorientierter Anwendung und kompetenter Kommunikation der Ergebnisse. Die angewandte Strategie zur Evaluierung mit den wirkungsbezogenen sogenannten "Indicator values" sind von großer Relevanz und weitgehend akzeptiert auf dem Gebiet Planung, Konstruktion und dem prozessorientierten Monitoring, um schon frühzeitig den "Zielerreichungsgrad" eines Projektes verfolgen zu können. Die wirkungsbezogenen "Indicator values" sind die Basis für die Projektarbeit im Netzwerk, die Visualisierung und das Verstehen komplexer Vorgänge in der Projektentwicklung und dem Fortschritt. Es gibt auf dem internationalen Markt viele Evaluierungs- und Monitoringsysteme wie z.B. BNB/DGNB, BREEAM, LEED, African Green City Index (GCI), Asian GCI, European GCI, ESTIDIMA (Pearls), GREEN Pyramids etc.; das neu entwickelte Eva.S Evaluierungs-System führt in einem sorgfältigen Abwägungsprozess alle für das eigene zu evaluierende Projekt wichtigen Faktoren und Indikatoren aus den international anerkannten Verfahren zur Bewertung von Bauwerken hinsichtlich Flächenmanagement und der sozio-kulturellen Problematiken zusammen. Die Eva.S Evaluierungs-"toolbox" stellt sich der Herausforderung einer erfolgreichen auf das jeweilige Projekt zugeschnittene Projektentwicklung, Erfassung der Auswirkungen und dem Management des Fortschrittes. Erforderlich ist eine international anerkannte Evaluierungs-Strategie, um ein der jeweiligen Situation und den baulichen Begebenheiten angemessenes wissenschaftliches Monitoring zu ermöglichen. Einsatz und Überprüfung von qualitativen und quantitativen wirkungsbezogene Indikatoren zur Erfassung und Bewertung der von den Projektteilnehmern geplanten und umgesetzten Maßnahmen wurden erstmalig mit Eva.S in dem Young Cities Projekt ermöglicht. Mit diesem Vorgehen war gleichzeitig ein "Rating" mit Noten von 1-10 (1 = sehr gut; 10 = schlecht) der geplanten und vorgenommenen Maßnahmen von Anfang an möglich. Parallel zu den einzelnen Arbeitsabschnitten des Young Cities Projekts wurde mit den Elementen des Eva.S zur ersten Datenerfassung, der Bewertung und schließlich zur Visualisierung in Diagrammen begleitet und ständig in der Rückkopplung über Eva.S Anwendung in fünf Arbeitsschritten optimiert: Datenerfassung, Datenorganisation in Matrizes und Indikatoren Formate, Eingabe in das Eva.S System zum Aufbau einer Datenbank, Überprüfung der Daten durch einen Eva.S "Prozessor" hinsichtlich der klassischen Qualitäten der Nachhaltigkeit (Ökonomie, Ökologie, Soziales), Bestimmung der projektbezogenen Indikatoren, Monitoring und Entscheidungs-Schleife zur Generierung der Ergebnisse einschließlich "Rating" und Zielerreichungsgrad sowie Kommunikation der Ergebnisse. Die Projektentwicklung endet nicht mit der Implementation, sondern es findet immer wieder eine Rückkopplung statt hinsichtlich der Evaluierungs- und Monitoringstrategien unter kritisch analytischer Betrachtung der Arbeitsabläufe und des "Ratings". Im Ergebnis der Bewertung lässt sich ein Handlungsbedarf ableiten. Das Eva.S Evaluierungs-System war im Rahmen des Young Cities Projekts zur projektinternen Evaluierung entwickelt worden. Eva.S wurde aber von Anfang an so gestaltet, dass auch andere Anwendungen und Projekte zu bearbeiten sind. Es wurden erste Probeläufe mit Daten-Sätzen des in sich abgeschlossenen REFINA Projekt zum Flächenmanagement erfolgreich durchgeführt. Die Eva.S Datenbank hat für das Young Cities Projekt 135 Datensätze verteilt auf 26 Dimensions für 3 Handlungsfelder (Field of Actions - FoA) und 25 Arbeitspaketen (Work Packages - WP) verarbeitet und verwaltet. Das Eva.S Evaluierungs-System arbeitet barrierefrei im Open Source / Microsoft Modus, die Daten werden über ein Drop-Down Menu eingespeist. Die Eva.S Projektdaten werden mittels projektspezifischen qualitativen und quantitativen Indikatoren nach den 3 klassischen Säulen der Nachhaltigkeit (Ökonomie, Ökologie, Soziales) bewertet. Der Teil Risikoanalyse im Eva.S Evaluierungs-System wurde in Anlehnung an die Ergebnisse einer MORIX Machbarkeitsstudie entwickelt und in Probeläufen im "feed back" überprüft und weiter optimiert. Das Eva.S Evaluierungs-System hat ein hohes Potential in der Anwendung als Prüfsystem in der Projektentwicklung, im Projektmanagement und bei der Entwicklung geeigneter Monitoring Strategien. Eva.S ist eine web-basierte Anwendung und hat über eine Internet Adresse http://yc.liebrenz.info/refina/index.php jederzeit einen weltweiten Zugriff zur Daten-Eingabe, Bewertung und Visualisierung. Ein Trainingsprogramm für Anwender von Eva.S aus den Bereichen Projektentwicklung und politischer Entscheidungsfindung ist in Vorbereitung. ; The evaluation tool Eva.S serves as an instrument for project developer and project participants to handle and present their overall results in a clear and manageable way. Because of the numerous projects and possibilities of Eva.S and its multiple applications and visualization of the processes for interpretation and competent communication to public the indicators values and the investigated evaluation strategy are of significant relevance and acceptance for planning, construction and process orientated monitoring as well as the "grade of achievements" for such projects. The investigated process orientated Indicator values are the fundament for net working, visualization and for understanding of complex systems in project development and success orientated achievements. There are many evaluation and monitoring system on the market like the BNB/DGNB, BREEAM, LEED, African Green City Index (GCI), Asian GCI, European GCI, ESTIDIMA (Pearls), GREEN Pyramids. The newly established Eva.S evaluation tool takes in account most of the pro and contras of all these internationally well accepted concepts. Eva.S represents a challenge as much as a competent opportunity and toolbox for a successful and tailored project development, assessment and management of the progresses. An internationally well accepted evaluation strategy is necessary to enable a relevant, scientific monitoring to capture and assess qualitative and quantitative effects related indicators of the measures planned and/or realized the first time by Eva.S and the Young Cities project. The impact of qualitative and quantitative effect related indicators are rated at the same level. The Young Cities project working phases were attended from the first moment on during data mining, evaluation and finally by visualization of the results by so-called radar diagrams. There are five relevant steps of work flow for managing the data. Starting with data mining and organizing the raw data in matrices and indicator templates. The project specific indicator related data sets are sorted out for feeding the Eva.S evaluation tool for a data check considering the classical criteria for sustainability in the field of economy, ecology and social-cultural aspects by a multi array grid (processor). In a monitoring and decision loop the final results and products as well as strategies are shown for dissemination and rating of the results. The rating system 1-10 (1= best practice; 10= failure) is similar to the common rating tables of international standards to demonstrate in particular the "grade of achievement" of the measures. The development and realization of a project is a process in several distinct project-phases and this will certainly not end with its implementation. Sectorial considerations and therefore possibly inefficient measures in case of changes in the project can be prevented because the presented interaction and feed back effects of the evaluation and monitoring strategy is integrated from the beginning on of the project with the focus on the analysis of work flow and rating checks. The Eva.S evaluation tool was performed by the Young Cities project by the participating project teams in the forum of an internal Evaluation and Monitoring group. From the first beginning on it was designed also for other applications and potential projects and test runs were consequently developed. The first runs were done successfully with data sets of the well known REFINA project and resources consumption management. The Eva.S data bank was serving the Young Cities project by 135 data sets, 3 Fields of Action (FoA) and 25 Work Packages. The Eva.S evaluation tool is operating in Open Source / Mikrosoft Office easy to feed by a Drop-Down menu. The Eva.S project data are evaluated by qualitative and quantitative project specific indicators proved by the classical dimensions of sustainability: socio-cultural quality, economic and ecological quality. The risk analysis part of Eva.S was tested and optimized by a MORIX feasibility study in Real Estate Management (REM) Master Courses. The dynamic and constantly up-dated Eva.S evaluation tool has many potential applications in the field of evaluation and monitoring. Stakeholders are project developer, political decision maker of municipal authorities. Eva.S is from now on present in the internet and offers access world wide: http://yc.liebrenz.info/refina/index.php. There are no barriers and there will be a training and application of Eva.S for legal frame work.

One of the biggest problems of Nepal has remained overwhelming poverty among the rural populace. At the moment, more than 25 percent of the population is compelled to live their life without basic necessities of life. As the predominant population lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture for their living, poverty in Nepal has been considered as rural phenomenon. In the past, the Nepalese government tried to address the poverty problem basically through supply-led credit interventions. However, they could not bring the desired result because of their limited focus on "credit alone" without emphasis on other support services. By considering past failure, with the support of donors, the Nepalese government started implementing Microenterprise Development Program (MEDEP) in 1998 in 10 districts(at the moment running in 36 districts) by focusing on women, economically and socially deprived communities, and hard core poor integrating components related to social mobilization for enterprise development, entrepreneurship training, technical skills development, access to finance, appropriate technology testing and transfer, and marketing linkages and business counseling . Because of meager economic base of the poor, microcredit is very important for them to start up a microenterprise. In that sense the microfinance component of MEDEP is the most important component while talking about reduction in poverty through microenterprise development in Nepal. Against this backdrop, we have assessed the effectiveness of microcredit provided to MEDEP entrepreneurs in the Sindhupalchowok district in eastern Nepal during 2005-2008 by various financial institutions by using propensity score matching methodology. Secondary data (2005-2008) that was made available to Seoul National University (SNU) by the Microenterprise Development Program (MEDEP) has been used for the purpose of this research. In addition, qualitative (exploratory) research methodology has also been used by interviewing 38 MEDEP microentrepreneurs in order to supplement information need to better explain the results received through PSM estimation. The major objective of the research is to assess the effect of microcredit support in enterprise development for poverty reduction among MEDEP microentrepreneurs. In this regard, efforts have been made to assess the effect of microcredit on sales, cost and profit of entrepreneurs in their entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, the effect of microcredit on the enterprise and the entrepreneur levels has also been assessed as per the research framework proposed. The effect has been measured in two time line scenarios "After one Year" and "After two years". In the first scenario, sales, costs and profit are statistically significant. However, the effect on profit is found to be negative implying that immediately after the establishment of any enterprise making profit is not that easy in the pretext that the entrepreneurs need more time to arrange raw materials, establish linkages with processors and traders, and to arrange necessary sales outlets. Even if the average effect of treatment on the treated (ATT) for profit is negative, the value of profit for the treated group is positive conveying the message that treated groups also had profit but it was less in comparison to untreated groups. In the next scenario, effect "after two years", the microcredit effect on sales and cost are statistically insignificant, whereas such effect on profit are statistically significant. Besides, there is a fluctuation in cost and sales values for treated group in two different scenarios. According to AsDB (1997) fluctuations in the performance of microenterprises in short span of time is possible in developing countries as a micro entrepreneur may have many part time or seasonal activities undertaken to support family income apart from the specific enterprise he is running at the moment. Net earnings in this kind of microenterprises are used for survival purposes meaning that they have short term impact on poverty thorough self-employment with larger number of direct beneficiaries. Livelihood microenterprises show lots of fluctuation in their schedule and volume of production (ibid). ATT derived is the average value of the estimated additional effects of each microcredit borrowing entrepreneur. All the microcredit borrowing entrepreneurs, however, have their own additional effects, which is the effect of microcredit after controlling for selection bias. In this context, we have performed econometrical analysis on the effect of different characteristics/explanatory variables with a data set of microcredit borrowing entrepreneurs using these additional effects as dependent variables. While doing so, rural dummy, savings, Hindu dummy, Dalit Dummy, PCI before MEDEP were found to be significant. However, the contribution of saving is significant and coefficients are positive in both scenarios showing the vital role saving was playing to make credit effective in the effort of poverty alleviation. Statistically significant but positive values of per capita income before MEDEP intervention in case of cost and profit have shown that the real poor were not contributing in microcredit effect on cost and profit. It raises a question whether MEDEP had really succeeded to bring hard core poor people in its ambit as lower level of profit might not encourage them to borrow microcredit and run microenterprise. Even though microentrepreneurs had not been able to generate employment to outsiders they had managed to create work for themselves. It is positive aspect while dealing with poverty because those who were making the agriculture sector overburdened, had been diverted away to the microenterprise sector. Among the major targeted beneficiaries of MEDEP, the women's contribution to generate positive effect of microcredit is not proved except in the case of sales and cost in the "after two years" and "after one year" scenarios. Dalits, however, were doing well in the long run contributing to generate profit. Indigenous microentrepreneurs, though a major focus of the program, are statistically insignificant showing that their role needed to be increased in the whole MEDEP process and basically in borrowing microcredit. On the whole, we have concluded in our research that microcredit had positive effect on the enterprise level in terms of income generation, employment creation and savings and positive but mixed results on the entrepreneur level in terms of enhanced self-esteem, control over resources and community participation. This conclusion has been supported by the findings of the qualitative research (interview) as well. However, the MEDEP has been suffering from number of problems for years, especially from the perspective of institutional development for the sustainability of the program and from the perspective of delivery of microcredit and other support services in rural areas. We believe that microcredit would have done much better, if those problems had been sorted out. Considering the scope of this research, we are not able to ascertain with conformity whether microcredit had contributed to poverty reduction among MEDEP entrepreneurs of Sindhupalchowok district. However, we expect that microcredit might have contributed to some extent in the effort of poverty reduction through MEDEP in the district. The extent, depth and magnitude of such reduction need to be confirmed through in-depth research with comprehensive data on economic and non-economic dimensions of the household, microentrepreneurs and microenterprises. Nevertheless, we recommend the Nepalese government (Ministry of Industry) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to expand the coverage of MEDEP nationwide by addressing challenges it has been facing. ; Doctor

