O imperativo mais urgente de nosso século atual é a preocupação com o meio ambiente. Sustentabilidade pode ser considerada como a solução chave para este problema universal. Vivendo em uma sociedade de consumo significa que as ações dos seres humanos sempre têm uma espécie de impacto sobre o nosso futuro comum. Isso, juntamente com as taxas de população em rápido crescimento, implica que algo tem que mudar o padrão de consumo em o mundo todo. Em geral, as economias emergentes são aqueles que, deste ponto de vista, assustam mais, devido as suas urbanização cada vez mais em aumento, juntamente com os seus enorme tamanho e o seus desenvolvimento industrial retrógrado e privo de regulamentações. Especificamente o Brasil, com o seu crescimento exponencial e as suas dimensões continentais, representa uma das maiores forças de consumo do planeta. Porque os estudos comportamentais sobre o consumo ecológico neste país concentram-se principalmente em alimentos orgânicos, este presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o mercado para produtos sustentáveis no cluster de Porto Alegre. Precisamente, o padrão de consumo em direção a detergentes para a roupa são inferidos, a fim de (a) identificar a oferta de detergentes para a roupa no mercado; (b) compreender como é que ocorre o processo de compra de detergentes para a roupa; e (c) definir valores e atitudes que impulsionam o comportamento dos consumidores verdes, investigando as possibilidades de penetração de um produto Italiano verde. Este trabalho é divulgado através de uma triangulação desenvolvida em três fases diferentes. A partir da delimitação teórica do comportamento do consumidor e do consumo verde, segue uma pesquisa qualitativa, de modo secundária como primária – através de entrevistas semiestruturadas – apoiadas por uma pesquisa quantitativa de Schwartz com o objetivo de inferir valores e atitudes dos segmentos de interesse. Resultados da pesquisa mostram um mercado que estaria pronto para considerar um produto mais verde entre as ofertas, quer devido à consciência ambiental, ou ligeiro desagrado da qualidade média do produto já comercializado. Ao mesmo tempo, os consumidores não estaria prontos para enfrentar um trade-off muito mais alto entre o preço e a qualidade, e estaria bastante inclinado a uma democratização da oferta verde. Este estudo melhora o conhecimento sobre o peso de essa consciência ecologia que, juntamente com considerações sociais e valores pessoais, influenciam o padrão de consumo, oferecendo uma descrição de um mercado potencial para detergentes de roupa ecológica. / The most urgent imperative of our current century is the concern about the Environment. Sustainability may be considered as the key solution to this universal problem. Living in a consumer society means that humans’ actions always have a sort of impact on what will be our common future. This, together with the fast growing population rates, implies that something have to change in the pattern of consumption worldwide. In general, emerging economies are those that from this point of view scare the most, due to their increasingly augmenting urbanization, together with their enormous size and their retrograde industrial development and regulations. Specifically Brazil, with its exponential growth and its continental dimensions represents one of the biggest consumption forces of the planet. Since behavioral studies among ecological consumption in this country are mainly concentrated on organic food, this present work aims to analyze the market toward sustainable products in the cluster of Porto Alegre. Precisely, the pattern of consumption toward laundry detergents are inferred, in order to (a) identify the offer of laundry detergents in the market; (b) understand how does the purchasing process of laundry detergents occurs; and (c) define values and attitudes that drives green consumers’ behavior, investigating the chances of penetration of an Italian green product. This work is disclosed through a triangulation of three different phases. Starting from the delimitation of the theoretical background both of consumer behavior and green consumption, it was then followed a qualitative research, either secondary and primary – via semi-structured interviews – supported by a quantitative Schwartz survey with the aim of inferring values and attitudes of the segments of interest.

