Donor policies and gender in the water and sanitation sector

This paper discusses policy towards gender in the water sector. It identifies key directions in gender policy and, while recognizing the progress made by donors towards implementing this, identifies some of the obstacles and difficulties encountered. The paper is based on a review of selected donor agency documentation and on discussions with staff conducted by Katja Jobes in May 1995.     

Training Captive-Bred or Translocated Animals to Avoid Predators

Abstract: Animal reintroductions and translocations are potentially important interventions to save species from extinction, but most are unsuccessful. Mortality due to predation is a principal cause of failure. Animals that have been isolated from predators, either throughout their lifetime or over evolutionary time, may no longer express appropriate antipredator behavior. For this reason, conservation biologists are beginning to include antipredator training in pre-release preparation procedures. We describe the evolutionary and ontogenetic circumstances under which antipredator behavior may degenerate or be lost, and we use principles from learning theory to predict which elements can be enhanced or recovered by training. The empirical literature demonstrates that training can improve antipredator skills, but the effectiveness of such interventions is influenced by a number of constraints. We predict that it will be easier to teach animals to cope with predators if they have experienced ontogenetic isolation than if they have undergone evolutionary isolation. Similarly, animals should learn more easily if they have been evolutionarily isolated from some rather than all predators. Training to a novel predator may be more successful if a species has effective responses to similar predators. In contrast, it may be difficult to teach proper avoidance behavior, or to introduce specialized predator-specific responses, if appropriate motor patterns are not already present. We conclude that pre-release training has the potential to enhance the expression of preexisting antipredator behavior. Potential training techniques involve classical conditioning procedures in which animals learn that model predators are predictors of aversive events. However, wildlife managers should be aware that problems, such as the emergence of inappropriate responses, may arise during such training.     

Predicting bicycle helmet wearing intentions and behavior among adolescents

INTRODUCTION: Cycling accidents in Australia, especially those resulting in head injuries, are a substantive cause of death and disability; but despite legislation and evidence that helmets reduce the risk of head injury, few adolescents wear them. METHOD: This study employed a revised version of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; [Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211]) to investigate the determinants of helmet use among a sample of adolescents. Participants in the initial data collection were 294 high school students in Year 8 and Year 11, with 266 completing a follow-up questionnaire measuring behavior over the previous two weeks. RESULTS: Social norms, perceptions of control, and past behavior significantly predicted intentions to use helmets and perceptions of control and past behavior predicted actual helmet use. CONCLUSIONS: Strengthening the routine of helmet use and building young people's confidence that they can overcome any perceived barriers to helmet use will improve adherence to helmet wearing behavior.     

Sustainability: new strategic thinking for business

Some researchers insist that sustainability should be represented as a continuous quest, doubting that there is the ‘right’ way to be sustainable. Acknowledging the immensity of sustainability challenges, this article takes a different perspective, arguing that without understanding of concrete barriers and seeking solutions, the challenge of addressing unsustainable practices becomes unsurmountable. This article will summarize research in sustainability literature that indicates that sustainability requires a constant human population, as well as ecologically benign method of production. This article will survey a number of helpful frameworks that address the key obstacles to sustainability, namely population growth, and unsustainable production and consumption. These frameworks are discussed in the context of business-level solutions and production systems. As illustrated by examples of best practices as well as potential pitfalls associated with each system, these systems have the potential to move the quest for sustainability beyond ‘business as usual.’     

Antimony bioavailability in mine soils

Five British former mining and smelting sites were investigated and found to have levels of total Sb of up to 700 mg kg(-1), indicating high levels of contamination which could be potentially harmful. However, this level of Sb was found to be biologically unavailable over a wide range of pH values, indicating that Sb is relatively unreactive and immobile in the surface layers of the soil, remaining where it is deposited rather than leaching into lower horizons and contaminating ground water. Sb, sparingly soluble in water, was unavailable to the bacterial biosensors tested. The bioluminescence responses were correlated to levels of co-contaminants such as arsenic and copper, rather than to Sb concentrations. This suggests that soil contamination by Sb due to mining and smelting operations is not a severe risk to the environment or human health provided that it is present as immobile species and contaminated sites are not used for purposes which increase the threat of exposure to identified receptors. Co-contaminants such as arsenic and copper are more bioavailable and may therefore be seen as a more significant risk.     

Perceived stressors of climate vulnerability across scales in the Savannah zone of Ghana: a participatory approach

Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are confronted with climatic and non-climatic stressors. Research attention has focused on climatic stressors, such as rainfall variability, with few empirical studies exploring non-climatic stressors and how these interact with climatic stressors at multiple scales to affect food security and livelihoods. This focus on climatic factors restricts understanding of the combinations of stressors that exacerbate the vulnerability of farming households and hampers the development of holistic climate change adaptation policies. This study addresses this particular research gap by adopting a multi-scale approach to understand how climatic and non-climatic stressors vary, and interact, across three spatial scales (household, community and district levels) to influence livelihood vulnerability of smallholder farming households in the Savannah zone of northern Ghana. This study across three case study villages utilises a series of participatory tools including semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The incidence, importance, severity and overall risk indices for stressors are calculated at the household, community, and district levels. Results show that climatic and non-climatic stressors were perceived differently; yet, there were a number of common stressors including lack of money, high cost of farm inputs, erratic rainfall, cattle destruction of crops, limited access to markets and lack of agricultural equipment that crossed all scales. Results indicate that the gender of respondents influenced the perception and severity assessment of stressors on rural livelihoods at the community level. Findings suggest a mismatch between local and district level priorities that have implications for policy and development of agricultural and related livelihoods in rural communities. Ghana’s climate change adaptation policies need to take a more holistic approach that integrates both climatic and non-climatic factors to ensure policy coherence between national climate adaptation plans and District development plans.     

Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food,energy, water and the environment

Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the ‘nexus’ of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.     

Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwined and embedded in the biosphere, placing shocks and extreme events as part of this dynamic; humanity has become the major force in shaping the future of the Earth system as a whole; and the scale and pace of the human dimension have caused climate change, rapid loss of biodiversity, growing inequalities, and loss of resilience to deal with uncertainty and surprise. Taken together, human actions are challenging the biosphere foundation for a prosperous development of civilizations. The Anthropocene reality—of rising system-wide turbulence—calls for transformative change towards sustainable futures. Emerging technologies, social innovations, broader shifts in cultural repertoires, as well as a diverse portfolio of active stewardship of human actions in support of a resilient biosphere are highlighted as essential parts of such transformations.     

Handling the phosphorus paradox in agriculture and natural ecosystems: Scarcity,necessity, and burden of P

This special issue of Ambio compiles a series of contributions made at the 8th International Phosphorus Workshop (IPW8), held in September 2016 in Rostock, Germany. The introducing overview article summarizes major published scientific findings in the time period from IPW7 (2015) until recently, including presentations from IPW8. The P issue was subdivided into four themes along the logical sequence of P utilization in production, environmental, and societal systems: (1) Sufficiency and efficiency of P utilization, especially in animal husbandry and crop production; (2) P recycling: technologies and product applications; (3) P fluxes and cycling in the environment; and (4) P governance. The latter two themes had separate sessions for the first time in the International Phosphorus Workshops series; thus, this overview presents a scene-setting rather than an overview of the latest research for these themes. In summary, this paper details new findings in agricultural and environmental P research, which indicate reduced P inputs, improved management options, and provide translations into governance options for a more sustainable P use.