Environmental Questions Research Articles

Military Dimensions of a Multipolar World: Implications for Global Governance

For a decade after the Cold War it seemed that multilateral governance might take root under US leadership, including a reinvigorated United Nations and a strengthened international legal framework. The nuclear explosive devices tested by India in 1998 took place in a pivotal period when the so-called ‘unipolar moment’ of the US began to be challenged by states that were not satisfied such an arrangement could advance their national interests.To European eyes, India never fully incorporated the implications of the post-Cold War changes into its national approach to global affairs. While many in Europe and the US expected Indian perspectives to be closely aligned with their own, India did not fully integrate into the West. At the same time, India tried to preserve its place in the Global South, even as its interests diverged from those of its traditional partners in certain key issue areas—the role of nuclear weapons being perhaps one clear example.While a governance system based on US leadership has corroded, no viable replacement has yet evolved. A further iteration of post-Cold War governance may be in the making, as the US is probably unable (and may not be interested) to play the central role in setting the international agenda or organising (and financing) the key frameworks for interstate dialogue. The main priority might be to insulate the US from any negative effects of events in other parts of the world and create a safe platform for more aggressive economic and financial competition.Fluid coalitions of interest form around specific issues, and as a result states that cooperate closely on one issue (such as military security) might take opposing views on another (such as climate). States cooperate and compete in different configurations, depending on how their interests align on specific political, strategic, economic, social and environmental questions. While some analysts draw parallels with the past, in reality there is little precedent or knowledge to guide current thinking and uncertainty contributes to the re-emergence of military factors in international relations as states seek both assurance and insurance.Uncertainties are promoting national investment that is gradually equipping military forces in ways that could provide major powers with capabilities that emphasise deterrence and defence. Although it is intended to reduce any risk of conflict between major powers, whether this investment will produce a stable global environment is unknown and untested.The pattern described above is challenging and problematic for Europeans, who were comfortable with the concept of enhancing the effectiveness of multilateralism under US leadership. A twin-track approach is emerging. Initiatives to strengthen intra-Western solidarity (particularly the promotion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation–European Union cooperation) promote a traditional approach, while intra-European cooperation is being revisited as a hedging strategy, in case autonomous European action is needed in future.In headline documents, India and European states emphasise that they are natural partners and promise to promote rules-based governance of an interconnected and multipolar world. However, Indian perspectives on global governance are largely absent from European discussions, and the promised cooperation appears more aspirational than real.

Challenges for social flows

Social and interpersonal connections are attached to the built environment: people require physical infrastructure to meet and telecommunicate, and then populate these infrastructures with movement and information dynamics. In GIS analysis, actions are often represented as a unit of spatial information called the social flow–a linear geographic feature that evidences an individual's decision to connect places through travel, telecommunications and/or declaring personal relationships. These flows differ from traditional spatial networks (roads, etc.) because they are often non-planar, and unlike networks in operations systems (such as flight networks), provide evidence of personal intentionality to interact with the built environment and/or to perpetuate relationships with others. En masse, these flows sum to illustrate how humans, information and thoughts spread between and within places.Amid a growing abundance and usage of social flow data, we extend formal definitions of this data type, create new typologies, address new problems, and redefine social distance as the manifestation of social flows. Next, we outline challenges to fully leveraging these data with commercial GISystems by providing examples and potential solutions for representing, visualizing, manipulating, statistically analyzing and ascribing meaning to social flows. The goal of this discussion is to improve the dexterity of social flow data for geographic, environmental and social research questions.

Climate change and water resources in Algeria: vulnerability, impact and adaptation strategy

The climate changes going on for a long time now have ceased to be a scientific curiosity. They constitute the major environmental question which dominates our time and pose the major challenge to environmental organizations of control. Water is one of the most important raw materials in Algeria. Because of its importance, it is essential to know its vulnerability with the climate changes. In Algeria, the vulnerability due to the climate changes is expressed through several aspects: demographic explosion, probable reduction in the water run-offs, scarcity of the resources, the degradation of the hydraulic infrastructures, threats to wetlands, etc. In the face of this situation, Algeria has taken quantitative and qualitative adaptive measures within the framework of durable management of this invaluable resource for the future.

