Priorities Of Local People Research Articles

Social branding for health promotion against non-communicable diseases in Maharashtra, India

Introduction: The burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is a major challenge for countries, regardless of their level of development. Social branding is an emerging approach to health promotion for NCD prevention. In this paper, the process of social branding is documented as a case study to help researchers develop similar kinds of interventions in the settings in which they work. Methods: The process of developing a social brand is documented through conversations with the project team, observations in the field, interaction with community local members, and information gathered through photographs, videos and newspaper clippings. Results: The social brand focused upon in this study was named the Aarogyachi Vaari (Health Pilgrimage) inspired by the Pandrapur Wari, a religious pilgrimage undertaken in the state of Maharashtra, India. Various stakeholders from self-help groups, panchayat raj institutions and schools from the local village collaborated successfully to implement the health event in a manner similar to the way in which diverse religious groups come together for the Pandrapur Wari religious pilgrimage. The Aarogyachi Vaari took the form of a strategically planned health event consisting of various health promotion stalls, many developed by local villagers themselves. The organisation of the event was aided by resource mobilisation within the local community. Discussion: Social branding can be an effective tool for health promotion in community settings. Studying people’s cultural preferences and what makes them feel connected and excited can lay the foundations for the creation of a social brand that reflects their choices and helps them take up healthy behaviours on their own. It is possible to mobilise a community for health through social branding that is culturally relevant and connected to the interests and priorities of local people.

More than one story: remaking community and place in Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society

ABSTRACT In this article, we study how Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society is interpreted and experienced by communities whose livelihoods and cultural identities are entangled with carbon-intensive industries. The study draws upon interviews with citizen groups in the coastal city of Lysekil, located next to Scandinavia’s largest oil refinery. Our analysis speaks to a growing scholarly literature on just transitions where we argue that a better understanding of place attachment as an active and operating force in local transition processes, can provide important information for just transition policy design. Based on our research on place attachment in Lysekil, we suggest that inclusivity in just transitions, implies acknowledging and addressing more than material aspects of loss, involving loss of direction, loss of identities and loss of imagined futures. Moreover, we argue that the vision of an inclusive transition requires a more nuanced approach to the concept of “community” which recognises different stories, voices, and perspectives and challenges taken for granted assumptions about local people's priorities in debates on just transitions. Finally, based on our experiences from Lysekil we contend that inclusivity requires communicative spaces where citizens can meet to listen, speak, and discuss future pathways towards a fossil free society. The visions of just and inclusive transitions, we argue, can only be realised if driven by a place-based dialogue on future pathways and if agendas for a fossil free transformation are locally anchored.

Understanding the diversity of values underpinning forest conservation

Values are the motivational goals that underpin individual and group decisions, attitudes, and behaviours, and often influence the success of conservation. Existing studies have provided insight into the perceptions and attitudes of stakeholders towards forest conservation values. However, there are still contentions among different stakeholders regarding the values underpinning conservation policies and programs. It is still unclear what values matter most to people in forest conservation. Moreover, the specific values that can motivate and empower people to participate in conservation remain poorly understood. We examined these issues using the human value orientation lens, a framework that captures the features of human relationships and interactions with forests and with other forest users. Given the need for conservation policies and programs to align with the priorities of local people, characterising multiple stakeholder perspectives can help us to better understand and untangle the conflicting interests and diverse motivating values influencing conservation policies and programs. Working in Nigeria, a country with one of the highest rates of global deforestation, we use the Q-methodology to capture and describe the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders regarding the values that underpin forest conservation. We identify three factors representing these values, and show heterogeneity in the viewpoints held by different stakeholders. The first factor explained 24 % of the study variance and identified environmental and management values as essential. This viewpoint was largely held by hierarchical stakeholders, forest experts, and forest staff. The second factor explained 12 % of the study variance, and identified cultural values that were predominantly held by forest users. The third factor explained 13 % of the study variance, and identified economic values that were mostly held by forest experts and forest users. Our study shows a diversity of value types held for forest conservation and that there are broad differences between stakeholders regarding their viewpoints. To enhance conservation success, in addition to focussing on consensus values, decision- and policy-makers should better differentiate value types that target the specific needs of stakeholders.

Evaluation of Land Use System for Supporting Sustainable Development of Agriculture in Quoc Oai District, Hanoi City

The area of ​​agricultural land in Quoc Oai District is quite large of 9949,0 hectares, accounting for 65,83% of total area of the district. The study have identified 77 land use systems (LUS) which are based on 56 land units and 7 major land use types. The effectiveness of ecological adaptability, economics, social and environment is evaluated and allows to determine main developed fields in ​​agricultural production, consistings of: wet rice, rice-fish, fruit trees, tea, short-day plants, forest (acacia) and aquaculture. Fruit trees is a land use types which have wide ecological adaptability area, the best economic effectiveness (168.4 million/ha/year), the local people's priorities, low negative impact on the environment. LUS evaluation process described in this paper can be applied to other districts which have an agricultural area in Ha Noi.

