Economics, advice and management

After a monoculture phase, it is becoming an unavoidable necessity to diversify perennial crops (cocoa, rubber, palm or coconut oil) in humid tropical areas. Why and when should these diversification processes take place? What type of planter is involved? What are the constraints to diversification? How do public policies and private actions interfere? The authors answer these questions through fifteen case studies, mainly located in Africa and South-East Asia, thereby providing a better understanding of the economies of family plantations and their recent changes.

Defined in the Bruntland Report in the 1980s, sustainable development is a notion that remains largely controversial: helping to assess it is the main objective of this book. What are the specific features of sustainable development? What relationship does it enjoy with growth? What is its timescale - long-term development or countdown? Sustainability is studied here across various sectors - urban, landscape, biodiversity, industry and agro-materials.

How, since 2006 when the organic law on the finance law entered into force, has the figure become the centrepiece in a way of governing where the political decision is subjected to a logic of result? The author wonders about the current hold of the management evaluation over the definition of the governmental activity. He shows how it makes the democratic practices lose their strength. It addresses the forms of resistance that civil servants and citizens can use to oppose this erosion.

At a time when a real "occupational distress market" is opening out, it is crucial to provide the interested parties with keys to understanding that will help them to make strategic choices or envisage prevention actions. This book, the only one in French, presents and compares the various economic analysis methods of occupational health (professional stress) and explains how "figures" are put on the consequences of stress at work.

The work analyses the transformations of farmer societies and organisations in several continents from a dual socio-economic interpretation that combines the classic logic of mercenary exchange with the viewpoint of the logic of reciprocity.

Urged on by new expectations of society, key rural players experiment with different agricultural and food systems, showing proof of creativity and stubbornness faced with the ever-dominant mass production.But what type of sustainable development are societies seeking? How do we choose the innovations to achieve it? What role can research and public policies play to support the emergence of these innovations?

How will waste management be organised in the years to come?What are the conflicts between the population and the decision makers? What are the decisive economic factors? What progress has been made in terms of health? The authors of this book answer questions from decision makers on household waste management. They present the historic, sociological, economic and health components that go hand in hand with territorial waste management and the use of technologies in France.

The risk management policy introduced since Cyclone Xynthia in February 2010 has highlighted the need to re-think French risk management policy and its climate change adaptation plan.This collective work analyses the recent natural disasters, especially Xynthia, and makes a few suggestions for an integrated risk management policy.

In the current context of neoliberal globalisation and the questions raised over its negative effects, the aim of this book is to show through miscellaneous case studies that the standardisation systems are not only new forms of regulation, institutions and social practices, but that in reality they refer to eminently political issues and to the building of a specific balance of power between players.

Producer organisations are very numerous and active in the farming modernisation process in southern developing countries. This didactic work analyses the advantage of the partnership with producer organisations, how they can be strengthened and their relations with the environment. The questions are made extremely accessible and are illustrated by numerous examples in the southern countries.