Beyond the critique of carbon markets: The real utopia of a democratic Climate Protection Agency

This paper discusses the possibility to go beyond the critique of carbon markets by offering an alternative, democratic, model for allocating greenhouse gas emissions rights, rather than one based on the ability to pay. Taking stock of the substantial critique that have been made of markets for allocating such rights, it seeks to offer a non-market based, yet realist, mechanism. This non-market mechanism is grounded in the literature on democratic economic planning as applied to environmental questions. It delineates the proposition for a Climate Protection Agency through which competing interests and visions could be represented – and transformed – in the process of allocating limited rights. This alternative model is offered in the spirit of “real utopias”. Discussions of the desirability, viability, and achievability of the model are made by way of comparison with a similar – but actually existing – model, namely the distribution of land-use rights in Switzerland.

Regulações territoriais e expansão urbana informal: é possível preservar e incluir?

A ascensão do objetivo da proteção ambiental interfere sobremaneira no modelo de urbanização das metrópoles brasileiras, seja na direção da universalização do acesso ao bem comum ou da privatização do mesmo. Este artigo discute uma formulação discursiva muito influente entre gestores urbanos e tomadores de decisão, que se apropria do objetivo da proteção ambiental para legitimar regulações territoriais restritivas, com efeitos socialmente perversos. O artigo discute a urbanização da Área de Proteção Ambiental do Rio São Bartolomeu, no Distrito Federal, para relacionar as pautas de proteção ambiental e de inclusão urbana, considerando a crescente magnitude da urbanização informal. Adota métodos de sobreposição espacial de dados secundários e pesquisa documental para realizar uma análise histórico-geográfica do processo de expansão urbana de Brasília, e avaliar os efeitos e a pertinência das restrições legais impostas em nome da proteção ambiental. Tendo como base as informações levantadas, o artigo sugere que a problemática ambiental urbana atual é antes de tudo uma questão política pelo acesso ao espaço urbano e suas benfeitorias. Mas deixa claro também que as opções morfológicas – padrões de urbanização – são cruciais para facultar um acesso à cidade mais democrático.

Risk factors associated to canine visceral leishmaniasis in Uruguaiana city, Brazil

The present study aimed to evaluate factors associated with canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) in areas with higher seroprevalence of it in Uruguaiana city, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, during the year of 2012. A semi-structured questionnaire with socioeconomic and environmental questions was applied in Leishmania endemic regions of the city. The survey data were analyzed by multivariate statistics and the associations between them were presented as odds ratio within a 95% confidence limit. The relationships between the studied variables showed no statistically significant difference between the dwellings with positive and negative dogs. However, when analyzing the odds ratio, the presence of green areas larger than 10m² turned the house into an area of potential risk for CVL (OR= 2.53). There was no difference among the socioeconomic variables education and income, though the groups with lower education and income showed a higher seroprevalence of CVL. The city of Uruguaiana is already located within the CVL broadcasting area and is taken as an endemic region of the disease, with seropositive dogs in all neighborhoods. Thus, the determinants for an increased Leishmania sp. infection could not be indicated, even so, the maintenance of green areas around the households represented a risk factor for being a potential vector shelter.

Development and validation of PediaTrac™: A web-based tool to track developing infants

ObjectivePediaTrac™, a 363-item web-based tool to track infant development, administered in modules of ∼40-items per sampling period, newborn (NB), 2­-, 4­-, 6­-, 9­- and 12­-months was validated. Caregivers answered demographic, medical, and environmental questions, and questions covering the sensorimotor, feeding/eating, sleep, speech/language, cognition, social-emotional, and attachment domains. MethodsExpert Panel Reviews and Cognitive Interviews (CI) were conducted to validate the item bank. Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT) methods were employed to examine the dimensionality and psychometric properties of PediaTrac with pooled longitudinal and cross-sectional cohorts (N = 132). ResultsIntraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) for the Expert Panel Review revealed moderate agreement at 6 ­months and good reliability at other sampling periods. ICC estimates for CI revealed moderate reliability regarding clarity of the items at NB and 4 months, good reliability at 2-­, 9­- and 12­-months and excellent reliability at 6 ­months. CTT revealed good coefficient alpha estimates (α ≥ 0.77 for five of the six ages) for the Social-Emotional/Communication, Attachment (α ≥ 0.89 for all ages), and Sensorimotor (α ≥ 0.75 at 6-months) domains, revealing the need for better targeting of sensorimotor items. IRT modeling revealed good reliability (r = 0.85–0.95) for three distinct domains (Feeding/Eating, Social-Emotional/Communication and Attachment) and four subdomains (Feeding Breast/Formula, Feeding Solid Food, Social-Emotional Information Processing, Communication/Cognition). Convergent and discriminant construct validity were demonstrated between our IRT-modeled domains and constructs derived from existing developmental, behavioral and caregiver measures. Our Attachment domain was significantly correlated with existing measures at the NB and 2-month periods, while the Social-Emotional/Communication domain was highly correlated with similar constructs at the 6-, 9- and 12-month periods. ConclusionPediaTrac has potential for producing novel and effective estimates of infant development via the Sensorimotor, Feeding/Eating, Social-Emotional/Communication and Attachment domains.

