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Robert Pogue Harrison : « Il existe un lien fondamental entre la poésie et la forêt »
Our guest: Akira Mizubayashi: The music of words
Créditos de carbono: ¿los árboles que no dejan ver el bosque?
El valor de un árbol talado es fácil de cuantificar: el precio de la madera alcanza actualmente unos 350 dólares. ¿Pero cuál es el precio de un árbol en pie? ¿Cómo calcular su aporte a la biodiversidad al clima a la vida humana y la agricultura? Un bosque proporciona refugio a las aves retiene el carbono mantiene el frescor y regula las precipitaciones. Pero los servicios ecológicos que el bosque proporciona son difíciles de evaluar. De ahí que surgiera una nueva idea.
The Congo Basin forest, a fragile treasure
The old colonial buildings of the University of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were not always dedicated to the study of environmental sciences. Until the 1970s the decrepit red brick buildings housed tobacco warehouses. It was then that the first shrubs were planted in the courtyard of this former factory by a Polish biologist.
Jens Liljestrand: “I wanted to capture the feeling of anger in the face of wildfires”
Les populations autochtones, rempart contre la déforestation
« Si la forêt est toujours là c’est grâce aux populations autochtones. Aujourd’hui c’est la mission la plus importante car la forêt protège non seulement notre vie mais aussi celle de l’humanité » déclare Txai Suruí militante du peuple Paiter Suruí et coordinatrice du mouvement de la jeunesse autochtone du Rondônia au Brésil.
Circunnavegación: Los sitios del Patrimonio Mundial en el centro de la conservación de la biodiversidad
La pérdida de biodiversidad amenaza la supervivencia de innumerables especies y la estabilidad de los ecosistemas de nuestro planeta. El problema es particularmente grave para los sitios del Patrimonio Mundial de la UNESCO que representan más de una quinta parte de la biodiversidad mundial.
Mundos inexplorados en los ‘fosos celestiales’ de China
En 2016 en el distrito chino de Leye en la ciudad de Baise de la región autónoma Zhuang de Guangxi mi equipo y yo bajamos hasta el fondo del tiankeng de Dashiwei 600 metros bajo la superficie. En mandarín el sustantivo tiankeng o ‘foso celestial’ es lo que los geólogos denominan un sumidero una dolina o depresión del terreno generada por el derrumbe de terrenos kársticos formados durante millones de años en los estratos de rocas calcáreas.
Ideas: Las vikingas salen de la sombra
Durante mucho tiempo la palabra “vikingo” hacía pensar en un hombre alto y corpulento ataviado con un casco que blandía un hacha y navegaba en la proa de un barco listo para saquear e incendiar aldeas enemigas. Sin embargo hoy en día como resultado de investigaciones interdisciplinarias y la omnipresencia de la historia medieval no solo en museos y universidades sino también en el cine y en las redes sociales la idea de los vikingos ha cambiado.
Notre invité: La musique des mots d’Akira Mizubayashi
Mundiya Kepanga, un chef papou fidèle à ses racines
Tari Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée 1965. Un garçon naît sur un tapis de feuilles de ficus très anciens dans la forêt des hautes terres. Son nom Mundiya se prononce « Moundidjê ».
An indigenous solution to deforestation in the Amazon
“If the forest is still standing it is thanks to the presence of indigenous peoples. And today this is the most important mission of our planet. Because it is a mission that not only guarantees our lives but guarantees the lives of all people” Txai Suruí activist of the Paiter Suruí people and coordinator of the Indigenous youth movement of Rondônia Brazil said in a recent statement.
Descubriendo la vida en las copas de los árboles
Jens Liljestrand: « J’ai voulu saisir le sentiment de colère face aux incendies »
Robert Pogue Harrison: “There is a fundamental connection between poetry and forests”
La forêt du bassin du Congo, trésor fragile
Les vieilles bâtisses coloniales de l’université de Kisangani en République démocratique du Congo (RDC) n’ont pas toujours été dédiées à l’étude des sciences de l’environnement. Les bâtiments décrépis en brique rouge abritaient des entrepôts de tabac jusque dans les années 1970. C’est à cette époque que les premiers arbustes ont été plantés dans la cour de cette ancienne usine par un biologiste polonais.
