Lost in Transitions: Analyzing Sectoral Transitions in Postcolonial Developing Island States, Investigating Theoretical and Practical Gaps in Sustainability Transitions Theory

The theory of Sustainability Transitions, a current concept that has a relevance for both policy and academic thinking, attempts to explain fundamental structural changes in individual economic sectors and in societies at large. Yet, its application outside developed industrialized societies, where the theory originated, has been limited. More research is required on the applicability of transition approaches in developing states. This study attends to this constraint by examining the explanatory power of the main theoretical tenets of sustainability transitions in the contexts of the agricultural and extractive sectors of the postcolonial developing island states of Nauru, Jamaica and Sri Lanka, which extends the geographical and historical terrain of the theory. An empirical survey of 180 individuals, participant observations, archival research, a review of 536 books and articles, in 9 fieldwork missions and some 50 research sites, provides a canvas broad enough to test Sustainability Transitions epistemology and hypotheses with local communities of knowledge: its theoretical scope – levels and units of analysis, its transition causation mechanisms, its validity outside its origin-context in developed countries, and, by extension, to establish whether or not its universal assumptions are justified. Drawing on a comprehensive multi-sectoral analysis, this study illustrates that when deployed in the context of developing countries, specifically in postcolonial island states, the multi-level perspective is deficient. While the analytical framework is useful to some extent, it falls short to provide an inclusive explanation of what drives sectoral changes in developing island states and its epistemology is not fully-representative of sectoral and societal transitions in unindustrialized island societies. The theory does not adequately consider the role of government, or agency; it fails to define the notion of sustainability in applicable, operational terms; it overemphasizes the role of niches and radical innovation networks in sectoral change processes while underemphasizing the rigidity of dominant socio-technical regimes; it offers neither a normative model nor a valid descriptive model of sectoral transformations, and therefore, subscribes no instrument for policy analysis and policy design. Further research is essential to examine whether or not these theoretical limitations are observable in other developing states, and in such event, further refinements of sustainability transitions analytical tools should be warranted

Entangled Histories: An Analysis Of The Anglophone Histories Of Science In Latin America From Dependence Decoloniality, 1950-Present

Science in Latin America has a rich, complex history characterized by a hybridization of multiple Indigenous, Creole, imperial Iberian and Western/Northern knowledge practices. As a result of these entangled histories, Latin American science does not fit easily into the standard periodization of Western histories of science, nor into traditional Latin American historical periodization. This inability to effectively categorize and constrain the heterogeneous histories of Latin American science has meant that these fascinating narratives have been widely ignored by historians in the West. After reading widely from what has been published over the years, some patterns began to emerge in the ways in which Western-located academics have considered the subject. This thesis examines how Anglophone historians have written about science in Latin America over the previous 70 years, from the early narratives of dependence, through social histories and constructivism, to more recent postcolonial histories and decolonial standpoints. The hope is that through such historical self-reflection, Anglophone historians will more readily incorporate heterogeneous and pluriversal perspectives on science in Latin America in their research and in their curriculums, and also begin to publish works that are accessible to diverse peoples outside of niche academic circles

The EC bioethanol blend mandate policy: its effect on ACP sugar trade and potential interaction with EPA policies

The study aim was to determine effects of the EC bioethanol blend mandate policy and its potential interaction with the EPA policies on EU/ACP countries. The research analysis focussed on welfare outcomes, changes in trade balance and output of bioethanol crops commodities due to these policies. Emphasis of our analysis was placed on sugar given the economic importance of this commodity to many ACP member states. Absence of an EU bioethanol partial equilbrium model means we had to design one from certain assumptions. One of the assumptions was that subsidies support EU bioethanol production such that just enough is produced to meet the 5.75% and 10% EC blend mandate requirements. For this reason, EU bioethanol production did not affect transport fuel demand and prices. Using the GTAP model, the study has found that the EC bioethanol blend mandate policy increases bioethanol crops commodities prices resulting in global welfare loss that is highest in the EU region. However, the EC bioethanol blend mandate policy also increases bioethanol crops commodities production in ACP countries and promote ACP export of these commodities to the EU. The EU is able to produce all bioethanol requirements from local sugar beet production. Increasing the amount of sugar beet in bioethanol production minimizes the effect on global food prices and offers greatest benefits to ACP countries through promotion of their sugar industries. Trade liberalising EPA policies result in welfare gain for regions engaged in them. However, the EC bioethanol blend mandate policy’s interaction with the EPA policies result in welfare loss, which is again highest in the EU. Combination of the EC bioethanol blend mandate/EPA policies also promotes ACP bioethanol crops production and export. Overall, the study has contributed to our understanding of biofuel policies and their potential global effects on food markets especially in ACP countries