Movimientos sociales populares frente el Tercer Sector: estudio comparado de organizaciones campesinas de Brasil, Argentina y México/Popular social movements faced with the third sector: A comparative study about peasant organizations of Brazil, Argentina

El trabajo aborda el tema de la acción colectiva internacional desde el ascenso de las organizaciones del llamado tercer sector, hasta el (re)surgimiento de movimientos campesinos contrahegemónicos, que internacionalizan y ambientalizan su lucha a partir de la agroecología y los debates de la soberanía alimentaria y justicia ambiental. Estos debates serán ejemplificados a partir de tres organizaciones campesinas de Brasil, México y Argentina. Las mismas expresan los procesos de territorialización campesina y sus dinámicas en los tres países, además de un complejo acercamiento a las temáticas ambientales que propone un quiebre normativo en relación a la actuación de Organizaciones No Gubernamentales (ONGs), fundaciones y organizaciones ambientalistas tradicionales. Si bien las organizaciones que buscaremos caracterizar en clave comparativa sean organizaciones novedosas en relación al movimiento campesino clásico, por adentrarse en problemáticas contemporáneas como la cuestión ambiental, democracia interna y la soberanía alimentaria; resignificando y ambientalizando a la cuestión agraria contemporánea; las mismas cuestionan al capitalismo y rescatan críticamente las experiencias de los movimientos sociales y sindical que las precedieron. Luego, las organizaciones campesinas estudiadas afirman en su existencia y base social algunas características que la Escuela de los Nuevos Movimientos Sociales tiende a negar frente su interpretación analítica de la acción colectiva internacional en la globalización y los sujetos sociales (tercer sector) que la misma privilegia en sus análisis.
 Abstract
 This research approaches the issue of the international collective action, from the rise of the third sector organizations to the resurgence of counter-hegemonic peasant movements that internationalize and “environmentalize” their struggle from the discussions of agroecology, food sovereignty and environmental justice. These discussions will be exemplified by three peasant organizations in Brazil, México and Argentina. The organizations above mentioned express the processes of peasant territorialization and their dynamics in the three countries, in addition to a complex approach to the environmental issues that proposes a normative break related to the actions of the traditional environmental NGO´s, foundations and organizations. The organizations that we characterize in comparative terms are innovatory in relation to the classic peasant movement, because they move further into contemporary issues such as environmental questions, internal democracy and food sovereignty; resignifying and “environmentalizing” the contemporary agrarian question. Also, these organizations confront capitalism and rescue, from a critical perspective, the experiences of the social and trade union movements that preceded them. Then, the peasant organizations studied in this work affirm in their existence and social base some characteristics that the School of New Social Movements tends to deny in its analytical interpretation of the international collective action in globalization and social subjects (third sector) that this School privileges in their analyzes.

Bridging Disciplinary Gaps in Studies of Human-Environment Relations: A Modelling Framework

Modern human-environment relations are problematic and difficult to analyse in terms of nature and culture. Many authors suggest to abandon and overcome the nature-culture dichotomy in order to reorganise the academic division of labour, not only on environmental questions. Anthropologist Philippe Descola, for example, surveyed the empirical evidence of patterns in humanenvironmental relations, suggesting four abstract cosmologies. Here, we propose a translation into a modelling terminology, which is compatible with the formalisation of programmes in computer science. The generalised framework contains four ideal types of modelling paradigms. It can be tested on various other classification schemes in a number of disciplines. In each application, the categories of classification can be translated and then the patterns of the four logic types can be compared with the phenomenology of each case. Implications for interdisciplinary cooperation between science and the humanities are sketched for some environmental issues. This work demonstrates how tools from computer science can help, metaphorically, conceptually and technically, to organise interdisciplinary exchanges between science and the humanities. The categorical approach of applying the “divide and conquer” technique to different disciplinary models serves as a yardstick for comparing the implicit logic and modelling assumptions across examples whose phenomenological contents appear as unrelated. It gives useful hints how a dilemma of choosing between rigorous or relevant models can be resolved (e.g., in environmental science) and how the nature-culturedichotomy might be replaced by a general and flexible framework of a few model types.