Da chegada do colonizador aos dias atuais, o processo de destruição da Amazônia foi cada vez mais acelerado, processo este que não existia no período pré-colonial. Segundo nossa análise, tal destruição da região está diretamente vinculada a entrada e avanço do Sistema de Mercado (como conceituado por Karl Polanyi) na região. Assim, apresentamos e discutimos a história econômica da região, destacando os papéis do poder público e do poder econômico nas transformações ocorridas. Para o último século, analisamos dados, principalmente dos censos, para evidenciar as transformações ocorridas na região. Concluímos que o poder político ao longo do tempo, cooptado pelo poder econômico, favoreceu a aceleração do processo de degradação da região com políticas de cunho desenvolvimentista que favoreceram mais à grupos de fora da Amazônia do que aos amazônidas. Mesmo existindo crescimento econômico marcante em alguns períodos, não se identifica um processo de desenvolvimento na história da região, muito menos de desenvolvimento sustentável. O Sistema de Mercado se manifesta na região principalmente em forma de latifúndios, o que indica que a solução da crise regional passará por um processo de distribuição de terras. No final, apresentamos um exemplo de empreendimento econômico sustentável do Acre (Projeto RECA) para discutirmos as propostas de desenvolvimento da perspectiva neoliberal localista e as possibilidades de disseminação das atividades econômicas sustentáveis na região. / From the arrival of the colonizers to the present day, the process of destruction of the Amazônia was increasingly accelerated, a process that did not existed in the pre-colonial period. According to our analysis, such destruction in the region is directly linked to the advance of the Market System (as conceptualized by Karl Polanyi) in the region. Thus, we present and discuss the economic history of the region, highlighting the roles of the governments and of the economic power in the transformations occurred. For the last century, we analyze data, especially the census, to highlight the changes occurring in the region. We conclude that the political system over time, coopted by the economic power, favored the acceleration of the process of degradation of the region focusing on development policies that favored more external groups than the Amazonians. While there are remarkable economic growth in some periods, a process of development was not identified in the history of the region. The Market System manifests itself in the region mainly in the great land concentration, which indicates that the solution for the regional crisis can be constructed through a land distribution process. We finalize the work, presenting an example of sustainable economic enterprise in the Acre state (RECA Project) to discuss the development proposals of the neoliberal localist perspective and the possibility of dissemination of sustainable economic activities in the Amazônia.

The Mackenzie River Delta is an ecologically rich freshwater environment in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It is vulnerable to multiple stressors such as climate change, resource development activities (oil and natural gas) and upstream-downstream linkages related to extraction activities in the southern part of the Mackenzie River watershed. Resultant socio-ecological impacts affect fishing livelihoods, which represent a significant component of the country food system and ways of life for Inuvialuit (Inuit of the Western Arctic), whose Settlement Area overlaps with the Delta. This thesis analyzes the implications of socio-ecological changes in the Mackenzie River Delta for Inuvialuit fishing livelihoods and the country food system, drawing from Local and Traditional Knowledge. In collaboration with the Fisheries Joint Management Committee in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, the westernmost Inuit region in Canada, I undertook a participatory-qualitative research, while also drawing on relevant literature and complementary data. Using 28 semi-structured interviews about changes in the Mackenzie River Delta and the importance of fishing livelihoods, results indicated that fishing livelihoods are essential contributors to the Inuvialuit food system, as well as cultural practices surrounding fishing as an activity. Moreover, some results imply the importance of previously ignored species for food security, such as burbot and inconnu, which receive limited attention in other studies. Key findings also indicate that multiple environmental changes are occurring in the Delta, including lower water levels, increasing land erosion, decreasing fish populations, and changes in Delta-reliant wildlife populations (e.g. more beavers), warmer water temperatures, poorer fish quality (e.g. softer flesh, parasites), thinner ice, climate variability, and an escalating cost of living. These changes affect primarily fishing access and raise important concerns about the safety of fish consumption for human health. Ultimately, limited access and declining fish quality have a negative impact on food security, given the key role of fish in the country food system and the importance of socio-cultural dimensions such as fishing knowledge and skills, and sharing practices.

