Long-term Stewardship Research Articles

What is preventing private capital from reaching local climate action?

Private sector investable assets totalling USD 35.3 trillion globally are currently bound by at least one environmental, social and governance (ESG) criterion, 1 and could be targeted to deliver responses to the environmental crisis and subsequent devastating impact on vulnerable communities. However private sector finance for climate resilience and nature recovery is reported to be either moving very slowly, or not at all. 2 So what is the hold up? The co-founders of Biodiversity Capital have a longstanding combined history of delivering projects in urban regeneration, as well as green 3 and blue 4 infrastructure, housing and culture across the private and public sector, where financing for projects follows a linear start to finish model with handover to the client on completion. Since the beginning of the 20th century, charities have received funding from either government or philanthropists to deliver programmes against an agreed set of quantifiable targets and outputs. The current crisis on our hands is not static, it is a mix of complex, intertwined social, economic and environmental factors, where long-term stewardship, ultimately unique and very local, is now deemed a fundamental part of the equation from the start. In the light of this, we argue that achieving climate justice will require private finance to embrace the distinctive nature of collaboration between governments and the non-profit sector.

Species Preservation in the Face of Novel Threats: Cultural, Ecological, and Operational Considerations for Preserving Tree Species in the Context of Non-Indigenous Insects and Pathogens

Abstract Non-Indigenous insects and pathogens (NIIP) have functionally eliminated numerous tree species of immeasurable cultural and ecological significance over the past century, with the number of species introductions and associated impacts growing each year. Foresters are often on the frontlines of these impacts, tasked with quickly adapting management plans to recover potential economic losses and maintain future silvicultural options following tree species loss. We highlight that the irreplaceable cultural and ecological values provided by many tree species argues for renewed focus on applying integrated pest management and adaptive strategies in novel ways to sustain these values for future generations. To guide these efforts, we describe a framework for adapting to NIIP centered on three interrelated components: preservation value, preservation approach, and preservation strategy. This framework and emerging species preservation efforts provide an alternative path forward to sustain threatened species and their associated values in an era of increasing change. Study Implications: The impact of non-indigenous insects and pathogens (NIIP) is one of the greatest challenges facing the long-term stewardship of forests in North America. Species preservation efforts that apply integrated pest management and adaptive strategies to maintain species in the face of NIIP are increasingly needed in foresters’ toolboxes to address these novel threats. Identifying the preservation values (ethical responsibility, cultural integrity, ecological function, genetic conservation) tied to a species preservation effort will help guide how preservation approaches and strategies are applied at stand and landscape scales to sustain species and associated cultural and ecological values into the future.

Professional perceptions of participatory practices in green stormwater infrastructure development

Participatory practices are essential for green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) development that addresses stormwater issues while providing other ecosystem benefits. However, few studies have examined barriers to community engagement experienced by GSI professionals, particularly which phases include public participation, the groups they target, and the engagement mechanisms selected. If and how professionals evaluated their engagement processes or outcomes also remain under-investigated. This study fills these critical gaps through a survey (n = 195) and key informant interviews (n = 17) of professionals and academics previously involved in GSI development. We reveal that engagement initiatives for GSI are hindered mainly by available resources, knowledge and perceptions, requirements, and the COVID-19 Pandemic. Public hearings/information sessions and design workshops/charrettes are the most frequently applied engagement mechanisms, and current participation practices focus primarily on early project stages. While most of the reported benefits, challenges, and best practices are aligned with well-recognized general community engagement guides, GSI community engagement is uniquely challenged by project technical complexity and the need for effective knowledge transfer and long-term stewardship. Finally, the significant gap in engagement assessments calls for allocating adequate resources for evaluation and advancing research on appropriate evaluative methods based on project type, community context, and evaluation purpose.