Democracy, Market Economics, and Environmental Policy in Chile

hile's return to democratic rule with sustained economic growth provided the opportunity for some much-welcomed political space that, it was hoped, would permit the country to attend, at long last, to a number of pressing issues which had been long deferred, if not ignored, by the previous military government. Some of those issues, such as the consolidation of democracy, poverty, and human rights, had been the subject of considerable study by scholars. Much less studied, however, although also on the agenda, was the promise to address Chile's environmental problems, which had become much exacerbated under the laissez-faire economic model favored by the military regime. Because the new democratic administrations have followed through on that promise, the Chilean example lends support to that hypothesis which holds that environmental concerns in developing countries can be addressed more effectively under economically stable democratic regimes than by authoritarian political systems. While Chile's recent environmental policy clearly offers hope for the future, it also presents a challenge. Policy debates on environmental questions have been surprisingly sharp and bruising. The force and outcome of these debates give rise to two questions. First, can developing countries with neoliberal policy orientations consider a sufficiently Eduardo Silva is Assistant Professor of Political Science and a Fellow of the

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF A HEALTH TECHNOLOGY: A SCOPING REVIEW.

The Health Technology Expert Review Panel is an advisory body to Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) that develops recommendations on health technology assessments (HTAs) for nondrug health technologies using a deliberative framework. The framework spans several domains, including the environmental impact of the health technology(ies). Our research objective was to identify articles on frameworks, methods or case studies on the environmental impact assessment of health technologies. A literature search in major databases and a focused gray literature search were conducted. The main search concepts were HTA and environmental impact/sustainability. Eligible articles were those that described a conceptual framework or methods used to conduct an environmental assessment of health technologies, and case studies on the application of an environmental assessment. From the 1,710 citations identified, thirteen publications were included. Two articles presented a framework to incorporate environmental assessment in HTAs. Other approaches described weight of evidence practices and comprehensive and integrated environmental impact assessments. Central themes derived include transparency and repeatability, integration of components in a framework or of evidence into a single outcome, data availability to ensure the accuracy of findings, and familiarity with the approach used. Each framework and methods presented have different foci related to the ecosystem, health economics, or engineering practices. Their descriptions suggested transparency, repeatability, and the integration of components or of evidence into a single outcome as their main strengths. Our review is an initial step of a larger initiative by CADTH to develop the methods and processes to address the environmental impact question in an HTA.

Pinngortitaq – A Place of Becoming

Arctic ecosystems are on the verge of changes that are unprecedented in both magnitude and velocity. We stress that statements of a changing climate and environment have ambiguous definitions in both theoretical and metaphorical senses. Inuit have embraced the idea of an environment in a process of Pinngortitaq – a place of becoming – rather than a process of changing. In this note, we accentuate how a philosophy of a world becoming can inspire to answer some of the complex environmental questions asked today by enabling more flexible management regimes in the future.

Can We Learn to Hear Ethical Calls? In Honor of Scott Cameron

This article tries to grapple with the difficulty of hearing the call of the other and recognizing it as a call that obligates us to ethical response, especially when such a “call” is not issued by a human other but by other species or environmental precarity more broadly. I briefly review how ethical responsibility is articulated by Emmanuel Lévinas and then consider some of the ways in which his philosophy has been applied to environmental questions. I suggest that while some calls might be obvious and obligate by the blatant need almost impossible to ignore, in many cases a hermeneutic context and predisposition is required in order to “hear” a call and understand it as ethically obligating. I conclude with one example of how it might be possible to inculcate such dispositions that would attune us to more careful hearing and might cause us to recognize ethical obligation.

