Search Results (350)

University-based animal welfare organizations are grassroots actors involved in managing free-roaming dog and cat populations, yet their role remains poorly characterized, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify and describe animal welfare organizations operating within universities in Ecuador and to analyze their potential contributions within a One Health framework. A cross-sectional survey of 63 universities was conducted using publicly available information from institutional websites and social media platforms, complemented by semi-structured interviews with representatives of identified organizations. Organizations with evidence of activity through 2026 and a focus on dogs or cats were included. A total of 14 animal welfare organizations from 12 universities were identified, representing 19.0% of the universities analyzed. Most organizations (71.4%) were located in public universities, and 35.7% were associated with veterinary-related programs. Framework-informed analysis of interview data (12 out of 14 organizations interviewed) revealed four key dimensions of organizational functioning: capacity and governance, animal care and population management, public health and community engagement, and institutional integration. Reported activities included animal rescue, sterilization campaigns, adoption initiatives, and community outreach, aligning with internationally recommended strategies for humane population management. Several organizations have extended their reach beyond campus boundaries through free veterinary intervention campaigns in rural communities, partnerships with municipal authorities, and collaboration with civil society networks, reflecting a broader public health role consistent with One Health principles. Despite their potential, these organizations face structural challenges, including high volunteer turnover, the absence of direct institutional funding, and limited formal integration into governmental frameworks. Institutional support, where present, is predominantly material rather than financial, placing the burden of sustainability on self-management mechanisms. Nonetheless, their embeddedness within academic environments positions them as strategic platforms for interdisciplinary collaboration, experiential training, and community engagement. This study highlights the need to recognize and integrate university-based animal welfare organizations into broader animal population management and public health strategies. Strengthening partnerships between academia, government, and civil society could enhance both animal welfare outcomes and zoonotic disease surveillance efforts in Ecuador and other low- and middle-income countries. Full article

Peri-urban belts are where most metropolitan residents actually meet farmland, and where urban food policy and agroecological transition physically overlap. They are also where wild food plants (WFPs) grow: on verges, ditch bank, and field margins, the interstitial biodiversity that complements cultivated crops. We ask whether the knowledge that makes those plants usable survives peri-urbanisation, and whether it can serve as a proxy for the resilience of the surrounding agroecosystem. Two Northern Italian landscapes with comparable perennial monoculture but opposite positions on the urban–rural gradient were compared through a diachronic design: the peri-urban lowland of the Trevigiano (Veneto), inside the dispersed-city fabric of the Venice–Padua–Treviso region and under rapid Prosecco expansion, and the Langhe (Piedmont), a UNESCO-listed hill district of low settlement density whose agriculture is nonetheless fully industrialised around wine grapes, hazelnuts, and tourism. Interviews with 74 informants were conducted through complementary designs: a cohort-structured approach in the Trevigiano and actor-diversified and diachronic interviews in the Langhe, recorded 13 folk food taxa in the Trevigiano against 43 in the Langhe (Jaccard 0.19). The peri-urban repertoire is thin and mostly inert: recognition survives while practice does not, with gaps of up to 86 percentage points between the two, and only Humulus lupulus, anchored in ritual, dialect, and a commercial product, is transmitted intact. The non-peri-urban repertoire is broader and still mobile, relocated by younger foragers onto unmanaged refugia and partly professionalised. The proxy, however, has a precondition. WFP knowledge indexes a healthy agroecosystem only where the land is clean enough to gather from, and the Trevigiano is not: informants avoid treated margins. The one EU instrument that would have banned pesticides in public green areas was withdrawn in 2024. We conclude that peri-urban planning should treat edges, unmanaged interstitial land, and treatment transparency as food-system infrastructure, and propose paired habitat and knowledge indicators for peri-urban agroecological assessment. Full article

