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Points of contestation in the biofuels debate: Perspectives from selected international organizations in the post 2007/08 food price crises

The 2007/08 food price crisis brought unprecedented international attention to the relationship between food and biofuels, and their competition over land. In this article we sought to understand how the international policy framing of the nexus of food, fuel and land has developed since the food price crisis. We undertook an analysis of major reports, since the crisis, by three international poli

What kind of, and whose, sustainability counts? – Implications of EU’s Renewable Energy Directive in sub-Saharan Africa

The European Union (EU) plays a globally influential role in environmental legislation, with policies and regulation rooted in particular norms. Through a narrative on regulatory capitalism, ecological modernization, and diffusion, we trace how the promotion of renewable energy in transport through subsidies, mandatory targets, and prescriptive criteria for liquid biofuels, has impacts beyond the

Biofuel policy and stakeholder perspectives in Sweden – Initial impacts of EU sustainability criteria on the biofuels sector and implications for land use

Global demand for transportation biofuels has increased significantly stimulated by policy interventions seeking GHG emission reductions, improved security of supply and rural development opportunities. However the impact on an increasing use of biofuels on land use and cover has become a global concern. While policy interventions have led to increased use of biofuels, certification is often regar

Does the EU renewable Energy Directive contribute to fair and just governance of the biofuel sector? A comparison between the Swedish national scheme and EU accredited voluntary schemes

In the search for viable pathways for transforming governance and institutions in the Rio+20 agenda,strengthening of public‐private governance networks has been emphasized. Important initiatives arefound in the expanding bioenergy sector where several certification schemes have been launched forensuring that bioenergy feedstock meet environmental and social requirements. These initiatives areencou

Age Identification of Twitter Users : Classification Methods and Sociolinguistic Analysis

In this article, we address the problem of age identification of Twitter users, after their online text. We used a set of text mining, sociolinguistic-based and content-related text features, and we evaluated a number of well-known and widely used machine learning algorithms for classification, in order to examine their appropriateness on this task. The experimental results showed that Random Fore

Governance of biofuel production in the transport sector through the renewable energy directive

In the search for viable pathways for transforming governance and institutions in the Rio+20 agenda, strengthening of public-private governance networks has been emphasized. Important initiatives are found in the expanding bioenergy sector where several certification schemes have been launched for ensuring that bioenergy feedstock meet environmental and social requirements. These initiatives are e

Scaling up social capital - A prerequisite for community based adaptation in the Lake Victoria basin?

The capacity of communities to reduce negative impacts of climate change on their lives and livelihoods is a function of socio-economic conditions, infrastructure, government accountability and institutional responsiveness and not the least social capital. Africa’s most densely populated region, the Lake Victoria basin (LVB), home to over 30 million people, is one example of a likely future climat

Seasonal pattern of climate vulnerability and adaptation in the Lake Victoria basin – Identifying needs and opportunities using a multi-stakeholder approach. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Annual Conference, San Diego

Important factors behind high levels of vulnerability and low adaptive capacity to climate variability and change in the developing world are direct reliance on natural resources, poverty and limited abilities to adapt financially and institutionally. In this study, focusing on the Lake Victoria Basin, a multitude of stressors on livelihoods, including climate related factors, are faced by the rur

The African Land-Grab: Creating Equitable Governance Strategies through Codes-of-Conduct and Certification Schemes

This paper examines two failed land acquisition processes for food and biofuels production in Africa with the aim to establishing more equitable governance strategies. More specifically it explores the roles of certification schemes and codes-of-conduct can play in these processes. The two cases used are the South Korean Daewoo Logistics case in Madagascar and the Swedish SEKAB in Tanzania. The me

Automatic Estimation of Web Bloggers’ Age Using Regression Models

In this article, we address the problem of automatic age estimation of web users based on their posts. Most studies on age identification treat the issue as a classification problem. Instead of following an age category classification approach, we investigate the appropriateness of several regression algorithms on the task of age estimation. We evaluate a number of well-known and widely used machi

Gender Classification of Web Authors Using Feature Selection and Language Models

In the present article, we address the problem of automatic gender classification of web blog authors. More specifically, we employ eight widely used machine learning algorithms, in order to study the effectiveness of feature selection on improving the accuracy of gender classification. The feature ranking is performed over a set of statistical, part-of-speech tagging and language model features.

Using Sociolinguistic Inspired Features for Gender Classification of Web Authors

In this article we present a methodology for classification of text from web authors, using sociolinguistic inspired text features. The proposed methodology uses a baseline text mining based feature set, which is combined with text features that quantify results from theoretical and sociolinguistic studies. Two combination approaches were evaluated and the evaluation results indicated a significan