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ; This research takes an interdisciplinary approach and includes aspects of applied geography, applied management, political economy, development studies, sociology and anthropology, in line with the tradition of progressive tourism studies. It seeks to resolve academic concern about the limited insight within existing bodies of knowledge into how sustainability and sustainable tourism development are conceptualised at a grassroots level by inhabitants and other stakeholders of tourism destinations (Redclift, 1987; Liu, 2003; Swarbrooke, 1999; Mowforth and Munt, 1998; Maida, 2007) and furthermore how these conceptualisations are shaped through expressions of political economy in a post-crisis context. The research aimed to evaluate how political economy and interpretations of sustainability affected post-disaster tourism redevelopment using the case study of Phi Phi Island in Thailand, which was devastated by the tsunami of December 2004. An interpretive philosophy informed the research design, in which primary data was gathered using an inductive mixed methodology. Methods included online research, comprising the design and operation of a tailored website to overcome geographical and access limitations; and offline methods such as visual techniques to monitor change and confirm opinions offered by participants of the research; in-depth face-to-face interviews with hand-picked stakeholders of Phi Phi's development; open-ended questionnaires with tourists; and extended answer Thai script questionnaires in order to overcome language barriers and present the 'Thai voice'. The primary data was gathered from April 2006-December 2011 including a period working at [information removed for anonymity purposes] University in Phuket (June-December 2006). Twenty-five themes emerged from the data, the most significant being the social impacts of tourism, environmental impacts of tourism, power relationships and future desires. It was found that the factor with the greatest influence over Phi Phi's development is the desire to develop the economy through tourism, and the philosophy underpinning the development is largely economic. The tsunami did not cause any significant reassessment of the tourism development trajectory, but served to uncover a range of conflicts and unlawful activity, resulting from powerful stakeholders pursuing their own interests and desired outcomes, in order to suit their own needs rather than those of the community as a whole. In terms of how sustainability is conceptualised by different stakeholder groups, it was found that the meanings attributed to sustainability in this context differ greatly to meanings elaborated within western ideological debates. Stakeholders' conceptualisations of sustainability were mapped against key debates within literature. How meanings differed between stakeholder groups was also examined and a definition for sustainable tourism development on Phi Phi was compiled encompassing a broad range of interests. The thesis provides a rare opportunity to see which political, economic and cultural factors shape the planning of tourism development and whether actual practice mirrors the principles of sustainability. For islanders, present needs are yet to be met and education was recommended to increase islanders' understanding of impacts and sustainability, as well as their skills and knowledge base to enable them to compete intellectually with the ruling elite and reduce dependence upon landowners and the mainland. Numerous authors have highlighted a relative lack of academic attention directly addressing the influence of political economy on achieving sustainability in post-disaster reconstruction (Klein, 2008; Hystad and Keller, 2008; Olsen, 2000; Bommer, 1985; Beirman, 2003; Faulkner, 2001; Glaesser, 2003; Ritchie, 2004). This work therefore extends existing academic debates and studies in a number of areas. In existing academic debates concerning the political economy of post-disaster reconstruction there is a trend towards 'disaster capitalism' (Klein, 2005: 3) or 'smash and grab capitalism' (Harvey, 2007: 32) and 'attempts to accumulate by dispossession' (Saltman, 2007a: 57). However, this did not occur on Phi Phi. Despite claims of a 'clean slate' being offered by the tsunami in developmental terms (Pleumarom, 2004; UNDP, 2005; Dodds, 2011; Ko, 2005; Nwankwo and Richardson, 1994; Argenti, 1976; Rice, 2005; Altman, 2005; Brix, 2007; Ghobarah et al., 2006; Dodds et al., 2010), this research provides evidence and explanation of why this did not and would never exist on Phi Phi, a finding that may be applied to other destinations in a post-disaster context. In response to Blaikie et al.'s (2004) concerns that vulnerability is often reconstructed following a disaster and may create the conditions for a future disaster, this work has extended discussions of disaster vulnerability through an adapted application of Turner et al.'s (2003) Vulnerability Framework. This meets Calgaro and Lloyd's (2008) recommendation that further longitudinal research is required in other tsunami-affected locations. This research refines their work to identify a detailed framework of vulnerability factors intertwined with factors of political economy, presenting a post-disaster situation that remains highly vulnerable and non-conducive to sustainability. This is in response to Hystad and Keller's (2008) recognition that there is a lack of long-term studies, which not only show how disaster has shifted the nature of the destination and tourism product, but also identify successful strategic processes and actions in disaster response. The strategic response has been analysed through an adapted Strategic Disaster Management Framework (Ritchie, 2004) to identify the shortcomings of the disaster response to comprehend how such a disaster has influenced tourism development and planning on the island, showing that this was a mirror opposite to how a disaster should be handled according to the literature (Ritchie, 2004; Adger et al., 2005; Miller et al., 2006; Olsen, 2000; Coppola, 2007; Faulkner, 2001; Baldini et al., 2012). The researcher draws on the notion of 'strategic drift' (Johnson, 1998: 179) and 'boiled frog syndrome' (Richardson, Nwankwo and Richardson, 1994: 10) to explain how host attitudes to tourism may increase vulnerability. Both these contributions can assist in identifying destination vulnerability and limitations in disaster response and recovery. Unlike the work of Dodds (2010) and Dodds et al. (2011), the aim was not to assess the practice and attainment of sustainability on Phi Phi; rather, it was to elaborate interpretations and conceptualisations of sustainability. An examination of development philosophy established how specific factors of political economy and relationships of a hegemonic nature influence the development trajectory of both Phi Phi and Thailand. Despite governmental rhetoric influenced by a strong 'sufficiency economy' hegemony led by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the observations of dependency theorists provide a better fit for the experiences on Phi Phi and present significant challenges for the pursuit of sustainability. The thesis posits that an effective response to the disaster and pursuit of sustainability are undermined by the political economy of the destination.

Land-use and land-cover change (LUCC), which is a general term for the human modification of the Earth's terrestrial surface, increasingly gains attention in the scientific community, due to its vast global extent and the role it plays in the Earth system functioning. About one third to one half of the global land surface has been modified by humans, and these changes are highly interrelated with many environmental, economic and social processes and problems. However, studies on LUCC processes are often challenged by the complex nature and unexpected behavior of both human drivers and natural constraints. Many studies tend to focus either on the human or the environmental part of LUCC systems, thus neglecting the interrelationships and responses among these two components. Many aspects of complexity can be overcome by a multi-agent based approach, whose design allows an integrated representation of the feedbacks, hierarchies and interdependencies of the coupled human-environment system of LUCC. A multi-agent simulation model (GH-LUDAS - GHana Land Use DynAmic Simulator) was developed to model this coupled human-environment system in a small-scale catchment in Ghana, thereby providing a simulation tool to predict land-use/cover patterns as related to socio-economic indicators. Apart from pure prediction, the aim of the model is to explore alternative future pathways of LUCC under selected policy, demographic and climatic conditions in order to provide stakeholders with support for making better-informed decisions about land resource management. Multi-agent based modelling is an approach to design computational models for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous individuals (i.e. agents) in a network, with a view to assessing their effects on the system as a whole. Thus, agent-based modeling can be regarded as a bottom-up modeling approach, as the behavior and interactions of single agents are specified, and complexity is considered to emerge from these specifications. Following this mindset, GH-LUDAS consists of four modules, which represent the main components of the human-evironment system of LUCC. The Human Module consists of collections of human agents (i.e. farm households), which are endowed with a set of attributes and autonomous behavior templates (i.e. the Decision Module), regulating land-use related decisions in response to the human agent's attributes and those of its environment. The Landscape Module consists of collections of individual landscape agents (i.e. land patches of size 30 x 30 m), which are characterized by biophysical attributes and ecological mechanisms, which work in response to human decision-making and natural constraints (e.g. crop yield, land-cover change). The Global-policy Module consists of a range of external parameters, which allow the exploration of alternative future pathways of LUCC, and which relate to attributes of both human and landscape agents. The ability to provide an integrated representation of these components is one of the strengths of this approach, and its flexibility allows the upgrading and modification of processes where these have not yet been considered. The developed model was applied to a small-scale catchment in Upper East Ghana, the Atankwidi catchment, which covers an area of about 159 km 2 . Spatially explicit data were obtained from an ASTER image, digitalmaps, an extensive land cover inventory and intensive household surveys. Field data were used to specify attributes and calibrate behavioral submodels of households and land patches. Considered external factors were the policies of dam construction and credit access, demographic changes, and rainfall change. Simulation outputs consist of a spatially and temporally explicit land use/cover map, visual graphs, and export files of selected land-use and livelihood indicators. These convenient output visualization tools, together with the user-friendly interface of GH-LUDAS, allow stakeholders to simulate and analyze selected scenarios, which can serve as a basis for discussion and communication among stakeholders and policy-makers. Simulation results suggest that, among others, the policy of dam construction had much less effect on average annual income than that of credit provision, although it is the much more costly option in comparison to a credit scheme. Furthermore, a decline in annual rainfall seemed to trigger a shift towards cash cropping and non-farm activities, which could compensate for the losses in harvest caused by decreased precipitation. All simulated spatiotemporal data developed by these simulations can be used for further scientific analyses using GIS and statistical packages, thereby providing a basis for further understanding of local LUCC processes in Northern Ghana. ; Ein agenten-basiertes Modell zur Simulierung von Landnutzungs- und Landbedeckungsänderungen im Einzugsgebiet des Atankwidi in Nordost-Ghana Landnutzungs- und Landbedeckungsänderungen, die die durch den Menschen verursachte Modifizierung der Landoberfläche der Erde bezeichnen, erfahren zunehmende Aufmerksamkeit in der wissenschaftlichen Welt, aufgrund ihres weltweiten Ausmaßes und der Rolle, die sie für die Funktionsweise der Erde spielen. Zwischen einem Drittel und der Hälfte der Landoberfläche sind bereits durch menschliche Einflüsse verändert worden, wobei diese Änderungen wichtige Wechselbeziehungen mit ökologischen, ökonomischen und sozialen Prozessen und Problematiken aufweisen. Studien, die sich mit Landnutzungs- und Landbedeckungsänderungen befassen, repräsentieren die KomplexitätmenschlicherVerhaltensweisen und ökologischer Bedingungen oft nur in unzureichender Weise. Viele Studien tendieren dazu, nur eineKomponente des ökologischen Systems, das ausmenschlichen wie aus umweltbedingten Prozessen besteht, zu erfassen, und vernachlässigen dabei die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen diesen beiden Komponenten. Der agenten-basierte Modellierungsansatz hat die Fähigkeit, viele Eigenschaften von komplexen Systemen zu integrieren, und ermöglicht die Modellierung von Rückkopplungen, Wechselbeziehungen und skalen-abhängigen Prozessen des ökologischen Systems. In dieser Arbeit wurde ein agenten-basiertes Modell namens GH-LUDAS (Ghana - Land Use DynAmic Simulator) entwickelt, das Landnutzungs- und Landbedeckungsänderungen sowie zugehörige sozio-ökonomische Indikatoren in einem Flusseinzugsgebiet desWhite Volta in Nord-Ghana simuliert. Das Ziel desModells ist sowohl die Prognostizierung von Landbedeckungs-/Landnutzungsänderungen als auch die Evaluierung von möglichen Zukunftsverläufen unter gegebenen politischen Maßnahmen, demographischen Veränderungen sowieKlimawandel. Die Simulierung solcher Szenarien kann die Entscheidungsfindungen lokaler Akteure bezüglich Landnutzung unterstützen und als Ausgangspunkt für Diskussionen unter lokalen Entscheidungsträgern dienen. Der agenten-basierte Modellansatz kennzeichnet sich durch die Modellierung der Aktionen und der Interaktionen einzelner Individuen (i.e. Agenten), deren Spezifikationen in komplexe Phänomene auf Systemebene resultieren. Agenten-basierte Modellierung kann daher als ein 'bottom-up approach' bezeichnet werden, da die Systembeziehungen nicht auf oberster Ebene spezifiziert werden, sondern von den Prozessen zwischen einzelnen Agenten reguliert werden. Dieser Philosophie folgend, gliedert sich GH-LUDAS in vier Hauptmodule. Das soziale Modul besteht aus einer Kollektion von menschlichen Agenten, die landwirtschaftliche Haushalte repräsentieren, und die mit einer Reihe von Attributen und Entscheidungsalgorithmen ausgestattet sind. Diese Algorithmen, die innerhalb des Entscheidungmoduls spezifiziert sind, regulieren Reaktionen auf persönliche wie auf umweltbedingte Attribute und Prozesse. Das Umweltmodul besteht aus landschaftlichen Agenten, die aus Pixeln von 30 m x 30 m bestehen, und die mit eigenen Attributen sowie ökologischen Mechanismen, die auf menschliche Entscheidungen sowie auf natürliche Prozesse reagieren (z.B. Ernteertrag, Landbedeckungsänderungen), ausgestattet sind. Das globaleModul besteht aus einer Reihe von externen Parametern, die von Modellnutzern reguliert werden können, und die Attribute von menschlichen und landschaftlichen Agenten direkt beeinflussen. Die Fähigkeit, diese Komponenten zu verbinden und miteinander zu integrieren, ist eine der Stärken des agenten-basierten Ansatzes, und seine Flexibilität erlaubt die Integrierung von Prozessen, wo diese (noch) nicht berücksichtigt worden sind. Das Modell wurde speziell für das Flusseinzugsgebiet des Atankwidi in Nordost- Ghana entwickelt, das eine Fläche von etwa 159 km 2 aufweist. Räumlich explizite Daten wurden auf der Basis eines ASTER Satellitenbildes, digitalen Karten, einer weiträumigen Bestandsaufnahme von Landbedeckung, und fokussierten Haushaltsbefragungen generiert. Auf diesen Felddaten basierend, wurden die Attribute sowie die reaktiven Mechanismen menschlicher und landschaftlicher Agenten spezifiziert und kalibriert. Die externen Parameter des Modells umfassen Maßnahmen, die Dammbau und Kreditvergabe betreffen, sowie demographische Veränderungen und Reduzierung des jährlichen Niederschlags. Die Ausgabe der Modellsimulationen erfolgt durch eine zeitlich und räumlich explizite Visualisierung von lokaler Landbedeckung/Landnutzung, Graphiken, und exportierbaren Dateien einer Auswahl an Systemindikatoren. Diese Bandbreite von Ausgabemöglichkeiten, in Kombination mit einer benutzerfreundlichenModelloberfläche ermöglichen beteiligten Akteuren, ausgewählte Szenarien zu simulieren und zu analysieren, und kann zur Diskussion und Kommunikation zwischen Akteuren und Entscheidungsträgern beitragen. Die Resultate von bereits simulierten Szenarien deuten unter anderem darauf hin, das die Strategie des Dammbaus eine geringere Wirkung auf durchschnittliches Einkommen hat als dieMaßnahme der Kreditvergabe, obwohl ersteres die bei weitem kostspieligereMaßnahme darstellt. Desweiteren zeigt sich, dass eine Reduzierung des jährlichen Niederschlags eine Verlagerung auf marktfähigere Agrarprodukte (cash crops) und nichtlandwirtschaftliche Einkommensstrategien auszulösen scheint, die die Reduzierung des Ertrags, verursacht durch die geringere Niederschlagsmenge, kompensieren. Alle simulierten zeitlichen und räumlichen Daten können weiteren wissenschaftlichen Analysen in GIS- und Statistik-Programmen unterzogen werden, und zu einer Erweiterung des Verständnisses von lokalen Landnutzungsund Landbedeckungsänderungen in Nord-Ghana beitragen.

