The development goals were set out in the Millennium Declaration in 2000 and express the resolve of the world's political leaders to free people from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty. The extreme income poverty was defined by a dollar-per-day threshold. The author has a doubt to this poverty line from my research experience. This paper focused on the Kaonde shifting cultivator society of northwestern Zambia and examined the multi-subsistence activities of slash-and-burn cultivation, hunting, gathering and fishing, as well as food sharing system and life history. The Kaonde people sustain the self-sufficient by obtaining the daily living necessities, mainly food from their environment. Although the agrarian villages, even in the remote area of Zambia, have connections with market economy, the sharing system and moral economy were predominant, rather than business of buying and selling. The agrarian villagers still maintain the self-sufficient and the lifestyle does not need a dollar-per-day. All the people living below the poverty line of "a dollar-per-day" are not equal with people suffering from the hunger and poverty. Recent years, the market-based land reform promotes the introduction of foreign capital, and simultaneously land enclosure and conversions for elites in the customary land. As African economy strengthens the connection with global system, the African people will face the drastic changes. We are apprehensive that the self-sufficient people will be really positioned as the poor under the market economy.

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This paper examines why many companies have drawn a great deal of groundwater in Hakushu Town (the present Hokuto City), Yamanashi Prefecture, from the viewpoint of political ecology, which advocates the consideration of larger scale political economic contexts, dynamism, and the micropolitics of local resource use. In Hakushu Town, some of the councilors were worried about the exhaustion of the groundwater by the companies. The government of the town, however, maintained a negative attitude toward restricting the companies from drawing groundwater. The context surrounding this attitude can be summarized in some points. First, conservatives had a majority in the council of the town. Second, the promotion of factories by the town government did not go well. Third, Hakushu Town came to be known for its mineral water, which results in attracting tourists. As a result, the local government hesitated to restrictions on the companies.

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Lake Taihu bordered on Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces is the third biggest freshwater lake in China. Along with the rapid urbanization and fast-growing economic development, a serious eutrophication has occurred in the basin of Lake Taihu. The plague of algal bloom in 2007 caused several days suspension of water supply for over 2 million population in Wuxi City. To struggle against this accident, the Chinese Government has implemented several policies in a short period with abundant budgets such as; introduction of freshwater from the Yangtze River, improvement of sewerage system, and closure of the small factories, stock farms and fish farms without proper drainage system. This paper aims to report the post-response to the plague of algal bloom in Lake Taihu based on the authors' fieldwork and literature survey as well. Moreover, this paper touches on the relations between environment policies and urban development in China.

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We investigated the extent to which public health nurses in Japan are performing community diagnosis in terms of health geography, an area whose focus is on the relationship between health and place. From October 2006 to February 2007, we carried out semi-structured interviews to public health nurses of area "A" in central Japan. The interviews lasted from 1 to 3 hours and were conducted in two prefectural public health centers and ten municipal health centers. Our questions targeted four fundamental areas: daily duties, activity areas, extent of community diagnosis and future goals regarding community health. As a result, we found that few of the public health nurses systematically perform community diagnosis. Three reasons for this were identified: 1) their normal duties (particularly desk work) occupy most of their time, 2) they are generally poor at doing community diagnosis because of a lack of training, and 3) there is little exchange of local information among the nurses (primarily due to the frequent resignation of more knowledgeable nurses). Despite these problems, the public health nurses do have a tacit knowledge of community diagnosis acquired through community awareness and relationships outside their workplaces. This knowledge can potentially be used in forming local relationships and thus for strengthening people's confidence in community. Regarding health geography, we indicated that public health nurses have the potential to contribute to the improvement of social relationship. To realize this potential, public health nurses should practice community diagnosis and incorporate a spatial dimension (point (household) - line (relationship) - surface (area)). They should also reevaluate qualitative local information, which has been regarded as subjective and corporeal. Improvement of labor conditions for public health nurses is also needed in order to create an incentive for sharing local knowledge among them.

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