Against the backdrop of high-quality development in rural tourism, issues such as landscape homogenization and insufficient coordination among diverse stakeholders have become increasingly prominent, creating a marked disparity with the requirements for distinctive and differentiated development in rural revitalization. This paper aims to investigate how actor-networks drive the dynamic evolution of rural tourism landscapes through translation mechanisms, and to illuminate the agentic role of non-human elements in this process, thereby addressing the core question of why the same set of local resources generates distinct landscape forms across different developmental stages. To this end, this study takes the Mayangxi Ecotourism Area in Fujian as a case study and, drawing on actor-network theory, employs qualitative research methods including in-depth interviews, participant observation, and grounded theory to systematically analyze the phased evolutionary characteristics, actor-network translation logic, and underlying operational mechanisms of rural tourism landscape creation. The findings reveal that: (1) the creation of the Mayangxi rural tourism landscape has successively undergone three major developmental stages—landscape construction, landscape integration, and landscape optimization—during which human and non-human actors, through a complete translation mechanism, drive the continuous iteration of the actor-network, with non-human elements playing a significant agentic role throughout the landscape’s evolution; (2) the local landscape creation has formed a closed-loop operational mechanism of “base activation → network construction → network iteration → sustainable operation,” which effectively supports the sustainable development of rural tourism landscapes. This study addresses the analytical limitations of existing rural landscape research, which tends to focus on human-centered interactions while overlooking the value of non-human elements, expands the application boundaries of actor-network theory in the field of rural tourism, and provides practical guidance for differentiated landscape creation in China’s rural tourism development. Full article

The diversification of rural development actors in China has promoted a shift from state-centered governance toward collaborative approaches, with rural operation emerging as an important pathway for resource mobilization and value creation. While existing studies have examined multi-actor participation, less attention has been paid to the institutional and socio-economic mechanisms through which polycentric governance shapes rural operation, particularly regarding market rationalities, contractual arrangements, and local capacity formation. This study develops an analytical framework conceptualizing rural polycentric governance as the interaction of institutional support, market embedding, and local agency, and examines rural operation transformation through changes in actors, rights relations, and industrial structures. Drawing on a case study of Huashu Village in Nanjing, this study explores how polycentric governance reshapes rural operation over time. The findings reveal a transition from traditional collective operation to government-led project-based operation, and ultimately to market-embedded polycentric collaborative operation. Specifically, institutional support, through property-rights reforms, policy incentives, and normative arrangements, provides foundations for multi-actor collaboration. Market embedding, through external capital, market-oriented management rationalities, and contractual norms, reshapes resource allocation and cooperative relationships. Local agency, through grassroots organization building, local resource activation, and actor capacity development, transforms external resources into endogenous development capabilities. Through continuous interaction and feedback, these dimensions jointly promote diversified actors, clarified rights arrangements, and integrated industrial development. This study expands the theoretical boundaries of rural polycentric governance by incorporating implicit governance dimensions, refining theoretical explanations of how polycentric governance enables rural operation, and providing empirical evidence on its complexity and dynamics for policy formulation. Full article

Historically, mpox was thought to be a geographically constrained ‘disease of poverty,’ leading to decades of neglect by global health actors. Waning population immunity from the cessation of smallpox vaccination and prolonged scientific neglect created conditions that enabled the monkeypox virus (MPXV) to adapt cryptically. This ultimately contributed to the emergence of unprecedented global public health crises. This review aims to systematically trace the history, epidemiology, genomic evolution, and reservoir ecology of mpox in West Africa from 1970 to 2025. Following PRISMA guidelines, 110 articles met the inclusion criteria and were synthesized to map the virus’s trajectory. For nearly four decades, an “Era of Silence” (1970–2016) masked the silent enzootic circulation of MPXV within West African wildlife, primarily rodents and small mammals. This epidemiological quiescence ended with the 2017 re-emergence in Nigeria, which signaled a fundamental paradigm shift. The disease profile transitioned from sporadic, rural paediatric infections to sustained, urban and secondary transmission among young adult males. This shift was often associated with sexual networks, especially among men who have sex with men, and was characterized by novel clinical presentations, including genital and perianal lesions. Genomic analyses revealed that clade II diverged from clade I approximately 3500 years ago and is uniquely defined by the deletion of virulence factors, such as the complement-binding protein. Importantly, the clade IIb lineage, which triggered the 2022 global outbreak, exhibits accelerated microevolution consistent with APOBEC3-mediated hypermutation. This host-driven mutational signature provides genomic evidence supporting the hypothesis that clade IIb circulated cryptically within human-to-human transmission chains in West Africa as early as 2014. Ecologically, while no definitive reservoir has yet been identified, evidence suggests diverse rodents and an expanding host range. The transformation of mpox from a rare zoonosis to a global threat underscores the severe consequences of delayed intervention, demanding robust, integrated “One Health” surveillance. Full article