Modern Western states declaring the right to fair and speedy trial have faced serious obstacles while implementing it. The judicial procedure is suffering from severe caseload leading to a substantial delay and increasing costs in litigation. The situation resulted in growing public dissatisfaction with the formal court system and a justice as a whole. This encouraged the states to look for new dispute resolution mechanisms which could be alternative to litigation and could overtake certain disputes from courts leaving access to justice more available. In 1950's USA introduced mediation in solving labor disputes. It showed a success and gained the support of legislation and judiciary which led to wide spread of mediation to other areas of dispute resolution: small claims, neighborhood, consumer, landlord-tenant, victim-offender, family, environmental disputes. Mediation can offer a cheaper, faster, less formal procedure compared to litigation. Mediation leaves the ultimate decision making process in the hands of the parties themselves. The third neutral person is only assisting the parties in developing the dialogue and reaching a mutually acceptable settlement of issues in dispute. This voluntarily reached settlement diminishes the friction between adverse parties, helps to maintain further amicable relations between parties and preserve the social peace and harmony. Confidentiality is regarded as a fundamental feature to effective mediation. It encourages candid and free nature of the discussion. Parties are then free to communicate without fear that the facts they disclosed during mediation will be used against them in court if mediation fails. Parties to mediation, the mediator, non-party participants are obliged to keep all the information related to mediation confidential. Parties to dispute can agree to disclose the protected information or a part of it. The mediator doesn't have such authority to decide upon disclosure of protected communications – he has an obligation to keep it confidential. But are there circumstances when mediator is compelled to disclose the confidential information? If so, what are they? Scientific novelty of the thesis The European Union (hereinafter – the EU) has acknowledged the importance of alternative dispute resolution (hereinafter - ADR) and especially mediation in reaching one of its political objectives in securing better access to justice. The EU institutions produced a number of legal instruments promoting the use of ADR: Green Paper on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Civil and Commercial Law presented by the European Commission in April 2002, European Code of Conduct for Mediators passed by the European Commission in 2004 and finally the Directive on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters enacted by the European Parliament and the Council in May 2008. Lithuania as a Member State has to ensure a proper implementation of the provisions of this Directive through the means of national legislation. The Directive provides for a minimum standards to ensure the protection of confidentiality in mediation but Member States are free to take stricter measures at domestic level. Regardless which approach Lithuania is going to take – softer or stricter - it has to ensure that legislation regulating confidentiality is to be clear, precise, understandable and fair to the users of mediation and especially to mediators. Parties to dispute can agree to disclose certain confidential information in later judicial or arbitration proceedings. Mediator doesn't have such authority – he is obliged to keep information confidential. The obligation of confidentiality for mediator arise from statutes defining mediation, codes of professional conduct or mediation agreements. The duty of confidentiality must be preserved in order to assure that the reasonable expectations of participants regarding the confidentiality are met rather than frustrated. The goal of this thesis is to provide the answer for the legal issue: is the duty of confidentiality placed upon mediators absolute? The proposed hypothesis is that the duty of confidentiality placed upon mediators is not absolute. In order to accomplish the goal of the thesis and to support or deny the hypothesis we take the following steps: 1. to analyze the mediation and to determine what its main features are; 2. to analyze the confidentiality in mediation; 3. to determine what are the legal means for safeguarding the confidentiality in mediation; 4. to determine the role of mediator in preserving the confidentiality in mediation; 5. to determine the scope of confidentiality whether there is exceptions to it. In order to accomplish the tasks set above we analyzed number of legal instruments passed by the institutions of European Union, Lithuanian legislation on mediation, the provisions of confidentiality in Uniform Mediation Act of United States of America. It was important to explore the legal means in safeguarding the confidentiality in mediation in different countries: statutory protection, without prejudice rule, mediation privilege, attorney-client privilege and contractual protection – in order to determine which legal instrument provides the most protection of confidentiality. We looked at the case law of United Kingdom, USA, Australia that emphasized the importance of confidentiality in mediation, also analyzed British case law establishing the exceptions from the confidentiality. After the above mentioned tasks are accomplished we make the following conclusions: 1. Mediation unlike other ADR and unlike judicial procedures, can offer an amicable dispute resolution procedure which is strictly confidential. 2. Confidentiality is one of the most important mediation features distinguishing it from other dispute resolution mechanisms and making it more attractive to the users. Legally protected confidentiality fosters the candid and open communications between parties and mediator increasing the effectiveness of the procedure. Lifting the shield of confidentiality would destroy the public trust in mediation and would discourage its potential users from engaging in mediation. 3. The statutory privilege against disclosure of any mediation communication by parties, the mediator and non-parties participants and ability to block others from disclosure – is the most effective legal instrument preserving the confidentiality in mediation and protecting the mediator from being called as a witness regarding confidential information. 4. The duty of confidentiality placed upon mediator is not absolute as it can be proved by several exceptions created by legislation and by courts. There is certain situations when courts can decide to look at otherwise privileged information when public interest to hear mediator testimony outweighs the interest in protecting the confidentiality and integrity of mediation. There are certain situations when courts are willing to hear the confidential information related to mediation. Absent any statutory protection the mediator may be called as a witness and could be compelled to testify. The mediator testimony may reveal certain information which could be in favor of one party and damaging to the other party this undermines the principle of mediator neutrality and the integrity of the process. All the exceptions to confidentiality must be construed carefully and precisely by statute leaving no ambiguities and providing the legal certainty for participants. The recommendations: In order to ensure the adequate protection of confidentiality in mediation we recommend: 1. to incorporate in the Code of Civil Procedure the provision prohibiting to call the mediator as a witness in civil or commercial proceedings; 2. to incorporate in Civil Dispute Conciliation Mediation Act the exception to confidentiality for information that is sought or offered to prove mediator malpractice claim or complaint; 3. to add an exception in Civil Dispute Conciliation Mediation Act that information about future or ongoing crimes which became known during mediation is not protected and must be disclosed to authorities.

Modern Western states declaring the right to fair and speedy trial have faced serious obstacles while implementing it. The judicial procedure is suffering from severe caseload leading to a substantial delay and increasing costs in litigation. The situation resulted in growing public dissatisfaction with the formal court system and a justice as a whole. This encouraged the states to look for new dispute resolution mechanisms which could be alternative to litigation and could overtake certain disputes from courts leaving access to justice more available. In 1950's USA introduced mediation in solving labor disputes. It showed a success and gained the support of legislation and judiciary which led to wide spread of mediation to other areas of dispute resolution: small claims, neighborhood, consumer, landlord-tenant, victim-offender, family, environmental disputes. Mediation can offer a cheaper, faster, less formal procedure compared to litigation. Mediation leaves the ultimate decision making process in the hands of the parties themselves. The third neutral person is only assisting the parties in developing the dialogue and reaching a mutually acceptable settlement of issues in dispute. This voluntarily reached settlement diminishes the friction between adverse parties, helps to maintain further amicable relations between parties and preserve the social peace and harmony. Confidentiality is regarded as a fundamental feature to effective mediation. It encourages candid and free nature of the discussion. Parties are then free to communicate without fear that the facts they disclosed during mediation will be used against them in court if mediation fails. Parties to mediation, the mediator, non-party participants are obliged to keep all the information related to mediation confidential. Parties to dispute can agree to disclose the protected information or a part of it. The mediator doesn't have such authority to decide upon disclosure of protected communications – he has an obligation to keep it confidential. But are there circumstances when mediator is compelled to disclose the confidential information? If so, what are they? Scientific novelty of the thesis The European Union (hereinafter – the EU) has acknowledged the importance of alternative dispute resolution (hereinafter - ADR) and especially mediation in reaching one of its political objectives in securing better access to justice. The EU institutions produced a number of legal instruments promoting the use of ADR: Green Paper on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Civil and Commercial Law presented by the European Commission in April 2002, European Code of Conduct for Mediators passed by the European Commission in 2004 and finally the Directive on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters enacted by the European Parliament and the Council in May 2008. Lithuania as a Member State has to ensure a proper implementation of the provisions of this Directive through the means of national legislation. The Directive provides for a minimum standards to ensure the protection of confidentiality in mediation but Member States are free to take stricter measures at domestic level. Regardless which approach Lithuania is going to take – softer or stricter - it has to ensure that legislation regulating confidentiality is to be clear, precise, understandable and fair to the users of mediation and especially to mediators. Parties to dispute can agree to disclose certain confidential information in later judicial or arbitration proceedings. Mediator doesn't have such authority – he is obliged to keep information confidential. The obligation of confidentiality for mediator arise from statutes defining mediation, codes of professional conduct or mediation agreements. The duty of confidentiality must be preserved in order to assure that the reasonable expectations of participants regarding the confidentiality are met rather than frustrated. The goal of this thesis is to provide the answer for the legal issue: is the duty of confidentiality placed upon mediators absolute? The proposed hypothesis is that the duty of confidentiality placed upon mediators is not absolute. In order to accomplish the goal of the thesis and to support or deny the hypothesis we take the following steps: 1. to analyze the mediation and to determine what its main features are; 2. to analyze the confidentiality in mediation; 3. to determine what are the legal means for safeguarding the confidentiality in mediation; 4. to determine the role of mediator in preserving the confidentiality in mediation; 5. to determine the scope of confidentiality whether there is exceptions to it. In order to accomplish the tasks set above we analyzed number of legal instruments passed by the institutions of European Union, Lithuanian legislation on mediation, the provisions of confidentiality in Uniform Mediation Act of United States of America. It was important to explore the legal means in safeguarding the confidentiality in mediation in different countries: statutory protection, without prejudice rule, mediation privilege, attorney-client privilege and contractual protection – in order to determine which legal instrument provides the most protection of confidentiality. We looked at the case law of United Kingdom, USA, Australia that emphasized the importance of confidentiality in mediation, also analyzed British case law establishing the exceptions from the confidentiality. After the above mentioned tasks are accomplished we make the following conclusions: 1. Mediation unlike other ADR and unlike judicial procedures, can offer an amicable dispute resolution procedure which is strictly confidential. 2. Confidentiality is one of the most important mediation features distinguishing it from other dispute resolution mechanisms and making it more attractive to the users. Legally protected confidentiality fosters the candid and open communications between parties and mediator increasing the effectiveness of the procedure. Lifting the shield of confidentiality would destroy the public trust in mediation and would discourage its potential users from engaging in mediation. 3. The statutory privilege against disclosure of any mediation communication by parties, the mediator and non-parties participants and ability to block others from disclosure – is the most effective legal instrument preserving the confidentiality in mediation and protecting the mediator from being called as a witness regarding confidential information. 4. The duty of confidentiality placed upon mediator is not absolute as it can be proved by several exceptions created by legislation and by courts. There is certain situations when courts can decide to look at otherwise privileged information when public interest to hear mediator testimony outweighs the interest in protecting the confidentiality and integrity of mediation. There are certain situations when courts are willing to hear the confidential information related to mediation. Absent any statutory protection the mediator may be called as a witness and could be compelled to testify. The mediator testimony may reveal certain information which could be in favor of one party and damaging to the other party this undermines the principle of mediator neutrality and the integrity of the process. All the exceptions to confidentiality must be construed carefully and precisely by statute leaving no ambiguities and providing the legal certainty for participants. The recommendations: In order to ensure the adequate protection of confidentiality in mediation we recommend: 1. to incorporate in the Code of Civil Procedure the provision prohibiting to call the mediator as a witness in civil or commercial proceedings; 2. to incorporate in Civil Dispute Conciliation Mediation Act the exception to confidentiality for information that is sought or offered to prove mediator malpractice claim or complaint; 3. to add an exception in Civil Dispute Conciliation Mediation Act that information about future or ongoing crimes which became known during mediation is not protected and must be disclosed to authorities.

Modern Western states declaring the right to fair and speedy trial have faced serious obstacles while implementing it. The judicial procedure is suffering from severe caseload leading to a substantial delay and increasing costs in litigation. The situation resulted in growing public dissatisfaction with the formal court system and a justice as a whole. This encouraged the states to look for new dispute resolution mechanisms which could be alternative to litigation and could overtake certain disputes from courts leaving access to justice more available. In 1950's USA introduced mediation in solving labor disputes. It showed a success and gained the support of legislation and judiciary which led to wide spread of mediation to other areas of dispute resolution: small claims, neighborhood, consumer, landlord-tenant, victim-offender, family, environmental disputes. Mediation can offer a cheaper, faster, less formal procedure compared to litigation. Mediation leaves the ultimate decision making process in the hands of the parties themselves. The third neutral person is only assisting the parties in developing the dialogue and reaching a mutually acceptable settlement of issues in dispute. This voluntarily reached settlement diminishes the friction between adverse parties, helps to maintain further amicable relations between parties and preserve the social peace and harmony. Confidentiality is regarded as a fundamental feature to effective mediation. It encourages candid and free nature of the discussion. Parties are then free to communicate without fear that the facts they disclosed during mediation will be used against them in court if mediation fails. Parties to mediation, the mediator, non-party participants are obliged to keep all the information related to mediation confidential. Parties to dispute can agree to disclose the protected information or a part of it. The mediator doesn't have such authority to decide upon disclosure of protected communications – he has an obligation to keep it confidential. But are there circumstances when mediator is compelled to disclose the confidential information? If so, what are they? Scientific novelty of the thesis The European Union (hereinafter – the EU) has acknowledged the importance of alternative dispute resolution (hereinafter - ADR) and especially mediation in reaching one of its political objectives in securing better access to justice. The EU institutions produced a number of legal instruments promoting the use of ADR: Green Paper on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Civil and Commercial Law presented by the European Commission in April 2002, European Code of Conduct for Mediators passed by the European Commission in 2004 and finally the Directive on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters enacted by the European Parliament and the Council in May 2008. Lithuania as a Member State has to ensure a proper implementation of the provisions of this Directive through the means of national legislation. The Directive provides for a minimum standards to ensure the protection of confidentiality in mediation but Member States are free to take stricter measures at domestic level. Regardless which approach Lithuania is going to take – softer or stricter - it has to ensure that legislation regulating confidentiality is to be clear, precise, understandable and fair to the users of mediation and especially to mediators. Parties to dispute can agree to disclose certain confidential information in later judicial or arbitration proceedings. Mediator doesn't have such authority – he is obliged to keep information confidential. The obligation of confidentiality for mediator arise from statutes defining mediation, codes of professional conduct or mediation agreements. The duty of confidentiality must be preserved in order to assure that the reasonable expectations of participants regarding the confidentiality are met rather than frustrated. The goal of this thesis is to provide the answer for the legal issue: is the duty of confidentiality placed upon mediators absolute? The proposed hypothesis is that the duty of confidentiality placed upon mediators is not absolute. In order to accomplish the goal of the thesis and to support or deny the hypothesis we take the following steps: 1. to analyze the mediation and to determine what its main features are; 2. to analyze the confidentiality in mediation; 3. to determine what are the legal means for safeguarding the confidentiality in mediation; 4. to determine the role of mediator in preserving the confidentiality in mediation; 5. to determine the scope of confidentiality whether there is exceptions to it. In order to accomplish the tasks set above we analyzed number of legal instruments passed by the institutions of European Union, Lithuanian legislation on mediation, the provisions of confidentiality in Uniform Mediation Act of United States of America. It was important to explore the legal means in safeguarding the confidentiality in mediation in different countries: statutory protection, without prejudice rule, mediation privilege, attorney-client privilege and contractual protection – in order to determine which legal instrument provides the most protection of confidentiality. We looked at the case law of United Kingdom, USA, Australia that emphasized the importance of confidentiality in mediation, also analyzed British case law establishing the exceptions from the confidentiality. After the above mentioned tasks are accomplished we make the following conclusions: 1. Mediation unlike other ADR and unlike judicial procedures, can offer an amicable dispute resolution procedure which is strictly confidential. 2. Confidentiality is one of the most important mediation features distinguishing it from other dispute resolution mechanisms and making it more attractive to the users. Legally protected confidentiality fosters the candid and open communications between parties and mediator increasing the effectiveness of the procedure. Lifting the shield of confidentiality would destroy the public trust in mediation and would discourage its potential users from engaging in mediation. 3. The statutory privilege against disclosure of any mediation communication by parties, the mediator and non-parties participants and ability to block others from disclosure – is the most effective legal instrument preserving the confidentiality in mediation and protecting the mediator from being called as a witness regarding confidential information. 4. The duty of confidentiality placed upon mediator is not absolute as it can be proved by several exceptions created by legislation and by courts. There is certain situations when courts can decide to look at otherwise privileged information when public interest to hear mediator testimony outweighs the interest in protecting the confidentiality and integrity of mediation. There are certain situations when courts are willing to hear the confidential information related to mediation. Absent any statutory protection the mediator may be called as a witness and could be compelled to testify. The mediator testimony may reveal certain information which could be in favor of one party and damaging to the other party this undermines the principle of mediator neutrality and the integrity of the process. All the exceptions to confidentiality must be construed carefully and precisely by statute leaving no ambiguities and providing the legal certainty for participants. The recommendations: In order to ensure the adequate protection of confidentiality in mediation we recommend: 1. to incorporate in the Code of Civil Procedure the provision prohibiting to call the mediator as a witness in civil or commercial proceedings; 2. to incorporate in Civil Dispute Conciliation Mediation Act the exception to confidentiality for information that is sought or offered to prove mediator malpractice claim or complaint; 3. to add an exception in Civil Dispute Conciliation Mediation Act that information about future or ongoing crimes which became known during mediation is not protected and must be disclosed to authorities.