Digital Curation and Contemporary Documentary Filmmaking

AbstractDocumentary films have evolved considerably since 1922s Nanook of the North. Fans of nonfiction now stream multi-episode documentaries on platforms like Netflix or catch a feature at one of many documentary-centered film festivals around the world. Inexpensive video cameras and internet distribution have expanded the documentary film universe exponentially. From 1-min films to feature-length theater releases, moviegoers around the world have embraced this diverse and growing genre. To the benefit of aspiring filmmakers, documentaries can now be filmed on a wide array of digital video devices, including smartphones, and edited inexpensively. Given this abundance, it may seem counterintuitive that, from a preservation perspective, the documentary film genre faces substantial risks. Research indicates that independent filmmakers lack access to resources that would ensure the long-term stewardship of their works (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2012). This research project examines documentary film production through the lens of digital curation. It describes filmmakers’ data practices and proposes a data curation model designed to guide filmmakers and film archives in developing data management plans similar to those currently used by researchers in the sciences. The proposed data curation model reflects the influence of the growing research data management field and integrates components related to digital storage, copyright, publishing, context, and file organization.

Border troubles: urban nature and the remaking of public/private divides

ABSTRACT Traditional interventions to “bring nature into the city” were often motivated by a concern to create forms of public space which would provide a public good. Despite such well-intentioned motivations, these public forms of urban nature have always been to some extent bounded, serving some in favor of others, authorizing particular uses and forms of behavior as more or less legitimate, and policing the boundaries of who is/not included in such space. In this paper, we argue that new interventions seeking to bring nature-based solutions (NBS) into the city serve to further trouble these boundaries. NBS seek to use nature to address urban sustainability challenges and they navigate and serve to reconfigure what is (and is not) public in the city. We draw on research undertaken in three cities – Newcastle (United Kingdom), Cape Town (South Africa) and Athens (Greece) to explore the ways in which notions of the private and the public are being remade with and through nature, and its implications for how we might understand urban politics. Our conclusions point to the need for governance arrangements that can support the long-term stewardship of nature in the public interest and with due accountability and we suggest three arrangements.

Centralized data repositories: NOAA’s National Archives for Marine Acoustic Data

The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information maintains two marine acoustic archives for the long-term stewardship of globally collected water-column sonar and passive acoustic data. These vast datasets are collected across NOAA and academia for a wide range of scientific objectives. The archives document the datasets using standards-driven metadata and preserve them on long-term storage systems. Users can discover, query, and access archived data using the archives’ web-based map viewers. Further, cloud-based access to 200 + TB through the NOAA Big Data Program enables free and immediate download of desired data and allows users to bring processing routines to large volumes of data—from simple statistical analyses to artificial intelligence. Cloud-based tools are being developed in collaboration with our partners in the ocean acoustic community to visualize and analyze data in the archives. This allows researchers of varying backgrounds to easily understand the quality and content of these complex data. Providing free access to data archives and facilitating the utility of these data increases the potential for researchers to address new questions that will advance the field of marine ecosystem acoustics.

Legal Options (and Obligations?) for Enhanced Canada–United States Cooperative Southern Resident Killer Whale Conservation

The critically endangered Southern Resident killer whale (SRKW) population is at a conservation crossroads. The SRKW’s range extends from California to southern Alaska, but the core habitat of the species is the inland Salish Sea. The principal threats to the population are the decline in Chinook salmon abundance, physical and acoustic disturbance, and environmental contamination. Effective management must respond to the cumulative impact of these threats. The SRKW population has been protected as an endangered species in Canadian and U.S. waters for more than a decade, and emergency conservation measures have been produced in both jurisdictions. Unfortunately, these conservation measures have failed to stabilize the population or advance cooperative ecosystem-based conservation. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) legally obligates states to cooperate in marine mammal conservation and, with respect to cetaceans, specifically requires states to work through an appropriate institution for their conservation and management. This article examines ongoing efforts by Canada and the United States to stabilize and recover the SRKW population in view of UNCLOS and the objective of long-term stewardship. This assessment includes ad hoc cooperative mechanisms and possible developments under existing cooperative forums. Although the base legal obligations created by UNCLOS are likely met, the objective of institutionalized cooperative cetacean conservation and management in UNCLOS is not met; moreover, existing cooperative forums are insufficient to effect SRKW recovery. Canada and the United States continue to approve projects without properly assessing the cumulative transboundary impact on the SRKW population or quantifying their contribution to important ecosystem-based thresholds, which reveals the true extent of management dissonance in the Salish Sea. This analysis concludes that enhanced bi-lateral cooperation and long-term co-existence with the SRKW population requires the creation of a new institutional forum, analogous to the International Joint Commission, that coordinates SRKW recovery measures and assesses future projects in view of cumulative effects management.