Energy Humanities: An Anthology eds. by Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer

Reviewed by: Energy Humanities: An Anthology eds. by Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer Jessica Maufort (bio) Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer, editors. Energy Humanities: An Anthology. Johns Hopkins UP, 2017. Pp. viii, 595. US $49.95. Against today's backdrop of eco-catastrophe and sustainability issues, recent concerns in the field of environmental humanities include the thematic and aesthetic examinations of pollution and waste, toxic/nuclear landscapes, eco-phobia, the imperilled human/non-human cohabitation, climate change fiction, and petrofiction. Often abridged as "cli-fi," climate change fiction refers to a recent (popular) literary genre whose fictional narratives foreground current environmental issues through a variety of techniques and modes (e.g., realist, speculative, utopian, dystopic). Petrofiction deals more specifically with the multi-faceted relationship between oil and human affairs. Both cli-fi and petrofiction as well as the representational challenges they investigate are usually studied within the context of the Anthropocene. In the face of posthumanism, new materialisms, and twenty-first-century climate and technological crises, many scholars and artists are, more than ever before, calling for collaborative work between the natural sciences and the arts. This mutual enrichment potentially helps us better understand, represent, and address the complex reality we live in. Informed by a similar interdisciplinary imperative, Energy Humanities: An Anthology contributes to these debates by focusing on the interface between culture and energy sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear energy. In their introduction to this substantial volume, editors Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer observe that engaging critically with our (ab)use of non-renewable energy resources leads to environmental questions as well as "social, cultural, and political challenges" (1). Work in the field of energy humanities, which is concomitant with that undertaken in environmental humanities, thus compels us to reconfigure old notions. The concept of modernity, for example, is reconceived as intimately linked to energy use: "We are citizens and subjects of fossil fuels through and through, whether we know it or not. And so any meaningful response to climate change will have to tarry with the world and the people that have been made from oil" (Szeman and Boyer 1). This point is articulated convincingly throughout the anthology. Equating modernity and energy, the editors argue, helps us achieve a more encompassing account of "the forces and processes shaping historical development" (2). The contributors to the volume contend that past critiques of modernity have too often overlooked this connection, while in fact the "economic growth," [End Page 271] "access to goods and services," and "capacities and freedoms" associated with modernity are "direct consequence[s] of the massive expansion of energy use" (2). The very well documented essays in the volume illuminate these interrelated issues. Szeman and Boyer propose that in addition to modern geopolitics, energy use has also intervened in "our relationships to our bodies, … human social relations, and … the imperatives of … 'culture'" (2). The pivotal thesis of Energy Humanities goes against the grain by suggesting that "the challenge of addressing global warming isn't fundamentally a scientific or technological one" (3). Such a proposition reacts not only to discourses that idealize technology as the sole solution to the crisis but also to those promoting energy transition plans that eventually prove complicit with an unrelenting exploitation of resources and thus with global capitalism (3).1 Rather, Szeman and Boyer write, the social sciences must complement technical research to apprehend our multi-faceted enmeshment with energy systems and "map out other ways of being, behaving, and belonging in relation to both old and new forms of energy" (3). The contributors to this volume, who for the most part hail from the humanities, adopt precisely such a transdisciplinary perspective. Some of the many issues addressed in this massive reimagining of modernity relate to environmental politics, "energy epistemologies" (6), linear and progress-based conceptions of history, and humankind's "energy unconscious" (8). Underlying these questions is a plea for "a sociopolitical revolution" that could reposition energy needs as a central criterion for "an equality of opportunities and capacities" (7). To explore the manifold implications of this eco-political endeavour, the scholarly and literary contributions to this volume are divided into four interconnected chapters: "Energy and Modernity: Histories and Futures...

Women's Satisfaction of Daylight in Contemporary Jeddah's Flats

For inhabitants of residential buildings in Saudi Arabia, daylight levels are generally considered to be sufficient (Dahlan and Mohamed 2010). While there are a number of studies that analyse the light conditions as a general parameter for dwellers in cities (Boubekri 2008, Edwards and Torcellini 2002, Gou, Lau, and Qian 2013, Kim and Kim 2010), there seems to be a lack of attention to the specific case of women. In their lifetime, women spend considerable time inside homes. Moreover, the window is an architectural element that embodies a complex combination of religious, cultural, and environmental questions in Saudi Arabia. This study examines women satisfaction with daylight level in their living space in middle class residential flats in Jeddah. Twenty three women between the ages 20-50 who live in contemporary flats in Jeddah were interviewed in semi-structure interviews. This research examines women's real use of daylight in their homes, by questioning the general understanding that daylight is provided at a sufficient level. This paper provides an insight into women's satisfaction with regards to the daylight provided in their daily life by demonstrating qualitative evidence. Results strongly indicates that women are not satisfied with daylight due to many reasons according to window location and glass type. This research seeks to make significant contribution to the gap in knowledge regarding women and daylight in Saudi culture that requires high level of privacy.

