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The article analyses the livelihood of peasant farmers in the rural area of three parishes in the Paute basin in Ecuador. First, the article presents the gathered empirical data of the study sites, respectively the Pichacay in the Santa Ana parish, Caldera in the Javier Loyola parish, and Llavircay in the Rivera parish. Applying the Chayanovian and van der Ploeg interpretation frames, three types of peasant households could be distinguished, based upon their specific organizational forms of producing and reproducing their livelihoods. The article concludes that a more in-depth analysis is needed in the peasant’s art of farming, particularly in their core balance of being conditioned by and linked to as well as resistant to the capitalist economy.

Largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture, the West African populations could be severely impacted by climate change and variability. In this paper, we performed a literature review relating to perceptions of climate change and variability in West Africa, followed by an in-depth comparison between perceptions by rural dwellers of Burkina Faso and trends in meteorological data to discuss the importance of perceptions vis-à-vis climate trends in migration decision. Results showed that respondents perceived increasing temperature and worsening rainfall conditions over 1988–2007 matching with findings of previous studies but inconsistent with the trends observed in rainfall data. Given that climate change is recognized as a key driver of mobility on the one hand and the fact that climate change perceptions influence decision to migrate on the other hand, our results suggest to jointly include perceptions and climate data in future research on environmental migration in order to improve the understanding of household’s decision in response to climate change.

As global warming and climate change predictions become increasingly certain, there is mounting pressure to gain a better understanding of disaster risk. Climate change is seen as a major contributing factor in the recent increases in the losses and damages attributed to hazard extremes. Vulnerability is one of the key components of risk. Yet identifying who the vulnerable segments of the population are, and to which specific hazards different groups are vulnerable, remains a challenge. Measuring social vulnerability has become an active area of research, with scholars attempting to capture the differential vulnerabilities of the population exposed to certain hazards. To address these research challenges, we developed in this study social vulnerability indices at the most basic level of governance in the Philippines using raw, individual-level census data for the entire country. Our goal in conducting this research is to establish relationships between the derived vulnerability measurements and flood exposure and the impacts of coastal flash floods triggered by Tropical Storm Washi in the southern Philippines in December 2011. We find that exposure rather than vulnerability appears to play a greater role in the magnitude of the losses and damages resulting from this particular type of hazard at the localized scale. ∗ J. Andres F. Ignacio (corresponding author), Environmental Science for Social Change, 1/F Manila Observatory Bldg., Ateneo de Manila University Katipunan Road, Loyola Heights 1108 Quezon City, Philippines Email: andresignacio@essc.org.ph Grace T. Cruz, Population Institute, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, Philippines Fernando Nardi, Universita per Stranieri di Perugia, Italy Sabine Henry, Department of Geography, University of Namur, Belgium DOI: 10.1553/populationyearbook2015s091 92 Assessing the effectiveness of a social vulnerability index

Movement of groups of people is closely linked to environmental, agricultural and cultural change. Gaining an understanding of these changes in a local context is a vital prelude to the construction of a viable predictive model. We carried out a study in the Philippines to better understand the association between migration and these types of changes at a village scale and to build a picture of how the associations changed in time and space. The study area was located in the uplands of Mindanao. Migration to the village began in the late 1970s. As of 2010, the population is made up of indigenous people (~57 %), people who migrated from elsewhere in the Philippines (~29 %), and descendants of indigenous/non indigenous parents (~14 %). Face-to-face interviews in the village and in the places of origin/destination were used to collect qualitative information on the migrations made by the current and past village inhabitants. The main results relate to the reasons for migration, the socio-environmental processes that induced the decision to move and the description and explanation of more recent moves. The local findings are discussed in the context of existing published models of migration in frontier areas.

In summary, findings from the four papers in this volume demonstrate the critical role played by migration in establishing linkages between rural origins and urban destinations, and the multifaceted impacts of these linkages on individuals, families and communities in Asian developing countries. These findings are relevant to the longstanding concern about the potential adverse impacts of internal migration, the siphoning of skill and human resources to the city. While migrants themselves are generally better off by moving from rural areas to the cities, it is well known that the migration process tends to be selective of the younger, better educated, and more dynamic members of origin communities, and is therefore detrimental to the vitality of rural communities and the family members left behind. The implications of the findings presented in this volume is that while these negative effects of migrant selection do exist, they are at least partly offset by benefits derived from the linkages between rural and urban areas established in the migration process. Indeed, such connections take a variety of forms and almost certainly bring positive effects to migrant families and communities in places of origin, especially if they are maintained and properly managed. This in turn underlines the need for a clear and nuanced understanding of the way that rural-urban linkages are forged in the migration process, and the diverse forms they take.