Long-term stewardship of green spaces: When urban regeneration meets social regeneration

This paper explores the challenges and the importance of long-term stewardship of green spaces. It looks at the role they play in bringing communities together and creating great places for people to live, work and play. It explores past mistakes and provides evidence for the positive impact green infrastructure can make in health and well-being, community and social cohesion and the economy.

Insights From the Software Design of a Multiphysics Multicomponent Scientific Code

Using simulations for scientific discovery requires that the software used in the simulations undergoes a rigorous design and development process similar to that of the lab instruments in the experimental sciences. To devise a good design methodology, it is critical to understand the requirements, constraints, and challenges. This article describes insights from the long-term stewardship of a multiphysics multicomponent software, FLASH, that was designed more than 20 years ago for astrophysics, now serves multiple communities, and has been successful in adapting to the changing world of high-performance computing.

Groundwater Recharge to Address Seawater Intrusion and Supply in an Urban Coastal Aquifer

The Orange County Water District (OCWD) was created in 1933 by the California Legislature and tasked with managing water resources in Orange County. As a part of its strategy to fight seawater intrusion and guarantee a reliable groundwater supply in the basin, OCWD built a recycled wastewater facility that treats wastewater received from the Orange County Sanitation District and recharges the water into the basin through injection wells and infiltration ponds. OCWD’s first recycled wastewater facility, Water Factory 21, began operating in 1975 and was replaced in 2008 by the Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS). Recharged water not serving as a barrier for seawater instruction is pumped by local water districts and municipalities (referred to as “producers”), who pay a pumping fee to OCWD. Water provided by GWRS is both more reliable and less expensive for the producers than water acquired from other sources, including imported surface water. In responding to the recognized threat of seawater intrusion, OCWD owes its success to creatively enabling recharge through the development of novel source water. OCWD’s broad purview and authority to manage groundwater, combined with its effective implementation and long-term stewardship of the recharge program as it has evolved over many years, have enabled innovation in MAR using treated wastewater.

Centralized repositories and cloud-based access: How ocean acoustic archives add value and enhance science

The NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information has developed two ocean acoustic archives for long-term stewardship, discovery and access to water-column sonar and passive acoustic data. These vast datasets are collected across NOAA, other government agencies, and academia for a wide range of scientific objectives. Through free and global access, users can discover, query, and analyze the data for new research and add value to the data by using it beyond its original collection purpose. NCEI has partnered with Google and Amazon Web Services to facilitate cloud-based access to 200 + TB of archived ocean acoustic data. Users can listen to the sound files from their browser, immediately download the desired data, and—most importantly—bring processing routines to large volumes of data from simple statistical analyses to artificial intelligence. The strength of the archives, the challenges faced by the impending tsunami of data, and how to tap into the archives for current and future acoustic research will be discussed.

Black Church and Liberal Arts Institutions

Academic institutions engaged in partnerships with the Black Church, including small, independent, under-resourced churches as well as historically Black denominational churches, and other under-resourced faith-based organizations, are encouraged to consider collaborative educational opportunities around the issues of strategic financial sustainability and short and long-term stewardship. Four highly community-engaged academics offer a thought-experiment starting with their observations and experiences with respect to the need for such partnerships, and how these kinds of collaborations may be able to help strengthen the Black Church, in all its forms and faith-based communities and ground them for greater advocacy for demanding systemic and structural change.

Prawns, justice, and relationships of care in Stilbaai, South Africa

Abstract This story is concerned with the intersection of governance, stewardship, care taking, and extraction. It is centred on insights gained through repeated encounters with bait prawns during 7 years of fieldwork in Stilbaai, South Africa. These prawns are intended as angling bait, but they are entangled in a host of complications—or relations—the discovery of which eventually led me see them differently than before. More recently, I have looked into the role of marine protected areas in the everyday lives of residents, researching conservation management in Stilbaai in connection with the Southern Cape Interdisciplinary Fisheries Research project. In that work, I use the idea of relationality, as understood from an anthropological perspective, to speak about what long-term stewardship needs to take into account. Understanding more about the mudprawn and where it lives in the ecosystem, how people extract it, what it is used for, and how it is thought of has provided an access point for me into thinking about coastal social–ecological systems and how to communicate their needs. In this story, I reflect on these creatures as they live in my research, showing what this species can teach about coastal sustainability more generically.