This report summarizes the results of "Nanotechnology and Life Cycle Assessment," a twoday workshop jointly convened by the Woodrow Wilson Center Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies; the United States Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development; and the European Commission, RTD.G4 "Nano S&T: Converging Science and Technologies." Held in October 2006, the workshop involved international experts from the fields of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and nanotechnology. The main program of the workshop consisted of introductory lectures, group discussions and a final plenary session. A writing group prepared the initial draft of this report based on workshop discussions, and the final report was reviewed by all workshop participants and outside experts. The contents are based on the results of the group discussions. The structure of this report follows the main topics identified and discussed by the groups. The purpose of the workshop was to determine whether existing LCA tools and methods are adequate to use on a new technology. This document provides an overview of LCA and nanotechnology, discusses the current state of the art, identifies current knowledge gaps that may prevent the proper application of LCA in this field and makes recommendations on the application of LCA for assessing the potential environmental impacts of nanotechnology, nanomaterials, and nanoproducts. For the purposes of this report, "nanoproducts" are defined as products containing nanomaterials. A short version of this report will be published in an appropriate LCA and/or a technical nanotechnology journal. The following presents a summary of the main conclusions and recommendations identified by the workshop participants and presented in this report. Main Conclusions · There is no generic LCA of nanomaterials, just as there is no generic LCA of chemicals. · The ISO-framework for LCA (ISO 14040:2006) is fully suitable to nanomaterials and nanoproducts, even if data regarding the elementary flows and impacts might be uncertain and scarce. Since environmental impacts of nanoproducts can occur in any life cycle stage, all stages of the life cycle of nanoproducts should be assessed in an LCA study. · While the ISO 14040 framework is appropriate, a number of operational issues need to be addressed in more detail in the case of nanomaterials and nanoproducts. The main problem with LCA of nanomaterials and nanoproducts is the lack of data and understanding in certain areas. · While LCA brings major benefits and useful information, there are certain limits to its application and use, in particular with respect to the assessment of toxicity impacts and of large-scale impacts. · Within future research, major efforts are needed to fully assess potential risks and environmental impacts of nanoproducts and materials (not just those related to LCA). There is a need for protocols and practical methodologies for toxicology studies, fate and transport studies and scaling approaches. · International cooperation between Europe and the United States, together with other partners, is needed in order to address these concerns. · Further research is needed to gather missing relevant data and to develop user-friendly eco-design screening tools, especially ones suitable for use by small and medium sized enterprises. Key Recommendations 1. Case-studies/prioritizing efforts With limited resources, a case-study research approach could be adopted to significantly enhance knowledge on environmental impacts of nanomaterials and nanoproducts. 2. LCA studies and presentations of results Any LCA study on nanoproducts and nanomaterials most likely suffers from high uncertainty issues. Therefore, the report recommends: · Do not wait to have near-perfect data. · Be modest about uncertainties; clearly state relevant uncertainty aspects and assumptions. · Draw conclusions in the case of major or significant improvements; otherwise, state that the nanoproducts and the conventional product are equivalent. · At this early stage, studies should focus on protecting humans and the environment. · Separate the category indicators, grouping them by relevance/uncertainty. · Avoid overselling the benefits of the new nanoproduct, since assessment methodologies will improve and might show "problems" in the future. · Work with toxicologists and other scientists (geographical and socio-economic impacts) to review data and bound the issue. · Make disaggregated data available for future LCA comparisons. 3. Approaches · Critical review should always be done to ensure credibility of LCA studies. · An independent review should be made by an expert panel with balanced representation and wide range of expertise. · Data for the critical review or other supporting data should be published. · Panels of interested parties should be formed to establish rules for LCA of nanomaterials and nanoproducts. 4. Actions from stakeholders Different stakeholders/authorities can potentially support the application and use of LCA for nanoproducts and nanomaterials through a large set of actions. Government actions could include: · Setting up research frameworks and programs for the methodology development of LCA in the field of nanotechnology and with nanoproducts. · R&D activities, with special emphasis on multinational cooperation in fields related to health and environmental safety. · Use of LCA results to design adapted economic instruments. · Using LCA to help develop green purchasing and integrate nanotechnology criteria in green purchasing. · Allocating a portion of current nano research funding to nano/LCA research to make it more attractive to the private sector for further R&D. · Providing independent, standardized and reviewed LCA information that might be used by industry and other stakeholders. · Covering different nanotechnologies' flows of substances (air emissions, water releases etc.) into the European Commission's "European Reference Life Cycle Data System" (ELCD), and the US Life Cycle Impact database. · Working toward an international LCI database for nanomaterials. · Improving data coordination among different government agencies, e.g., agencies responsible for product consumer safety evaluations, workplace safety evaluations and environmental issues. Academia can potentially support the application and use of LCA to nanoproducts and nanomaterials through a large set of actions, including: · Setting up databases for LCA case studies on nanotechnology and nanoproducts. · Providing scholarships to the universities to hire Ph.D. students specifically for nano/LCA research. · Carrying out research in LCA methods applied to nanotechnology and nanoproducts. Industry can potentially support the application and use of LCA to nanoproducts and nanomaterials through a large set of actions, including: · Undertake R&D activities. · Use of LCA results to design improved products. · Co-funding research on developing LCA methods, impact characterization metrics specific to nanotechnologies. · Co-funding research on toxic effects of specific nanomaterials. · Co-funding social science research on public concerns about nanotechnology and on developing effective risk-communication strategies using LCA data. · Actively creating mechanisms for sharing confidential data without compromising competitiveness. The report also notes that the insurance industry should play a leading role in assessing life cycle risk assessments of nanoproducts. NGO and Consumer Associations can potentially support the application and use of LCA to nanoproducts and nanomaterials through a large set of actions, including: · Communicating LCA study results to the public to inform consumers. · Educating themselves and promoting LCA as a tool to assess nanotechnology.

It has been said that most of the founders of demography were astronomers (viz., Halley or Quetelet) or clergymen (viz., Süssmilch or Malthus). Jean‐Baptiste Moheau, the author of a treatise, published in 1778 under the title Recherches et considérations sur la population de la France, was an exception to this rule. He seems to have been an obscure bureaucrat, and left so few tracks in the record that his very existence was long in doubt. Today, however, the rough outlines of a biography have been traced. Moheau was born in 1745, and died in 1794; he was not thirty years old when he wrote the treatise. He made no other contribution to science, and appears to have been unwilling even to make simple corrections to his text when changes were requested by the 1780 German translator of the work. (There exists no translation in English.) He was the personal secretary of Montyon, the Intendant (the equivalent of a provincial governor, delegated by the central government) of the généralité of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast of France. There is still a controversy about Montyon's possible contribution to the work, but it appears that Montyon was not interested in population, that he was not even in residence in La Rochelle, and that Moheau as his secretary was substituting for him, taking a special interest in the collection of population statistics that were requested by the royal administration.At the time of publication, the work attracted some attention, including an unfavorable critique by Condorcet, and had some admirers in Germany where it was compared to the work of Süssmilch, the great Prussian political arithmetician, whose own Göttliche Ordnung (The Divine Order, first edition published in 1741) was unknown to the author or authors of the Recherches et considérations. Moheau's work was soon forgotten, however, until a 1912 re‐edition. A modern critical edition, annotated by Eric Vilquin, which contains a biographical essay by Rene LeMée and a number of other contributions assessing the work and placing it in its historical context, was published in 1994 jointly by the Institut National d'Études Démographiques and Presses Universitaires de France. The excerpt printed below and the citations in this introduction are translations from the text as it appears in that edition. The translation is by Etienne van de Walle. Page numbers also refer to the 1994 edition. Recherches et considérations sur la population de la France, in any event, is a remarkable achievement for its time and deserves an important place in the history of demography. The title could be roughly translated, today, as "Empirical Studies on the Population of France, and Their Interpretation." Like John Graunt's 1662 Natural and Political Observations…made upon the Bills of Mortality, the work is characterized by a dual concern to present hard data and to use them to make politically and socially relevant inferences. Moheau's book consists of two very different parts, however, and lexicographical analysis suggests that they were written by two authors. The first part ("State of the Population") is a demographic monograph, and one is struck by the similarities of the chapter titles to those that one would find in any demographic description of a national population today:

– The means of investigating the population
– An estimate of the population of France
– Distribution by age and sex
– Distribution by socioeconomic characteristics
– Body size and strength
– Fertility
– Mortality
– Migration
– Is the population growing or decreasing?

The main demographic contribution of the work is in the area of fertility. Moheau lists the topics himself:
A multitude of interesting questions present themselves for our investigation. What is the fertility of women in France? One in how many women gives birth per year? What is the ratio of marriages to births, and what is the highest number of children per marriage? Is fertility the same in all provinces of France, in the cities and in the countryside, and in the various parts of Europe? Is the result roughly the same every year, or every month? And finally, which of the two sexes accounts for the most births? (p. 125)
This is a remarkable list of questions, and Moheau was the first to raise them so comprehensively. (It is noteworthy that there was not even a word in English, at that time, to express the concept of fertility as an aggregate characteristic of populations.) He distinguishes fertility from what we now call the birth rate, and marital fertility from overall fertility. He is interested in variability in space—national and international, and urban and rural. He analyzes the seasonality of births. He also concludes that fertility is constant over the years: "Nature has arranged the fertility of women in such a way that each year gives approximately the same number of births" (p. 134). The result of this constancy is that, in the absence of a census, the number of registered births provides the best estimate of the population size of a country. This view conflicts with the idea of fertility decline, and with potential depopulation as expressed later in the volume and in the passage below.The second part of the book examines the causes of the progress or decay of the population. This is the part described by the word "considérations" in the title of the book. The author distinguishes between physical causes (climate, food, dangerous occupations…) and political, social, or moral causes. Among the latter factors, he discusses the effects of law, government, religion, taxes, war, and the possession of colonies. The excerpt translated below is entitled "Des moeurs" (literally: "Of Mores"), by which Moheau means private morality in the areas of sexuality and reproduction; this is not unlike the meaning adopted by Malthus when he speaks of "moral restraint." The chapter deals mainly with four areas of sexual conduct: marital fidelity, prostitution, breastfeeding, and nonmarital sex (which may occasion venereal diseases). A specially noteworthy passage alludes to funestes secrets (fatal secrets), an expression widely quoted by French demographers and often interpreted as a reference to the spread of contraception in marriage. In context, however, it would appear that Moheau had in mind the growing impact of various types of extramarital behavior—fornication, prostitution, and adultery.But beyond offering a catalogue of individual behavior he considers reprehensible—a sharp—eyed critical description of some aspects of contemporary French mores—Moheau's central concern in these matters is with the consequences that affect the strength of the State. Moral failings, he argues, lead to diminished fertility and damage the overall physical quality of the population; they are pernicious in the civil and political order. He notes the high economic costs of children and implies that economic calculus alone would result in failure to reproduce: "logic and a calculating mind would not lead to the propagation of the species." Populousness of the State presupposes motivations that transcend material interest: it rests on the foundation of moral virtues.

"Major technological advances in the last few years have increased our knowledge of the role that genetics has in occupational diseases and our understanding of genetic components and the interaction between genetics and environmental factors. The use of genetic information, along with all of the other factors that contribute to occupational morbidity and mortality, will play an increasing role in preventing occupational disease. However, the use of genetic information in occupational safety and health research and practice presents both promise and concerns [McCanlies et al. 2003; Kelada et al. 2003; Henry et al. 2002; Christiani et al. 2001; Schulte et al. 1999]. Use of genetic information raises medical, ethical, legal and social issues [Clayton 2003; Ward et al., 2002; McCunney 2002; Christiani et al 2001; Rothstein 2000a; Schulte et al. 1999; Lemmens 1997; Barrett et al. 1997, Van Damme et al. 1995; Gochfeld 1998; Omenn 1982]. The purpose of this report is to bring together the diverse literature and opinions on genetics in the workplace, to highlight important issues, and to provide some considerations for current and future practice. Occupational safety and health professionals and practitioners may have particular interest in this report as the understanding of gene-environment interactions at the mechanistic and population levels may result in improved prevention and control strategies. This report is divided into topic areas for ease of reading. Specifically, the role of genetic information in occupational disease is discussed in Chapter 2, followed in Chapter 3 by a presentation of how genetics is incorporated into occupational health research. Health records as a source of genetic information are discussed in Chapter 4. The report continues in Chapter 5 with a focus on genetic monitoring, followed in Chapter 6 by a theoretical discussion of genetic screening. The final chapter presents an overview of the most important aspects of this report, which are the ethical, social, and legal implications of genetics in the workplace. In addition, ethical issues specific to health records and genetic testing are discussed in Chapters 4 and 6, respectively. To assist our audience in finding additional sources of information or more in-depth discussion of the issues surrounding genetic information, a list of web sites is provided at the conclusion of this document. Role of Genetic Information in Occupational Disease: The role of genetic information in occupational disease is being explored. The framework for considering genetics in the exposure to disease paradigm arose from a National Academy of Sciences review on biomarkers [NRC 1987]. Biomarkers are measurements using biological tissues that give information about exposure, effect of exposure, or susceptibility. Evaluation of genetic damage can provide information about exposure or effect of exposure. However, the presence of a specific genetic biomarker will not itself result in an occupational disease; exposure to a workplace hazard is necessary. The presence of a disease risk biomarker in the absence of exposure may be innocuous. The study of biomarkers of genetic susceptibility in the context of workplace exposures can provide information about gene-environment interactions. One major emphasis of genetic research in occupational disease has been in the area of response variability. Extensive variability in the human response to workplace exposures has been observed. Genes can have multiple variations known as polymorphisms, which may contribute to some of this variability [Grassman et al. 1998]. Research has been conducted over the last approximately 30 years to identify the role of genetic polymorphisms in a wide range of occupational and environmental diseases, particularly those involving occupational carcinogens [Hornig 1988; Berg 1979]. The risk of biological effects or diseases attributable to an occupational exposure can be decreased, unchanged, or increased among individuals with certain genetic polymorphisms. Incorporating Genetics into Occupational Health Research: The main influence on genetic research with respect to occupational health is the large number of technological advances in molecular biology. Because of these new techniques, it is now feasible to evaluate the relationship of disease with individual genes and their variants or even with the whole genome. These technologies promise to set the stage for new discoveries in understanding mechanisms and the preclinical changes that might serve as early warnings of disease or increased risk [NRC 2007]. " ; (Cont'd) "They also present difficult challenges in terms of handling large data sets, understanding the normal range, standardizing technologies for comparison and interpretation, and communicating results [King and Sinha 2001; Wittes and Friedman 1999]. As our understanding of the role of specific genes and their variants increases, genetic tests are being developed to look at specific genotypes. One critical issue in genetics is the validity of such genetic tests. Much contemporary genetic research involves the collection of biological specimens (usually DNA in white blood cells) that are then tested either for changes (damage) to genetic material or for genetic polymorphisms. These genetic tests, while useful in occupational health research, are not ready for clinical use; in other words, they are not validated for clinical interpretation. Validation is a process by which a test's performance is measured both in the laboratory and in populations, resulting in the evaluation of the clinical utility or the risks and benefits of the test. Until clinically validated, the information from such tests may be meaningless with regard to an individual's health or risk. In contrast, genetic tests may be validated for assessing exposure or effect modification in research even if they have no clinical utility. Health Records: A Source of Genetic Information: Genetic tests are not the only source of genetic information in the workplace. Genetic information is kept in workers' personnel and workplace health records [Rothenberg et al. 1997]. This information is in the family history of diseases with known strong genetic etiologies as well as in the results of physical examinations and common laboratory tests. This type of information is reported routinely by workers or obtained by employers from workers' job applications, health questionnaires, health and life insurance applications, physicals, and workers' compensation proceedings [Anderlik and Rothstein 2001]. The line between what is and is not genetic information in health records is unclear. States have enacted legislation with widely varying definitions of what constitutes genetic information from an employee's health record. Questions concerning confidentiality, privacy and security remain as the handling of health records may be influenced by various federal and state regulations. Genetic Monitoring and Occupational Research and Health Practice: Genetic information can be a scientific tool to understand mechanisms and pathways in laboratory research and as independent or dependent variables in population research studies of workers. In occupational safety and health practice, genetic tests may be used in a variety of ways. As in other areas of health science, genetic information may be used in the differential diagnosis of disease, allowing clinicians to consider or exclude various diagnoses. Monitoring for the effects of exposure on genetic material, such as chromosomes, genes, and constituent deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), has been used to evaluate risks and potential health problems for more than 50 years, particularly those from ionizing radiation [Mendelsohn 1995; Langlois et al. 1987; Berg 1979]. Such monitoring is not unlike monitoring for metals in blood, solvents in breath, or dusts in lungs and presents less ethical concern than assessing heritable effects [Schulte and DeBord 2000]. Tests for genetic damage have been advocated as a way to prioritize exposed individuals for more thorough medical monitoring [Albertini 2001]. Genetic monitoring highlights the confusion that exists between individual and group risk assessment. Unlike other monitoring methods, the risks linked to cytogenetic changes are interpretable only for a group, not for an individual [Schulte 2007; Murray 1983; Lappe 1983]. Currently, no U.S. regulations exist that mandate genetic monitoring. Questions arise whether genetic monitoring indicates a potential health problem, an existing health problem, or compensable damage. More research is needed to understand the science before the individual's risk of disease can be interpreted from genetic monitoring results. However, genetic monitoring to determine exposure may be useful for the occupational health practitioner Theoretical Use of Genetic Screening and Occupational Health Practice: Genetic monitoring may have some application in occupational health practice, but perhaps the most controversial use of genetic information would be in making decisions about employment opportunities and health and life insurance coverage [Schill 2000; Bingham 1998; Van Damme et al. 1995; Murray 1983; Lappe 1983]. This would occur primarily as a result of genetic screening, in which a job (and insurance) applicant or a current worker might be asked to undergo genetic testing to determine if he or she has a certain genotype. However, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) prohibits discrimination on the basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance and employment [U.S. Congress 2008]. Genetic screening which was not strictly prohibited by the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is now prohibited. Under ADA an employer may not make medical inquiries about an applicant until a conditional offer has been extended. Once the offer has been tendered, an employer could have obtained medical, including genetic, information about a job applicant. ADA did not prohibit obtaining genetic information or genetic screening, nor did it prohibit an employer from requesting genetic testing once an applicant has been hired provided the testing is job related. and can be used for the purposes of job placement after a conditional job offer is made. Most criteria for genetic screening programs indicate that participation should be voluntary, with informed consent in place. Genetic screening for these purposes cannot be supported at this time because of the current lack of linkage of causation of a given genetic polymorphism with a given occupational disease and its implications with regard to the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act of 1970) that the workplace be safe for all workers [OSHA 1980b]. Accurate genetic screening information may eventually be useful to workers considering employment options. Obtaining this information for the worker would become appropriate only after the screening tests have been validated regarding risk. Various ethical arguments have been advanced in the discussion of genetic screening, and a broad range of implications of genetic testing has been discussed in the literature and in this document, including the oversight of genetic testing laboratories. The Ethical, Social, and Legal Implications of Genetics in the Workplace: A concern about the use of genetic information in occupational safety and health is that the emphasis in maintaining a safe and healthful workplace could shift from controlling the environment to excluding the vulnerable worker. This would be counter to the spirit and the letter of the OSH Act of 1970 [OSHA 1980b]. Actions that attempt to depart from providing safe and healthful workplaces for all should not be supported. Nevertheless, understanding the role of genetic factors in occupational morbidity, mortality, and injury is important and could lead to further prevention and control efforts. However, occupational safety and health decision-makers, researchers, and practitioners may find that genetic factors do not contribute substantially to some occupational diseases. Environmental risk factors will probably always be more important for developing strategies for prevention and intervention in occupational disease and ultimately for the reduction of morbidity and mortality. The challenge is to identify and apply genetic information in ways that will improve occupational safety and health for workers. The use of genetic information in occupational safety and health research requires careful attention because of the real or perceived opportunities for the misuse of genetic information. Society in general and workers in particular have concerns that discrimination and lack of opportunity will result from the inappropriate use of genetic information [MacDonald and Williams-Jones 2002; Maltby 2000]. While only sparse or anecdotal information supports this contention, a wide range of workers, legislators, scientists, and public health researchers have concern that such discrimination could occur. Thus, GINA and other regulations were passed to prevent the potential misuse and abuse of genetic information in the workplace. Examples of safeguards include rules and practices for maintaining privacy and confidentiality, prohibition of discrimination, and support of a worker's right of self-determination (autonomy) with regard to genetic information. Many of these safeguards have been built into biomedical research in general, and occupational safety and health research in particular, through guidance given in the Nuremberg Code [1949], the Belmont Report [1979], and the Common Rule (45 CFR. 46) [DHHS 2005; CFR 2007], as well as in the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) reports [1999], the ADA [1990], Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) [1996] and GINA in 2008 [U.S. Congress 2008]. ADA and HIPAA provided some safeguards against the potential misuse of genetic information in the workplace before GINA was signed and in 2000, Executive Order 13145 was signed that prohibits discrimination in federal employment based on genetic information [65 Fed. Reg. 6877 (2000)]. In summary, the use of genetic information in the workplace has the potential to affect every worker in the United States. This NIOSH document provides information on the scientific, legal, and ethical issues with regard to the use of genetics in occupational safety and health research and practice." - NIOSHTIC-2 ; Introduction -- The Role of genetic information in occupational disease -- Incorporating genetics into occupational health -- Research -- Health records: a source of genetic information -- Genetic monitoring: occuptional research and practice -- The Theoretical use of genetic screening and occupational health practice. -- The Ethical, social, and legal implications of genetics in the workplace ; "November 2009." ; Also available via the World Wide Web. as an Acrobat .pdf file (1.62 MB, 151 p.). ; Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-114) and index.