Zoom: Our lives in Technicolor
They are both foreign and yet familiar. Photos from before the digital age and selfies before Instagram. Their vintage colours and gelatin-silver grain give off a curious air of innocence – and melancholy. The protagonists have no names. We know nothing about them or the person who one day captured these scenes of ordinary life on film. All we know is the country and the year (the pictures presented here were taken between 1950 and 1980 in the United States and the United Kingdom).
En canadá, ‘baños de bosque’ por prescripción médica
Vincent Beaubien necesita ir al bosque con frecuencia. Suele hacer un picnic junto a una hoguera dormir o simplemente pasear entre los árboles. Capataz del sector de la construcción este hombre de 33 años residente en Delson en las afueras de Montréal siente los beneficios del contacto con los árboles nada más adentrarse unos pasos en la naturaleza. “Esos paseos me proporcionan la calma y la serenidad que necesito. Son emociones que luego me llevo conmigo”.
Gran angular: La llamada del bosque: Aires de cambio
En 2015 una película filmada en cámara rápida por la agencia espacial estadounidense (NASA) mostraba cómo “respira” la Tierra. De abril a septiembre los bosques boreales de Siberia Escandinavia y América del Norte reviven y cubren de verde gran parte del hemisferio Norte antes de retroceder con la llegada del invierno. En el hemisferio Sur la animación muestra el proceso inverso: la zona verde se extiende y retrocede sobre el mapa en función de los movimientos del sol. Los tres grandes bosques tropicales del mundo en la Amazonia la cuenca del Congo e Indonesia dibujan zonas de un verde profundo a ambos lados del ecuador.
Robert Pogue Harrison: “Existe una conexión fundamental entre la poesía y el bosque”
Zoom: Nuestras vidas en Tecnicolor
Nos resultan a la vez extrañas y familiares. Son fotos anteriores a la era digital y a los selfis antes de Instagram. Sus colores envejecidos y su granulado de gelatina de plata desprenden un curioso perfume de inocencia también de melancolía. Los protagonistas carecen de nombre. De ellos no sabemos nada. Ni de ellos ni de quien un día capturó en película estas escenas de la vida ordinaria. Apenas sabemos el país de origen y el año en el que se hicieron. En la serie presentada aquí se trata de imágenes tomadas en Estados Unidos y Reino Unido entre los años 1950 y 1970.
Idées: Les femmes vikings sortent de l’ombre
Le mot « viking » a longtemps évoqué un homme grand et musclé brandissant une arme coiffé d’un casque se tenant hardiment à la proue d’un navire prêt à piller et incendier. Mais aujourd’hui sous l’effet des recherches interdisciplinaires et de l’omniprésence de l’histoire médiévale non seulement dans les musées et les universités mais aussi au cinéma et sur les réseaux sociaux notre vision des Vikings a changé.
Carbon credits, the tree that hides the forest?
The worth of a felled tree is easy to quantify; currently lumber is worth about US$350. But what is the value of a standing tree? It is obviously valuable for biodiversity for the climate for humans and agriculture: a forest provides habitat for birds stores carbon casts shadow and regulates rainfall. But these are not financial values therefore leaving forests vulnerable for clearance. So a new idea emerged.
In depth: UNESCO World Heritage sites: Key to biodiversity conservation
Biodiversity loss is a critical issue that threatens the survival of countless species and the stability of our planet’s ecosystems. The issue is of particular concern for UNESCO World Heritage sites which are representative of more than a fifth of global biodiversity.
En Chine, des mondes inexplorés dans les « puits célestes »
En 2016 dans le district de Leye ville de Baise région autonome zhuang du Guangxi en Chine mon équipe et moi-même sommes descendus au fond du tiankeng de Dashiwei à 600 mètres de profondeur. Le terme tiankeng ou puits céleste désigne les vastes dépressions d’effondrement aux parois abruptes ou dolines qui se sont formées pendant des millions d’années dans des strates de roches carbonatées.
