“One thing leads to another”—Commodities,linkages and industrial development

With a particular focus on low income economies in SSA, this paper addresses the nature and determinants of linkages from the commodities sectors and challenges the received view that enclave development is an inherent characteristic of resource extraction, particularly in the hard and energy commodities sectors. It argues that there has been a steady increase in linkage development and that there are significant opportunities for deepening this process. The opportunities may be greater for backward than for forward linkages, particularly in the minerals and energy sectors. In making this case, this Discussion Paper draws on the experience of high income countries which have resource intensive economic structures, the geographical specificity of many resources and the growing interest of large resource extracting firms in outsourcing the production of inputs which are outside of their core competences and in supporting local production of some inputs, it sets out a general model of linkage development which distinguishes between win–win and win–lose outcomes.     

The effects of elevated carbon dioxide levels on a Vibrio sp. isolated from the deep-sea

Introduction

The effect of oceanic CO₂ sequestration was examined exposing a deep-sea bacterium identified as Vibrio alginolyticus (9NA) to elevated levels of carbon dioxide and monitoring its growth at 2,750 psi (1,846 m depth).

Findings

The wild-type strain of 9NA could not grow in acidified marine broth below a pH of 5. The pH of marine broth did not drop below this level until at least 20.8 mM of CO₂ was injected into the medium. 9NA did not grow at this CO₂ concentration or higher concentrations (31.2 and 41.6 mM) for at least 72 h. Carbon dioxide at 10.4 mM also inhibited growth, but the bacterium was able to recover and grow. Exposure to CO₂ caused the cell to undergo a morphological change and form a dimple-like structure. The membrane was also damaged but with no protein leakage.     

Land changes and their driving forces in the Southeastern United States

The ecoregions of the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, Southeastern Plains, Piedmont, and Blue Ridge provide a continuum of land cover from the Atlantic Ocean to the highest mountains in the East. From 1973 to 2000, each ecoregion had a unique mosaic of land covers and land cover changes. The forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains provided amenity lands. The Piedmont forested area declined, while the developed area increased. The Southeastern Plains became a commercial forest region, and most agricultural lands that changed became forested. Forests in the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain declined, and development related to recreation and retirement increased. The most important drivers of land conversion were associated with commercial forestry, competition between forest and agriculture, and economic and population growth. These and other drivers were modified by each ecoregion’s unique suitability and land use legacies with the result that the same drivers often produced different land changes in different ecoregions.     

Enzymatic basis for fungicide removal by <Emphasis Type="Italic">Elodea canadensis</Emphasis>

Purpose  

Plants can absorb a diversity of natural and man-made toxic compounds for which they have developed diverse detoxification mechanisms. Plants are able to metabolize and detoxify a wide array of xenobiotics by oxidation, sugar conjugation, glutathione conjugation, and more complex reactions. In this study, detoxification mechanisms of dimethomorph, a fungicide currently found in aquatic media were investigated in Elodea canadensis.     

Cascading loss and loss risk multipliers amid a changing climate in the Pacific Islands

Human society has experienced, and will continue to experience, extensive loss and damage from worsening anthropogenic climate change. Despite our natural tendencies to categorise and organise, it can be unhelpful to delineate clean boundaries and linear understandings for complex and messy concepts such as loss and damage. Drawing on the perspectives of 42 local and regional Pacific Islander stakeholders, an underexplored resource for understanding loss and damage, we explore the complexity and interconnectedness of non-economic loss and damage (NELD). According to participants, Pacific Islander worldviews, knowledge systems and cosmologies often make it difficult to separate and evaluate NELD independently, challenging the nomenclature of NELD categories developed through international mechanisms. Instead, NELD understandings are often centred on the interdependencies between losses, including the cascading flow-on effects that can occur and the nature of some losses as risk multipliers (i.e. one loss creating the risk for further losses). Most notably, losses to biodiversity, ecosystem services and land are critically linked to, and have cascading effects on, livelihoods, knowledge, ways of life, wellbeing, and culture and heritage. We argue that loss and damage is not always absolute, and that there are NELD that are arguably reparable. Concerning, however, is that biodiversity loss, as a risk multiplier, was considered the least reparable by participants. We put forward that NELD understandings must consider interconnectivity, and that biodiversity and ecosystem conservation and restoration must be the focus for interventions to prevent irreparable and cascading losses from climate change in the Pacific Islands.     

