Contested H2O: science, policy and politics in water resources management in Chile

This paper critically explores the politics that mediate the use of environmental science assessments as the basis of resource management policy. Drawing on recent literature in the political ecology tradition that has emphasised the politicised nature of the production and use of scientific knowledge in environmental management, the paper analyses a hydrological assessment in a small river basin in Chile, undertaken in response to concerns over the possible overexploitation of groundwater resources. The case study illustrates the limitations of an approach based predominantly on hydrogeological modelling to ascertain the effects of increased groundwater abstraction. In particular, it identifies the subjective ways in which the assessment was interpreted and used by the state water resources agency to underpin water allocation decisions in accordance with its own interests, and the role that a desocialised assessment played in reproducing unequal patterns of resource use and configuring uneven waterscapes. Nevertheless, as Chile’s ‘neoliberal’ political-economic framework privileges the role of science and technocracy, producing other forms of environmental knowledge to complement environmental science is likely to be contentious. In conclusion, the paper considers the potential of mobilising the concept of the hydrosocial cycle to further critically engage with environmental science.

Theology and politics in Richard Hooker's thought

Although Richard Hooker’s private attitudes were clericalist and authoritarian, his constitutional theory subordinated clergymen to laymen and monarchy to parliamentary statute. This article explains why his political ideas were nonetheless appropriate to his presumed religious purposes. It notes a very intimate connection between his teleological conception of a law and his hostility towards conventional high Calvinist ideas about predestination. The most significant anomaly within his broadly Aristotelian world-view was his belief that politics is nothing but a means to cope with sin. This too can be linked to his religious ends, but it creates an ambiguity that made his doctrines usable by Locke.

Impegno nero: Italian intellectuals and the African-American struggle

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Italian intellectuals participated in Italy’s reconstruction with an ideological commitment inspired by the African-American struggle for equal rights in the United States. Drawing on the work of many of the leading figures in postwar Italian culture, including Italo Calvino, Giorgio Caproni, Cesare Pavese, and Elio Vittorini, this essay argues that Italian intellectual impegno—defined as the effort to remake Italian culture and to guide Italian social reform—was united with a significant investment in the African-American cause. The author terms this tendency impegno nero and traces its development in the critical reception of African-American writers including W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright. Postwar impegno nero is then contrasted with the treatment of African-American themes under Fascism, when commentators had likewise condemned American racism, but had paradoxically linked their laments for the plight of African Americans with defenses of the racial policies of the Fascist regime. Indeed, Fascist colonialism and anti-Semitism were both justified through references to what Fascist intellectuals believed to be America’s greater injustices. After 1945, in contrast, Italian intellectuals advocated an international, interdependent campaign for justice, symbolizing national reforms by projecting them onto an emblematic America. In this way, impegno nero revived and revised the celebrated "myth of America" that had developed in Italy between the world wars. Advancing a new, postwar myth, Italian intellectuals adopted the African-American struggle in order to reinforce their own efforts in the ongoing struggle for justice in Italy.

A new regime of carbon counting: the practices and politics of accounting for everyday carbon through C02e

Inspired by the commercial desires of global brands and retailers to access the lucrative green consumer market, carbon is increasingly being counted and made knowable at the mundane sites of everyday production and consumption, from the carbon footprint of a plastic kitchen fork to that of an online bank account. Despite the challenges of counting and making commensurable the global warming impact of a myriad of biophysical and societal activities, this desire to communicate a product or service's carbon footprint has sparked complicated carbon calculative practices and enrolled actors at literally every node of multi-scaled and vastly complex global supply chains. Against this landscape, this paper critically analyzes the counting practices that create the ‘e’ in ‘CO2e’. It is shown that, central to these practices are a series of tools, models and databases which, in building upon previous work (Eden, 2012 and Star and Griesemer, 1989) we conceptualize here as ‘boundary objects’. By enrolling everyday actors from farmers to consumers, these objects abstract and stabilize greenhouse gas emissions from their messy material and social contexts into units of CO2e which can then be translated along a product's supply chain, thereby establishing a new currency of ‘everyday supply chain carbon’. However, in making all greenhouse gas-related practices commensurable and in enrolling and stabilizing the transfer of information between multiple actors these objects oversee a process of simplification reliant upon, and subject to, a multiplicity of approximations, assumptions, errors, discrepancies and/or omissions. Further the outcomes of these tools are subject to the politicized and commercial agendas of the worlds they attempt to link, with each boundary actor inscribing different meanings to a product's carbon footprint in accordance with their specific subjectivities, commercial desires and epistemic framings. It is therefore shown that how a boundary object transforms greenhouse gas emissions into units of CO2e, is the outcome of distinct ideologies regarding ‘what’ a product's carbon footprint is and how it should be made legible. These politicized decisions, in turn, inform specific reduction activities and ultimately advance distinct, specific and increasingly durable transition pathways to a low carbon society.