Los pueblos indígenas, un escudo contra la deforestación
« Si el bosque sigue ahí es gracias a la presencia de los pueblos indígenas. Hoy en día esa es la misión más importante porque esa misión no solo protege nuestras vidas sino las vidas de toda la humanidad” afirmó recientemente en un comunicado Txai Suruí militante del pueblo Paiter Suruí y coordinadora del movimiento de la juventud indígena de Rondônia en Brasil.
Au canada, la nature sur ordonnance
Vincent Beaubien a besoin de se rendre régulièrement en forêt. Il va y pique-niquer au coin du feu dormir ou simplement se promener. Contremaître dans le bâtiment cet homme de 33 ans qui vit à Delson dans la banlieue de Montréal ressent les bienfaits de ce contact avec les arbres après quelques pas dans les bois. « Cela me procure l’apaisement et la sérénité dont j’ai besoin. Ce sont des émotions que j’emporte avec moi. »
Mexico: Women lead the way in saving the mangroves
Since she was a small child Erika Barnett from the Seri community in northeastern Mexico watched mangrove seedlings be carried away by the waves. She would then gather young shoots to take back to her home on the coast.
Grand angle: L’appel de la forêt: Changer de cap
En 2015 un film en accéléré réalisé par l’agence spatiale américaine (NASA) montrait la Terre en train de « respirer ». D’avril à septembre les forêts boréales de Sibérie de Scandinavie et d’Amérique du Nord prennent vie et verdissent une grande partie de l’hémisphère Nord avant de régresser avec l’arrivée de l’hiver. Dans l’hémisphère Sud l’animation montre le processus inverse la partie verte s’allongeant et reculant sur la carte avec la course du soleil. Les trois plus grandes forêts tropicales du monde en Amazonie dans le bassin du Congo et en Indonésie dessinent des zones d’un vert profond de part et d’autre de l’équateur.
Learning among the trees in Denmark
At the Danish forest kindergarten Krudthus about 30 kilometers north of Copenhagen children spend most of their time in the forest.
La canopée : découvertes au sommet
Mundiya kepanga, un jefe papú fiel a sus raíces
Tari Papúa Nueva Guinea 1965. Un bebé acaba de venir al mundo sobre un manto de hojas de un ficus muy antiguo en un bosque de las tierras altas. Su nombre Mundiya se pronuncia “Mundiyé”.
In Canada, nature by prescription
Vincent Beaubien needs to go to the forest regularly. He goes there to picnic by a fire sleep or simply walk. The 33-year-old construction foreman who lives in Delson a suburb of Montreal feels the benefits of this contact with the trees after taking just a few steps in the woods. “It gives me the peace and serenity I need. These are the feelings I take away with me.”
Nuestro invitado: La música de las palabras de Akira Mizubayashi
Wide angle: The call of the forest: Winds of change
In 2015 the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) published a time-lapse of the Earth “breathing”. From April to September boreal forests in Siberia Scandinavia and North America burst into life turning much of the northern hemisphere green only to fall back with the arrival of winter. In the southern hemisphere the process happens in reverse the graphic showed the green waxing and waning on the map with the movements of the sun. The world’s three largest rainforests in the Amazon the Congo Basin and Indonesia are deep-green and ever-present around the equator.
Les crédits carbone : une fausse bonne idée?
La valeur d’un arbre abattu est facile à quantifier : le cours du bois d’oeuvre s’élève actuellement à près de 350 dollars. Mais quelle est celle d’un arbre sur pied ? Comment évaluer ce qu’il apporte à la biodiversité au climat à la vie humaine et à l’agriculture ? Une forêt fournit en effet un refuge pour les oiseaux retient le carbone garde la fraîcheur et régule les précipitations. Mais la valeur marchande des services écologiques qu’elle rend est difficile à évaluer. Une nouvelle idée a donc germé.