In the management of agricultural insect pests, short-term costs must be balanced against long-term benefits. Controls should be selected to account for both their immediate and downstream effects upon the demography and genetics of the pest, enabling suppression today without threatening suppression tomorrow. The iterative, algorithmic method of dynamic programming can provide optimal solutions to problems of this type, in which actions are taken sequentially and each action may influence those which follow it. However, this approach is fundamentally constrained with regards to the magnitude of the problems it may solve. As questions of insect pest management can be subject to ecological and evolutionary complexities, this may place them beyond the scope of dynamic programming. When it is the intricacies of a problem that are of interest, it may be more productive to utilise approximate dynamic programming (ADP) methods which can attempt problems of arbitrary complexity, although at the expense of no longer guaranteeing optimality. In this thesis I first challenge a dynamic programming algorithm with the management of a hypothetical insect pest feeding upon a transgenic insecticidal crop. The model explores how different realisations of fitness costs to resistance influence the algorithms suggested actions. I then apply a brute-force variant of ADP, a lookahead policy, to the management of a stage-structured, continuously reproducing pest population. This was to explore the extent to which an algorithm with a limited temporal perspective is able to balance the timetable of pest demography against the timescale over which insecticidal sprays and bisex-lethal sterile insect releases unfold. This same decision framework is then applied to a modified problem in which resistance to insecticidal toxins may evolve and releases are now male-selecting. This was used to assess the efficacy with which simple lookahead policies utilise a control with delayed benefits (the male-selecting releases) and possible constraints on their capacity to respond to resistance evolution. Dynamic programming and ADP methods offer a versatile toolbox for accounting for the potential impacts of the evolutionary and ecological peculiarities of particular pests upon control decisions.

This thesis explores the question of how social power is accounted for in the theory and practice of resilience. Beginning with a critical assessment of the social ecological systems (SES) perspective that underpins much of the theory and study of resilience, this thesis develops a framework, based on Gaventa’s powercube, for understanding power that also incorporates a much less hierarchical understanding of the dimensions of space and time. This revised ‘powerplane’ framework is applied to two empirical case studies of practices of resilience. Applying the powerplane to the case of government-led Scottish community emergency resilience planning finds that while the practices of resilience result in greater levels of engagement and interaction between local and regional levels of government, a gap exists between local government and the public it represents. Applying the powerplane to the grassroots case of Transition Town Peterborough, Canada, shows that intimate knowledge of local social and political institutions can allow a grassroots organisation to introduce resilience ideas into social and political community life. Together the two case studies reveal three key insights from resilience practices aimed at local contexts, rooted in: (1) institutionalising community engagement practices; (2) differences between formal and informal understandings of resilience; and (3) the scope of the risks resilience is aimed at mitigating. Critically exploring these issues in turn helps to illuminate questions about the efficacy, as well as the social and political implications of the resilience practice in question. For theory, the research shows that reconsidering hierarchical notions of scale and time in SES resilience can provoke new thinking about the role of power in resilience practices. In doing so, insights from this research offer novel challenges and complementarities to they way existing critiques of resilience approaches to account for social power issues.

