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Lead Papers
Dr. Jyotsna Bapat descibed the impact of the two parks even though the cases are not strictly a peasant economy, nor is the tenant-landlord relationship strictly relevant here. But the moral economy argument still holds. There is a breach of social obligation, in a different way. There is a breach of social obligations by three claimants in this situation: (i) the earlier landowners, (ii) the new landowners and (iii) the elected representatives of the constituency in the local, democratically elected government and (iv) the state. The social articulation of the discontent is however a reflection on the status of the community in the larger context of the society. Professor Vincenzo Bentivegna chair in "Land planning and architectural evaluation" at the university of Florence, and regional government adviser in charge for the evaluation aspects of the planning law, has produced the "Tuscany Region evaluation code for land and urban plans" and has been a member of the planning team in several provincial and town master plans. After five years, it is now time for a first critical analysis of this sustainability evaluation experience. The paper will describe the evaluation code in terms of evaluation procedures and indicators and its application in some leading provincial and urban plans like Siena and Pisa trying to individuate successes and failures. In Ethiopia, as in most developing countries, small and resource poor farmers using traditional farming methods produce the bulk of food crops(Ayalneh Bogale). One of the most striking problem of the last few decades has been the coincidences between deepening poverty and accelerating land degradation leading to drought and famine. The major prerequisite for mitigating the problem and for attaining sustainable agricultural development is the formulation of appropriate resource management policy based on firm understanding of the farming community and their day-to-day practices in making decision of land use. Although land degradation is a result of human activities and something that threatens the base of human livelihood, the view that it is a result of the cultivator’s imputed negligence is unwarranted. The survival of smallholder farmers depend on land resource and such societies cannot afford to be lazy or unaware of destructive practices. But as subsistence seekers, they were forced to over-utilize land or simply pushed in to marginal land by circumstances and institutions such as technological stagnation, imperfect capital and insurance markets, insecurity of land rights, imperfect information, prohibitive transaction costs and misguided policies, which are far beyond their control. Immediate survival needs and food security are overriding objectives driving household behavior, thereby shortening the planning horizon of the poor. The immense effort made by the government and NGOs in soil and water conservation projects employing various approaches has done little to avert the recurrence of the problem. Peasants are unlikely to adopt land degradation control measures (practices) unless they anticipate that the shift to a conserving practice will improve their immediate well-being without violating their subsistence consumption. When immediate survival is threatened, households without sufficient assets to hedge against risks may lack the enthusiasm to sacrifice current consumption to undertake resource conservation investments needed to meet future consumption. Thus, measures that enhance productivity of land and counter land degradation and at the same time that minimize risks of adopting new practices are needed to promote sustainable land use in degrading areas. Such policies may include technical change, institutional support, market access through investment in rural infrastructure and provision of targeted incentives. Thorkil Casse and Fabiana Issler discussed about economic sustainability in the light of resource dependency, exemplified by a case study of Paragominas, a municipality in eastern Amazonia, Brazil, where the economy is highly dependent on logging and wood-processing. Timber resources in Paragominas are currently being rapidly exploited and high deforestation rates threaten the very basis of the local economy. First, Paragominas’ GDP is produced in a 26-year time series (1970-1996), as well as the timber related user costs, applying El Serafy’s calculation method. Secondly, a brief review of existing cost-benefit studies with data from Paragominas is presented. The article demonstrates the risks involved when the basic conditions of the cost-benefit analyses are not fulfilled. Estimation of shadow prices and forecasting of changes in relative prices leaves many questions unanswered, and the concept of economic sustainability easily reduces itself to one of economic efficiency. As an early warning system of unsustainability, the user-cost method is a more suitable methodological tool. Dr. C. Ramachandraiah described estimations of desertification have been carried out worldwide since the United Nations Conference on Desrtification (1977). The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) was held in 1992. It has been estimated that about 80 per cent of productive