Genetic Conservation in a Climate of Loss: Thinking with Val Plumwood

In February 2008 the Svalbard Global Seed Vault had its official opening. The vault is a co-operative project: while its construction was largely funded by the Norwegian Government, its management also involves the Global Crop Diversity Trust and others, and its seed samples are being provided by governments and organisations all over the world. The vault is located in the Svalbard Archipelago, and has been dug into a mountainside. The project's architects hope that the location's remotenessalongside a thick layer of rock and permafrostwill ensure the survival of the seed samples in the face of any political conflict or environmental catastrophes that may occur elsewhere in the world. In short, the facility aims to provide seed insurance in a time of uncertainty, instability and change. According to accounts in the press, this bank is a `doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside on a secluded Arctic island ready to serve as a Noah's Ark for seeds in case of a global catastrophe' (Mellgren)

Loudly sing cuckoo : More-than-human seasonalities in Britain

This research was funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant number AH/E009573/1.Peer reviewedPostprin

Oriënterende meting van ammoniakemissie Holcim Sleufvloer type B = Explorative ammonia emission measurements on the Holcim grooved floor type B

This report describes open flux chamber measurements on the Holcim grooved floor type B for dairy cattle compared to a slatted concrete floor as references. Results show that ammonia emission was 39% compared to the slatted floor. However it should be noticed that this are only explorative measurements that need validation at full scale

Gladde loopvloeren? Er is wat aan te doen!

Dit artikel geeft een overzicht van de mogelijkheden met de voor- en nadelen en kosten

Autonomy of Nations and Indigenous Peoples and the Environmental Release of Genetically Engineered Animals with Gene Drives

This article contends that the environmental release of genetically engineered (GE) animals with heritable traits that are patented will present a challenge to the efforts of nations and indigenous peoples to engage in self‐determination. The environmental release of such animals has been proposed on the grounds that they could function as public health tools or as solutions to the problem of agricultural insect pests. This article brings into focus two political‐economic‐legal problems that would arise with the environmental release of such organisms. To address those challenges, it is proposed that nations considering the environmental release of GE animals must take into account the underlying circumstances and policy failures that motivate arguments for the use of the modified animals. Moreover, countries must recognize that the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights place on them an obligation to ensure that GE animals with patented heritable traits are not released without the substantive consent of the nations or indigenous peoples that could be affected

‘What about the coffee break?’: Designing virtual conference spaces for conviviality

Geography, like many other disciplines, is reckoning with the carbon intensity of its practices and rethinking how activities such as annual meetings are held. The Climate Action Task Force of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), for example, was set up in 2019 and seeks to transform the annual conference in light of environmental justice concerns. Mirroring shifts it geographic practice across the globe, these efforts point to a need to understand how new opportunities for knowledge production such as online events can operate effectively. In this article, we offer suggestions for best practice in virtual spaces arising from our Material Life of Time conference held in March 2021, a two day global event that ran synchronously across 15 time zones. Given concerns about lack of opportunities for informal exchanges at virtual conferences, or the “coffee break problem”, we designed the event to focus particularly on opportunities for conviviality. This was accomplished through a focus on three key design issues: the spatial, the temporal and the social. We review previous work on the benefits and drawbacks of synchronous and asynchronous online conference methods and the kinds of geographic communities they might support. We then describe our design approach and reflect on its effectiveness via a variety of feedback materials. We show that our design enabled high delegate satisfaction, a sense of conviviality, and strong connections with new colleagues. However we also discuss the problems with attendance levels and external commitments which hampered shared time together. We thus call for collective efforts to support the ‘event time’ of online meetings, rather than expectations to fit them around everyday tasks. Even so, our results suggest that synchronous online events need not result in geographical exclusions linked to time zone differences, and we outline further recommendations for reworking the spacetimes of the conference