Relevance of the topic. Lithuania is not a large country and sports talents are not emerging very often. It does not depend on the social or economic situation of the country (Schnabel et al., 1994; Cedaro, 2000; Carling et al., 2009). When giving the opportunity for the talent to achieve positive results in sports, the talented personalities have to be selected, the purposeful training program has to be concluded as well as the monitoring of the practical implementation of the program has to be performed (Regnier et al., 1993; Durand-Bush, Salmela, 2001; Abernethy, 2008; Vaeyens et al., 2008; Bailey et al., 2010; Burgess, Naughton, 2010; Philips et al., 2010; Ford et al., 2011). Therefore it is very important that the training of the athletes has to be conceptualized, so a small quantity of the talented athletes is developed as optimally as possible. Inaccurate training system prevents the athletes from revealing their own potential. Thus, only the consistent sports training system shall stimulate a more rapid improvement of the sports results, as it is harder to identify a talent than to develop it (Balyi, Hamilton, 1999; Raslanas, 2001; Malina et al., 2004; Balyi, Williams, 2009; Stafford, 2010). It was considered for a long time that success in sports depends solely on the athletes, who are physically strong and developed tactically (Krasilshchikov, 2011), however, due to increase of the competition between athletes (De Bosscher et al., 2006) and major political and commercial influence of sports (Green, Oakley, 2001), there is a necessity to create long-term development programs with respect to different sports (Balyi, Hamilton, 2004; Balyi, Williams, 2009; Stafford, 2010). Long-term development of the young athletes taking place for a period between eight–to–twelve years before becoming elite athlete is a purposeful and integral didactic process (Ericsson, Charness, 1994; Salmela et al., 1998; Balyi, 2001; Balyi, Hamilton, 2004; Balyi, Williams, 2009; Stafford, 2010) which is significantly affected by the body composition of the athletes (genotypic and phenotypic factors) (Heyward, Stolarczyk, 1996; Jebb et al., 2000; Drinkwater et al., 2008; Ostojic et al., 2006; Abraham, 2010), training program (Trninic et al., 2001; Milanovič, 2002; Balčiūnas et al., 2006), exceptionally physical (Drinkwater et al., 2008; Delextrat, Cohen, 2009) and technical fitness (Apostolidis et al., 2004; Karpowicz, 2006), nature of sport performance (Hucinski, 2004; Dembinski, 2005). A reasonable long-term development system of young basketball players began to take shape in seventh decade of the 20th century. Different types of training were distinguished in such system: integral, physical, technical, tactical and theoretic (Stonkus, 1992; Butautas, 2002). The scientists have different opinions on the long-term development. Zeldovič and Keraminas (Зельдович, Кераминас, 1964) provide that 50 % of the total training time in the training cycle of the boys aged 11–14 years should be attributed to the physical and technical training. Dobry (1986) and Stonkus (1985) provide that physical training should prevail (at least 40 % of the total training time) in the training of boys aged 11–14 years. Other scientists (Mikulowsky, Oszast, 1976, Butautas, 2002; Milanovič et al., 2002; Cenic, 2004) state that the technical training is the most important type of training. Based on the opinion of the other group of scientists (Литвинов и др., 1996; Canadian Sports Centres, 2008), the time attributed to the physical training shall be reduced in parallel to the increase of age of an athlete, i.e. during the first year of training the largest part shall be attributed to physical training. One of the most important conditions of effective sports training is control and management of sports training in order to determine and assess physical development, physical fitness, change in the level of technical skills (Johnson, Nelson, 1986; Bouchard et al., 1997; Stonkus, 2002, 2003; Graham et al., 2004; Barfield et al., 2007; Mirkov et al., 2008; Balčiūnas et al., 2009; Robinson, 2010). According to some studies performed, age periods which are the most sensitive for the training of motor abilities (Komi, 1992; Shephard, Astrand, 1992; Kraemer, 1993; Pauletto, 1995; Alter, 1996; Donald, Chu, 1996; Dintiman et al., 1997; Donald, Chu, 1998; Viru et al., 1999; Baquet et al., 2003; Boisseau, Delamarche, 2000; Malina et al., 2004; Ford et al., 2011), technical skills (Schmidt, 1991; Latash, 1993; Burton, Miller, 1998; Schmidt, Lee, 1999; Cabodevilla, 2008; Kasa, 2006; Zambova, Tomanek, 2012) is childhood and adolescence. Scientists (Impellizzeri et al., 2005; Wolf, 2006; Ljach, 2007) provide that with respect to training of young basketball players fitness objectives shall be important next to the training objectives, as they influence achievement of the results of a young personality. Considering that the population of Lithuania is just below 3 million (2.96 million; http://www.stat.gov.lt, 2013), the results and achievement of Lithuanian basketball men national team (5th place in the world ranking, 406 points; http://www.fiba.com, 2013) and of national teams of younger age groups (3rd place in the world ranking, 261 points (http://www.fiba.com, 2013) in the Olympic Games, World and European championships should be treated as exceptional phenomena. A case study of an effective training institution could help to form an assumption on the peculiarities of the long-term development program successfully implemented by the Lithuanian coaches. The relevance of the problem is influenced by the following factors: • a special meaning for the development of a personality has genuine activity in childhood and adolescence (Jovaiša, 1993; 2001); • basketball is becoming a more important social phenomena as sports results represent the country (Wilson, Spink, 2006; Sakalauskas, 2010; Paulauskas, 2010); • in order to form a training concept of young basketball players, tendencies of the training of the training and fitness of the best athletes has to be analyzed (Leonardo et al., 2002; Stonkus, 2003); • train and manage the process of young basketball players so that the best results are achieved in the most important competitions (Balyi, Williams, 2009). It is especially important for Lithuania as it has limited resources of sports talent and finance; • only the scientifically-sound optimum training program of the young basketball players (aged 7–17 years) shall allow the athletes to realize their individual potential in order to achieve results in sports, as well as to realize sensitive opportunities for the development of personality (Aksen, Gunay, 2010). Research problem: due to different training of the young basketball players and different concept of the fitness influencing the training, it is important to determine, which peculiarities of the training programs applied effectively while aiming for the best results influence the fitness of the players during different age periods. Research hypothesis: a case study of coaching of young basketball players of Sabonis Basketball Center aged 7–17 years will reveal the structure of the long-term coaching of the players. Research object: coaching of young basketball players (aged 7–17 years). Research aim: conceptualization of the peculiarities of coaching of young basketball players (aged 7–17 years). Research objectives: 1. Determine the peculiarities of the content changes and amount of load of the training programs of basketball players aged 7–17 years. 2. Evaluate the body composition indicators, physical and technical fitness of basketball players aged 7–17 years by creating the rank scales of the indicators. 3. Determine the model values of the sport performance indicators of basketball players aged 12–17 years. 4. Reveal the selection and coaching model of Sabonis Basketball Center. Originality and theoretical significance of the research As basketball is becoming a more complex sport (faster, more athletic and more versatile), the results depend on many internal and external factors (Stonkus, 2003; Wissel, 2012). Training of young basketball players has become multidimensional, systemic process as multidisciplinary knowledge, methods and measures are used. A revealed phenomenological interaction between training and fitness of young basketball players aged 7–17 years is based on the following aspects: • a selection and training model of Sabonis Basketball Center has been revealed; • a training program of young basketball players aged 7–17 years applied in Sabonis Basketball Center has been revealed; • a rank scale of body composition indicators, physical and technical fitness of young basketball players aged 7–17 years has been formed; • the most sensitive age periods for the training of motor abilities and technical skills of young basketball players have been determined; • the characteristics of sport performance of basketball players aged 12–17 years have been formed. Practical application of the research Training programs and their peculiarities for different age periods provided in this dissertation shall help Lithuanian coaches to organize, plan and implement the long-term development of young basketball players more effectively. The rank scales of young basketball players' body composition indicators, physical and technical fitness and the model indicator values of sport performance, which have been formed for the purposes of this dissertation, shall help to select and train the players, prepare them for competitions and develop the highly skilled athletes. The established sensitive age periods for the training of motor abilities and technical skills shall assist the coaches in developing the abilities of young basketball players more effectively. Conclusions 1. It was determined that aiming to develop the basic skills of basketball technique and game awareness the specialized development prevail