Changing local weather and adaptation in two coastal villages in Bangladesh

Coastal Bangladesh is experiencing the effects of weather and climate-related stressors. The paper reports on the ways in which members of nine occupational groups in two coastal villages in South-west Bangladesh understand and respond differentially to recent changes in local weather and weather-related events and processes. Their understanding is grounded in local experiences and varied livelihood options, which are a complex interaction between people's social and spatial locations and local weather and non-weather events and processes. Their priorities are to protect livelihoods through resilience-building actions, which address proximate causes of vulnerability (improving coastal embankments, rehabilitating and strengthening homesteads, protecting agricultural land). Government support is limited to traditional development interventions that assist some more than others and often disconnected from local people's priorities. Most adaptation actions are practical measures within the prevailing politico-legal order. There is some evidence of more rights-based cooperative action between a national non-governmental organisation and local farmers that challenged aspects of that order.

‘Surfing a wave of change’: a critical appraisal of the London 2012 cultural programme

This article takes as its focus an overlooked element of the Olympic Games – the Cultural Olympiad (and associated cultural programme) – and offers a critical commentary upon its effectiveness in reaching into local settings to generate empowered communities. The article focuses on a case study of one Scottish project funded through the London 2012 Olympic Games’ cultural programme and draws on participant observation, elite interviews and policy statements for its empirical foundation. The authors conclude that the complexity of cultural programming around the London 2012 Olympic Games contributes to a dissonance between the priorities of local people within a Scottish urban location and the professed ambitions of the Games organisers. Whilst Olympic values are shared across geographical boundaries, the pragmatic policy needs at the local level take precedence when resources for cultural development become available.

Fighting Neglected Diseases: A Double Push-and-Pull Program

This paper contributes to a better understanding of the pharmaceutical market for neglected diseases and propose a program that creates incentives and encourage research and development of new medicines for neglected diseases. The current patent system ensures that incentives are directed towards generating products that people want. However, the patent system has failed to create incentives to produce products for which there is a social need but no economic demand, such as drugs for diseases that primarily affect populations with little purchasing power. This paper investigates why it is occurring and shows the impact of this problem worldwide. It reviews several proposed reforms to encourage the research and development of new drugs for neglected diseases. Getting developing countries involved in the research process turns out to be critical not only for the pharmaceutical industry but also for poor and developing countries. This is a key feature of the proposed Double Push-and-Pull program, which proposes to, systematically, reorganize some of the ideas to spur innovation by involving effectively the developing countries in the process of research and development of new drugs for neglected diseases, since they are the most affected by them. The main goal of this program is to find a connection between global decisions, policies and local people's priorities regarding neglected diseases. It is a program that makes possible a link between local needs, reality on low-income countries and global assistance.

Recognizing Local People's Priorities for Tropical Forest Biodiversity

Tropical forest people often suffer from the same processes that threaten biodiversity. An improved knowledge of what is important to local people could improve decision making. This article examines the usefulness of explicitly asking what is important to local people. Our examples draw on biodiversity surveys in East Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). With local communities we characterized locally valued habitats, species, and sites, and their significance. This process clarified various priorities and threats, suggested refinements and limits to management options, and indicated issues requiring specific actions, further investigation, or both. It also shows how biological evaluations are more efficient with local guidance, and reveals potential for collaborations between local communities and those concerned with conservation. Such evaluations are a first step in facilitating the incorporation of local concerns into higher-level decision making. Conservationists who engage with local views can benefit from an expanded constituency, and from new opportunities for pursuing effective conservation.

Local perceptions of vegetation change and priorities for conservation of woody-savanna vegetation in Senegal

Ethnobotanical information relevant to the management of savanna vegetation was obtained through interviews with 57 elderly villagers living near Delta du Saloum National Park, Senegal. Local people had observed a change in the local environment from forest to savanna during their lifetime and considered it primarily a result of frequent intensive fires and declining rainfall. Most people preferred the woody vegetation to be dense. In particular, nine woody species were useful for construction, 10 for protection in agricultural fields, 19 for medicine and 10 for livestock fodder. Some of the locally highly preferred species were also considered to be declining in the local environment, they included Cordyla pinnata, Pterocarpus erinaceus, Daniellia oliveri, Parkia biglobosa, Khaya senegalensis and Pericopsis laxiflora. Highly preferred and declining species were characteristically large trees, non-thorny, with edible fruits and of Sudano-Guinean to Guinean affinity. The study furthermore identified a close coincidence between the interest in conserving tree species diversity in protected areas and the priorities of local people which included preservation of plenty of large trees (including many fruit trees), maintenance of a variety of species, improvement of woody regeneration, and reduction of fire intensity and frequency. Focusing management strategies on increasing populations of such declining and highly preferred species, by active fire protection for instance, would enhance the natural resource value considerably and thereby the quality of life for the local people.