Greenhouse Governmentality : Discourses of Rural Development and the Negotiation of Farmer Subjectivity in Jamaica

The Jamaican small farmer has long been perceived as backward and technologically inept, and has been severally intervened upon by the state and development agencies aiming to correct this perceived obsolescence. The aggressive promotion of greenhouse farming technology since the early 2000's represents one of the latest of these initiatives. In this thesis, I examine the deployment of greenhouse technology, which has been hailed by some of its promoters as a vehicle for rural development and agricultural modernization. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, I argue that this new greenhouse development model can be read as a form of greenhouse governmentality, aimed at cultivating a modern subjectivity defined by technological sophistication and neoliberal entrepreneurism. The discussion and arguments of the thesis are based on a qualitative analysis of a synthesis of data derived from observation, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussion collected over two summers. My findings suggest that farmers are performing and contesting subjectivity in multiple ways. A number of greenhouse farmers have implemented greenhouses, but have rejected the notion that greenhouse farmers are a special, or new kind of farmer. Conversely, some open field farmers and other greenhouse farmers declare that greenhouse production is transformative. These contestations about how the farmer should be seen play out in the way that the farm is assembled, and I show that farmers have to negotiate a physical terrain that mediates access to water, predisposes them to hurricanes and results in high temperatures in greenhouses based on elevation differences.M.S

The Conservation, Excavation, and Analysis of Ancient Human Remains: A Bioarchaeological Case Study of Prehistoric Reburials from Nevis, West Indies

In the summer of 2015, the cranium of what seemed to be an indigenous Caribbean individual was discovered partially exposed on White’s Bay Beach, Nevis. The following year, upon excavation of two known burial sites, a test pit brought forth an additional burial of two individuals dating about 1025-1275 AD. Currently, there is very little known about this period causing confusion about the migration and settlement patterns of the Caribbean people during this time. Additionally, the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society is experiencing rising concerns of the demolition and utilization of their historical land and beaches for infrastructural development. As the tourist economy and access to the internet have increased, economic development has become far more important to developers and landowners than land preservation. As a result, this has caused an increase in beach erosion and historically documented and undocumented lands are being developed, erasing the cultures and histories present on this land. This thesis argues that a case study of prehistoric human remains found on White’s Bay Beach can be used to describe and better understand the culture, customs, and heritage, of both the current and indigenous population on Nevis. It can also help educate and inform the current Nevisian residents on the importance of decreasing construction and preserving these lands. Traditional excavation methods and a combination of visual and metric observations were used to collect skeletal data. The results of this case study found that these burials belonged to the Taíno people, providing valuable information that will allow a better understanding of the Caribbean people during the end of the Ostionoid period (600-1500 CE)

Persistent Mirage : how the 'Great American Desert' buries Great Plains Indian environmental history

In the winter of 1819 the United States shook under the first Great Depression, and on the Missouri River a great military/scientific enterprise sent to secure Missouri Territory shivered and died from cholera and scurvy. In 1820 Maj. Stephen Long and a poorly equipped expedition of twenty-three soldiers, amateur scientists, and landscape painters, set out from Engineer Cantonment to circumnavigate the unknown Central Great Plains during the height of summer, and rescue something from the debacle. After weathering endless rain and hallucinating waves of Comanche, they divided into two groups at the Arkansas, and then either starved and endured weeks of rain on the lower Arkansas, or ate rancid skunk and endured blistering sun on the 'Red River'. On return they found Long had 'mistaken' the Canadian River for the Red, and that they were yet another failed expedition to know the Louisiana Purchase. Unsurprisingly, Long labeled the whole place a "great desert." An editor improved the phrase to Great American Desert, and emblazoned the phrase on history. A Persistent Mirage is both an exegesis of the GAD myth and an HGIS study of the groups and biomes the desert mirage occludes. Desert was a cultural term meaning beyond the pale that beached with the Puritans. Like Turner's frontier, it stayed a step ahead of settlement, moving west to the tall grass prairies before crossing the Mississippi to colonize the Great Plains. Once there it did calculable damage to the writing of Plains Aboriginal history. After all, who lives upon deserts but wandering beasts and savages? Beneath the mirage was an aboriginal network of agricardos, or agricultural and trading centers, growing enough food to support large populations, and produce tradable surpluses, under-girded by bison protein. Euramericans from Cabeza de Vaca on were drawn to agricardos which helped broker the passages of horses to the Northern Plains and of firearms to the Southwest. While some withstood epidemic disease, the escalation of inter-group violence and environmental degradation due to the adoption of the horse by agricardo groups proved their undoing. Beneath the Great American Desert lies the great Indian agricardo complex, with its history just begun

