Business for ocean sustainability: Early responses of ocean governance in the private sector

A large sample of 1664 companies—69 directly working in the ocean economy—distributed across 19 industrial sectors was investigated to explore awareness and activation regarding direct and indirect pressures on the ocean, their responses to these pressures, and the disclosure tools used. We examined their accountability and disclosure practices on sustainable development goals (SDGs) using the drivers, pressures, state, welfare, and response accounting framework. Based on their 2019 sustainability reports, just 7% of the companies assessed disclosed on SDG14. However, 51% of these companies can be considered as aware, albeit to varying degrees, of the pressures their industries place on the oceans, 44% deploy mitigating activities, and 26% are aware and actively lead business responses to ocean challenges. Although we have seen just early responses in addressing ocean challenges, companies’ awareness and activation must converge to achieve ocean sustainability and move businesses into a truly blue economy.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-022-01784-2.     

An interdisciplinary review of current and future approaches to improving human–predator relations

In a world of shrinking habitats and increasing competition for natural resources, potentially dangerous predators bring the challenges of coexisting with wildlife sharply into focus. Through interdisciplinary collaboration among authors trained in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, we reviewed current approaches to mitigating adverse human–predator encounters and devised a vision for future approaches to understanding and mitigating such encounters. Limitations to current approaches to mitigation include too much focus on negative impacts; oversimplified equating of levels of damage with levels of conflict; and unsuccessful technical fixes resulting from failure to engage locals, address hidden costs, or understand cultural (nonscientific) explanations of the causality of attacks. An emerging interdisciplinary literature suggests that to better frame and successfully mitigate negative human–predator relations conservation professionals need to consider dispensing with conflict as the dominant framework for thinking about human–predator encounters; work out what conflicts are really about (they may be human–human conflicts); unravel the historical contexts of particular conflicts; and explore different cultural ways of thinking about animals. The idea of cosmopolitan natures may help conservation professionals think more clearly about human–predator relations in both local and global context. These new perspectives for future research practice include a recommendation for focused interdisciplinary research and the use of new approaches, including human‐animal geography, multispecies ethnography, and approaches from the environmental humanities notably environmental history. Managers should think carefully about how they engage with local cultural beliefs about wildlife, work with all parties to agree on what constitutes good evidence, develop processes and methods to mitigate conflicts, and decide how to monitor and evaluate these. Demand for immediate solutions that benefit both conservation and development favors dispute resolution and technical fixes, which obscures important underlying drivers of conflicts. If these drivers are not considered, well‐intentioned efforts focused on human–wildlife conflicts will fail.     

Phytopumping for hydraulic control of an arsenic plume

Phytoremediation, the use of plants for in situ contaminant cleanup, is gaining new appreciation as an aesthetically pleasing, sustainable method that naturally makes use of solar power. Hybrid poplars are widely used because they grow rapidly and have high transpiration rates, making them advantageous for hydraulic control of groundwater. However, the tendency for trees and other vegetation to uptake metals may be a disadvantage in some settings due to potential redistribution of metals from groundwater to the ground surface. Therefore, a pilot test in the upper midwestern United States was implemented to evaluate the applicability of poplars to groundwater withdrawal and metals transport. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Vocal Activity as a Low Cost and Scalable Index of Seabird Colony Size

Although wildlife conservation actions have increased globally in number and complexity, the lack of scalable, cost‐effective monitoring methods limits adaptive management and the evaluation of conservation efficacy. Automated sensors and computer‐aided analyses provide a scalable and increasingly cost‐effective tool for conservation monitoring. A key assumption of automated acoustic monitoring of birds is that measures of acoustic activity at colony sites are correlated with the relative abundance of nesting birds. We tested this assumption for nesting Forster's terns (Sterna forsteri) in San Francisco Bay for 2 breeding seasons. Sensors recorded ambient sound at 7 colonies that had 15–111 nests in 2009 and 2010. Colonies were spaced at least 250 m apart and ranged from 36 to 2,571 m². We used spectrogram cross‐correlation to automate the detection of tern calls from recordings. We calculated mean seasonal call rate and compared it with mean active nest count at each colony. Acoustic activity explained 71% of the variation in nest abundance between breeding sites and 88% of the change in colony size between years. These results validate a primary assumption of acoustic indices; that is, for terns, acoustic activity is correlated to relative abundance, a fundamental step toward designing rigorous and scalable acoustic monitoring programs to measure the effectiveness of conservation actions for colonial birds and other acoustically active wildlife. La Actividad Vocal como un Índice Escalable y de Bajo Costo del Tamaño de Colonia de las Aves Marinas     