In China’s Erhai Lake basin, strict agricultural pollution control policies have reduced ecological degradation but severely disrupted smallholder livelihoods, creating an urgent need for institutional actors capable of mediating between state mandates and rural communities. This study examines Science and Technology Backyards (STBs), university-based knowledge intermediaries, as a distinctive governance mechanism embedded within China’s state-led environmental governance system. Drawing on 60 days of ethnographic fieldwork and 33 semi-structured interviews with 36 participants in Gusheng Village, Dali City, we develop a socio-technical institutional framework that conceptualizes STB effectiveness as depending on the joint operation of three dimensions: technological rationality, social embeddedness, and institutional access. Empirically, the findings show that STBs operate through three bridging mechanisms: technical correction, power adjustment, and market linkage. However, their influence is structurally uneven. Vertically, STB engagement is strong at the prefectural level but weakens sharply at township and village levels. Horizontally, technology diffusion concentrates in core villages and disproportionately benefits large-scale farmers over smallholders. Market linkage remains the weakest mechanism due to deep institutional deficits in cooperative development, supply chain infrastructure, and state–market coordination. These findings contribute to understanding how knowledge intermediaries produce uneven governance outcomes within hierarchical political systems. Full article

The Brazilian Amazon is a contested frontier, shaped by destructive and conservationist forces. Most forest clearing is driven by agro-extractivism, an agrarian pathway based on raw commodity production. The socio-biodiversity economy (SBE) has emerged in response, widely regarded as a transformative agrarian pathway capable of reconciling environmental conservation and rural livelihoods. However, recent research suggests that, as socio-biodiversity products scale up, agro-extractivist dynamics can be reproduced within the SBE. We examine this tension in the cocoa frontier of the Transamazon, where cocoa is institutionally promoted as an SBE alternative. We conduct an exploratory, mixed-methods study combining a geospatial analysis of land use and land cover (LULC) change (2020–2025, random forest classification) with a qualitative analysis drawing on participatory mapping and 87 semi-structured interviews with farmers, cooperatives, buyers, and institutional actors. Using a gradient framework, we read LULC transitions and farmers’ land use practices along an agro-extractivism–SBE continuum. The cocoa frontier emerges as a hybrid geography. The landscape is predominantly stable but internally reorganizing: anthropogenic forest declines while full-sun monoculture expands over pasture, with intensification concentrated in peri-urban areas and restoration in remote ones. Land use practices form five recurring configurations, two firmly anchored at the socio-biodiversity or agro-extractivist poles and three whose alignment with the SBE depends on access to markets, knowledge, and institutions. We argue that the frontier contestation unfolds not only between distinct economies but within the cocoa economy itself, and we identify the policy areas relevant to sustaining SBE-oriented practices in the Transamazon. More broadly, this study suggests that the classification of Amazonian forest-based economies as inherent alternatives to agro-extractivism should be treated as an empirical question rather than an assumption. Full article

Although rural public cultural spaces in China have expanded rapidly, many struggle to maintain stable and sustained public participation. Taking Sanchalu Village in Wuhan as a case, this study examines how multi-actor interactions transform fragmented and short-term participation into a resilient participatory structure. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, the study analyzed semi-structured interviews with 13 government officials, village cadres, enterprise representatives, and villagers, supplemented by participant observation and documentary materials. The findings identify an adaptive linkage process in which external resource embedding activates participation, village-level organizations promote the institutionalization of participation through incentive mechanisms and participation channels, internal and external resources are integrated through trust-based reciprocity, and multi-actor collaboration stabilizes governance arrangements. Accordingly, participation resilience develops through sustained participation, organizational mediation, and institutional safeguards rather than through infrastructure provision alone. This study clarifies how participation resilience supports the social sustainability of rural public cultural spaces and offers practical guidance for developing demand-responsive, locally embedded, and institutionally sustained participation mechanisms. Full article