Protected area downgrading,downsizing, and degazettement as a threat to iconic protected areas

Protected areas (PAs) are expected to conserve nature and provide ecosystem services in perpetuity, yet widespread protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD) may compromise these objectives. Even iconic protected areas are vulnerable to PADDD, although these PADDD events are often unrecognized. We identified 23 enacted and proposed PADDD events within World Natural Heritage Sites and examined the history, context, and consequences of PADDD events in 4 iconic PAs (Yosemite National Park, Arabian Oryx Sanctuary, Yasuní National Park, and Virunga National Park). Based on insights from published research and international workshops, these 4 cases revealed the diverse pressures brought on by competing interests to develop or exploit natural landscapes and the variety of mechanisms that enables PADDD. Knowledge gaps exist in understanding of the conditions through which development pressures translate to PADDD events and their impacts, partially due to a lack of comprehensive PADDD records. Future research priorities should include comprehensive regional and country-level profiles and analysis of risks, impacts, and contextual factors related to PADDD. Policy options to better govern PADDD include improving tracking and reporting of PADDD events, establishing transparent PADDD policy processes, coordinating among legal frameworks, and mitigating negative impacts of PADDD. To support PADDD research and policy reforms, enhanced human and financial capacities are needed to train local researchers and to host publicly accessible data. As the conservation community considers the achievements of Aichi Target 11 and moves toward new biodiversity targets beyond 2020, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers need to work together to better track, assess, and govern PADDD globally.     

Climate and predation dominate juvenile and adult recruitment in a turtle with temperature-dependent sex determination

Conditions experienced early in life can influence phenotypes in ecologically important ways, as exemplified by organisms with environmental sex determination. For organisms with temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), variation in nest temperatures induces phenotypic variation that could impact population growth rates. In environments that vary over space and time, how does this variation influence key demographic parameters (cohort sex ratio and hatchling recruitment) in early life stages of populations exhibiting TSD? We leverage a 17-year data set on a population of painted turtles, Chrysemys picta, to investigate how spatial variation in nest vegetation cover and temporal variation in climate influence early life-history demography. We found that spatial variation in nest cover strongly influenced nest temperature and sex ratio, but was not correlated with clutch size, nest predation, total nest failure, or hatching success. Temporal variation in climate influenced percentage of total nest failure and cohort sex ratio, but not depredation rate, mean clutch size, or mean hatching success. Total hatchling recruitment in a year was influenced primarily by temporal variation in climate-independent factors, number of nests constructed, and depredation rate. Recruitment of female hatchlings was determined by stochastic variation in nest depredation and annual climate and also by the total nest production. Overall population demography depends more strongly on annual variation in climate and predation than it does on the intricacies of nest-specific biology. Finally, we demonstrate that recruitment of female hatchlings translates into recruitment of breeding females into the population, thus linking climate (and other) effects on early life stages to adult demographics.     

Considering built environment and spatial correlation in modeling pedestrian injury severity

Objective: This study looks at mitigating and aggravating factors that are associated with the injury severity of pedestrians when they have crashes with another road user and overcomes existing limitations in the literature by focusing attention on the built environment and considering spatial correlation across crashes.

Method: Reports for 6,539 pedestrian crashes occurred in Denmark between 2006 and 2015 were merged with geographic information system resources containing detailed information about the built environment and exposure at the crash locations. A linearized spatial logit model estimated the probability of pedestrians sustaining a severe or fatal injury conditional on the occurrence of a crash with another road user.

Results: This study confirms previous findings about older pedestrians and intoxicated pedestrians being the most vulnerable road users and crashes with heavy vehicles and in roads with higher speed limits being related to the most severe outcomes. This study provides novel perspectives by showing positive spatial correlations of crashes with the same severity outcomes and emphasizing the role of the built environment in the proximity of the crash.

Conclusions: This study emphasizes the need for thinking about traffic calming measures, illumination solutions, road maintenance programs, and speed limit reductions. Moreover, this study emphasizes the role of the built environment, because shopping areas, residential areas, and walking traffic density are positively related to a reduction in pedestrian injury severity. Often, these areas have in common a larger pedestrian mass that is more likely to make other road users more aware and attentive, whereas the same does not seem to apply to areas with lower pedestrian density.     

Twenty-five years of nationwide ambient metals measurement in the United Kingdom: concentration levels and trends

Ambient air quality has been an important issue for humans and the environment for hundreds of years. More recently, definitive links have been identified between pollutants and adverse effects on human health and on environmental sustainability. Of particular concern since the last quarter of the twentieth century has been the presence of toxic 'heavy metals' in ambient air. In order to measure the concentrations of pollutants, including 'heavy metals', in ambient air, to assess human and environmental exposure, comply with developing legislation, and assess newly introduced abatement strategies, the UK government established nationwide air quality measurement networks in the late 1970s. The nationwide measurement of 'heavy metals' in ambient air began in the late 1970s, and in 1980 was developed into several national networks, aimed at different metals and different emissions sources. These networks were rationalised into the current UK Heavy Metals Monitoring Network in 2003. The data produced by the current scientific operator of the Network, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), in 2005, marked 25 years of ambient 'heavy metals' measurement in the UK at a nationwide level. This paper celebrates this milestone and provides a novel and critical examination of Network operations, measured concentration levels, and trends, over the last quarter of a century.