Les méthodes actuelles utilisées pour définir les enjeux de biodiversité peinent à prendre en compte : les espaces agricoles et les pratiques, à la fois réservoir et pression pour la biodiversité et les dynamiques spatiales et temporelles, modifiant l’occupation du sol et la présence, la qualité et la connectivité des habitats. Ce travail a pour objectif de proposer des solutions pour ces 2 aspects.Nous avons identifié des pratiques agricoles favorables à la biodiversité. Pour comprendre les enjeux liés au développement de ces pratiques, nous avons étudié des leviers pour leur mise en place. Nous avons confirmé la difficulté à mesurer un effet général de certaines pratiques sur la biodiversité. Néanmoins, l’hétérogénéité, dans les pratiques, les types de culture et les éléments semi-naturels environnants est un aspect favorisant la biodiversité. Inciter leur développement nécessite de s’appuyer sur les avantages pour les agriculteurs, au travers des services écosystémiques et d'une multitude de supports de diffusion. Nous avons aussi montré l’importance d'intégrer l’agriculture dans l’identification d’enjeux de conservation.Nous avons présenté les limites des scénarios existants pour l’échelle régionale. Nous proposons une méthode alliant ces deux types de scénarios pour explorer l’impact des changements sur les continuités écologiques. Cette utilisation revêt un intérêt particulier pour les questions d’aménagement, par ex. pour mesurer l’effet, cumulé ou non, de certains projets. Avant le transfert vers des projets appliqués, il convient néanmoins de poursuivre la recherche sur cette méthode, notamment en la complétant avec d’autres mesures de continuités écologiques. / Actual ways to define priorities for biodiversity conservation experience difficulties to take into account: agricultural areas and practices, both reservoir and source of pressure for biodiversity and spatial and temporal dynamics modifying land-cover and land-use and the presence, the quality and the connectivity of habitats. This research work have for objective to propose solutions for these two aspects.We wanted to identify biodiversity-friendly agricultural practices. To understand the issues related to the development of these practices, we also studied the levers to their application. We confirm the difficulty to measure a general effect of some practices on biodiversity. Nevertheless, the heterogeneity, in practices, crops types and semi-natural elements, favor the biodiversity. Encourage their development need to rely on benefits for farmers, through ecosystem services and various substrate for information spread. We show the importance to taking into account agriculture in the identification of conservation priorities.We introduced the limits from existing scenarios to explore changes at regional scale. We proposed a method coupling these two types of scenarios to measure the impact of changes on ecological networks, with an indicator of connectedness, for three species. The application of scenarios to ecological networks’ analyses have a particular interest for land planning questions, for example to measure the, cumulative or not, effect of some projects. Before transfer to applied projects, research on this method have to be continued, in particular completing it with others measures of ecological networks.

Resumo: Os objetivos do trabalho foram isolar, identificar, comparar meios de cultura para crescimento, esporulação de fungos nematófagos e testá-los no controle de Meloidogyne exigua e M. paranaensis em laboratório, casa de vegetação e em cafezal infestado. Foram testados dois isolados de Arthrobotrys oligospora e um de Arthrobotrys sp., A. musiformis, Monacrosporium robustum e Paecilomyces liIacinus. Os dados obtidos revelaram que esses fungos ocorrem em diferentes agroecossistemas, têm exigências nutricionais especiais e apresentam diferentes níveis de predação para os nematóides estudados. Os meios, farelo de arroz, extrato de levedura e ágar, e o de fubá e ágar propiciaram crescimento e esporulação adequados para a maioria dos isolados estudados. A mistura de palha de café com farelo de arroz foi um substrato adequado para formulação desses fungos. Uma aplicação de 1 ou 2 L da mistura de partes iguais desse substrato colonizado pelos fungos, proporcionou a redução da população dos nematóides. No período estudado a cultura tratada não esboçou sinais de recuperação, indicando que cafezais depauperados, em solos degradados, não se recuperam com uma aplicação. Os dados também possibilitaram inferir que o controle biológico dos nematóides do cafeeiro será tanto mais efetivo quanto mais cedo forem iniciados os tratamentos, e a aplicação sistemática dos fungos, com isolados mais agressivos contra os nematóides presentes, deve ser efetuada. / Abstract: The objective of the research was to isolate, identify and compare culture media for growth and sporulation of nematode antagonistic fungi, and to evaluate the efficiency of these agents for biological control of Meloidogyne exigua and M. paranaensis under laboratory, greenhouse and field environmental conditions. Two isolates of Arthrobotrys