Tropical deforestation is an important contributor to climate change, through the release of significant amounts of carbon in the atmosphere. The main proximate cause of deforestation in tropical regions is agricultural expansion, followed by timber extraction. The general objective of this research is to understand how the interaction of technological, environmental, economic and social factors influence land use dynamics, including household decisions, about agricultural expansion and resource extraction in sensitive tropical regions. More specific questions relate to the role of various governance structures, particularly those recognizing common property regimes of land tenure to indigenous and rural communities, and the deliberative evaluation about the opportunity of reforming such structures in order to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. Although such aspects have been addressed in a variety of contexts, the approach proposed here is novel as a) it explicitly models the interaction between institutional, environmental, technological and socio-economic factors at different spatio-temporal scales, b) it specifically focuses on the governance structures associated with different land tenure regimes through the lenses of Social Network Analysis (SNA), c) uses a Q-methodology framework to develop a participatory approach to study stakeholders’ perspectives and attitudes on the necessary governance interventions to prevent deforestation and forest degradation and d) it assesses the relationships between agricultural expansion, deforestation, governance structures and stakeholders’ attitudes, with particular attention to the sensitivity of household land use decisions and resource extraction. In order to meet the research objectives, this project will focus on the province of Salta in the dry Chaco in North-Western Argentina, a region characterized by high rates of land cover change and the presence of indigenous/rural communities.

The Tourism Research Innovation And Next Generation Learning Experience (TRIANGLE) Project (November 2016 – October 2019), had the objective of establishing a European-wide knowledge alliance of Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) to link research and higher education bodies to tourism sector SMEs through the creation of a common knowledge development and training process. In this 3 year time frame, a European wide knowledge alliance of over 22 HEIs in 18 countries has been established to date, along with other key deliverables that were designed to bring European added value to the work of the member state HEIs and their business networks. As its central objective, the Alliance has developed the Tourism 2030 Knowledge Base into an online, HEI supported, collaborative learning delivery system to address tourism sustainability challenges and opportunities identified at the global and European level, including: Climate change, biodiversity loss facing European tourism stakeholders, the need for sustainable consumption and production in tourism destinations in or near protected areas, and the changing training and education skills required by the fast-moving global tourism market-place with its multi-sector SMEs and diverse destinations. This sustainable development of tourism-focused Collaborative Content Management & Database System and its user-designed information tools developed by the project partners has enabled the HEIs to work in collaborative European-wide process to develop and implement national and international next-generation learning experiences. The TRIANGLE ICT innovation-driven sustainability learning environment consists of online and in situ formal and informal courses, an internships system as well as mentoring and network experiences. It has engaged students and tourism SME training institutes to promote sustainability innovations based on product and service certification with the aim of improving their environmental impacts, cutting costs and building Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) maps and supply chains. A body of pilot students has been trained to have the gain basic sustainable tourism auditing competences based on global industry criterial. As a result the project has accelerated and improved in-country sustainable tourism learning processes to enable to the HEIs, the SMEs and students to use their European connectivity to better compete in the global tourism market-place, and ensure they act in a sustainable and responsible manner. At the conclusion of the project the Higher Education Institutes at the core of the process have implemented their program calendar targets with regard to the knowledge base development, the graduate course development and intern programme and the mapping of tourism SMEs in the Going Green process. A post-project continuation structure has been elaborated and agreed so that the partners can do more work to target and then link up with tourism SMEs to implement the project innovations designed to help SMEs improve sustainability learning processes in the future, to establish better links to protected areas, and to contribute to the European implementation effort towards the SDG goals 8, 12, 13, 14 and 15 of the UN Agenda 2030.

In today's world, access to information thought of as the resolution of uncertainty; is often considered as a benefit or even as an indisputable human right. There is, however, the “dark side” of information: the abundance of data beyond one’s capacity to process them leads to so-called information overload (IOL). This notion had troubled mankind long before even the print was invented and examined from different points of view, ranging from neuroscience to journalism. IOL is, however, usually considered at the individual level by examining a single factor or a specific level that eventually leads to switching off an active individual. The influence of IOL appearing simultaneously at different levels, i.e., a multilevel information overload is unknown, though. These observations lead to setting the main aim of the OMINO - Overcoming Multilevel INformation Overload project in a form of the following objectives: (1) create and apply means to measure multilevel IOL in different systems as well as methods to model IOL and counter-measures to mitigate this phenomenon, (2) training and knowledge exchange on IOL between partners in different domains using expertise from universities in U.S., Singapore and Japan, (3) intersectoral knowledge transfer between academia and the media industry (Slovenian and Austrian Press Agencies) by exposing researchers to real-life problems and giving business access to innovative methods and tools for information analysis. One of the most important aspects of the undertaken research area is its interdisciplinary nature, requiring joint work of experts in different fields and topics, i.e., social sciences, neuroscience, journalism, computing, data mining and complexity science. OMINO will accelerate individual careers of involved researchers, especially early stage ones and increase their employability. The project will lay foundations for long-term collaboration by strengthening existing links between partners and creating new ones.