The EC bioethanol blend mandate policy: its effect on ACP sugar trade and potential interaction with EPA policies

The study aim was to determine effects of the EC bioethanol blend mandate policy and its potential interaction with the EPA policies on EU/ACP countries. The research analysis focussed on welfare outcomes, changes in trade balance and output of bioethanol crops commodities due to these policies. Emphasis of our analysis was placed on sugar given the economic importance of this commodity to many ACP member states. Absence of an EU bioethanol partial equilbrium model means we had to design one from certain assumptions. One of the assumptions was that subsidies support EU bioethanol production such that just enough is produced to meet the 5.75% and 10% EC blend mandate requirements. For this reason, EU bioethanol production did not affect transport fuel demand and prices. Using the GTAP model, the study has found that the EC bioethanol blend mandate policy increases bioethanol crops commodities prices resulting in global welfare loss that is highest in the EU region. However, the EC bioethanol blend mandate policy also increases bioethanol crops commodities production in ACP countries and promote ACP export of these commodities to the EU. The EU is able to produce all bioethanol requirements from local sugar beet production. Increasing the amount of sugar beet in bioethanol production minimizes the effect on global food prices and offers greatest benefits to ACP countries through promotion of their sugar industries. Trade liberalising EPA policies result in welfare gain for regions engaged in them. However, the EC bioethanol blend mandate policy’s interaction with the EPA policies result in welfare loss, which is again highest in the EU. Combination of the EC bioethanol blend mandate/EPA policies also promotes ACP bioethanol crops production and export. Overall, the study has contributed to our understanding of biofuel policies and their potential global effects on food markets especially in ACP countries

Assessing the sustainability of indigenous food systems in Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health Nutrition & Food Systems at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Chapter 2 is reproduced with the publisher's permission. This article was published in Vogliano, C., Murray, L., Coad, J., Wham, C., Maelaua, J., Kafa, R., & Burlingame, B., Progress towards SDG 2: Zero hunger in Melanesia – A state of data scoping review, Global Food Security, 29, 100519, © Elsevier 2021. Chapter 3 is reproduced with permission. This article was published as Chapter 4, From the ocean to the mountains: Storytelling in the Pacific Islands, in FAO and Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, Indigenous Peoples’ food systems: Insights on sustainability and resilience from the front line of climate change, Rome, 2021, http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cb5131en. Chapters 4 & 5 are re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Appendices A & H are re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 IGO (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO) license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/. Appendix B was removed for copyright reasons. Appendix C is re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Indigenous Peoples living in Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) who have traditionally relied on locally grown, biodiverse foods for their primary source of nutrition are now seeing the adverse impacts of changing diets and climate change. Shifts away from traditional diets towards modern, imported and ultra-processed foods are likely giving rise to noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, which are now the leading causes of mortality. Climate change is magnifying health inequities and challenging food and nutrition security through heavier rains, longer droughts, and rising sea levels. COVID-19 has highlighted additional challenges for those living in PSIDS, exposing vulnerabilities across global food systems. Using Solomon Islands as a proxy for the broader Pacific, this thesis aims to assess PSIDS food system sustainability, including diet quality and diversity, as well as perceived food system transitions. Findings from this thesis can help strengthen discourse around promoting sustainable and resilient food systems and help achieve food and nutrition security targets set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The effects of genetic ancestry on elite sprint athlete status in the West African diaspora