Stewardship as process: A paradox perspective

Long-term stewardship is usually represented as a stable structural condition and portrayed as a source of competitive advantage to firms (including family businesses) that use it as a mode of governance. Less is known about how organizations engage with stewardship as a process. We embrace a process approach to report a case study about the unfolding of stewardship in a multi-business family group. We conclude that stewardship is a process marked by critical tensions and paradoxes; by exploring the nature of these we uncover further dimensions and responses to the paradoxes of stewardship.

Herbicide programs to manage glyphosate/dicamba-resistant kochia (Bassia scoparia) in glyphosate/dicamba-resistant soybean

AbstractEvolution of kochia resistance to glyphosate and dicamba is a concern for growers in the US Great Plains. An increasing use of glyphosate and dicamba with the widespread adoption of glyphosate/dicamba-resistant (GDR) soybean in recent years may warrant greater attention. Long-term stewardship of this new stacked-trait technology will require the implementation of diverse weed control strategies, such as the use of soil-residual herbicides (PRE) aimed at effective control of GDR kochia. Field experiments were conducted in Huntley, MT, in 2017 and 2018, and Hays, KS, in 2018 to determine the effectiveness of various PRE herbicides applied alone or followed by (fb) a POST treatment of glyphosate plus dicamba for controlling GDR kochia in GDR soybean. Among PRE herbicides tested, sulfentrazone provided complete (100%), season-long control of GDR kochia at both sites. In addition, PRE fb POST programs tested in this study brought 71% to 100% control of GDR kochia throughout the season at both sites. Pyroxasulfone applied PRE resulted in 57% to 70% control across sites at 9 to 10 wk after PRE (WAPRE). However, mixing dicamba with pyroxasulfone improved control up to 25% at both sites. Kochia plants surviving pyroxasulfone applied PRE alone produced 2,530 seeds m−2 compared with pyroxasulfone + dicamba (230 seeds m−2) at the Montana site. No differences in soybean grain yields were observed with PRE alone or PRE fb POST treatments at the Montana site; however, dicamba, pyroxasulfone, and pendimethalin + dimethenamid-P applied PRE brought lower grain yield (1,150 kg ha−1) compared to all other tested programs at the Kansas site. In conclusion, effective PRE or PRE fb POST (two-pass) programs tested in this research should be proactively utilized by the growers to manage GDR kochia in GDR soybean.

What Does Good Green Infrastructure Planning Policy Look Like? Developing and Testing a Policy Assessment Tool Within Central Scotland UK

ABSTRACTThis paper develops and tests a new self-assessment policy tool that illuminates the quality of planning policy for green infrastructure (GI). Working with 19 local planning authorities within the UK Central Scotland Green Network area (CSGN), the multi-functional coverage and strength of GI policies in statutory development plans were assessed. The tool was built from fusing two existing but unrelated initiatives addressing GI standards; Building with Nature and Integrating Green Infrastructure (IGI). The results reveal surprising variation across the functional coverage of GI-related policy and strength of associated policy wording, suggesting a significant vulnerability for how GI is mainstreamed in decision-making processes. To address this knowledge exchange deficit, the best performing policies were captured and adapted to inform a suite of model policies with global application. Significantly, the policies champion the different functions performed by GI and stress the need for early and ongoing involvement throughout any development process with funding for long-term stewardship post-development. The results serve as a catalyst for improved dialogue and social learning across planning, and wider built/natural environment teams and professions to plug identified policy gaps. In particular, there is recognition of the need for planning policy responses to move outside their usual environmental remit and engage with other policy sectors using more holistic policy hooks such as placemaking, placekeeping and the climate emergency. We argue that this tool has universal applicability in many planning systems for improving the policy response and imperative for GI, thereby increasing the potential for better spatial planning delivery.

