Experimenting with the design of policies on sustainable resources management : Phase 1 final report, January 2004 - February 2005

The overall objective of the DMP is to arrest land degradation in Africa's desert margins through demonstration and capacity building activities. The GEF increment to this project will enable the programme to address issues of global environmental importance, in addition to the issues of national economic and environmental importance, and in particular the loss of biological diversity, reduced sequestration of carbon, and increased soil erosion and sedimentation. Key sites harbouring globally significant ecosystems and threatened biodiversity have been selected in each of the nine countries to serve as field laboratories for demonstrations activities related to monitoring and assessment of biodiversity status, testing of most promising natural resource management options, developing sustainable alternative livelihoods and policy guidelines and replicating successful models. The project will make a significant contribution in reducing land degradation in the marginal areas and help conserve biodiversity. Guidelines, recommendations and supportive national policies that address biodiversity concerns are envisaged to be in place in the implementing countries. (Résumé d'auteur

Experimenting with the design of policies on sustainable resource management : Progress report, June 4, 2004

The overall objective of the DMP is to arrest land degradation in Africa's desert margins through demonstration and capacity building activities. The GEF increment to this project will enable the programme to address issues of global environmental importance, in addition to the issues of national economic and environmental importance, and in particular the loss of biological diversity, reduced sequestration of carbon, and increased soil erosion and sedimentation. Key sites harbouring globally significant ecosystems and threatened biodiversity have been selected in each of the nine countries to serve as field laboratories for demonstrations activities related to monitoring and assessment of biodiversity status, testing of most promising natural resource management options, developing sustainable alternative livelihoods and policy guidelines and replicating successful models. The project will make a significant contribution in reducing land degradation in the marginal areas and help conserve biodiversity. Guidelines, recommendations and supportive national policies that address biodiversity concerns are envisaged to be in place in the implementing countries. (Résumé d'auteur

Experimenting with the design of policies on sustainable resource management : A proposal for Cirad's involvement in a transversal socio-economics component of DMP in West Africa

In our proposal, public policy is approached as a social mediation process, where actors and sectors confront their representations, objectives, and constraints. We offer to set-up and test a platform for demonstration and capacity building with policy makers and representatives of local organizations, to help endogenize resource quality and availability in development policy design. The project contributes to build multi-institutional capacity for policy design related to Natural Resources Management (NRM). It integrates lessons learnt from local experiences, modeling and upscaling. It envisions a 5 years horizon but the strategy and work plan will be reevaluated after 2 years. In this proposal, we focus on the first 3 years. (Résumé d'auteur

Influential Factors Contributing to College Student Spending Habits and Credit Card Debt

This paper explores how access to credit, familiarity with debt and financial education, socialization agents and social identities, academic performance, and financial aid and family income influence college student spending habits and credit card debt. Being in credit card debt is common for many college students, but exploring the specific factors that contribute may help prevent future generations of students from participating in unhealthy spending habits and accumulating credit card debt. After a close comparison of eleven studies, I was able to conclude that easy access to credit cards makes students susceptible to accumulating debt. Students who perform poorly academically, are female, minorities, and who are older tend to be more likely to be in debt than other students. Family income and the amount of financial aid a student receives also affects their financial situation, as does the student’s own level of financial education, and financial socialization from parents. Although future research is needed on this topic, it is important to note that students’ social environment has an effect on their financial health

Generally covariant quantization and the Dirac field

Canonical Hamiltonian field theory in curved spacetime is formulated in a manifestly covariant way. Second quantization is achieved invoking a correspondence principle between the Poisson bracket of classical fields and the commutator of the corresponding quantum operators. The Dirac theory is investigated and it is shown that, in contrast to the case of bosonic fields, in curved spacetime, the field momentum does not coincide with the generators of spacetime translations. The reason is traced back to the presence of second class constraints occurring in Dirac theory. Further, it is shown that the modification of the Dirac Lagrangian by a surface term leads to a momentum transfer between the Dirac field and the gravitational background field, resulting in a theory that is free of constraints, but not manifestly hermitian.Comment: final version, to appear in Annals Phy