Elite athletic performance is widely acknowledged to result from the exposure of a favourable genetic endowment to a favourable combination of environmental factors including culture, diet, training regime and socioeconomic status. Athletes from West African descendant populations in North America and Western Europe have long been prominent in elite sprint running, constituting 63% of the top 100 performers in each sprint discipline, outperforming athletes from Europe (23%), West Africa (8%) and the rest of the world (6%). These members of the West African diaspora are genetically admixed, resulting in detectable levels of both African and European ancestry because of gene flow between African slaves and Europeans during chattel slavery in the 16th to 19th centuries. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate the effect that ancestral genetic composition may have had on the likelihood of becoming a top-class sprint athlete amongst samples of African-Americans and Jamaicans. It was hoped that these findings would add to the existing research in attempting to understand the unique combination of factors that produce elite sprint athletes. Ancestrally informative genetic data from elite African-American and Jamaican sprint athletes and ethnically-matched controls were used to explore how genetic ancestry affects sprint athlete status in these populations. These data are also vital when investigating the putative origins of an admixed population, and relatively little research has investigated the genetic ancestry of modern Jamaicans when compared to African-Americans. To bring the two groups to comparable levels of insight, the population history of the Jamaican people was estimated by comparing the observed matrilineal gene pool to the gene pools of known source regions of Africa. By simulating a stable population with the observed population dynamics from slave-era Jamaica, it was possible to draw conclusions about selection acting on the Jamaican slave population from the colonisation of the island by England in 1655 until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. In addition to the Jamaican maternal lineages already genotyped, paternal lineages in both African-Americans and Jamaicans, as well as maternal lineages in African-Americans were genotyped to assess any association these lineages had with elite sprint athlete status. These lineages were also compared between the cohorts to assess any differences in lineage composition across both groups of athletes and controls. Finally, locus-specific genetic ancestry was calculated to map loci associated with elite athlete status to regions of the genome with a greater amount of African or European ancestry than would be expected under the null hypothesis of no association with ancestry. Assuming a difference in the likelihood of sprint athletes originating from either Africa or Europe, detected associations between locus-specific ancestry and sprint status may indicate specific genomic regions of interest. The main findings of this thesis are: a) Modern Jamaicans are mostly descended from slaves originating from the Gold Coast of Africa, despite large influxes of slaves from the Bight of Biafra and West-central Africa before the end of the slave trade. b) There appears to have been selective pressure acting on the slave population of Jamaica. Differences between the presumptive origins of the observed lineages and the outcome of the stable population model suggested varying levels of mortality and fecundity within the slave population, consistent with earlier ethnographic and linguistic studies. c) The distribution of maternal lineages in the African-American athletes were significantly different from that of African-American controls. Maternal lineage distributions between Jamaican athletes and Jamaican controls were not significantly different. There was insufficient statistical power to infer any differences between the paternal lineages of African-American athletes and controls or the Jamaican athletes and controls. This suggests that either maternal ancestry may be a factor in elite sprint athlete status for African-Americans or it could simply be a false positive, inherent to the methodology used. Jamaican maternal lineages are homogeneous with regards to elite sprint athlete status. There was insufficient statistical power to arrive at similar conclusions regarding the paternal lineages of athletes and controls in either group. d) The maternal lineages of African-American athletes and Jamaican athletes were significantly different, although there was insufficient statistical power to determine if there were any differences between the paternal lineages of African-American athletes and Jamaican athletes. This suggests that the same maternal lineage distribution is not associated with sprint athlete status in the two populations, while there is insufficient evidence to make a similar claim regarding paternal lineages. e) The maternal lineages of African-American controls and Jamaican controls were also significantly different, although there was insufficient statistical power to conclude whether significant difference exists in the paternal lineages of African-American controls and Jamaican controls. These results suggest that there is some evidence that the population histories of African-Americans and Jamaicans are significantly different despite the lack of evidence from the paternal lineages. f) The proportion of genome-wide African ancestry did not differ significantly between either African-American athletes and controls or Jamaican athletes and controls. This suggests that environmental factors typically associated with higher levels of African ancestry in these populations (e.g. lower socioeconomic status, diminished access to healthcare) are not directly linked with elite athlete status. g) The estimated number of generations since admixture occurred did not differ significantly between athletes and controls for either African-Americans or Jamaicans. This suggests that athletes were not more likely than controls to have had European ancestors in the recent past, thereby potentially having greater access to resources. h) Admixture mapping was used to detect an enrichment of European ancestry at chromosome 4q13.1 significantly associated with athlete status in African-Americans. There were no significant loci associated with athlete status in Jamaicans. This suggests that the regions of the genome influencing sprint athlete status may be different in the two populations, although there was insufficient statistical power to draw any meaningful conclusions from the Jamaican data. This thesis has potential implications for future work not only explaining the disproportionate success of West African descendant sprint athletes but also for advancing the basic understanding of the genetic influences on the limits of human performance