oligospora, one of Arthrobotrys sp. and one of each species of A. musiformis, Monacrosporium robustum and Paecilomyces liIacinus, were also evaluated. It was observed that those fungi were very common under distinct agroecosystems, having special nutrition requirements, and also different pathogenicity levels for the nematodes above related. The culture media prepared with rice meal, malt extract and agar as well as the com meal agar favoured adequate growth and sporulation of most the isolates evaluated. The mixture of coffee straw with rice meal showed to be an adequate substrate for these fungi formulation under experimental trials. Just one application of one or two liters of a mixture of equal parts of the substrate colonized by the fungi, reduced the population of nematodes. However, the treated coffee trees did not show any sign of recovery during the period of study, indicating that weak coffee trees under poor soil conditions could not recover with just one treatment. The data also show that biological control of coffee nematodes can be more effective as early as the treatment with the fungi is applied, and, considering that it is a perennial crop, the fungi systematic application along with the selection of more aggressive isolates against the nematodes, must be done. / Orientador: Jaime Maia dos Santos / Coorientador: Rita de Cássia Panizzi / Banca: Marineide Mendonça Aguillera / Banca: Carlos Eduardo de Mendonça Otoboni / Banca: David Ariovaldo Banzatto / Banca: João Carlos de Oliveira / Doutor

This article reviews the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) as an ambulatory ecological momentary assessment tool for the real-world observation of daily behavior. Technically, the EAR is an audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds while participants go about their lives. Conceptually, it is a naturalistic observation method that yields an acoustic log of a person’s day as it unfolds. The power of the EAR lies in unobtrusively collecting authentic real-life observational data. In preserving a high degree of naturalism at the level of the raw recordings, it resembles ethnographic methods; through its sampling and coding, it enables larger empirical studies. This article provides an overview of the EAR method; reviews its validity, utility, and limitations; and discusses it in the context of current developments in ambulatory assessment, specifically the emerging field of mobile sensing.

Um dos maiores impactos antrópicos aos ecossistemas terrestres é a fragmentação do habitat. Este processo afeta fortemente os padrões de movimentação das espécies, implicando em alterações consideráveis na conectividade entre as manchas de habitat remanescentes. Por sua vez, isso interfere na distribuição espacial e na dinâmica das populações de uma espécie. Nesta dissertação, foram estudados alguns aspectos dos movimentos rotineiros e dispersivo de Pyriglena leucoptera, uma espécie de ave endêmica da Mata Atlântica. Estes dois tipos de movimentação atuam em escalas distintas, afetando diferentemente os parâmetros que regulam a estrutura das populações. Com o uso da técnica de playback, foi verificado se a capacidade desta espécie atravessar áreas abertas, em movimentos rotineiros entre fragmentos, é afetada pela distância entre eles. A partir desta relação, foram obtidas probabilidades de cruzar áreas abertas, as quais foram usadas para parametrizar índices de conectividade funcional (um binário e outro probabilístico) baseados na teoria dos grafos. Em uma abordagem de seleção de modelos, estes dois índices de conectividade mais um outro estrutural (i.e. área do fragmento) foram comparados para se estabelecer qual deles melhor prediz a incidência de P. leucoptera em fragmentos florestais. Quanto aos movimentos dispersivos, foram realizados experimentos de translocação e telemetria para verificar se a dispersão desta espécie em áreas fragmentadas é afetada pela distância entre os fragmentos, assim como para averiguar se este efeito é diferente entre os sexos. Os resultados mostraram que distância entre os fragmentos florestais limita tanto a movimentação rotineira, quanto a dispersiva para esta espécie. Na escala dos movimentos rotineiros, verificou-se que fragmentos distanciados a mais de 45 m estão totalmente isolados. A incidência da espécie foi melhor descrita pelo índice de conectividade funcional probabilístico (PCS), mostrando que a conectividade é fundamental para se compreender a distribuição espacial da espécie, sendo que este atributo da paisagem deve ser visto de forma probabilística. Ademais, a dispersão foi enviesada para fêmeas, as quais possuíram maior propensão a emigrar, assim como foram mais eficientes em sua movimentação pela matriz. As conseqüências deste viés foram discutidas, destacando-se que, em áreas altamente fragmentadas, a probabilidade de colonização de áreas desocupadas diminui, bem como o fluxo gênico entre as populações da espécie pode estar comprometido. Portanto, ambos os tipos de movimento devem ser considerados para que se possa compreender mais precisamente os efeitos da conectividade do habitat para a sobrevivência de uma