Irrigation and collective action: A study in method with reference to the Shiwalik Hills, Haryana

In recent years decentralized development approaches have gained prominence in the agricultural sector. A host of community based watershed management projects have been implemented that encourage community organizations to undertake management of previously government controlled irrigation systems and forests. Community organizations have been given the responsibility of managing water distribution, collection of irrigation service fees and undertaking routine maintenance of irrigation infrastructure. In this context, analysis of irrigation management has concluded that groups that are relatively homogeneous may fare better than heterogeneous groups in facilitating collective action. However, this article argues that analysis of the influence of group heterogeneity on collective action is complicated because of its multi‐dimensional nature and the presence of non‐monotonic effects in mechanisms linking heterogeneity and collective outcomes. The article discusses the importance of context specification in analysis of group heterogeneity through a discussion of elements of a joint management contract in Haryana (India), identification of key variables with a potential to explain collective action in irrigation management and construction of household endowment and water interest scores to account for the influence of group heterogeneity in facilitating collective action. In the process of applying household endowment and water interest scores, the authors highlight the role of local ecological variation and non‐farm employment in influencing collective action. Proper specification of local context enables the researchers to rely on household endowment and water interest scores to predict conflicts and potential for irrigation service provision and compliance with irrigation service rules.     

A case study on artificial intelligence based cleaner production evaluation system for surface treatment facilities

The metal finishing industry is water intensive. Surveys of South African metal finishing companies indicate that water consumption is as high as 400 L/m² of metal surface treated, whilst best available practice can achieve less than 10 L/m². The industry uses hazardous chemicals such as chrome VI, cadmium, nickel and cyanide. If consumption of these chemicals can be optimized, quantities of heavy metals released into the environment will be reduced. In some cases where cleaner production techniques were applied by local companies, heavy metals have been completely eliminated from effluents discharged to municipal sewers, which represent a significant benefit to the urban environment. This benefit was accompanied by significant reduction in the use of chemicals, with a concomitant cost saving and competitive advantage to the companies concerned.A Danish environmental aid initiative promoted cleaner production in the South African metal finishing industry. Local consultants were trained by Danish experts in this field. The general methodology was to conduct an audit of the chemical, water, human resource and environment aspects of the company and compare it to best available practice. Once the review was completed, a detailed feasibility was performed on systems and equipment required to reduce chemical consumption, water consumption, human resources and environmental impact. Applied to a number of South African companies, these methods have typically achieved reductions of the order of 90% in water use and 50–60% in the use of chemicals.There were difficulties in applying the Danish methodology to South African metal finishing companies, as it makes use of quantitative indices derived from the process operations. The companies are often small and technically unsophisticated, and do not have ready access to the process data that are needed. An alternate system is required to simplify the evaluation and optimization process. This paper proposes a case study on a fuzzy-logic operator based evaluation system that outputs the cleaner production status of the company. The model is compared to an established cleaner production tool.     

Rules of supply and demand regulate recruitment to food in an ant society

The process by which ant scouts move a group of nestmates toward a newly discovered food site is called recruitment. In this paper, I report on the interactions between scouts and nestmates that result in a graded recruitment response to graded food quality in the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. Twelve experimental groups composed of 100 fire ant workers and 50 fire ant larvae were established (three experimental groups per colony × four stock colonies). Each experimental group was placed in a shallow, artificial nest with a glass cover. After a 48-h period of food deprivation, experimental groups were exposed to one of three concentrations of sugar water. Behavioral interactions between scouts and nestmates in each group were videotaped at 10× magnification for 20 min. Detailed behavioral data on a total of 120 scouts (10 scouts per experimental group) and ~1,000 nestmates (~90 nestmates per experimental group) were transcribed from the videotapes using standard play and frame-by-frame techniques. Throughout the recruitment process, scouts employed six discrete behaviors to inform nestmates of the location and quality of a food site. Scouts laid incoming trails, waggled their heads, increased walking tempo, stroked nestmates with their antennae, advertised with a brief food display, and led groups of nestmates to the food site by laying outgoing trails. In turn, nestmates assessed the food sample with antennae, then responded to or resisted recruitment based on the quality of food advertised, their employment status and their level of hunger. In summary, recruitment was an emergent property based on competent supply and demand decisions made face-to-face inside the nest rather than on the trail or at the food site.Communicated by J. Heinze     

Collective action: an alternative institutional arrangement for reducing water pollution in an industrial estate in India

This study explores the possibility of collective action as an alternative option for reducing water pollution for a cluster of small-scale industries. A case study of the Nandesari Industrial Estate in Gujarat, India, demonstrates the roles played by different agents, such as affected parties, polluters, non-governmental organizations, regulators and the court. The study empirically estimates the 'benefits' and 'costs' of water pollution abatement for a cluster of 250 small-scale industries at Nandesari, and uses these estimates for a social cost-benefit analysis. Benefits are estimated using the contingent valuation method, with a 'willingness to accept' format for the rural areas, and a 'willingness to pay' format for the urban area of the nearby Vadodara city. The article considers costs of command and control, market-based solutions and the option of common effluent treatment as alternative scenarios. It discusses how collective action and joint abatement at a common effluent treatment plant (CETP) by the 250 industries efficiently comply with the State Pollution Control Board norms, which had not been possible for the factories acting individually over the last 20 years. Finally, a detailed social cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken to estimate the net present social benefits with and without CETP. The cost-benefit analysis shows the economic advantage and social desirability of 'collective action' (joint treatment with CETP institutional arrangement) for water pollution abatement with respect to all possible scenarios comprising shadow prices of investment, foreign exchange, unskilled labour and equity considerations.     