Sustainable tourism in oasis landscapes requires governance approaches that go beyond generic destination-growth models and standardized sustainability checklists. In living cultural landscapes such as Al-Ahsa Oasis, tourism development is inseparable from water systems, palm-grove agriculture, rural livelihoods, heritage values, climate stress, visitor behavior, and institutional accountability. This paper develops a governance framework for sustainable tourism in Al-Ahsa Oasis, Saudi Arabia, a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape. Methodologically, it is a conceptual framework-development study based on structured critical review and contextual synthesis. It critically interprets international sustainable tourism, heritage management, visitor management, and sustainable investment frameworks in relation to recent Al-Ahsa-specific evidence on rural tourism, resident satisfaction, farm-tourist behavior, rural lodges, land-cover change, and World Heritage governance. The study proposes a six-dimensional framework structured around cultural landscape stewardship, water-sensitive ecological governance, agricultural landscape continuity and rural accommodation regulation, community benefit and local enterprise, climate-responsive visitor management and interpretation, and monitoring and institutional accountability. These dimensions are treated as interdependent governance fields rather than separate checklist categories. The framework is further operationalized through an indicator and governance matrix linking suggested indicators, data sources, governance mechanisms, and responsible actors. The paper contributes by reframing sustainable oasis tourism as an adaptive governance problem rather than a technical exercise in applying predefined criteria. It provides an evidence-informed basis for planning, monitoring, stakeholder deliberation, policy refinement, and future empirical testing in Al-Ahsa and comparable arid cultural landscapes. Full article

The adoption of Circular Economy approaches in agriculture offers opportunities to transform agricultural waste into valuable resources. This study was conducted within the TANGO-Circular project, which implemented Rural Lab training activities in four European countries: Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. A structured questionnaire was administered to participants involved in these activities. Overall, 197 questionnaires were collected, of which 195 valid responses were included in the final quantitative analysis. Respondents included farmers, technicians, students, and other actors connected to agricultural and sustainability-related contexts. The results indicate that, despite differences in sample composition across countries, no statistically significant differences were observed in awareness and interest toward Circular Economy practices within the analyzed sample. Conversely, statistically significant differences emerged in gender distribution, professional profile, and perceived barriers among countries. Overall, respondents exhibited a generally positive attitude toward agricultural waste valorization and a high level of interest in further training activities. However, key barriers were identified, including lack of technical knowledge, limited institutional support, lack of awareness, and high initial costs. These findings suggest that the adoption of Circular Economy practices in agriculture requires not only positive attitudes, but also targeted training, accessible support services, and institutional and logistical frameworks adapted to local contexts. Full article

The revitalization of idle rural homesteads constitutes a key policy instrument for promoting rural revitalization and enhancing rural household income. However, existing studies predominantly adopt a single-actor or policy-instrument perspective and lack a systematic examination of the complex coupling relationships among multiple actors, resource endowments, and institutional environments. Adopting a rural operational perspective, this study explores how internal and external elements interact to reshape rural systems and identifies the configurational paths through which multiple actors’ behavioral logics drive efficient idle homestead revitalization. Drawing on symbiosis theory, we constructed a systemic analytical framework. A mixed-methods design combining fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis and case studies of 35 typical villages in Zhejiang Province was employed. The findings reveal that (1) there exist four equifinal high-performance paths—market-driven, government-led, multi-actor co-governance, and endogenous development; (2) efficient revitalization does not rely on any single actor but depends on the dynamic alignment between actor behavioral logics, resource endowments, and the institutional environment; and (3) a robust policy environment can compensate for resource endowment deficiencies, whereas superior resource conditions allow for optimal efficiency, even with streamlined actor participation. Theoretically, this study extends symbiosis theory to the field of rural governance. Practically, it offers transferable governance solutions for Global South countries confronting rural decline and addressing rural poverty. Full article

Background: This study examines how humanitarian supply chain cooperation in Morocco may evolve toward 2030, focusing on the roles of donors, volunteers, and digital technologies in strengthening coordination, operational performance, and resilience in crisis environments. Methods: A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining qualitative data collected through interviews and focus groups with 57 humanitarian actors and quantitative data obtained from 1183 logistics professionals. Regression analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and qualitative foresight techniques were employed to explore current cooperation patterns and future humanitarian supply chain dynamics. Results: The findings indicate that donors are increasingly expected to support digital coordination, predictive planning, and capacity-building initiatives rather than acting solely as financial contributors, while volunteers continue to play a critical role in adaptive and decentralized operations, particularly in rural areas. The results further suggest that digital technologies may enhance visibility, responsiveness, and collaboration when integrated into human-centered governance systems. Conclusions: The study proposes an integrated socio-technical framework for understanding humanitarian supply chain cooperation toward 2030 and provides practical insights for developing resilient, collaborative, and future-ready humanitarian logistics systems in emerging economies. Full article

