Sara Moreno Pires

Surrender or resistance to the implementation of Local Agenda 21 in Portugal: the challenges of local governance for sustainable development

The aim of this paper is to understand how Local Agenda 21 (LA21) is contributing to update local policy and decision making towards sustainable development in Portugal. Departing from a theoretical view of governance for sustainable development – its core values and challenges – and the role of LA21 in its endorsement, the paper presents the main results of a questionnaire survey submitted to Portuguese municipalities, with the purpose of understanding how far LA21 is being incorporated into planning and management. The paper then tries to expose some of the main potential, limitations and challenges in the local Portuguese case for the short-term sustainable future.

Sustainability Assessment: The Role of Indicators

There are many ways to assess sustainable development, each of which provides potentially useful, though different, insights for distinct audiences. Despite the abundance, specific features and diversity of methods and tools for assessing sustainability, indicators are one of the most used approaches. In fact, sustainability indicators, have been at the forefront of many political, academic, scientific, and community debates for the past decades. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of research on synthesizing indicator approaches, frameworks, trade-offs, advantages, and drawbacks, at different operational and strategic scales and contexts. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is first to develop an integrative analysis of existing sustainability indicator approaches, frameworks, and different initiatives in scope and scale. In the second place, it aims to present insights and critical dilemmas about how indicators could be adopted and tailored for higher education institutions that want to assess sustainability performance. The roles and potential values of sustainability indicators should be clarified; more than “empty” or “miraculous” assessment tools, they need to be considered as steering processes able to change organizational and cultural dimensions of higher education institutions, their education and research structures, and the way they relate to society.

The minority report: social hope in next generation indicators work. Commentary on Rob Kitchin et al.’s ‘Knowing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchmarking, and real-time dashboards’

Kitchin et al. offer clear warnings about the proliferation and use of increasingly automated, standardized and digitized urban data systems. These risks and warnings resonate for us, both social s...

Distribution of the - 13910C>T polymorphism in the general population of Portugal and in subjects with gastrointestinal complaints associated with milk consumption.

Background: The − 13910C>T polymorphism has been associated with lactase persistence (LP) in European populations. Aim: To assess − 13910C>T genotypes across Portugal and in adult individuals with unspecific gastrointestinal complaints associated with milk consumption. Subjects and methods: This study genotyped − 13910C>T in the general population from Northern (n = 64), Central (n = 70) and Southern (n = 65) Portugal and in 40 subjects with gastrointestinal symptoms. Additionally, the concordance was evaluated between breath-hydrogen test and − 13910C>T genotypes in 65 samples. Results: An overall frequency of 0.349 for the LP − 13910*T allele was estimated in the general population, with a noticeable decrease in the South (0.269) compared with North (0.383) and Centre (0.393). Among the symptomatic group, the frequency of the − 13910*T allele (0.363) was not significantly different from the general population. A 94% concordance was found between the breath-hydrogen and the molecular tests. Conclusions: This study suggests that (i) the distribution of the LP polymorphism is not uniform across the country, (ii) genotyping − 13910C>T is a good diagnostic tool for lactase status in the Portuguese population and (iii) self-reported gastrointestinal complaints are not good predictors of the LP status, implying that a significant part of those complaints may not be related to hypolactasia.

Learning from community indicators movements: Towards a citizen-powered urban data revolution

This paper explores current debates, data products and key implications of what has been called the urban data revolution, which has emerged to international prominence in recent years. We engage with critical appraisals of the new urban data revolution, and discuss what they can learn from both the successes and the failures of the earlier wave of data enthusiasm, the community indicators movement. Second, we analyse the different challenges, dangers and implications of the urban data revolution that both complicate and can sustain a citizen-centred vision of good city governance. We further consider the potential for deliberation and participation in the use of data to define and measure urban progress and success. In the face of a mounting volume and velocity of urban data, these lessons nonetheless pose democratic challenges to the urban data revolution today.