A role-playing game as a tool to facilitate social learning and collective action towards Climate Smart Agriculture: Lessons learned from Apuí, Brazil

Addressing the global challenges of climate change (CC), food security and poverty alleviation requires enhancing the adaptive capacity and mitigation potential of land use systems. To this end, Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) aims to identify land use practices that sustainably increase productivity, enhance climate change (CC) adaptation and contribute to CC mitigation. A transition towards CSA requires technical, but also socio-institutional changes, for improved smallholder agricultural systems. Such changes may be triggered by stakeholder participation processes that stimulate social learning and collective action. This article evaluates whether a role-playing game (RPG) is an effective participatory tool to encourage social learning and collective action among local stakeholders towards adoption of CSA strategies. We designed and implemented an RPG with three groups of farmers in Apuí (Southern Amazonas), evaluating the game’s impact on social learning by interviewing each farmer before and after the RPG. Our findings show that the RPG induced not only technical learning, but also socio-institutional learning and engagement for collective action, though outcomes varied between different RPG sessions and among farmer participants.     

Participation in devolved commons management: Multiscale socioeconomic factors related to individuals’ participation in community-based management of marine protected areas in Indonesia

Management of common-pool natural resources is commonly implemented under institutional models promoting devolved decision-making, such as co-management and community-based management. Although participation of local people is critical to the success of devolved commons management, few studies have empirically investigated how individuals’ participation is related to socioeconomic factors that operate at multiple scales. Here, we evaluated how individual- and community-scale factors were related to levels of individual participation in management of community-based marine protected areas in Indonesia. In addressing this aim, we drew on multiple bodies of literature on human behaviour from economics and social science, including the social-ecological systems framework from the literature on common-pool resources, the theory of planned behaviour from social psychology, and public goods games from behavioural economics. We found three key factors related to level of participation of local people: subjective norms, structural elements of social capital, and nested institutions. There was also suggestive evidence that participation was related to people’s cooperative behavioural disposition, which we elicited using a public goods game. These results point to the importance of considering socioeconomic factors that operate at multiple scales when examining individual behaviour. Further, our study highlights the need to consider multiscale mechanisms other than those designed to appeal to self-interested concerns, such as regulations and material incentives, which are typically employed in devolved commons management to encourage participation. Increased understanding of the factors related to participation could facilitate better targeting of investments aimed at encouraging cooperative management.     

Graduated stringency within collective incentives for group environmental compliance: Building coordination in field-lab experiments with artisanal gold miners in Colombia

Small-scale gold mining is important to rural livelihoods in the developing world but also a source of environmental externalities. Incentives for individual producers are the classic policy response for a socially efficient balance between livelihoods and the environment. Yet monitoring individual miners is ineffective, or it is very costly, especially on frontiers with scattered small-scale miners. We ask whether monitoring at a group level effectively incentivizes cleaner artisanal mining by combining lower-cost external monitoring with local collective action. We employ a mining-framed, threshold-public-goods experiment in Colombia's Pacific region, with 640 participants from frontier mining communities. To study compliance with collective environmental targets, we vary the target stringency, including to compare increases over time in the stringency versus decreases. We find that collective incentives can induce efficient equilibria, with group compliance – and even inefficient overcompliance – despite the existence of equilibria with zero contributions. Yet, for demanding targets in which the reward for compliance barely outweighs the cost, compliance can collapse. Those outcomes improve with past successes for easier targets, however, so our results suggest gain from building coordination via graduated stringency.     

火灾风险等级评估的专家软件系统建设的探讨

目前 ,我国在火灾风险等级评估的专家软件系统建设方面的研究较少 ,笔者在该方面进行了研究和探索。在简要介绍了国内外对火灾风险等级评估专家软件系统的研究现状的基础上 ,阐述了火灾风险等级评估的相关概念 ;提出了一套建立火灾风险等级评估专家软件系统的思路 ;然后从人工智能的角度出发 ,综合考虑火灾风险等级评估的特殊性 ;设计了基本的火灾风险等级评估认定专家系统的结构 ,并讨论了如何建设该专家软件系统。该探索结果所提出的建设火灾风险等级评估的专家软件系统的思路和方法可为相关研究工作提供参考。     

铁路平交道口交通安全管理研究

针对铁路平交道口安全管理中存在的管理体制、管理手段、预警监控和防护等现状,以系统论的观点,分析道口事故频繁发生的主要原因和影响道口安全的主要因素,建立起适合道口的管理体制。在该体制下,提出道口安全及违章管理办法,同时构建以列车接近道口数字化智能动态预警、列车通过道口智能防护、道口安全实时监控为主要特征,人、车、路为一体,预警、监控、防护、管理相结合的智能型数字化道口安全系统,将道口安全从以防护为主的观念转到以预警、监控和防护相结合的观念上来,最终实现道口安全的综合管理。     

From manager's emotional intelligence to objective store performance: Through store cohesiveness and sales‐directed employee behavior

The relationships among manager's emotional intelligence, store cohesiveness, sales‐directed employee behavior, and objective store performance were investigated. Non‐managerial sales employees of a large retail electronics chain in South Korea (N = 1611) rated the emotional intelligence of their own store managers as well as the group cohesiveness within their stores. Store managers (N = 253) separately rated the sales‐directed behavior of their employees. Objective sales data were collected one month later for each store. No direct relationship between manager emotional intelligence and objective store performance was found. Instead, the results supported the hypothesized four‐variable, three‐path mediation model: store manager's emotional intelligence was related to store cohesiveness, which in turn was related to the sales‐directed behavior of the frontline employees, which ultimately predicted the objective performance of the stores. Manager emotional intelligence and store cohesiveness are seen as intangible organizing resources or socio‐psychological capital for non‐managerial store employees. Implications for future research and more effective management of retail firms are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.