Relevance of the topic. Lithuania is not a large country and sports talents are not emerging very often. It does not depend on the social or economic situation of the country (Schnabel et al., 1994; Cedaro, 2000; Carling et al., 2009). When giving the opportunity for the talent to achieve positive results in sports, the talented personalities have to be selected, the purposeful training program has to be concluded as well as the monitoring of the practical implementation of the program has to be performed (Regnier et al., 1993; Durand-Bush, Salmela, 2001; Abernethy, 2008; Vaeyens et al., 2008; Bailey et al., 2010; Burgess, Naughton, 2010; Philips et al., 2010; Ford et al., 2011). Therefore it is very important that the training of the athletes has to be conceptualized, so a small quantity of the talented athletes is developed as optimally as possible. Inaccurate training system prevents the athletes from revealing their own potential. Thus, only the consistent sports training system shall stimulate a more rapid improvement of the sports results, as it is harder to identify a talent than to develop it (Balyi, Hamilton, 1999; Raslanas, 2001; Malina et al., 2004; Balyi, Williams, 2009; Stafford, 2010). It was considered for a long time that success in sports depends solely on the athletes, who are physically strong and developed tactically (Krasilshchikov, 2011), however, due to increase of the competition between athletes (De Bosscher et al., 2006) and major political and commercial influence of sports (Green, Oakley, 2001), there is a necessity to create long-term development programs with respect to different sports (Balyi, Hamilton, 2004; Balyi, Williams, 2009; Stafford, 2010). Long-term development of the young athletes taking place for a period between eight–to–twelve years before becoming elite athlete is a purposeful and integral didactic process (Ericsson, Charness, 1994; Salmela et al., 1998; Balyi, 2001; Balyi, Hamilton, 2004; Balyi, Williams, 2009; Stafford, 2010) which is significantly affected by the body composition of the athletes (genotypic and phenotypic factors) (Heyward, Stolarczyk, 1996; Jebb et al., 2000; Drinkwater et al., 2008; Ostojic et al., 2006; Abraham, 2010), training program (Trninic et al., 2001; Milanovič, 2002; Balčiūnas et al., 2006), exceptionally physical (Drinkwater et al., 2008; Delextrat, Cohen, 2009) and technical fitness (Apostolidis et al., 2004; Karpowicz, 2006), nature of sport performance (Hucinski, 2004; Dembinski, 2005). A reasonable long-term development system of young basketball players began to take shape in seventh decade of the 20th century. Different types of training were distinguished in such system: integral, physical, technical, tactical and theoretic (Stonkus, 1992; Butautas, 2002). The scientists have different opinions on the long-term development. Zeldovič and Keraminas (Зельдович, Кераминас, 1964) provide that 50 % of the total training time in the training cycle of the boys aged 11–14 years should be attributed to the physical and technical training. Dobry (1986) and Stonkus (1985) provide that physical training should prevail (at least 40 % of the total training time) in the training of boys aged 11–14 years. Other scientists (Mikulowsky, Oszast, 1976, Butautas, 2002; Milanovič et al., 2002; Cenic, 2004) state that the technical training is the most important type of training. Based on the opinion of the other group of scientists (Литвинов и др., 1996; Canadian Sports Centres, 2008), the time attributed to the physical training shall be reduced in parallel to the increase of age of an athlete, i.e. during the first year of training the largest part shall be attributed to physical training. One of the most important conditions of effective sports training is control and management of sports training in order to determine and assess physical development, physical fitness, change in the level of technical skills (Johnson, Nelson, 1986; Bouchard et al., 1997; Stonkus, 2002, 2003; Graham et al., 2004; Barfield et al., 2007; Mirkov et al., 2008; Balčiūnas et al., 2009; Robinson, 2010). According to some studies performed, age periods which are the most sensitive for the training of motor abilities (Komi, 1992; Shephard, Astrand, 1992; Kraemer, 1993; Pauletto, 1995; Alter, 1996; Donald, Chu, 1996; Dintiman et al., 1997; Donald, Chu, 1998; Viru et al., 1999; Baquet et al., 2003; Boisseau, Delamarche, 2000; Malina et al., 2004; Ford et al., 2011), technical skills (Schmidt, 1991; Latash, 1993; Burton, Miller, 1998; Schmidt, Lee, 1999; Cabodevilla, 2008; Kasa, 2006; Zambova, Tomanek, 2012) is childhood and adolescence. Scientists (Impellizzeri et al., 2005; Wolf, 2006; Ljach, 2007) provide that with respect to training of young basketball players fitness objectives shall be important next to the training objectives, as they influence achievement of the results of a young personality. Considering that the population of Lithuania is just below 3 million (2.96 million; http://www.stat.gov.lt, 2013), the results and achievement of Lithuanian basketball men national team (5th place in the world ranking, 406 points; http://www.fiba.com, 2013) and of national teams of younger age groups (3rd place in the world ranking, 261 points (http://www.fiba.com, 2013) in the Olympic Games, World and European championships should be treated as exceptional phenomena. A case study of an effective training institution could help to form an assumption on the peculiarities of the long-term development program successfully implemented by the Lithuanian coaches. The relevance of the problem is influenced by the following factors: • a special meaning for the development of a personality has genuine activity in childhood and adolescence (Jovaiša, 1993; 2001); • basketball is becoming a more important social phenomena as sports results represent the country (Wilson, Spink, 2006; Sakalauskas, 2010; Paulauskas, 2010); • in order to form a training concept of young basketball players, tendencies of the training of the training and fitness of the best athletes has to be analyzed (Leonardo et al., 2002; Stonkus, 2003); • train and manage the process of young basketball players so that the best results are achieved in the most important competitions (Balyi, Williams, 2009). It is especially important for Lithuania as it has limited resources of sports talent and finance; • only the scientifically-sound optimum training program of the young basketball players (aged 7–17 years) shall allow the athletes to realize their individual potential in order to achieve results in sports, as well as to realize sensitive opportunities for the development of personality (Aksen, Gunay, 2010). Research problem: due to different training of the young basketball players and different concept of the fitness influencing the training, it is important to determine, which peculiarities of the training programs applied effectively while aiming for the best results influence the fitness of the players during different age periods. Research hypothesis: a case study of coaching of young basketball players of Sabonis Basketball Center aged 7–17 years will reveal the structure of the long-term coaching of the players. Research object: coaching of young basketball players (aged 7–17 years). Research aim: conceptualization of the peculiarities of coaching of young basketball players (aged 7–17 years). Research objectives: 1. Determine the peculiarities of the content changes and amount of load of the training programs of basketball players aged 7–17 years. 2. Evaluate the body composition indicators, physical and technical fitness of basketball players aged 7–17 years by creating the rank scales of the indicators. 3. Determine the model values of the sport performance indicators of basketball players aged 12–17 years. 4. Reveal the selection and coaching model of Sabonis Basketball Center. Originality and theoretical significance of the research As basketball is becoming a more complex sport (faster, more athletic and more versatile), the results depend on many internal and external factors (Stonkus, 2003; Wissel, 2012). Training of young basketball players has become multidimensional, systemic process as multidisciplinary knowledge, methods and measures are used. A revealed phenomenological interaction between training and fitness of young basketball players aged 7–17 years is based on the following aspects: • a selection and training model of Sabonis Basketball Center has been revealed; • a training program of young basketball players aged 7–17 years applied in Sabonis Basketball Center has been revealed; • a rank scale of body composition indicators, physical and technical fitness of young basketball players aged 7–17 years has been formed; • the most sensitive age periods for the training of motor abilities and technical skills of young basketball players have been determined; • the characteristics of sport performance of basketball players aged 12–17 years have been formed. Practical application of the research Training programs and their peculiarities for different age periods provided in this dissertation shall help Lithuanian coaches to organize, plan and implement the long-term development of young basketball players more effectively. The rank scales of young basketball players' body composition indicators, physical and technical fitness and the model indicator values of sport performance, which have been formed for the purposes of this dissertation, shall help to select and train the players, prepare them for competitions and develop the highly skilled athletes. The established sensitive age periods for the training of motor abilities and technical skills shall assist the coaches in developing the abilities of young basketball players more effectively. Conclusions 1. It was determined that aiming to develop the basic skills of basketball technique and game awareness the specialized development prevail

Slavery is a historical antecedent, which affected all continents, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes successively; its genesis is the sum of all that happened during an intermediate period of history. Paradoxically, slavery and slave trade still exist today under various pseudonyms: servants, nannies, prostitutes, indentured servants, extremely low paid workers. The examination here is confined to the Atlantic Slave Trade and its implications to Africa and its people, both in Africa and in Diaspora. Various aspects and instruments of law, particularly, international and inter-temporal law were examined to justify or repudiate the demand for compensation vis-à-vis reparation. The Atlantic Slavery, which began in the year 1440 was first abolished in 1787 throughout British Empire and in 1833, the British parliament abolished slavery in its colonies. In 1838, the slaves were emancipated and by 1880, slavery had been abolished in southern United States and across the world an estimated figure of over 14 million blacks was forcibly transported to overseas countries. This figure does not include those who died before they arrived to their various destinations. The thesis that slavery and slave trade contributed to the development of capitalism because slave trade constituted an essential element in the early mercantilist stage of capitalist development and abolition, which was a reflex of the resulting industrialism and its free commercial policies may have adherence here and there. Apparently, the increased demand for slaves not only reallocated resources, but also produced externalities thought to impede long-time development in Africa. These impediments were constraints on the growth of African states, increase in ethnic and socio stratification and sustained a culture of political violence. The history of West Africa will be used as a model for the economic marginalisation and depopulation of Africa. While most scholars agree that the depopulation of Africa was a consequence of Atlantic Slave Trade and must have reduced the aggregate population between 1700 and 1850, nevertheless it is problematic to assess the causal impact of slave population growth and development. The regular slave raiding was a constraint to production, social life obscured the ethnic boundaries and the inability to distinguish insider from outsider as the people scattered to escape the risk of being caught. Between the 16th and 19th centuries more than 14 million slaves were produced in Africa and transported to overseas. Book one Chapter I addresses the term "Slavery" and its concepts in all its ramifications. The instruments of semantics, philology and biology e.t.c. were used to arrive at an acceptable definition of slavery. Chapter II have as its priority the examination of slavery as an ancient institution of all cultures and the subsequent break of this culture by the Europeans. Enough evidence were advanced to prove that almost every continent and country practiced one form or another of slavery and slave trade, but this seemingly established culture and norm were put to question by the Europeans. The practice of the Atlantic triangular slave trade and the colonial Plantation economy with the attendant exploitation of the slave workers were extensively discussed in this chapter. Chapter III have as its priority racism, cultural differences, and above all, economics as the motives for Atlantic slave trade vis-à-vis triangular slave trade. The roles and the works of intellectuals, movies, newspapers, and physical contacts with the Africans contributed to slavery and also to the Atlantic slave trade. Book Two Chapter IV dealt with the examination and analysis of the motives of Atlantic slavery and slave trade using the economic, social and political yardstick as the most compelling factors. Mathematical calculations and economic diagrams were used here to describe the demand and supply of slaves and its effect on African economies. In Book Two, the implications of Atlantic slave trade to Africa and its people in strictly economic and demographical terms were examined. Chapter V presented various definitions of natural law and present its prominent progenitors and contributors. The role of natural law in the examination of the atrocities of the Atlantic slave trade cannot be underestimated considering the fact that during this period, international law or positive law as we understand it today, had hardly existed therefore, the only appropriate yardstick open for the examination of the treatment and trade of the Africans appear to be the instrument of natural law vis-à-vis moral law. Chapter VI examined in detail the merits and demerits of the concept of "Pacta sunt servanda" as applied by the Europeans in trade with his African partners. The unfolding implications that resulted because of the failure of adherence to "Pacta sunt servanda" to the contracting persons, nations, villages also featured here prominently. It is on record that the European expansion over other parts of the world was undertaken by the acts of states and governments and later also private business partners participated in the slave trade. Therefore, the implication of this under international law was evaluated. Chapter VII combined the extent and influence of the Radbruch's Formula of Ratio Juris, its logicality and the nature of legal theory and Robert Alexy's conceptual analysis and the theory about the nature of law to determine the degree of morality and justice embodied in the slave laws enacted in the United States during the Atlantic Slave Trade. For example, Radbruch postulated that the objective of legal philosophy is to appraise the law in terms of congruency with its ultimate goal, i.e. to realize the ideas of law. Chapter VIII highlighted the abolition and emancipation of slavery and emphasized the role of Quakers, Anglicans and most importantly anti-slavery campaigners, like Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson. They initiated, campaigned and fought for the abolition and emancipation of African slavery, without which the history of Africa and its people would have being hitherto be rewritten today. Just as the instruments of publications, sermon, pamphlets, treatise, poems, narratives, newspaper articles, reports and petitions were used to promote and aggravate Atlantic slave trade and slavery so also were these instruments used to fight for the emancipation of slavery. Though the cause of reparation for Africans and Africans in Diaspora cannot be seriously questioned, particularly under natural law and the laws of morality, the conceptual, legal, moral and historical issues were discussed extensively in Chapter IX. The normative arguments for and against reparations and the identity of beneficiaries and those sued for reparations were the object of analysis. Causation and attenuation arguments of reparations, particularly in tort liability, for example, act attenuation, victim attenuation and wrongdoer attenuation will help to determine culpability. Tort law analogy in slavery reparations and more so lawsuits for Jim Crow, constitutional requirements and unjust enrichment are all indispensable legal instruments to ascertain the merits and demerits of reparations. The concepts of restitution and genealogical determinism are also essential parts of this chapter. And finally, the philosophy of Libertarianism also constituted to the evaluation of the case for reparations. Reparation has been a common feature or idea in public international law before the emergence of international human rights law. The various international courts have defined the notion of reparation in relation to the notion of international responsibility of the state in • Art. 31: ILC (s. pages 238, 241) • Art. 3: ILC • Art. 13 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) • Art. 11(2) • Art. 7(1) The international law advances that any conduct, which is attributable to the state and which constitutes a breach of an international obligation of the state is an international wrongful act and comes under the state responsibility. The international law that adjudicates on state responsibility stipulates that there must be a link between a past wrong and present claim, consequently any legal claim for reparation at the international level will be confronted with the problem of proving that the present day western countries caused the injury inflicted on slaves. Other bodies of law like restitution, which deals with benefit-based liability or benefit-based recovery, has become an increasingly powerful tool in the case of reparation, particularly for mass wrongs. The merits and demerits were done justice to in this Dissertation. Natural Law has played an important role in the affairs of men through the ages because it entails basic principles of moral law and legislation and is in some cases objective, accessible to reason and based on human nature. Though, the concept of natural law is controversial, however, the Nuremberg War-Crimes trials after World War II, had no foundation in written laws. The prosecutors and judges justified their sentences on the assumption of natural laws binding all human beings and the present insistence on human rights also implies the affirmation of a kind of natural law. Natural law is therefore, a reflection of morality and consequently, legally valid if they conform to morality. He appraised human rights as surpassing all written laws and advanced that the law of nature should be sufficient to address the issue of restitution. Therefore, the kidnappings, the involuntary enslavement, the killings or murder of protesting or rebellious African slaves were an offence and a crime that needed to be addressed. Africa and the Africans in Diaspora can seek for justice albeit post mortem of the slaves.