This study tests the influence of environmental changes on migration in Burkina Faso. It describes individual migratory pathways in the 1960-1999 period in Burkina Faso, using environmental typologies of origins and destinations based on rainfall variations and land degradation. The study links data from a national longitudinal (retrospective) survey with fine resolution rainfall data and land degradation data. Results suggest that environmental factors influence, but in different ways, both the probability to out-migrate and the selection of a destination once the migration decision has been made. Migration seems to be more influenced by a slow-acting process such as land degradation than by episodic events such as droughts.

This study analyses the factors that cause inter-provincial migrations in an African context (Burkina Faso, West Africa), focusing specifically on the role of environmental factors in driving large migration flows in ecologically marginal regions. It uses statistical methods for modelling migration data to assess the relative importance of socio-demographic and biophysical variables. The former included the percentage of the population who are male, literacy and economic activity rates, and the presence of a resettlement policy. The latter included measures of land degradation, land availability and climatic variability, which vary considerably between different regions of the country. The results demonstrate that, as expected, demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Provinces were associated with migration patterns, and that environmental variables were also significant. However, the contribution of environmental variables in the explanation of migration was slightly lower than for the socio-demographic variables. The results show that inter-provincial migrations in Burkina Faso are influenced by high literacy and economic activity rates at the origin and destination, a high proportion of men at the origin, a low proportion of men at the destination, as well as by unfavourable conditions concerning rainfall variability, land degradation and land availability at the origin, and favourable conditions at the destination for these variables.

This study aims to compare, on the one hand, the geographical distribution of the desert dust source areas, their contribution to quantities emitted into the atmosphere, the trajectories and the quantities deposited, with on the other hand the areas of research interest focused on the desert dust impacts on air quality and/or human health. Based on a systematic review of the literature using the ISI Web of Knowledge database, we found 231 articles published over the last decade on the desert dust impacts on air quality. Of these, 48% concerned Asian dust and 39% Saharan dust, with the remaining 13% divided between the other dust source areas. However, only one of these studies addressed the worsening air pollution in West Africa, even though it is very close to the Sahara, the greatest contributor to the global dust budget. Moreover, there have been very few studies (41) looking at the direct links between desert dust and human health; in this context too, no interest has been shown in West Africa. Yet this region is also among the areas in which morbidity rates have been noted to be far higher than those found in other regions of the world, and where respiratory infections alone account for more than 20% of the causes of infant mortality. This survey highlights a clear imbalance between those areas most exposed to dust and the most studied areas in terms of dust impacts. Given these findings and the often alarming results published about other regions of the world, we advocate a revival of interest in research on West Africa in order to achieve a better understanding of the desert dust impacts on air quality and health among the populations of this region.

Background The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the efficacy and the safety of lamivudine therapy in hepatitis B virus (HBV)-positive/DNA-positive renal transplant recipients. Methods Six HBV DNA-positive cadaveric renal transplant recipients ranging in age from 49+/-6 years were administered lamivudine, at 100 mg/day for a period of at least 6 months, on a compassionate-use basis. Lamivudine is the (-) enantiomer of 3'-thiacytidine, which is known to be a potent inhibitor of HBV replication. All of the patients but one were on cyclosporine-based immunosuppression. Results The mean serum creatinine was 134+/-44 micromol/L. The mean duration of HBV infection was 230+/-54 months (156-288). All of the patients but one had high serum alanine aminotransferase levels (122+/-52 IU/L; range, 45-243). Histological evaluation showed the presence of either chronic active hepatitis (n=4) or cirrhosis (n=2). All of the patients but one were hepatitis B e antigen negative/hepatitis B e antibody positive, but none were coinfected with either hepatitis C virus or hepatitis D virus. Conclusions Lamivudine therapy was associated with (i) a normalization of alanine aminotransferase levels in four of five patients when these levels were increased at the beginning (n=5); (ii) a rapid disappearance of HBV DNA from the serum (detected by hybridization) in all of the patients; (iii) the negativity of HBV DNA by polymerase chain reaction in four patients; and (iv) no change in renal function and in proteinuria when present (one patient). Finally, no adverse effects were noted. When lamivudine therapy was stopped for four patients after 6 months, it was associated with a biochemical and virological relapse within the weeks that followed. Lamivudine therapy was therefore resumed for these patients.