The Impacts of Inter-El Nino Variability on the Tropical Atlantic and Northeast Brazil Climate

In this study, observations and numerical simulations are used to investigate how different El Nino events affect the development of SST anomalies in the Atlantic and how this relates to the Brazilian northeast (NE) precipitation. The results show that different types of El Nino have different impacts on the SST anomalies of the equatorial and tropical South Atlantic but a similar SST response in the tropical North Atlantic. Strong and long (weak and short) El Ninos with the main heating source located in the eastern (central) Pacific generate cold (warm) anomalies in the cold tongue and Benguela upwelling regions during boreal winter and spring. When the SST anomalies in the eastern equatorial and tropical South Atlantic are cold (warm), the meridional SST gradient across the equator is positive (negative) and the ITCZ is not allowed (allowed) to move southward during the boreal spring; as a consequence, the precipitation is below (above) the average over the NE. Thus, strong and long (weak and short) El Ninos are followed by dry (wet) conditions in the NE. During strong and long El Ninos, changes in the Walker circulation over the Atlantic and in the Pacific-South Atlantic (PSA) wave train cause easterly wind anomalies in the western equatorial Atlantic, which in turn activate the Bjerknes mechanism, establishing the cold tongue in boreal spring and summer. These easterly anomalies are also responsible for the Benguela upwelling. During short and weak El Ninos, westerly wind anomalies are present in the western equatorial Atlantic accompanied by warm anomalies in the eastern equatorial and tropical South Atlantic; a positive phase of the South Atlantic dipole develops during boreal winter. The simulations highlight the importance of ocean dynamics in establishing the correct slope of the equatorial thermocline and SST anomalies, which in turn determine the correct rainfall response over the NE.

Upper-mantle seismic structure beneath SE and Central Brazil from P- and S-wave regional traveltime tomography

We present models for the upper-mantle velocity structure beneath SE and Central Brazil using independent tomographic inversions of P- and S-wave relative arrival-time residuals (including core phases) from teleseismic earthquakes. The events were recorded by a total of 92 stations deployed through different projects, institutions and time periods during the years 1992-2004. Our results show correlations with the main tectonic structures and reveal new anomalies not yet observed in previous works. All interpretations are based on robust anomalies, which appear in the different inversions for P-and S-waves. The resolution is variable through our study volume and has been analyzed through different theoretical test inversions. High-velocity anomalies are observed in the western portion of the Sao Francisco Craton, supporting the hypothesis that this Craton was part of a major Neoproterozoic plate (San Franciscan Plate). Low-velocity anomalies beneath the Tocantins Province (mainly fold belts between the Amazon and Sao Francisco Cratons) are interpreted as due to lithospheric thinning, which is consistent with the good correlation between intraplate seismicity and low-velocity anomalies in this region. Our results show that the basement of the Parana Basin is formed by several blocks, separated by suture zones, according to model of Milani & Ramos. The slab of the Nazca Plate can be observed as a high-velocity anomaly beneath the Parana Basin, between the depths of 700 and 1200 km. Further, we confirm the low-velocity anomaly in the NE area of the Parana Basin which has been interpreted by VanDecar et al. as a fossil conduct of the Tristan da Cunha Plume related to the Parana flood basalt eruptions during the opening of the South Atlantic.

Fiscal adjustment, conditionality and politics in IMF programs

A common feature in programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the use of conditionalities, macroeconomic and structural measures that a requesting country should adopt to obtain an assistance package. The objective of this work is to conduct an empirical analysis of the economic and political determinants of such conditionalities. In particular, our main contribution consists in the development of a new measure of conditionality, fiscal adjustment, and its comparison with the most used in the literature, the number of conditions. We choose fiscal adjustment because it is an adequate proxy for program austerity, since its implementation carries economic and political costs. In the empirical exercise, we use data from 184 programs in the period of 1999 and 2012, and estimate how our two measures of conditionalities respond to the economic and political factors. Our results suggest that they are quite different. The main determinant of the number of conditions is the political proximity of the borrowing country to the Fund’s major shareholders, the members of G5. On the other hand, the main determinant of fiscal adjustment is the size of the government fiscal deficit. Finally, we did not find correlation between the size of fiscal adjustment and the number of conditions. These results suggest that the analysis of the content of IMF programs should take into account the different measures of agreed conditionality.

Illegal trade of the guitarfish Rhinobatos horkelii on the coasts of central and southern Brazil: genetic identification to aid conservation

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Actinopterygii, Siluriformes, Loricariidae, Loricariichthys platymetopon Isbrucker and Nijssen, 1979: first record in Reservoir of Canoas II, Middle Paranapanema River, border of the states of São Paulo and Parana, Brazil.

First record of the cascudo, Loricariichthys platymetopon Isbrucker and Nijssen, 1979 in Canoas II Reservoir (Middle Paranapanema River, border of the states of São Paulo and Parana, Brazil). Its occurrence is due to the flooding of Sete Quedas waterfall, as a result of the construction of Itaipu Reservoir. Furthermore, there is absence or low abundance of natural predators, like Salminus brasiliensis, since this species has difficulties to adapt or even survive in reservoirs.

Clinical and epidemiological study of 27 poisonings caused by ingesting puffer fish (Tetrodontidae) in the states of Santa Catarina and Bahia, Brazil

Os baiacus ou peixes-bola podem ser venenosos devido à presença em seus tecidos corporais de Tetrodotoxina e/ou Saxitoxina, ambas potentes neurotoxinas. Os autores relatam 27 envenenamentos por ingestão da carne de baiacus. Os pacientes foram atendidos nos Centros de Toxicologia de Santa Catarina e da Bahia de 1984 a 2009. Os acidentes foram classificados em moderados (52%) e graves (33%), havendo dois óbitos. O diagnóstico precoce é fundamental no sentido de garantir suporte ventilatório aos pacientes.