Décryptage: Les sites du patrimoine mondial au coeur de la conservation de la biodiversité
Le recul de la biodiversité menace la survie d’innombrables espèces et la stabilité des écosystèmes de notre planète. Le problème se pose avec une acuité particulière pour les sites du patrimoine mondial de l’UNESCO qui représentent plus d’un cinquième de la biodiversité mondiale.
Discovering life in the canopy
Mexique: les femmes en première ligne pour sauver la mangrove
Depuis son plus jeune âge Erika Barnett issue de la communauté seri au nord-est du Mexique voyait les plantules de mangroves se faire emporter par les vagues. Elle en ramassait alors de jeunes pousses pour les rapporter chez elle sur la côte.
Ideas: Viking women in a new light
The word “Viking” has long been associated with tall and muscular man wielding a razor-sharp weapon wearing a helmet and standing boldly on the prow of a ship ready to pillage and burn. Today however in the age of interdisciplinary research and when medieval history is omnipresent in museums and universities but also on social media and the silver screen our visions of the Vikings are changing.
China’s “heavenly pits”, a dive into the unknown
In 2016 in Baise Leye County of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China my team and I rappelled down with a rope to the bottom of the Dashiwei Tiankeng 600 metres under the ground. The term tiankeng “heavenly pit” refers to large sink-like negative terrains with steep walls formed over millions of years and developed in carbonate rock strata.
Au Danemark, l’école au milieu des abres
À Krudthus à une trentaine de kilomètres au nord de Copenhague les enfants de la maternelle de la forêt passent la plupart de leurs journées en plein air. Ils s’affairent à identifier les insectes dissimulés sous les pierres et les branches tombées au sol à suivre le rythme des saisons à travers l’évolution des arbres ou encore apprendre le cycle de la vie en observant la décomposition des plantes et des animaux morts. Entre deux activités ils gambadent avant d’aller pêcher ou de faire du vélo au milieu des massifs d’anémones.
Jens Liljestrand: “Quise captar el sentimiento de cólera ante los incendios”
La selva de la cuenca del Congo, un tesoro frágil
Los viejos edificios coloniales de la Universidad de Kisangani en la República Democrática del Congo (RDC) no siempre estuvieron dedicados al estudio de las ciencias del medio ambiente. Hasta la década de 1970 los decrépitos locales de ladrillo rojo acogían almacenes de tabaco. Fue por aquel entonces cuando un biólogo polaco plantó los primeros arbustos en el patio de esta antigua fábrica.
Globalized production processes and foreign governmental lobbies: Analysing the United States Foreign Agents Registration Act reports
This study examines two potentially opposing effects that the current state of trade globalization can have on foreign governmental lobbies in the United States. On one hand economic globalization and increased flows of goods may lead to more and more contentious issues between trading partners. On the other hand the growing networks of global value chains (GVCs) may mobilize interest groups in foreign lobbies’ target countries (the United States in this study) whose activities might substitute for those of foreign governmental lobbies. With such linkages an increase in lobbying activities by domestic producers may reduce the need for direct foreign lobbying on contentious issues. The study reveals different effects of forward and backward GVC linkages and the results have two main policy implications: first policymakers should be aware of the growing intricate nature of foreign influence; second more attention must be paid to political consequences of GVCs’ distributive effects particularly those from backward linkages.
Reshoring, nearshoring and development. Readiness and implications for Latin America and the Caribbean
This paper discusses the concepts of reshoring and nearshoring which are gaining increasing popularity. We contribute to the literature in three main ways. First building on previous theories we define a conceptual framework and consider how recent developments – the COVID-19 pandemic and Industry 4.0 technologies – may affect these patterns. Second we process some preliminary evidence to test whether Latin American and Caribbean economies are indeed participating in this reshoring trend. Third we propose a measure of “reshoring readiness” to assess whether these countries appear to be ready to host relocations and benefit from them. Overall we find limited evidence of nearshoring to the region so far except in Mexico and we highlight strengths and weaknesses of the region for attracting and benefitting from future relocations.