lands in arid and semi-arid areas suffer from moderate to severe desertification. Most severely desertified areas are existing in the drylands of Africa, Asia, and South America. The CCD has observed that desertification puts at risk the livelihoods of around one billion people in the drylands of over 100 countries. Largest numbers of people affected by desertification are living in Asia. About 71 per cent of Asia's drylands i.e., one-third of its entire area, are moderately to severely degraded thus making Asia the most affected region in terms of loss of productivity. Desertification undermines food production which affects socio-economic conditions of the local population, and triggers a vicious circle of poverty, ecological degradation, migration and conflicts. Poor land use practices, over-grazing, and population pressure can lead to desertification of lands at a rapid rate. Professor A.S.R.A.S. Sastri described how the time series data of rice productivity and its variability a sustainability ladder concept has been developed for each state in Eastern India. The different districts in each state which fall either below the sustainability ladder or above in rice productivity have been identified. In the districts below the sustainability ladder, there is a need to increase the productivity and for those districts above the sustainability ladder there is a need to stabilize the productivity. The strategies for either increasing the productivity or increasing the stability have been mentioned. The rice productivity in each district, after reaching the sustainability ladder should be increased, in a 2-3 year time frame and then stabilize the same in similar time frame and so on. This type of strategy would be of immense help in increasing the productivity in a sustainable manner. Moreover, once the productivity increased and in the stabilizing period, there would be enough time to developed new technologies or to tune the technologies which have already been developed to fit into this sustainable ladder. Svetlana D.Schlotgauer and Maria V. Kryukova have analyzed the catastrophic fire consequences has shown that in some areas there were irreversible changes of ecosystems. The negative tendencies in biodiversity dynamics, sharp drop of wild animal number (elk, boar, red deer), ichtyofauna (salmon) and ornithofauna (goose, duck), which play an important role in traditional food of indigenous peoples, can lead to ecological tragedy in the nearest future. Biological diversity of forest birds in recently burned-out forest drops by 80-90 %. Their species composition is reduced till 80-90 %, in comparison with native communities. The bioresource of food and medicinal plants has decreased to 30 % in 4 areas of the lower Priamurye. Besides direct biota destruction, direct and indirect biomass reduction, the changes of routes and dates of animals and birds migrations are marked. They have to leave habitual stations and move far away. As a result of this, the territory loses inherent specific natural features, the ecological frame collapses, bioresource potential is lost. If not to take necessary measures, this area will become the leader of the lowest standard of living, early mortality and cancer diseases among other areas of the territory. General instability and intensity of social and political situation in the country, being imposed on regional (local) problems, will create a critical condition in social situation of this, before safe, territory. Professor Madireddi Venkata Subba Rao explained that India is one of the twelve megabiodiversity countries in the world and hence a rich flora and fauna. Many of them are endemic. Today Indian forests and wildlife are subjected to more biotic pressure. In the year 1900, the Indian forests covered 40 % of the country's geographic area. Today, it is reduced to 13 % and efforts to increase forest cover through afforestation and Jowt forest management. Now it is necessary to concentrate our attention to ecorestoration, survivability of the ecosystem and sustainable development through management plane for success of the Biodiversity Conservation in Eastern Ghats of India.
An indicator of land management is the
number or per cent of biogeographical regions with adequate protected areas of
adequate size and configuration. It is important that each natural region
has an adequate system of parks, ecological reserves or equivalent protected
areas to ensure that its unique natural elements are preserved. These protected
areas will ensure that the full range of native animals and plants will
continue to have suitable habitats both in terms of size and configuration.
Another indicator is the number and area of parks, recreational areas, heritage sites, and scenic viewpoints. These areas are aesthetically attractive settings that contribute to the quality of life of the people. The total area in significant land-use categories such as agriculture, forest, wetlands, urban and transportation corridors, measured as a per cent of the total area of a region or a country. Most economic, environmental and social initiatives need land or require land-use change. This indicator measures changes in the use of this resource.
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