Inhaltsangabe: To introduce this work the author refers to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011, which took place in Davos from the 26th - 30th of January 2011, its agendas and reports (The World Economic Forum, 2011). At first view this meeting looks like a get-together of several leaders from different backgrounds, meaning leaders from different industries as well as political and religious leaders. But the huge amount of attendees and their position in the world turns this get-together into a platform to discuss strategies and solutions for the world's future economy and how to overcome the latest issues regarding the financial crisis. The theme of this year's meeting was 'Shared norms for a new reality', indicating, that the world has reached a turning point where change is important to assure a sustainable future. Abhisit Vejjajiva, Prime Minister of Thailand, for example states 'Governments and businesses should start revising their social contracts with their stakeholders in the light of the new realities of the post-crisis world". Furthermore his concern is that today's leaders are mostly just focused on the short-term success, due to the high pressure from their shareholders and thus work in their own borders without caring about the common good outside the borders in order to generate sustainable success. This concern gets a higher emphasis by Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, who actually attacks today's businesspeople and want to send them back to university because they just aim for short-term profits, rather than worrying about a sustainable future. In addition it is about the future leadership role of China considering multi stakeholders to achieve win-win solutions (Victor Chu, First Eastern Investment Group), leadership for people (Christine Lagarde, French Minister of Finance) and finally an optimistic outlook for the future, especially Europe, and the request of change and more transparency by David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. At the end buzzwords like stakeholders, sustainability, partnership, social responsibility, growth, balance and responsible leadership, just to name a few, can be found throughout all statements. As a matter of course all these statements are in a broader context meaning global issues, but can easily transferred to normal businesses. Reason for this project: Sustainability has become, as seen above, a huge topic paired with a more social behaviour for the common good and let the feeling arise that a new era has begun, that some of the main leaders have started to develop a new 'Zeitgeist". The question now is how this dissertation can contribute to the on-going change in order to achieve sustainable success. Sustainable success is depended on the competitive advantages, which is often tried to gain through reengineering, process improvement, etc. According to Huber, Scharioth, Pallas (2004) this is initially a good idea, but even if there are differences putting these into practice, the performance standard is often quite similar and the competitive advantage, which is won by these initiatives, is not as significant as desired. That is why they are putting the emphasis on stakeholder management with the purpose to not left the relationships with stakeholders on its own. Stakeholder management is actually an idea developed within the 80's by Freeman (1984) in order to strategically align the stakeholder's interest, using a rough framework, finally resulting in improved success (Stoney Winstanley, 2001). Success is nowadays often seen in form of financial benefits and at least in this point Berman, Wicks, Kotha, Jones (1999) see a positive impact on the part of stakeholder management. Nonetheless sustainable success is not just about finances and thus it is interesting to investigate what sustainable success is and how stakeholder management nurtures all its components. But why is each stakeholder so important? Giving some examples according to Huber, Scharioth, Pallas (2004), it points out that no matter if employees or suppliers they all have an essential impact on the business. Employees for instance have a high impact on the customer retention and company's profitability (improvement of 20% - 50%) and therefore put before customer by Nayar (2010). On the other hand suppliers need a lot of attention, due to 'Outsourcing', 'Lean' and scarcity of raw materials, to get required quality, quantity and delivery time. But also other external stakeholders are from high importance to avoid higher financial risks, as already pointed out in the 1990s by McGuire in Savage, Nix, Whitehead, Blair (1991), and thus must be managed well in order to not loose the support of a specific group and thus getting hindered on the journey to sustainable success (Reynolds, Schultz, Hekman, 2006). This is where 'managing", also understood as 'balancing" (Avery, 2005), the different interests comes into play, whereas it can become difficult, if the company is highly depending on one specific stakeholder. This could be an investor, who is holding a lot of shares, or a supplier, who is having a monopole, leading to generated bias and an exposure of sustainability (Savage, Nix, Whitehead, Blair, 1991). Furthermore a company or a company network respectively, is seen as an alliance of stakeholders (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, 2007), and their sustainable success is ensured by sticking together and behaving like a moving target (De Wit Meyer, 2005), in order to withstand evolutions in the industry and the corresponding challenges. It also could be refereed to a company as organisation, an amalgamation of people or groups of people with the aim of accomplishing productive activities, which is seen as difficult on an individual basis (Chemers, 1997). However there are also arguments against stakeholder management as enabler for sustainable success (Stoney Winstanley, 2001), at which the only purpose of a company is seen by Friedman (1962) in Stoney Winstanley (2001) in making profit and thus stakeholder management is an attack on the individual wealth of shareholders (Sternberg, 1997). In addition stakeholder management has found one of its biggest critics in Stoney Winstanley (2001) who complain about the complexity of this approach and finally its misuse as just a new tool to control the participants. Nonetheless these concerns are generally based on traditional and old-fashioned views and the question arises if the time is ripe for change, meaning the move away from just sustainable shareholder success. Considering the criticism above it seems that one of the biggest drawbacks of stakeholder management is the actual realisation, meaning the consideration of everyone's interest. This is why De Wit Meyer (2005) see good leadership skills as crucial to balance the discrepancies mostly between shareholders and other stakeholders, and lead through an alliance with different partners, affected by mistrust, due to fear that others always want a bigger part of the cake. So one major pitfall of leaders regarding stakeholder management is that of avoiding bias. There are differences between the stakeholders, for instance regarding the flexibility. Employees are mostly depending on their workplace, whereas shareholders can always choose from a wide range or portfolio of possible investments and therefore the risk of favouring shareholders is quite high (De Wit Meyer, 2005), caused in their higher direct influence (Savage, Nix, Whitehead, Blair, 1991). Additionally it should be born in mind that CEO's and the board often hold a share of the own company or are even obligated to, according to several financial reports (e.g. Finsbury, Reckitt Benckiser). Thus the own opulence is affected by the profitability of the company. In this case a bias is self-evident. On the other hand advocates of stakeholder management see the necessity for shareholder value (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, 2007), but state that it can be just sustainably realised if it is not seen as the main purpose, according to William George, chairman of Medtronic, in De Wit Meyer (2005). Instead of focusing on shareholder value, the actual focus should be concentrated on 'customer satisfaction" and 'integrity" as stated by Porras Collins (2005). In addition a motivated workforce can be seen as a crucial aspect of sustainable success, due to difficulties of competitors to copy it (De Wit Meyer, 2005). Buying in the workforce, but also other stakeholders, by creating a vision, maintaining it and finally make it live through the whole company is seen as one of the major and most difficult tasks of a leader (Ware, Michaels, Primer, 2004) and thus leaders often lacking clear direction during this task and therefore fail (Wheeler, Fabig, Boele, 2002). In order to make the organisation in a highly competitive market successful it is important to have a stable financial support, but also a highly trained and motivated workforce (Post, Preston, Sachs, 2002), often requiring a crucial change in the fundamental structure, like financial and/or ownership model (Avery, 2005). These changes are hindered by insufficient human resource models and techniques, the question how to get the employees aboard and finally the persuasion of the upper management, shareholders, etc. (Simmons, 2003). This can be eased the more the leader is convinced of the performance improvement using stakeholder management (Stoney Winstanley, 2001). The fact that people already having assets and power are not willed to share this (Gamble Kelly, 1996) and thus will defend it with all legal means or maybe also illegal, does not make it easier for the leader to put stakeholder management through. The globalisation and the expansion of companies throughout the world held another challenge for the leaders. Business policies must be kept flexible, as basis to deal with different countries, cultures and thus unusual competitive and social conditions and at the same time stick to the fundamental values and principles of the organisation (Post, Preston, Sachs, 2002). Talking about flexibility, it is important to see the flexibility of stakeholders in terms of changing from a supporting to a hampering position (Savage, Nix, Whitehead, Blair, 1991) and therefore the necessity to always reassess the importance and influence of stakeholders (Reynolds, Schultz, Hekman, 2006). In addition leaders need to focus on the right stakeholders in the right situations, different from the CEO of Eastern Airlines who was focusing during a strike just on the stakeholders with the loudest voice, and thus ran into serious trouble regarding the other parties of the strike (Savage, Nix, Whitehead, Blair, 1991). Additionally an issue arises that stakeholder may get the feeling that the decision-making regarding stakeholders is negatively influenced by divisibility of resources, saliency, incentives and sanctions (Ogden Watson, 1999) and let fade away the initial willingness to find a fair balance (Reynolds, Schultz, Hekman, 2006). This is why leaders must be prepared for the future challenges, which are a lot more complex, due to a wider range of expectations by the stakeholders, globalisation and more common pressing problems. So finally wrap the power of all stakeholders to a 'value network", considering the creation of social capital and a benefit for every participant (Maak, 2007) is the responsibility of the leader. Stakeholder Management provides a framework, a concept, which can be used by leaders, who are at the end the persons decide how stakeholder management is understood and what is the driving motivation behind its implementation (Stoney Winstanley, 2001). It was even thought about legislating SM and thus make it compulsory for companies, what is seen critical by Stoney Winstanley (2001), because in their opinion company's leaders should practice stakeholder management voluntary and chose their driver for motivation themselves. Today's environment and the resulting circumstances are continuously changing and require a leader who is always questioning the current status of a company and its direction in a constructive and meaningful way (Ware, Michaels, Primer, 2004). Therefore the leader is seen as a key catalyst in defining success of a company (Shinkle, Gooding, Smith, 2006) and also in order to make change happen to the benefit of sustainable success. Seeing sustainable success as a long-term goal leaders are confronted and hindered by external requirements, like the publication of financial reports (Avery, 2005) and thus it becomes a challenge for them to remain committed and thus have the required authentic 'tone at the top" (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, 2007). They will decide about success or failure of changes while acting as a role model and therefore have the requirement of caring about ethics and social responsibility, rather than just on making quick money. Finally it is about the ensemble of stakeholders and leaders who need a practical guideline to make their contribution for the organisation's and common good, leading to the following research question and its supporting objectives. Research content: Research question: 'What elements and characteristics of leadership would help organisations to achieve missing sustainable success through effective stakeholder management?' Supporting objectives: - Investigate and define sustainable success, stakeholder management and leadership with the purpose to identify what is understood by it and what are their characteristics. - Investigate the correlations and dependencies between sustainable success and stakeholder management to approve their complementarity. - Identify how leadership can overcome possible barriers of balancing stakeholders and creating sustainable success. - Investigate existing guidance and frameworks for the creation of sustainable success, in order to underpin their validity or propose modifications. Scope: The scope of this work is chosen very broadly, due to the nature of the project and its research areas. It is about management in general and is not aiming to be specialised on a specific industry or region. Reason therefore is the involvement of several parties, eventually coming from different industries and indeed the globalisation that does not allow investigating management tools with a narrowed regional view. However the scope is laid on business organisations. Therefore the outcome is neither focused on politics, an area worth investigating in the context of stakeholder management, nor religion. Purpose and contribution: The purpose of this work is to show companies and their leaders a way to manage their stakeholders in form of a proposed framework, to achieve sustainable success. As already mentioned in the introduction, an atmosphere of departure has arisen, due to the last happenings within the economy as well as in the politics. The outcome of this work will be an initiation to change by showing leaders how their characteristics can help to establish a win-win situation between stakeholders. Furthermore it shows the need for today's leaders to care about all stakeholders and that this is not just a matter of instruments, concepts and tools to achieve a balanced stakeholder environment, it is more about the mind-set, behaviour and confidence of the leader itself. It requires a lot of energy and stamina to achieve sustainable success and leaders will face a lot of problems and confrontations. Presenting these issues and discuss them in depth will hopefully support them to defend their view of organisational success.Inhaltsverzeichnis:Table of Contents: LIST OF FIGURESVI LIST OF TABLESVII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONSVIII 1INTRODUCTION1 1.1BACKGROUND OF THE TOPIC AN REASON FOR ITS CHOICE1 1.1.1INITIATION FOR THE PROJECT1 1.1.2REASON FOR THIS PROJECT2 1.2RESEARCH CONTENT8 1.2.1RESEARCH QUESTION8 1.2.2SUPPORTING OBJECTIVES8 1.2.3SCOPE8 1.2.4PURPOSE AND CONTRIBUTION9 1.2.5CHAPTER OVERVIEW10 2THE MANUAL - RESEARCH METHODOLOGY12 2.1FOREWORD12 2.2RESEARCH THEORY12 2.2.1RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY12 2.2.2RESEARCH APPROACH14 2.2.3RESEARCH STRATEGY14 2.2.4THE TIME HORIZON15 2.2.5THE ENQUIRY16 2.3RESEARCH IN PRACTICE17 2.3.1RESEARCH AREA17 2.3.2RESEARCH GUIDELINE18 2.3.3RESEARCH INFORMATION RESOURCES21 2.3.4RESEARCH KEYWORDS24 2.3.5USABILITY OF DATA27 2.3.6HANDLING OF FINDINGS30 2.4CONCLUDING REMARKS31 3THE AIM - SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS32 3.1SUBSTANCE32 3.1.1THE COMPONENT SUCCESS32 3.1.2THE COMPONENT SUSTAINABILITY34 3.1.3THE OUTCOME SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS40 3.2THE IMPORTANCE OF SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS42 3.2.1GENERAL42 3.2.2AFFECTING PEOPLE42 3.2.3AFFECTING FINANCES43 3.2.4AFFECTING REPUTATION44 3.2.5AFFECTING ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY45 3.2.6AFFECTING RESPONSE TO REGULATIONS AND LEGISLATIONS46 3.4BARRIERS OF ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS48 3.5CONCLUDING REMARKS51 4THE TOOL - STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT52 4.1THE BASICS52 4.1.1DEFINITION52 4.1.2DISTINCTION OF STAKEHOLDERS54 4.1.3PRINCIPLES OF STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT58 4.1.4STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT THEORIES60 4.1.5PUTTING STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT INTO PRACTICE64 4.2LINK TO SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS65 4.3CONCLUDING REMARKS71 5THE ENABLER – LEADERSHIP72 5.1DEFINING LEADERSHIP72 5.2THE LINK OF LEADERSHIP TO STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT73 5.3REQUIRED LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS76 5.3.1REALISTIC76 5.3.2INTELLECTUAL / NOUS77 5.3.3DISCLOSING78 5.3.4GENEROUS78 5.3.5GOOD FAITH79 5.3.6SOLID80 5.3.7VISIONARY82 5.3.8RIGHTEOUS83 5.5CONCLUDING REMARKS85 6THE PROPOSAL - TOTAL STAKEHOLDING86 6.1CRITERIA FOR USEABLE FRAMEWORKS86 6.2EXISTING MODELS87 6.2.1FREEMAN'S MODEL REDEFINED87 6.2.2THE EFQM-MODEL90 6.3THE DEVELOPED FRAMEWORK95 6.3.1GENERAL DESCRIPTION95 6.3.2USER'S MANUAL97 6.3.3STAKEHOLDER98 6.3.4LEADERSHIP101 6.3.5SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS101 6.3.6PLAN-DO-STUDY-ACT (PDSA)104 6.4DISCUSSION OF FRAMEWORKS AND VALIDITY OF THE PROPOSED108 6.5CONCLUDING REMARKS113 7DISCUSSION114 7.1SCOPE114 7.2SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS115 7.3STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT116 7.4LEADERSHIP118 7.5SPECIFIC LITERATURE119 7.6METHODOLOGY DATA COLLECTION120 8CONCLUSION122 9LIMITATIONS RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER WORK124 9.1RESILIENCE124 9.2QUADRUPLE BOTTOM LINE124 9.3GROWTH125 9.4CONTRACT THEORY125 9.5ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE126 9.6SCORING SYSTEM126 10REFERENCES127 11BIBLIOGRAPHY157 12APPENDICES157 12.1WAYS OF DATA COLLECTION157 12.1.1SURVEYS157 12.1.2CASE STUDIES158 12.1.3SECONDARY DATA158 12.2SEARCH STRING TABLE160 12.3DETAILED STAKEHOLDER LIST161 12.4STAKEHOLDER ALLOCATION TO SUSTAINABILITY ASPECTS169 12.5IDENTIFIED STAKEHOLDER BY FASSIN (2009)170 12.6RADAR ASSESSMENT FOR RESULTS171 12.7RADAR ASSESSMENT FOR ENABLER172Textprobe:Text Sample: Chapter 5.3.6, Solid: The personality of a leader decides whether the leader is anxious of loosing control and power, so that especially wrong strategic decisions are made due to prescient from involving others in the decision-making process (Delbecq, 2008) and not considering their opinion (Avery, 2005:216). Furthermore a strong leader's personality may benefit from a good sense of humour, suggested by (Kets de Vries, Doyle, Loper, 1994) as well as hope, that does not let him give up (Thomas Thomas, 2011). Hope is a crucial point in stakeholder management, with the aim to motivate and therefore overcome the difficulties of making it successful. But finally bravery is a personal characteristic that let the leader stand up fight for the right thing, an important step on the way to stakeholder management (Avery, 2005:79). Collins (2001:21) has done comprehensive research on great leaders and even though he just find a few of them he points out one important characteristic of great leaders: putting the greatness of the company above all. This also means to put it above the own interests, obviously a giant task and thus often doomed to failure. But this does not undermines the importance of this characteristic with regard to stakeholder management. To make this clockwork of stakeholders work the leader must put back the own interest for the benefit of the whole system. Even though it was stated in 4.2 that people are always selfish Mitchell, Agle, Wood (1997) bring forward enough opponents regarding this view, so that it finally depends on the values of the leader (Greer Downey, 1982). Solid in this case indicates that a leader is strong and self-confident in way that he can cope with the previous mentioned. All this results in a characteristic indicated as solid whereas the personality is strong enough to resist external influences. In addition it is pointed to the phrase 'solid as a rock". The leader must be the one standing out of the crowd at least for the followers and keep them grounded. In this position he act as a role model (Oakland, Tanner, Gadd, 2005) an attribute that plays a major role within stakeholder management and sustainable success. The tone at the top is crucial to buy in stakeholders, whereas they must believe in what they are doing to fulfil these expectations (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, 2007). Being solid in this context also means, as a leader, to recognise that the values are not supported and thus a further collaboration is not efficient. Nonetheless being solid also refers to the time span a leader is staying in its position. In Germany the period in higher management change after 6.1 years whereas it was 8 years in 2003 (Handelsblatt, 2011). Against the trend it is more desirable that leaders stay longer because the biggest problem with changing executives is to find a new one, an undertaking that can become very expensive as well as bear risks (Kennedy, 2000). Research in the 90s showed that the experience of managers has a great impact on their belief and their values, so that the experience of a manager in a company will have a positive impact on his decisions (Höpner, 2003:205) in this context with view to sustainable success. Additionally there is always the risk that new leaders turning the whole company upside-down and even if this is often wanted it is not if the new leader does not support the idea of stakeholder management and sustainable success. So all the hard work could turn out to be useless. Deming, 1986:121) sees an obstacle of long-term success in job-hopping due to the fact that leaders do not develop a sense of commitment and that new leaders unsettle the stakeholders. But long-term commitment also must be understood in the commitment to the approach of stakeholder management. So patience is necessary due to the fact that sustainable success and the necessary organisational behaviour is not achieved overnight (Potter, 1994). This requires an aim in the future that can be established as the one of the main motivator 5.3.7, Visionary: To avoid confusion and to respond to critics on stakeholder management a clear direction is vital for the success as discussed in 3.4. So it is about the leader to establish this direction by introducing a vision (Kets de Vries, Doyle, Loper, 1994), that helps to unify the stakeholders behind it, whilst providing clarity about what the vision is not about (Dubrin, 2007). In order to stimulate high performance and motivate followers a leader must lead passionately (Collins, 2001:20) and pragmatic (Frydman, Wilson, Wyer, Senge, 2000) towards a vision giving him/her the opportunity to have a major influence on the stakeholders. This refers back to the characteristic 'solid" (5.3.6) where a leader act as a role model towards the vision, so that stakeholder can follow (Cyert, 2005). It must be assured that the vision meets the requirements of stakeholder management, in particular balance and ethically correct, referred to as righteous. 5.3.8, Righteous: Righteous refers mainly to ethical and moral, including several 'components'. Morality is a key aspect of stakeholder management, resulting in trust and cooperation of the stakeholders. Indeed leaders should be compensated as every other stakeholder but it must be appropriate and not too high, like the stated 326:1 ratio between average CEOs and workers pay (Tang, Kim, Tang, 2000) in order to sustain trust and goodwill of stakeholders. Against the traditional way of high pay equals high performance (Jones, 1995) the survey of (Kennedy, 2000) reveals that challenging work and open communication are far more important than the pay, supported by Freeman (1984) the father of strategic stakeholder management seeing open communication as one enabler of stakeholder management. So this mind-set actually supports to lead stakeholder management, but nonetheless the salary of managers has increased dramatically. This is mainly caused in more freedom and missing internal monitoring of salary (Höpner, 2003:207), leading to a necessary moral respect of this freedom and do not exploit it. But it is not just about the monetary frugality it is also about recognition and awards, where heroism is not appropriate, acting in silence is what turned out to characterise great leaders (Collins J. , 2001:28). This includes the dispense of awards if things go good and blaming oneself if they go bad, this helps to not become arrogant (Kets de Vries, Doyle, Loper, 1994). This is also true for stakeholder management where the collaboration of the whole clockwork should be recognised and the leader act just as the element holding everything together and is not the centre of everything. Ethics is a fundamental characteristics for stakeholder management leaders, whereas Freeman, Harrison, Wicks (2007) see ethical leadership as the one most suitable, backed by McManus (2006:137) advocating ethical behaviour in order to decide to do the right thing, or ethical judgement respectively (Clarkson, 1995). This is why it is also about humanity (Kets de Vries, Doyle, Loper, 1994) and not seeing the environmental and societal responsibility as nonessential (Avery, 2005:216). Leaders also should be aware that they have fiduciary to all stakeholders and thus this fact should become the basis of the ethical mind-set (Kaufman, 2002). This fiduciary towards all stakeholders lead then towards the need of leaders to use this tool in an appropriate manner and to not justify bad decision with this model (Collins, Kearins, Roper, 2005). In addition this brings with it the desired balance of wealth distribution required by Sachs Maurer(2009).