espécie em paisagens fragmentadas. Por fim, foi sugerido um modelo hierárquico de estrutura populacional, a fim de integrar as informações obtidas pelos dois tipos de movimentação em uma única estrutura conceitual. Esse modelo possui um grande potencial para ser usado no planejamento e manejo ambiental. / Habitat fragmentation is one of the major human impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. This process highly affects the species movement pattern, implying in considerable alterations on the connectivity between the remaining habitat patches. Consequently, it interferes in the spatial distribution and in the population dynamics of species. In this dissertation, some aspects of the routine and dispersal movements of Pyriglena leucoptera, an endemic bird of the Atlantic rainforest, were studied. These two movement types act in distinct scales, affecting, differently, the parameter regulating the structure of the populations. Using the playback technique, we verified if the gap-crossing capacity of this species, by routine movements, is affected by gap width. From this relation, we obtained gap-crossing probabilities, which were used to parameterize functional connectivity indices (one binary and one probabilistic) based on graph theory. In a model selection approach, these two indices plus another structural one (i.e. patch area) were compared to establish which one is the best to predict P. leucopteras incidence in forest fragments. About the dispersal movements, we done translocation and telemetry experiments to investigate if the species dispersal ability in fragmented landscapes is affected by the distance between forest patches, and to verify if there are sexual differences in this effect. The results showed that distance between forest patches limits both the routine movements and the dispersal one to this species. In the routine movements scale, we verified that patches are completely isolated when the gap width is higher than 45 m. The species incidence was better described by the probabilistic connectivity index (PCS), evincing that it is essential to consider connectivity to understand the spatial distribution of P. leucoptera, and this attribute must be viewed in its probabilistic form. Furthermore, dispersal is female-biased, since females are more prone to emigrate and were more efficient in their movement in the matrix. We discussed the consequences of this sex-bias, highlighting that, in severely fragmented landscapes, the colonization probability of empty patches is decreased and the genetic flux between populations should be imperiled. Thus, to comprehend the effects of habitat connectivity on species survival in fragmented landscapes, both movement types must be considered. Finally, we suggested a hierarchically structured population model in order to integrate the two movement type information in one conceptual framework. This model has a great potential to be used in environmental planning and management.

South Africa is a water-scarce country (Otieno and Ochieng, 2004; Wassung, 2010). The current sanitation system mostly used in South African urban areas depends on extensive use of water in a form of flush toilets. The housing sector in major cities is continuously growing and this is putting a strain on water services. The government has explored a range of sanitation technologies including waterborne, the Ventilated Improved (VIP) toilet and ecological sanitation (widely known as ecosan) in a form of a urine diversion dry (UDD) toilet. The latter provides a reasonable solution to the current sanitation challenge. This study explores the perceptions of the users of the UDD toilets installed in the medium density mixed housing development of Hull Street in Kimberley. Understanding the users’ socio-cultural perceptions of the UDD toilet will contribute to future policy making, as the information can be used to improve the future roll-out of the technology in order to make it more acceptable. The study was qualitative in nature and used a phenomenological research design. The sample size comprised 16 participants, 13 of whom were residents of the Hull Street housing project and three were employees of the Sol Plaatje Housing Company (SPHC). The sample was selected by a purposive sampling method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data for the study. The data was analysed by means of content analysis, which enabled the researcher to identify important themes for the study. The findings of the study revealed dissatisfaction regarding the use of the UDD toilet, which emanates from poor design of the toilet facility. The research was successful in identifying, inter alia, odour, uncomfortable sitting position on the toilet mainly by female users and high cost of operating and maintaining the sanitation system. Recommendations emphasise the importance of involving users in future UDD sanitation projects and educating the public at large about sustainability aspects of this sanitation technology (UDD). One of the key lessons drawn from the study is that challenges experienced by the users should be used to improve future UDD toilets.