Articles: Are emerging market MNEs more attracted towards better patent enforcement regimes when undertaking greenfield R&D-focused FDI?
Multinational enterprises in emerging markets (EMNEs) owing to weak enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) face challenges when undertaking domestic innovation. As a result they may search for superior IPR environments in which to create greenfield projects focused on research and development (R&D) and innovation. We hypothesize that the likelihood that an EMNE chooses to invest in an R&D-focused greenfield project over other FDI projects is positively associated with increased levels of host-country patent enforcement protection relative to its home market. In addition we hypothesize that EMNEs many in the process of catching up through “springboard” FDI with developed-market MNEs (DMNEs) are more sensitive to IPR protection than DMNEs. Results of logistic regression modelling of 112908 greenfield projects largely support our hypotheses. We discuss implications for understanding EMNE theorizing and policy which has to date focused more on regulating technology-seeking mergers and acquisitions (M&As) overlooking the growing importance of R&D-related greenfield FDI as an effective firm-level catch-up strategy for EMNEs.
UNCTAD Insights: Internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): A new assessment
The contributions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to domestic economies are sizeable. The most productive and dynamic ones venture abroad and internationalize by exporting or by investing overseas. For smaller firms foreign direct investment (FDI) implies the commitment of a high level of resources potentially increasing the risk of failure. This study empirically assesses the question of whether outward investment is a valuable growth strategy or whether engaging in FDI might hurt performance. The results show that while displaying higher revenue growth rates than their larger counterparts SMEs experience a bigger shock after their foreign investment: the sales growth of SMEs decreases by about 6 per cent during the first three years after a cross-border greenfield project; it starts recovering only after the fourth year. Larger MNEs show no significant change in growth rate after an investment. The decrease in revenues in SMEs occurs mostly in manufacturing enterprises and less so in services companies. This is primarily because for services companies a foreign affiliate which almost by definition is market-seeking tends to make an immediate contribution to sales and sales growth whereas many manufacturing affiliates require a start-up period and may engage in activities that contribute less to sales growth such as supply chain activities.
Intrafirm transactions and tax haven linkages: Evidence from Indian manufacturing
This study aims to assess the pattern and prevalence of intrafirm activities in foreign exchange transactions of foreign affiliates in the manufacturing sector in India. The related-party foreign transactions of selected foreign affiliates are analysed for two years and the shares of financial payments directed to tax haven locations are identified to appraise the vulnerability of these outflow transactions to potential risk of corporate tax avoidance. A majority of foreign exchange earnings and expense transactions were found to be conducted within firms. The major part of intrafirm payments for the key expenditure types was made to various tax haven locations having different levels of tax avoidance risk. Close to half of all expense payments were traced to tax havens with several firms reporting predominant shares of intrafirm import financial or services payments linked to certain significant tax havens. The data indicate active involvement of foreign affiliates in India in the use of tax havens for foreign expense transfers which could be motivated by tax avoidance aims. This tendency is noted to be high for specific channels such as services interest payments and other miscellaneous transactions suggesting that these channels may be used for transfer mispricing and tax avoidance strategies by foreign-affiliated firms.
The United Kingdom Modern Slavery Act: Are we making progress? A look at organizational commitment to eradicating modern slavery
This study examines the effect of regulatory outreach actions on modern slavery statements by the United Kingdom. More than 30000 policy entries in the United Kingdom Modern Slavery Compliance Registry from 2020 to 2022 were reviewed using analysis of variance and multiple regression to determine predictors of policy statement robustness. The results reveal that policies have become more robust following regulatory efforts. Private conglomerate groups which can include multinational corporations are the largest publishers to the registry. However the role of the chief executive officer as the authority approving the statements has diminished in impact while company turnover has emerged as a more reliable predictor of impact. Furthermore the presence of International Labour Organization indicators in the policy statement shows that concern for child-related issues can vary depending on the geographical focus of risk but that it does not predict a focus on women. The steady improvement in the robustness of modern slavery policies signals some progress following regulator outreach.