Major features of contemporary forest governance include decentralization of forest management, logging concessions in publicly owned commercially valuable forests, and timber certification, ...primarily in temperate forests. Although a majority of forests continue to be owned formally by governments, the effectiveness of forest governance is increasingly independent of formal ownership. Growing and competing demands for food, biofuels, timber, and environmental services will pose severe challenges to effective forest governance in the future, especially in conjunction with the direct and indirect impacts of climate change. A greater role for community and market actors in forest governance and deeper attention to the factors that lead to effective governance, beyond ownership patterns, is necessary to address future forest governance challenges.
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has been an important source of income for communities in the Madre de Dios River Basin in Peru for hundreds of years. However, in recent decades, the ...scale of ASGM activities in the region has increased dramatically, and exposures to a variety of occupational and environmental hazards related to ASGM, including mercury, are becoming more widespread. The aims of our study were to: (1) examine patterns in the total hair mercury level of human participants in several communities in the region and compare these results to the 2.2 µg/g total hair mercury level equivalent to the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Committee of Food Additives (JECFA)'s Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI); and (2), to measure the mercury levels of paco (
) fish raised in local aquaculture ponds, in order to compare these levels to the EPA Fish Tissue Residue Criterion of 0.3 µg Hg/g fish (wet weight). We collected hair samples from 80 participants in four communities (one control and three where ASGM activities occurred) in the region, and collected 111 samples from fish raised in 24 local aquaculture farms. We then analyzed the samples for total mercury. Total mercury levels in hair were statistically significantly higher in the mining communities than in the control community, and increased with increasing geodesic distance from the Madre de Dios headwaters, did not differ by sex, and frequently exceeded the reference level. Regression analyses indicated that higher hair mercury levels were associated with residence in ASGM communities. The analysis of paco fish samples found no samples that exceeded the EPA tissue residue criterion. Collectively, these results align with other recent studies showing that ASGM activities are associated with elevated human mercury exposure. The fish farmed through the relatively new process of aquaculture in ASGM areas appeared to have little potential to contribute to human mercury exposure. More research is needed on human health risks associated with ASGM to discern occupational, residential, and nutritional exposure, especially through tracking temporal changes in mercury levels as fish ponds age, and assessing levels in different farmed fish species. Additionally, research is needed to definitively determine that elevated mercury levels in humans and fish result from the elemental mercury from mining, rather than from a different source, such as the mercury released from soil erosion during deforestation events from mining or other activities.
Understanding tropical biology is important for solving complex problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and zoonotic pandemics, but biology curricula view research mostly via a ...temperate-zone lens. Integrating tropical research into biology education is urgently needed to tackle these issues.
To complement a recent flush of research on transnational environmental justice movements, we sought a deeper organizational history of what we understand as the contemporary environmental justice ...movement in the United States. We thus conducted in-depth interviews with 31 prominent environmental justice activists, scholars, and community leaders across the US. Today's environmental justice groups have transitioned from specific local efforts to broader national and global mandates, and more sophisticated political, technological, and activist strategies. One of the most significant transformations has been the number of groups adopting formal legal status, and emerging as registered environmental justice organizations (REJOs) within complex partnerships. This article focuses on the emergence of REJOs, and describes the respondents' views about the implications of this for more local grassroots groups. It reveals a central irony animating work across groups in today's movement: legal formalization of many environmental justice organizations has made the movement increasingly internally differentiated, dynamic, and networked, even as the passage of actual national laws on environmental justice has proven elusive.
Sustainability science has been gaining traction within academic research and teaching over the past few decades, and it is now entering a phase of greater maturity as a discipline, with links to ...sectors beyond the academy including energy, finance, advocacy, development, design, construction, agriculture, and healthcare. Concurrently, the growth of the internet has spurred innovation in platform development. This convergence has generated technology-enabled opportunities for training sustainability scholars and practitioners grounded in active learning pedagogies. Case studies are one active learning strategy becoming established within the fields of environment and sustainability. However, the traditional case study form and mode of delivery, which excel at a retroactive analysis of strategic decision-making and outcomes, can create challenges for teaching about issues involving emergent technologies and rapidly changing scientific and social dimensions. This article describes one novel platform, called Gala, for teaching and learning about sustainability science through case studies that address these challenges. Gala closely integrates text and multimedia components, is easily updated, and embraces content consumers as content creators and vice versa. We also report here the results of one pilot study that investigated differences between graduate and undergraduate student interactions with different case components. Results indicate that both groups heavily used the case narrative, but varied in their use of multimedia components. Such insights into patterns of case use are informing decisions about improvements to Gala and directions for future case production, teaching, and assessment, in order to create better tools for teaching and learning about sustainability.
Individuals with eating disorders (EDs) have high rates of suicidal ideation (SI) and attempts (SA). Fasting, body dissatisfaction, binge eating and purging have been associated with SI in ...non-clinical samples, individuals with anorexia nervosa or low-weight EDs, and a multi-diagnostic sample. However, few studies have examined how ED symptoms contribute to risk for SI in conjunction with other well-established risk factors, such as nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and past SA. The aim of this study was to examine which ED symptoms contribute unique risk for current SI in a multi-diagnostic, clinical sample when statistically adjusting for gender, NSSI, past SA, and past SI.
We conducted a chart review of 166 individuals who presented for ED treatment at an outpatient facility and signed informed consent. Initial intake interviews were coded for the presence versus absence of fasting, fear of weight gain, binge eating, purging, excessive exercise, restriction, body checking, self-weighing, and body dissatisfaction, as well as NSSI, past SA, past SI, and current SI.
A total of 26.5% of the sample endorsed current SI. In a logistic regression analysis, identifying as male (n = 17) or having a non-binary gender identity (n = 1), the presence of fasting, and past SI were all significantly associated with increased odds of current SI, whereas excessive exercise significantly decreased odds of current SI. Fasting was equally common across all diagnostic groups.
Future research should establish the temporal relationship between fasting and SI to better inform intervention.
•Teaching life cycle analysis in cross cultural context.•Environmental justice and electronics life cycles.•Accessibility of sustainability science.•Educational innovation for sustainability ...sciences.
This case could create networked learning experiences across the sites where raw materials are sourced, and those where devices are designed, fabricated, circulated, and come to rest. This would be no small feat, as curricula are often siloed by language, country, and discipline. Companies on the other hand, seem to span such sites with ease; Blaze Metals, known for activity in the gold sector so important to Ghana’s economy and history, has relatively recently involved themselves in the exploration for copper and cobalt in DRC. Our challenge, as scholars, educators and advocates, is to build better understandings of the many contexts and real consequences of a given electronics life cycle. This case advances us in the goals of building communities of research, communication and accountability across these sites, across these social groups, across generations.
PDF