Evaluating indicators of human well-being for ecosystem-based management

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Interrelated social and ecological challenges demand an understanding of how environmental change and management decisions affect human well-being. This paper outlines a framework for measuring human well-being for ecosystem-based management (EBM). We present a prototype that can be adapted and developed for various scales and contexts. Scientists and managers use indicators to assess status and trends in integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs). To improve the social science rigor and success of EBM, we developed a systematic and transparent approach for evaluating indicators of human well-being for an IEA.Methods: Our process is based on a comprehensive conceptualization of human well-being, a scalable analysis of management priorities, and a set of indicator screening criteria tailored to the needs of EBM. We tested our approach by evaluating more than 2000 existing social indicators related to ocean and coastal management of the US West Coast. We focused on two foundational attributes of human well-being: resource access and self-determination.Outcomes and Discussion: Our results suggest that existing indicators and data are limited in their ability to reflect linkages between environmental change and human well-being, and extremely limited in their ability to assess social equity and justice. We reveal a critical need for new social indicators tailored to answer environmental questions and new data that are disaggregated by social variables to measure equity. In both, we stress the importance of collaborating with the people whose well-being is to be assessed.Conclusion: Our framework is designed to encourage governments and communities to carefully assess the complex tradeoffs inherent in environmental decision-making.

Gendered participation in community forest governance in India

ABSTRACTRecent forest governance practices in India have responded to environmental change and subsequent livelihood insecurity by focusing resource governance policies on communities. A paradigm shift has occurred involving participatory inclusive bottom-up approaches, rather than state-centric, top-down forestry. With the formulation of the 1988 National Forest Policy, several variants of participatory models of forest governance – social forestry, community forestry, joint forest management – have been tried out, with differing degrees of success. The 2006 Forests Right Act adopts a rights-based approach to participatory forestry to address the serious concerns of environmental degradation, livelihood insecurity, tenure reforms and questions of autonomy and identity of forest-dependent communities. Using mainly qualitative methodology, this paper reviews forest governance policies and undertakes a critical examination of recent participatory forestry practices. Drawing empirical evidence from two community-based forest governance institutions in the state of Odisha in eastern India, the paper demonstrates how participatory forestry programmes, albeit successful, may be exclusionary with regard to women’s engagement in cases where their involvement is under-represented.

Pediatric Environmental Health: Using Data on Toxic Chemical Emissions in Practice

Children's unique behavioral and physiological characteristics can increase their exposure and susceptibility to environmental chemicals. The link between exposure to environmental chemicals and specific health outcomes, however, is often uncertain. This article introduces several resources to help health practitioners identify potential environmental exposures and risks related to toxic chemicals. It focuses on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) free and public environmental data, including the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data that contain information about toxics released to the environment. Three hypothetical case studies are presented to demonstrate how these data can help answer environmental exposure questions. The first case study illustrates a scenario where multiple patients in an area exhibit the same symptoms with a suspected link to environmental chemicals. The second case study illustrates a scenario where a patient with a confirmed exposure to a toxic chemical needs assistance with identifying potential environmental sources. And the third case study illustrates a scenario where a patient is concerned about the potential for future exposure to an environmental contaminant in a particular geographic area. Each case study includes contacts for follow-up questions, including the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units (PEHSUs), EPA regional staff, state environmental agencies, and local health departments. These resources can help practitioners access and interpret environmental data, answer questions about potential exposures, and inform next steps if necessary.

Confronting Climate Change: The Uneasy Alliance of Scientists and Nonscientists in a Neoliberal World

Confronting Climate Change: The Uneasy Alliance of Scientists and Nonscientists in a Neoliberal World

The Comprehensive Barnegat Bay Research Program

Abstract Buchanan, G.A.; Belton, T.J., and Paudel, B., 2017. The Comprehensive Barnegat Bay Research Program. In: Buchanan, G.A.; Belton, T.J., and Paudel, B. (eds.), A Comprehensive Assessment of Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. A comprehensive ecosystem research strategy was developed and initiated for the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor (BB-LEH) estuary in New Jersey, United States. This multiyear program (2011–15) examined several environmental management issues and questions involving concerns with water quality (e.g., nutrients) and the health of this ecosystem (e.g., eutrophication). Multiple projects ranging from the assessment of phytoplankton to fish to wetlands, as well as hydrodynamic/water quality and ecosystem modeling, were conducted each year to fill in critical data gaps and to define the bay's baseline condition for future comparisons (e.g., a nuclear generating station on the bay with a once-through cooling system will close in 2019). Issues of concern for environmental agenci...