Reducing vulnerability to drought and famine: developmental approaches to relief

In this paper we present salient lessons learned through the International Relief/Development Project about the relationships between disasters and development. We discuss approaches to famine response and prevention, including the impact of global food distribution efforts on the capacities of people affected by famine and offer criteria for planning famine relief so that it will promote systemic, long term development of these capacities. We first describe a collaborative research project which showed that it is possible for international famine assistance either to promote the capacities of people who suffer from famine so that they are better able to handle future food crises, or to leave those it purports to help worse off and even more vulnerable to subsequent disasters. We then illustrate alternative strategies for promoting development in the midst of crisis by presenting information about a number of famine response programs and analyzing their impact on capacities and vulnerabilities.     

Atmospheric impacts of the life cycle emissions of fuel ethanol in Brazil: based on chemical exergy

An assessment is made of the atmospheric emissions from the life cycle of fuel ethanol coupled with the cogeneration of electricity from sugarcane in Brazil. The total exergy loss from the most quantitative relevant atmospheric emission substances produced by the life cycle of fuel ethanol is 3.26E+05 kJ/t of C₂H₅OH. Compared with the chemical exergy of 1 t of ethanol (calculated as 34.56E+06 kJ), the exergy loss from the life cycle's atmospheric emission represents 1.11% of the product's exergy. The activity that most contributes to atmospheric emission chemical exergy losses is the harvesting of sugarcane through the methane emitted in burning. Suggestions for improved environmental quality and greater efficiency of the life cycle of fuel ethanol with cogenerated energy are: harvesting the sugarcane without burning, renewable fuels should be used in tractors, trucks and buses instead of fossil fuel and the transportation of products and input should be logistically optimized.     

Resource availability and the abundance of an N-based defense in Australian tropical rain forests

Plant defense theories predict that relatively resource-rich environments (those with more fertile soil) will support a greater abundance of plants with nitrogen-based chemical defense, but this has yet to be adequately tested. We tested this prediction by measuring the diversity and contribution to total biomass of cyanogenic plants (those that release hydrogen cyanide from endogenous cyanide-containing compounds) in the Australian tropical rain forest. We examined 401 species in thirty 200-m2 plots, six at each of five sites, for cyanogenesis. In upland/highland rain forest, two pairs of sites similar in rainfall and altitude, but differing in soil nutrients, were selected, as well as one site in lowland rain forest. Sites differed markedly in species composition and foliar N was positively related to soil fertility. Holding altitude constant, we did not detect significant differences in the proportion of cyanogenic species with soil fertility, nor did we consistently detect significant increases in the contribution of cyanogenic species to total biomass on higher nutrient sites. Thus we found no clear evidence that soil fertility affects the distribution and prevalence of species investing in a constitutive N-based defense at the community level.     

Comparison of headspace and gas-stripping methods for determining the Henry''s law constant (H) for organic compounds of low to intermediate H

A computer-controlled headspace sampling and gas chromatographic system (HS-GC) was used to measure Henry's Law constant (H) for organic compounds. The HS-GC results, extrapolated to ambient temperature in Clausius-Clapeyron type equations, compared well with values obtained using a gas-stripping method at ambient temperature. The HS-GC method provided the temperature-dependence of H so that it can be calculated at any temperature, which is essential when comparing laboratory results with values of H derived from air/water distributions in the environment.