Does founding family involvement affect share repurchase activity? Evidence from US firms from 2006 through 2015

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate whether family firms (FFs) differ from non-family firms (NFFs) in their propensity and likelihood of repurchasing shares. It focuses on the effects of voting control and managerial control of family members and economic conditions on repurchasing activity.Design/methodology/approachThis paper employs pooled Tobit and probit models for a sample of 982 US firms for the period 2006 through 2015 and separates the roles of voting control and managerial control on influencing share repurchase decisions.FindingsThis paper provides evidence that FFs have a decreased propensity to repurchase shares relative to NFFs over the sample period. In general, the decreased propensity to repurchase shares is driven by the decision whether to repurchase shares and not the percentage of outstanding market value of equity repurchased.Practical implicationsFor critics of share repurchases, this paper provides support for existing literature that FFs provide good long-term stewardship to their firms. In general, it demonstrates that FFs are less likely to repurchase shares than NFFs. Investors that have a preference for or against repurchases can use this information to improve their security selection process.Originality/valueTo date, the effects of family voting and managerial control on share repurchases in the USA has not been considered in the finance literature. This paper adds to the literature by providing evidence that family influence generally results in a lower propensity to repurchase shares.

Critical Financial Challenges for Biobanking: Report of a National Cancer Institute Study.

Researchers and other key stakeholders in biobanking often do not have a thorough understanding of the true costs and challenges associated with initiating, running, and maintaining a biobank. The National Cancer Institute's Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB) commissioned the Biobanking Financial Sustainability survey to better understand the challenges that biobanks face in supporting ongoing operations. A series of interviews with biobanking managers and an international focus group session informed the content of the survey. The design of the survey included five main sections, each containing questions related to primary topics as follows: general demographics, operations, funding sources, costs, and financial challenges. While the survey focused on financial issues and challenges, it also explored staffing and strategic planning as these issues relate to the sustainability of operations and financial support. U.S. and international biobanks were included in the survey. Biobanks in general are dependent on public funding and most biobanks do not have formal plans for the long-term stewardship of their collections. Respondents are working at a critical level of personnel and are not in a position to further reduce staffing. Smaller biobanks in particular need assistance in defining reasonable cost recovery user fees for biospecimens and related services. The survey results highlight several issues that are important for long-term biobank sustainability. It is critical to prepare for such issues as effective biobanking practices have increasingly been recognized as a key component for the advancement of precision medicine.

Increasing access to big bioacoustic data through cloud-based systems

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has recently developed an archive for the long-term stewardship of passive acoustic data. Protocols for archiving passive acoustic data are currently being established in support of the NOAA Ocean Noise Reference Station Network project, and monitoring marine mammals and fish. Archives maintain data, but access to these data is a core mission of NCEI that allows users to discover, query, and analyze the data in new and innovative ways. To facilitate global access to what will be 100s of TB of bioacoustic data, NCEI has partnered with Google Cloud through the NOAA Big Data Project. Cloud-based access to large volumes of data creates the ability to listen to sound files, download more easily, and bring processing routines to the data instead of bringing the data to the processing.

Collections Access and Custom Storage Solutions at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center

The National Museum of Natural History is committed to long-term stewardship of collections and to supporting their use by scientists and the general public. This stewardship role is unique among other US natural history museums. As the nation’s natural history museum, the National Museum of Natural History has a mandated commitment to conserve and protect its collections in a manner that will assure their continued accessibility by future generations and maintain the National Museum of Natural History mission. A significant number of objects from the National Museum of Natural History are permanently stored at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD. This space not only includes collections from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), but also the Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (HMSG), the Freer Sackler Gallery (FSG) and the National Museum of African Art (AfA) as well as several other museums. In terms of collections access and use, the museum support center has a team, Collections Support Services (CSS), dedicated to collections’ long-term care and preservation. Collections Support Services provides access and support for the 730,000 square feet of collections housed at MSC. CSS staff perform a variety of technical and labor tasks related to the cleaning, preparation, packing, transport, unpacking, and permanent storage of objects and specimens. This includes building custom aluminum pallets for oversized objects and whale skull cradles. Moreover, while the use of palletized storage is not a new concept in museum storage, the construction of Pod 4 at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, MD posed some unique challenges for the permanent storage of oversized collections. Pod 4 provides continuous rows of 2', 4' and 8' deep cantilevered open racking from floor to ceiling (22 feet high), and allows palletized objects to be moved and placed in the racking via forklift. Traditional wooden pallets are unacceptable by archival standards, as they are acidic by nature, bulky, heavy, not fire-retardant, and prone to pest infestation. Collections Support Services circumvented these issues by establishing an innovative system of customized aluminum pallets for collections’ long-term care and preservation. These pallets are durable and lightweight, and must pass several quality control tests that include dropping and jarring. They are also designed with multiple functions in mind for ease of use, storage, transport, and maintenance.