Implementing technological change in rural or culturally distinct settings requires moving beyond the modernization bias that treats Western technical solutions as universally applicable. This article develops a process-based reflection on culturally grounded co-design for sustainable technology, drawing on social design, just transition principles, and appropriate technology. Rather than evaluating final project outcomes, the article examines how technology and social organization can be approached as context-specific practices that must be negotiated, adapted, and maintained with local actors. The discussion is informed by the O-Waste Project in The Gambia, which is used as an illustrative case to examine the role of local councils, women’s organizations, market committees, and implementing partners in shaping technological adoption. By emphasizing vernacular knowledge, locally maintainable systems, and participatory decision-making, the article argues that sustainable innovation depends on technical performance as well as cultural legitimacy, institutional trust, and procedural justice. The analysis suggests that development in diverse cultural contexts requires a careful balance between external technical expertise and community appropriation. The O-Waste case therefore offers process-based insights into how sustainable technologies can be introduced without reducing local communities to passive recipients of modernization. Full article

Northeast China is one of China’s major commodity grain bases and plays a strategic role in national food security. Against the background of rural population outflow and agricultural modernization, new agricultural business entities (NABEs), including family farms, farmers’ cooperatives, and agribusinesses, have become important actors in reshaping agricultural production organization. Based on registration data for 2014, 2018, and 2023, this study uses kernel density estimation (KDE), standard deviational ellipse (SDE) analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to examine the spatiotemporal patterns and driving factors of NABEs in Northeast China. The results show that: (1) NABEs expanded rapidly from 2014 to 2023 and became increasingly concentrated in agriculturally advantageous plain areas. (2) Family farms showed the fastest expansion, farmers’ cooperatives had the widest spatial coverage, and agribusinesses were mainly concentrated around transport corridors and market nodes. (3) In terms of industrial structure, crop-production entities remained dominant, followed by animal husbandry entities, while forestry, fishery, and agricultural support service entities accounted for relatively small shares; however, their numbers continued to increase. (4) The OLS results showed that the reclamation rate and road network density had relatively stable associations with the spatial distribution of multiple entity types, whereas economic development, science and technology investment, and fiscal support showed differentiated relationships across entity types and regions. (5) The MGWR results further reveal spatial heterogeneity in the effects of driving factors. These findings provide empirical evidence for type-specific cultivation and differentiated policy support for NABEs in major grain-producing areas. Full article

Digital transformation has become an essential component of sustainable rural development, yet substantial inequalities persist in how communities access, adopt, and benefit from digital technologies. Understanding these disparities requires not only information about technological resources but also knowledge of the relational structures through which information, support, and opportunities circulate. This article presents a reproducible synthetic socio-digital network dataset designed to support the analysis of digital gaps in community-based tourism (CBT) environments. Rather than containing original respondent-level observations, the repository was computationally reconstructed from aggregate statistics derived from field studies conducted in three rural communities in the province of Guayas, Ecuador: Bucay (5 de Septiembre), Manglares Churute, and Ruta de los Chirijos. All node-level records, survey variables, and support relationships included in the repository were synthetically generated to preserve aggregate community characteristics while protecting participant confidentiality and preventing individual re-identification. The repository contains synthetic actor metadata, reconstructed socio-digital variables, directed support networks, graph representations in interoperable formats, and precomputed Social Network Analysis (SNA) indicators. The dataset includes 90 synthetic actors, more than one thousand generated support interactions distributed across multiple socio-digital dimensions, machine-readable metadata, and reusable scripts for preprocessing, validation, graph construction, and metric computation. The represented dimensions include financial assistance, training support, information exchange, technological support, social media promotion, institutional collaboration, trust, and emotional closeness. To facilitate reuse, all resources are distributed in standardized formats compatible with NetworkX, Gephi, Neo4j, and graph-learning frameworks. The repository follows FAIR principles and includes documentation intended to support transparency, reproducibility, and methodological benchmarking. Potential applications include social network analysis, graph mining, graph neural networks, digital inequality research, computational social science, community resilience studies, and educational activities. By providing an openly documented synthetic dataset and reproducible computational workflow, the repository contributes to the study of socio-digital systems, privacy-preserving data sharing, and community-level digital transformation processes. Full article