An agenda for assessing and improving conservation impacts of sustainability standards in tropical agriculture

Sustainability standards and certification serve to differentiate and provide market recognition to goods produced in accordance with social and environmental good practices, typically including practices to protect biodiversity. Such standards have seen rapid growth, including in tropical agricultural commodities such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soybeans, and tea. Given the role of sustainability standards in influencing land use in hotspots of biodiversity, deforestation, and agricultural intensification, much could be gained from efforts to evaluate and increase the conservation payoff of these schemes. To this end, we devised a systematic approach for monitoring and evaluating the conservation impacts of agricultural sustainability standards and for using the resulting evidence to improve the effectiveness of such standards over time. The approach is oriented around a set of hypotheses and corresponding research questions about how sustainability standards are predicted to deliver conservation benefits. These questions are addressed through data from multiple sources, including basic common information from certification audits; field monitoring of environmental outcomes at a sample of certified sites; and rigorous impact assessment research based on experimental or quasi‐experimental methods. Integration of these sources can generate time‐series data that are comparable across sites and regions and provide detailed portraits of the effects of sustainability standards. To implement this approach, we propose new collaborations between the conservation research community and the sustainability standards community to develop common indicators and monitoring protocols, foster data sharing and synthesis, and link research and practice more effectively. As the role of sustainability standards in tropical land‐use governance continues to evolve, robust evidence on the factors contributing to effectiveness can help to ensure that such standards are designed and implemented to maximize benefits for biodiversity conservation.     

Chlorinated Hydrocarbons in Surface Sediments From the Open Adriatic

This paper presents the results of the examination of concentrations of chlorinated hydrocarbons in surface sediments from the middle of the Adriatic. the sampling area was chosen as part of the protection programme of the Adriatic Sea and is located at two transverse transects, each consisting of four stations. the sediments were collected during the summer cruise of 1990. Quantification of individual components was performed by Capillary Gas Chromatography (CGC) using reference standards. Areal distribution of the concentrations of HCB, lindane, DDT and its metabolites, dieldrin, endrin and PCBs are presented. the values obtained varied within a wide range of concentration from 20 pg/g dry weight for lindane to 700 pg/g dry weight for Σ DDT and the sum of PCBs as Aroclor 1254 from 0.3 to 6.6 ng/g.

The main source of these compounds is thought to be from suspended matter entering the Adriatic sea via the River Po and transported by currents to its middle part.     

Observations on rock boring by Alpheus saxidomus (Crustacea: Alpheidae)

This study describes some aspects of the distribution, ecology, and rock boring behaviour of the shrimp Alpheus saxidomus Holthuis from the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. This species has a typical hammer-shaped dactylus on the first right pereiopod of females and males that shows tracks of abrasion at the hammer-head. Structural analysis of this hammer-dactylus proved that it is suited for the mechanical treatment of rocks. The very thick and calcified cuticle of the hammer is mostly formed by the sclerotinized, hard exocuticle, which has abundant pore canals.