This paper clarifies the practices of motorcycle taxi drivers in urban Uganda to create norms and acquire customers at their customer waiting area. In Uganda, motorcycle taxis are the main means of transport. They are used in everyday life and business settings. Motorcycle taxi drivers wait for customers in a specific area called a “stage.” They form voluntary organizations at their stage and set up committees called “lukiikos,” which have many roles including providing mutual aid and regulating admission. The committees set up rules, and members monitor drivers’ behavior in and around each stage. Under the committee’s control, drivers maintain the quality of service. Therefore, each stage is premised on a system by which the committee members guide drivers in line with customary group values and norms. Through this system, drivers provide accurate and quick transport and build trust with people around their stage. This has led to the motorcycle taxi becoming an important mode of transport for citizens in these areas.

Two ethnic groups, the Amhara and Oromo, used distinct soil fertility management practices until the mid-1970s in the northern semi-arid Ethiopia Rift Valley. The Amhara carried compost from their house-yards and applied it to crop fields, whereas the Oromo repeated short-distance transfers (house move) to amend the soil in their vicinity. Soil fertility decline and the introduction of inorganic fertilisers (or chemical fertilisers: IFs) techniques were the primary drivers for the Amhara to change their soil fertility management practices after the mid-1970s. Land constraints caused by population increase, the introduction of IF techniques, and government policy (villagisation) were the primary drivers for the Oromo to change their soil fertility management practices. Since then, their soil fertility management practices merged into what the Amhara had established after the mid-1970s, the combined use of organic fertilisers (OFs) and IFs. Despite the continuous deterioration in the limited availability of animal dung and increasing commuting distances to the crop fields, the adoption rate of the OF techniques and the proportion of manured fields have remained unchanged. A hypothesis of population-induced agricultural intensification in sub-Saharan Africa indicates that future resource constraints can encourage farmers to use more IFs and improved seeds. To enhance the OF-IF integration, OFs technique development of thorough utilisation of organic materials in farmers’ vicinity, such as compost techniques, and their dissemination through linkages between research, extension services, and farmers, are the requirements for sustainable soil fertility management in the northern semi-arid Ethiopia Rift Valley.

Super Typhoon Yolanda hit the Philippines in November 2013 and caused the largest damage in the country’s history. Previous studies on the disaster have mainly discussed the problematic nature of the neoliberalist reconstruction process, which transferred responsibility for crisis response from the state to markets and individuals. These studies, however, have limited their scope to condemning political economic injustice and have failed to shed light on the creativity of people who, presupposing a degree of social and ecological precarity, try to design alternative lives under crisis conditions. This paper, therefore, critiques the literary anthology Agam: Filipino Narratives on Uncertainty and Climate Change, published by an environmental NGO in June 2014, and shows its significance in the social context of that time. While the idea of resilience gained the power to rigidly govern the victims’ lifestyle and their relationship with the natural environment in the aftermath of Yolanda, Agam utilizes media that do not fix meanings, such as photography and literature, to explore the uncertainty of nature, and presents an image of the Filipino nation that, in the midst of destruction, transforms itself and lives through the climate crisis by its own hands. This paper implies that a unique politics of climate is emerging in the contemporary Philippines that resists the biopolitics of resilience and stakes the very possibility of experiencing and responding to the climate crisis on its struggle.

This paper attempts to clarify the various aspects and changes in the folklore of “mountain monsters,” Gredmo and Mirgon, in Bhutan. In Bhutan, the only Buddhist kingdom remaining in the Himalaya, Buddhist culture can be seen in every aspect of life, but local belief elements, such as local deities and the rituals practiced by local professionals, are further components of people’s religious life. Among them, Gredmo/Mirgon have appeared in human living areas and village boundaries. They have also been discussed in various aspects of individual relationships. However, the relationship between people and Gredmo/Mirgon has been transformed by social changes such as development and by the influence of Buddhism, and there are multiple interpretations of Gredmo/Mirgon. The case of Gredmo/Mirgon folklore reveals the multi-layered nature of the religious sphere of Bhutanese village society, which cannot be described monolithically, and the importance of understanding the society through the tradition and reality of “mountain monsters.”