Effects of payments for ecosystem services on wildlife habitat recovery

Conflicts between local people's livelihoods and conservation have led to many unsuccessful conservation efforts and have stimulated debates on policies that might simultaneously promote sustainable management of protected areas and improve the living conditions of local people. Many government‐sponsored payments‐for‐ecosystem‐services (PES) schemes have been implemented around the world. However, few empirical assessments of their effectiveness have been conducted, and even fewer assessments have directly measured their effects on ecosystem services. We conducted an empirical and spatially explicit assessment of the conservation effectiveness of one of the world's largest PES programs through the use of a long‐term empirical data set, a satellite‐based habitat model, and spatial autoregressive analyses on direct measures of change in an ecosystem service (i.e., the provision of wildlife species habitat). Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) habitat improved in Wolong Nature Reserve of China after the implementation of the Natural Forest Conservation Program. The improvement was more pronounced in areas monitored by local residents than those monitored by the local government, but only when a higher payment was provided. Our results suggest that the effectiveness of a PES program depends on who receives the payment and on whether the payment provides sufficient incentives. As engagement of local residents has not been incorporated in many conservation strategies elsewhere in China or around the world, our results also suggest that using an incentive‐based strategy as a complement to command‐and‐control, community‐ and norm‐based strategies may help achieve greater conservation effectiveness and provide a potential solution for the park versus people conflict.     

The role of digital data entry in participatory environmental monitoring

Many argue that monitoring conducted exclusively by scientists is insufficient to address ongoing environmental challenges. One solution entails the use of mobile digital devices in participatory monitoring (PM) programs. But how digital data entry affects programs with varying levels of stakeholder participation, from nonscientists collecting field data to nonscientists administering every step of a monitoring program, remains unclear. We reviewed the successes, in terms of management interventions and sustainability, of 107 monitoring programs described in the literature (hereafter programs) and compared these with case studies from our PM experiences in Australia, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greenland, and Vietnam (hereafter cases). Our literature review showed that participatory programs were less likely to use digital devices, and 2 of our 3 more participatory cases were also slow to adopt digital data entry. Programs that were participatory and used digital devices were more likely to report management actions, which was consistent with cases in Ethiopia, Greenland, and Australia. Programs engaging volunteers were more frequently reported as ongoing, but those involving digital data entry were less often sustained when data collectors were volunteers. For the Vietnamese and Canadian cases, sustainability was undermined by a mismatch in stakeholder objectives. In the Ghanaian case, complex field protocols diminished monitoring sustainability. Innovative technologies attract interest, but the foundation of effective participatory adaptive monitoring depends more on collaboratively defined questions, objectives, conceptual models, and monitoring approaches. When this foundation is built through effective partnerships, digital data entry can enable the collection of more data of higher quality. Without this foundation, or when implemented ineffectively or unnecessarily, digital data entry can be an additional expense that distracts from core monitoring objectives and undermines project sustainability. The appropriate role of digital data entry in PM likely depends more on the context in which it is used and less on the technology itself.     

Building the role of local government authorities towards the achievement of the human right to water in rural Tanzania

In recent decades, many changes have occurred in the approach to financing and operating water services in developing countries. The demand‐responsive approach is now adopted in many countries in a context of donor‐supported decentralization processes, which gives more responsibility to end users. However, the government's responsibility at different levels is enforced by the international recognition of the human right to water. This paper examines specific actions that build the role of local government authorities in this scenario. A collaboration between an international NGO and a rural district in Tanzania from 2006 to 2009 is used as an action research case study that is representative of local capacity‐building needs in decentralized contexts and rural areas. Three main challenges were detected: i) lack of reliable information; ii) poor allocation of resources in terms of equity; and iii) lack of long‐term community management support from the district. Two mechanisms were established: i) water point mapping as a tool for information and planning; and ii) a District Water and Sanitation Unit Support (DWUS) for community management. The results show how the framework provided by the goal of human right to water helps to define useful strategies for equity‐oriented planning and post‐project support at the local level.     

A Thermodynamic Geography: Night-Time Satellite Imagery as a Proxy Measure of Emergy

Night-time satellite imagery enables the measurement, visualization, and mapping of energy consumption in an area. In this paper, an index of the “sum of lights” as observed by night-time satellite imagery within national boundaries is compared with the emergy of the nations. Emergy is a measure of the solar energy equivalent used, directly or indirectly, to support the processes that characterize the economic activity in a country. Emergy has renewable and non-renewable components. Our results show that the non-renewable component of national emergy use is positively correlated with night-time satellite imagery. This relationship can be used to produce emergy density maps which enable the incorporation of spatially explicit representations of emergy in geographic information systems. The region of Abruzzo (Italy) is used to demonstrate this relationship as a spatially disaggregate case.