A Global Review of Sustainable Consumption Policies

Rebecca Gresh discusses the current status of industrialized countries’ uses of world resources, as well as recent actions to address sustainable consumption. She notes that critiques of the recent Marrakech Process by scholars demonstrate the need for increasing structural and collective measures to address sustainable consumption in an equitable way.Title VI National Resource Center Grant (P015A100065)published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Neoliberalism and alternative food movements: markets, the state, and knowledge production in Southern California

Alternative food movements are promoted as solutions to environmental and social problems in the context of neoliberalism in the Unites States. Scholarly literature is divided over whether alternative food movements are reproducing the very structures of oppression they have sought to overcome, thus limiting the potential for systemic food change. My dissertation investigates how food justice is envisioned and practiced in this context through a qualitative research study of two alternative food projects in San Diego, California. One project is in a low-income, African American, and Latino locale, called Southeastern San Diego. They call themselves “Project New Village.” A second project is formed by white, affluent participants, located south of the city in the wild Tijuana River Estuary at the U.S. – Mexico border. They call themselves “San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project.” These two movements emerge from San Diego’s history as two different trajectories. I found that by building a community garden and local farmers market, PNV is resisting the legacy of institutional racism, class inequality, city disinvestment, and supermarket abandonment that forged Southeastern as a space of exclusion. Not simply a project about food, PNV uses food as a tool to empower the neighborhood by engaging educational institutions in the project, creating employment opportunities through the garden and neighborhood market, forging community bonds, and teaching critical knowledge about food and nutrition from their perspective. Strategically using the garden and market as a tool to leverage city support, they can position themselves in ways that can advocate for policy transformation. The obstacles they face, such as that of law enforcement patrols interrupting their community rebuilding efforts, are very different hurdles than those faced by privileged settings. The location and affluence of SDRS leaders and participants lends a different approach to food justice work. I learned that SDRS is resisting the legacy of development in San Diego that has given rise to suburban sprawl, little land for farming, importing food to survive, and environmental destruction. SDRS challenges this past by creating local markets around sustainable food production. Building on sustainable agriculture by using permaculture, dry land farming techniques, and experimenting with the local habitat, SDRS is contributing to new knowledge about how to farm ecologically in San Diego. In addition to selling their produce at the farm and local venues, they work to create a new generation of sustainable farmers, and enlightened consumers

Phylodynamics of CHIKV Asian genotype epidemics.

<p>Time-scaled maximum clade credibility (MCC) tree of the CHIKV Asian genotype was inferred by Bayesian analysis. Sequences from different regions are colored as described in the key. The Caribbean outbreak (CO) clade is supported by Bayesian posterior probabilities (BPP) as 1 in BMCMC analysis and bootstrap values 96% in the maximum likelihood phylogeny. Subclades CO1 and CO2, supported by BPP over 0.98, are also marked in the tree. A small group of Nicaraguan sequences that are relatively distinct from other Nicaraguan sequences are highlighted by a red hash symbol (#). The major ancestral geographic states (state probabilities over 0.5) at the backbone of phylogenetic tree are colored by region and labeled in the tree. The nodes with state probabilities greater than 0.9 are marked by asterisks. The mean and 95% highest posterior density (HPD) of the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) of the entire Asian genotype and tMRCAs of virus movement between regions are also indicated. The scale bar represents chronological time (in years).</p

Significant residue diversity between CO clades.

<p>Significant residue diversity between CO clades.</p

Regions of sampling countries^a.

<p>Regions of sampling countries<a href="http://www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0006670#t001fn001" target="_blank">^a</a>.</p

Phylogeographic clustering of Caribbean/Americas epidemic CHIKV strains.

<p>The Bayesian maximum clade credibility (MCC) tree of CHIKV Asian genotype was annotated to reflect the geographic origin of samples collected in the Americas. The CO clade was split into three parts, magnified, and indicated by gray shading: subclade CO1 (right side of the tree), subclade CO2 (left middle panel), and non-CO1/CO2 strains (left lower panel). Sequences from different regions are colored in branches as described in the key. The original countries of infections (either indigenous or travel-related) are depicted with colored ovals next to the complete strain names and described in the key as well.</p

Maximum likelihood tree of CHIKV Asian genotype.

<p>The major nodes with bootstrap values above 70% are indicated. The CO clade, supported by bootstrap value 96.6%, is colored in red. Amino acid substitutions that contribute to clade diversity are mapped to the branches of the tree. CO-clade-specific amino acid substitutions are marked in red. Monophyletic groups within CO clade and associated amino acid changes are marked in blue. The scale bar represents genetic distance.</p

Differing epidemiological dynamics of Chikungunya virus in the Americas during the 2014-2015 epidemic

<div><p>Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) has been detected sporadically since the 1950s and includes three distinct co-circulating genotypes. In late 2013, the Asian genotype of CHIKV was responsible for the Caribbean outbreak (CO) that rapidly became an epidemic throughout the Americas. There is a limited understanding of the molecular evolution of CHIKV in the Americas during this epidemic. We sequenced 185 complete CHIKV genomes collected mainly from Nicaragua in Central America and Florida in the United States during the 2014–2015 Caribbean/Americas epidemic. Our comprehensive phylogenetic analyses estimated the epidemic history of the Asian genotype and the recent Caribbean outbreak (CO) clade, revealed considerable genetic diversity within the CO clade, and described different epidemiological dynamics of CHIKV in the Americas. Specifically, we identified multiple introductions in both Nicaragua and Florida, with rapid local spread of viruses in Nicaragua but limited autochthonous transmission in Florida in the US. Our phylogenetic analysis also showed phylogeographic clustering of the CO clade. In addition, we identified the significant amino acid substitutions that were observed across the entire Asian genotype during its evolution and examined amino acid changes that were specific to the CO clade. Deep sequencing analysis identified specific minor variants present in clinical specimens below-consensus levels. Finally, we investigated the association between viral phylogeny and geographic/clinical metadata in Nicaragua. To date, this study represents the largest single collection of CHIKV complete genomes during the Caribbean/Americas epidemic and significantly expands our understanding of the emergence and evolution of CHIKV CO clade in the Americas.</p></div

Maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree of complete coding nucleotide sequences of CHIKV.

<p>Well-supported nodes by bootstrap values over 70% are marked in the tree. Three genotypes (West African, ECSA, and Asian) and clades (Indian Ocean and Caribbean outbreaks) are described in the trees. New sequences sampled from the Americas are colored in red. The phylogenetic tree is midpoint-rooted, and the scale bar represents the number of nucleotide substitutions per site. Arrows indicate known recent travel of the human hosts to Africa or Asia in the ECSA genotype.</p