Publicaciones
Telecottages are local community service centres where information, assistance and help are available and where anyone can use the information and communication technology (ICT) and access the Internet. Telecottage userscan solicit, disseminate, record, analyse, or simply access information. These institutions bring information to locals and provide opportunities to use information in different ways: to work, to learn or simply to play. The everincreasing need for communal access to information society services can perfectly be satisafied by telecottages.The term telecottage was first used...
Hernando De Soto’s influential book The Mystery of Capital offers a simple yet beguiling message: capitalism can be made to work for the poor through formalizing their property rights in houses, land and small businesses. Yet this paper presents evidence from South Africa to suggest that many of de Soto’s policy prescriptions may be inappropriate for the poorest and most vulnerable, and could have negative impacts on their security and well-being.
The South African timber industry has been dominated by a few large companies. Meanwhile poor rural people increasingly see tree growing and timber sales as a means of improving their livelihoods. Policy frameworks have begun to recognise this too. Yet emerging South African small tree growers still operate under conditions of economic marginalisation - they have to fight for land rights and fair deals for their products. Individual growers have seen the logic of collective action - with the result that many associations have sprung up to champion members' interests. This report surveys 10...
Uganda's 2,000-3,000 forest-based associations play an important role in the country's sustainable development. They include community groups made up of individuals (and often with a strong social focus) and industrial groups made up of enterprises (and often with a commercial focus). They span a number of different areas: forest production (both timber and non-timber forest products), primary and secondary processing, management, training and enterprise support and environmental services (such as ecotourism or carbon sequestration projects). This report surveys 62 different associations....
A broad arch of deforestation spans the lower Brazilian Amazon, cutting through the State of Mato Grosso. At the forest frontier, varied traditions of family farming are being adapted by migrant settlers of diverse origins. The forceful expansion of soybean plantations led by global markets is displacing family farms or incorportating them into out-growing schemes. Commodity plantations are pushing cattle ranching further into the forests. Logging is also opening up new access at the frontier. Conflicts are all but inevitable. As associations endeavor to strengthen the voice of...
Until recently, climate change was viewed largely as an environmental concern, of little relevance to development policy-makers or practitioners. Likewise, development approaches have been given less attention within the climate change community, who instead favour natural science approaches focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This paper describes the independent evolution of climate change and development discourses, and provides some explanation as to why the two fields have operated largely independently from one another. The recent initiatives to strengthen links between the...
Amid mounting concern over increasing reliance on high-yielding varieties, chemical fertilisers and pesticides among Bangladesh’s smallholder farmers, many NGOs have been training farmers in more sustainable farming methods. Despite this, the numbers of farmers adopting ecological agriculture have not been great. In this paper we explore why this is so, drawing on action research we conducted in 16 Bangladeshi villages. We found that although many trained farmers realise the importance of ecological agriculture, they are not always able to put the training into practice, especially on...
As regulative institutions, Andean barter markets help sustain local food systems and the ecosystems in which they are embedded. Action research with indigenous communities in the Lares Valley (Department of Cusco, Peru) generated new evidence on the importance of barter markets for: - giving some of the poorest social groups in the Andes better food security and nutrition; - conserving agricultural biodiversity (genetic, species, ecosystem) through the growing and exchange of native food crops in barter markets; - maintaining ecosystem services and landscape features in different agro-...
En este artículo de la Revista Etecé, se habla sobre los beneficios de la maca, cual es la adecuada forma de comercialización de esta y cuales son los errores comunes que se dan en su comercialización, como venderla como remedio y no como energizante, otro error es que los productores producen mas maca que la que se puede procesar, lo que ocasiona que el precio de la maca baje, y por lo tanto los ingresos de los productores también se reducen.
Productos sustentables (definidos como aquellos productos que generan impactos sociales, ambientales y económicos más positivos o menos negativos que aquellos generados por los productos convencionales) han sido indentificados debido a su potencial para contribuir al desarrollo sustentable de los países en desarrollo. No obstante, existen diversos factores que dificultan el crecimiento de estos mercados para los países en desarrollo. Por ejemplo, en el nivel nacional existe una falta de información de mercado, y en el nivel internacional los requerimientos de ecoetiquetado imponen...