Local knowledge building is a crucial factor for upgrading small producers and improving their market competitiveness and livelihoods. The rise of global standards affecting food safety and environmental sustainability in agriculture sparks debates on the impact on smallholders in developing countries. This article presents a perspective on the links of international standards to knowledge and ...

How the review was carried out is briefly described. The review looks mainly at the literature published since year 2000, but does not exclude earlier publications. The sustainability of practices to limit erosion must be assessed not only in terms of the soil resource and the wider environment but must also take into account economical and socio-political factors. Soil degradation may be due t...

This emergy-based urban economic account provided a historical portrait of the urban economy and its structures to understand the overload of the biosphere`s assimilative capacity. The basic situation of the urban economy, involving the indigenous resources base, emergy consumption patterns, emergy exports and imports, were investigated, accounted and discussed. Using a series of ratios and ind...

Agricultural productivity and sustainability are continually challenged by emerging and indigenous pathogens. Currently, many pathogens can be combatted only with biocides or environmentally dangerous fumigants. Here, we report a rapid and pathogen-specific strategy to reduce infection by organisms that target plant roots. Combinatorially selected defense peptides, previously shown to effect pr...

BACKGROUND Navajo Nation Community Health Representatives (CHR) are trained community health workers (CHWs) who provide crucial services for patients and families. The success of the CHRs' interventions depends on the interactions between the CHRs and their clients. This research investigates the culturally specific factors that build and sustain the CHR-client interaction. METHODS In-depth i...

BACKGROUND As the prevalence of obesity increases in developing countries, the double burden of malnutrition (DBM) has become a public health problem, particularly in countries such as Guatemala with a high concentration of indigenous communities where the prevalence of stunting remains high. OBJECTIVE The aim was to describe and analyze the prevalence of DBM over time (1998-2008) in indigeno...

in the recent decades, urbanization has affected social, economical, cultural, political and physical aspects of human life-style. presentation of sustainable development as one of the goals of the third millennium is derived from the effects of cities on earth and on different aspects of human life. undoubtedly, talking about sustainability and sustainable development would be impossible witho...

This article examines altruistic social norms among the Dolgans and the Nganasans in Arctic Siberia, drawing on and integrating experimental game theory and semiotic approaches. The article demonstrates the complementarity of these two methodologies in order to more fully understand how sharing is promoted over individual selfaggrandizement in a communal-resource property regime. Any theory of ...

Studies of conservation in small scale societies typically portray indigenous peoples as either sustainably managing resources, or forsaking long-term sustainability for short-term gains. To explain this variability, we propose an alternative framework derived from a co-evolutionary perspective. In environments with long histories of consistent interaction, we suggest that local species will fr...

The present practice of traditional slash-and-burn agriculture (locally called jhum kheti) by the ethnic Noctes in Tirap district of Arunachal Pradesh, India is a part of history of rural landscapes. Even today, the local jhumias totally depends on this traditional farming system for their livelihood. Nonetheless, it is time and again considered as ‘traditional’ and firm in contrast to modern m...