The attachment that we feel to Madagascar compels us to talk about it – its richness, its values, its people and about life lessons learned and taught. As these experiences may differ in many aspects, a journal is the ideal place for sharing our common ideas, as well as expressing our divergent thoughts and theories. It is also a conduit for the exchange and transmission of our ideas and perspectives to the world. Thus, it is the ambition of this journal to talk about Madagascar – it's natural richness and its conservation, about development and challenges in the country, and more generally about components and facets of conservation and development. In this volume, the Journal launches two new rubrics, which emerged from the energetic enthusiasm of the authors, editors and our friends. Words are not the only way to formulate and share stories, pictures can carry messages as well; and they can speak without using words while still diligently evoking emotions and reactions in all of us. Now, we want to hear what your reactions are; we need to hear and to read how images from Madagascar capture and affect you. The Journal is doing this for the very first time and no matter who, whether men, women, or children, all of them have voiced their feelings about the photo of the little girl on the front cover of this volume. We want you to participate in Voicing Over Pictures, to share your ideas, for those of you not having a scientific based project ready yet, or simply to tell your experience in a different way. For example, those who have the courage to circulate photos and stories about the dead stranded dolphins of the port of Antsohihy. They suspected a link between the sonar systems of Exxon Mobil and the dolphins' navigation off the coasts of Analalava and Antsohihy (and they may be right, as such correlations are scientifically proven in peer - reviewed publications) even though they did not want to believe that such a tragedy could happen in their Madagascar. These people felt motivated to reach out into the world and show us what is happening. Madagascar can sometimes seem too far away from the rest of the world but this story brings us back to our sense of place in the country. Some pictures have been circulated but lately there has been only a dull silence, as scientists take time to research the issue and publish the evidence that they find. We have received a broad variety of contributions to this volume such as "Bats as bushmeat in Madagascar". This is not only the first MCD review focussing on Madagascar's bats, but it also shows some impressive pictures including a rather unusual and unfortunate shot of bats in a context that is more common than you think: the bat on the dinner plate. Another contribution addresses one of the top 25 most endangered primates in the world. Instead of resigning and continuing what others of their ilk have done for generations (and seriously risking a listing in the history books under the chapter 'Extinct') the White - collared brown lemur has adapted to new and changing situations and has even been flexible enough to tackle the aftermath of cyclones and start feeding on mushrooms and spicy invasive plants. Is this a recipe for survival? We shall see. In another story, the authors of the Manambolomaty Lake Project draw on local taboos and beliefs to establish a conservation framework for the protection of natural resources – a success story showing how important the traditional knowledge and culture of the local people is to achieving conservation that really matters. Sharing information is important, that is nothing new. Before you can share, however, you need the ability to access it. In a piece about the power of radio, the authors show that radio broadcasting can be utilized beyond the daily spread of news and entertainment: it can also be an effective tool for community outreach. This has so far been 'off the radar' for most international aid agencies. Broadcasting information and knowledge over the radio can be an effective tool in the fight to alleviate poverty; which is so far still the biggest challenge in Madagascar. As our words mark the passage of time into history, then you will be part of Madagascar's history of tomorrow. MCD is presenting another new rubric; Travelling Through Time will be talking about people who have written Madagascar's history in the past century, about people who were building on Madagascar's milestones for present and future conservation and development endeavours. There are people who have been participating in Madagascar's history. Some of them are almost living legends; they have made their imprints on this island; and whether they are appreciated or not, people talk about these personalities. At the beginning of the 19 th century oil mining industries (often with governments in the background) were endorsing renowned geologists for their endeavours such as Raymond Decary (1891 - 1973) who over the years became an accomplished humanist and naturalist. There is also the story of Charles A. Domergue, a hydro - geologist who also ended up dedicating his life to development in southern Madagascar where he pursued scientific studies and the conservation of the biological riches of Madagascar that mesmerized him. We invite you to talk in Travelling Through Time about your own heroes, men and women who have been the pioneers and advocates for Madagascar's Conservation and Development. Returning to the picture as a medium of information, some of these are also meant to satisfy the classic clichés, the ones that reinforce stereotypes that the rest of the world has about Madagascar. Madagascar is a country of the South, and the world expects to see pictures mirroring these characteristics. In the South, mining is often married with the traditional picture of gold miners: deep pits bored by using the angady (the Malagasy spade), causing sweaty and muddy foreheads on the miners' emotionless faces while the mining dumps grow bigger and taller. One might think of a new Germinal or Assommoir - like novel of Emily RaZola's, with the toka Gasy replacing the absinthe, with the North pointing fingers and watching the South. However, the question remains, what is the real picture? Modern mines are equipped with sophisticated exploitation tools, and the companies have the backing of conduits of social and environmental impact studies, employing an international guild of workers, efficient and trained in using the latest technology, rearing to go. The Journal would like to call upon people who know about these mining activities and who are studying specific social, economic and environmental impacts; people who also are aware that these activities are unavoidable, and people who know that tropical forests are disappearing quickly from the maps of Madagascar, and with them the Indris that sing no longer, crying if they only could. We need these people to tell their stories and share their expertise and experience, since we all want to know and would like to understand what the benefits and negative impacts of large - scale mining or farming are for Madagascar. The Journal would like to emphasize one more time that sharing information between agencies (governmental and non), universities and private persons is crucial. Whether you are in the field, in a forest, a community or a laboratory; sharing and informing is the most important step to moving Madagascar further ahead! You can simply share your impressions of the breath - taking photo on this volume's cover (which has been kindly contributed by Peter Oxford and Reneé Bish); as college students, children and older people have done, or you can go further and contribute more to the information sharing in the pages of this Journal. Submit us your stories and impressions as photo essays, or bring your experiences and findings to paper and send us articles, reviews or essays. We are sure you will enjoy the articles in this issue and we hope to see more in the near future.Image en Action Comme tous ceux qui sont affectivement attachés à Madagascar, nous aimons parler de cette grande île, de ses richesses, de ses valeurs profondes, de ses gens, des leçons de vie qu'ils nous ont inculquées, mais si nos expériences aux uns et aux autres ont Madagascar en commun, elles diffèrent certainement en tous points et un journal est ainsi le lieu idéal pour échanger nos points de vue. Ici nous voulons parler des richesses naturelles de Madagascar et de leur protection, de développement et des défis à relever, ou un seul aspect lié à la protection de la nature ou au développement mais surtout et avant tout, nous invitons des hommes et des femmes à prendre la parole. Le journal lance ainsi deux nouvelles rubriques qui sont nées de l'enthousiasme des auteurs, des éditeurs et de nos amis qui partagent tous cette même volonté de communiquer ; les mots sont loin d'être les seuls outils de communication et si nous ne pouvons employer tous les moyens ici, nous savons cependant que les images véhiculent bien des messages, ont cet incroyable pouvoir de nous émouvoir et nous parlent. Et nous avons besoin de vous, de vous entendre, de vous lire, comme nous l'avons fait ici lorsque nous avons donné la parole à des femmes, des hommes et des enfants pour qu'ils nous disent avec leurs mots, leur sensibilité, ce qu'ils ont entendu dans les yeux de cette enfant. Et nous vous attendons pour participer à cette rubrique 'Voicing Over Pictures' ou 'Paroles d'Images' pour partager vos idées, pour communiquer en attendant d'avoir matière à produire un article scientifique, ou pour le dire autrement. Nous pensons par exemple à ceux d'entre vous qui ont eu le courage de faire circuler ces photos de dauphins échoués dans le port d'Antsohihy. Certains ont soupçonné un rapport entre les sonars à balayage latéral d'Exxon Mobil et l'échouage des dauphins sur les côtes proches d'Analalava et d'Antsohihy, ils ne peuvent pas avoir tort car tout cela est connu depuis bien longtemps ; de tels faits sont scientifiquement prouvés et publiés dans des revues à comité de lecture, mais ceux qui constataient les faits sur les côtes malgaches ne voulaient tout simplement pas croire que cela se passait aussi chez eux, en étaient émus, voulaient le hurler, et très fort car Madagascar est parfois tellement loin du reste du monde ! Quelques photographies circulèrent mais furent rapidement remplacées par un silence pesant car la science a besoin de bien plus d'éléments et qu'il lui faut du temps pour procéder aux recherches et mettre ses résultats sous presse. Nous avons reçu des contributions variées pour ce volume et pour n'en citer que quelques unes, l'article « Bats as bushmeat in Madagascar » est une première sur les chauves-souris pour le journal mais qui nous montre des images impressionnantes de ces animaux dans un contexte qui n'est pourtant pas inhabituel, celui où ils se retrouvent accommodés dans une assiette. Un autre article concerne l'un des 25 primates les plus menacés du Monde. Et plutôt que de démissionner et de poursuivre comme d'autres de la lignée l'avaient fait pendant des générations (pour prendre inéluctablement le risque d'aller rejoindre les livres d'Histoire sous la rubrique 'Éteints'), le Lémurien à collier blanc montre qu'il s'adapte à une situation changeante en étant capable de composer dans une forêt ravagée par un cyclone et de s'alimenter de champignons et de fruits épicés d'espèces allogènes ; recette pour survivre ou non, il s'agit pour le moment d'une affaire à suivre. Les auteurs de l'article sur le projet du lac Manambolomaty s'inspirent des croyances et des tabous locaux pour mettre en place un réseau destiné à la protection des ressources naturelles – l'histoire d'une réussite qui relate une fois de plus à quel point les gens sont importants pour protéger une nature qui compte. Partager l'information est primordial et ceci n'est pas un scoop ! Mais avant de pouvoir partager il vous faut les moyens de le faire comme il est montré ici dans l'article sur la radiodiffusion qui peut aller au - delà de la transmission de nouvelles et de divertissement en constituant un outil capable de s'adresser aux communautés les plus isolées et qui étaient loin de toutes les priorités des agences d'aide internationales. La radio peut constituer un outil de choix pour lutter contre la pauvreté qui reste encore et par - dessus tout le plus grand défi à relever à Madagascar. Ainsi, les mots marqueraient - ils le passage du temps dans l'Histoire, de sorte que vous êtes alors tous la future Histoire de Madagascar. Dans ce contexte, le journal présente donc une autre rubrique pour parler des gens qui ont écrit l'histoire du siècle dernier de Madagascar, de ceux qui ont posé des jalons sur la route de la conservation et du développement présents et futurs de l'île. Car il y a des gens qui ont participé à cette Histoire, parfois des légendes vivantes qui ont marqué l'île de leur empreinte, on les aime ou non mais on parle d'eux. Au début du XIXe siècle, les explorations pétrolières firent appel à d'éminents géologues et nous nous rappelons de Raymond Decary (1891 - 1973) qui est, par la suite, devenu un humaniste et un naturaliste chevronné. Plus jeune, un autre géologue a partagé un destin semblable en consacrant sa vie au développement du Sud de Madagascar ainsi qu'à la science et la protection de ses richesses naturelles, ce naturaliste est Charles A. Domergue. Dans Travelling Through Time ou Voyage dans le Temps, nous donnons la parole à ceux qui veulent nous parler de leurs héros, de ces hommes et ces femmes qui ont marqué l'histoire de la protection de la nature et du développement de Madagascar. Pour revenir aux paroles émanant des images, il nous faut admettre que certaines d'entres elles sont aussi destinées à contenter les clichés, ces caricatures qui rassurent et qui doivent traduire la bonne marche du monde. Madagascar est un pays du Sud et le monde veut y voir des images du Sud. Dans le Sud, l'exploitation minière se marie avec l'orpaillage traditionnel, des puits profonds creusés à la sueur du front, des terrils érigés à la force des angady (les pelles locales) dans une ambiance où on frôle un nouveau 'Germinal' ou 'Assommoir' d'un Émile RaZola où le toka gasy (rhum local) remplacerait l'absinthe dans le Sud qui sera pointé du doigt par le Nord. Mais savons - nous seulement à quoi ressemble la réalité ? L'exploitation minière moderne met en place des chantiers élaborés, des moyens d'extraction sophistiqués, se contraint à réaliser les études sociales et d'impact environnemental conformément à des normes internationales, fait appel à des travailleurs et experts de toutes nationalités, efficaces et rompus à utiliser les dernières technologies en la matière. Le Journal voudrait donc inviter ceux qui connaissent ces activités minières, qui étudient spécifiquement les impacts sociaux, économiques et environnementaux mais aussi tous ceux qui admettent qu'il n'y a généralement pas le choix, qui savent que des forêts tropicales disparaissent rapidement de la carte de Madagascar, et avec elles des Indris qui ne chantent plus mais pleureraient s'ils le pouvaient ou si nous pouvions les entendre. Nous avons besoin de vous entendre avec des mots, des paroles d'images et vous invitons à partager vos expertises et expériences car nous voulons tous savoir et nous voudrions comprendre ce que sont les avantages et les inconvénients des exploitations minières ou agricoles à grande échelle à Madagascar. Madagascar Conservation & Development voudrait insister une fois de plus sur le besoin de partager les informations, aussi bien celles des agences gouvernementales que non gouvernementales, des universités ou des particuliers, que des gens de terrain, qu'ils soient en forêt, dans un village ou dans un laboratoire ; le partage et l'information sont des éléments déterminants pour faire avancer Madagascar ! Vous pouvez simplement partager votre sensibilité en nous disant ce que vous voyez dans des images comme l'ont fait des collégiens, des enfants et des moins jeunes pour la superbe photo de couverture aimablement mise à disposition par Peter Oxford et Reneé Bish. Mais avant tout, le journal voudrait inviter des gens qui travaillent dans la Conservation et le Développement à participer à l'échange de l'information ! Soumettez nous vos histoires et vos impressions, sous la forme d'images accompagnées d'une courte légende, ou partagez vos expériences et vos découvertes dans des articles, des revues ou des essais. Nous sommes certains que vous apprécierez la lecture de ce numéro et espérons vous y voir davantage dans un proche avenir.