The geopolitical ecology of conservation : the emergence of illegal wildlife trade as national security interest and the re-shaping of US foreign conservation assistance

In this article we develop a geopolitical ecology of foreign conservation assistance. While the literature on the political nature of foreign assistance writ large highlights how geopolitical agendas are pursued through foreign assistance, we focus on how this geopolitics of foreign assistance articulates with biodiversity conservation concerns. We draw attention to how conservation donor agencies negotiate shifting geopolitical contexts in which the protection of biodiversity from the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is increasingly framed in the language of national security concerns. We ask: Does framing IWT as a national security concern shape the allocation of foreign conservation assistance? What can answering this question tell us, both empirically and conceptually, about the geopolitical ecology of foreign conservation assistance specifically, and about the meaning of biodiversity conservation efforts to the state more broadly? We approach these questions by combining in-depth qualitative and quantitative analyses of the foreign conservation assistance provided by the US’ lead wildlife conservation agency, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Between 2002 to the end of fiscal year 2018, the USFWS Division of International Affairs provided assistance to 4142 projects across 106 countries worth over USD $301 million. Our results show that an increasing portion of foreign assistance for biodiversity conservation is allocated to projects that have the specific objective of combating wildlife trafficking (CWT) at the expense of other conservation priorities. This transformation of what it means to fund conservation work overseas, we argue, lies at the heart of an emerging and intensifying geopolitical ecology of conservation, marked by increasing efforts to link the illicit harvesting and trafficking of wildlife with concerns about threats to national security. We conclude by discussing what a geopolitical ecology lens offers for understanding international assistance, biodiversity conservation, more traditional geopolitical concerns, and the intersections between them

Topographies of security and the multiple spatialities of (conservation) power: Verticality, surveillance, and space-time compression in the bush

This article advances the analytic of topography to account for vertical and horizontal dimensions of space, power, and the ways in which they articulate with biophysical and political-ecological dynamics to (re)-shape socio-spatial and socio-natural relations. While commonly used to refer to the horizontal, vertical, and environmental features of a particular landscape, social scientists use the language of topography to understand the connections between spaces, processes, and power dynamics. I combine these literal and metaphorical understandings of topography to examine how multiple dimensions of space and power coalesce to protect certain bodies, police others, and secure the space within each move. In response to increases in commercial poaching, for example, conservation-security actors are increasingly going aerial to mobilise the vertical as a dimension of space and power to protect wildlife, neutralise those who threaten them, and ultimately secure conservation areas below. Verticality thus becomes important as both an empirical and analytical phenomenon that matters for understanding shifting power dynamics in contexts where actors seek to secure space and resources from perceived threats. But, the vertical does not exist on its own. It is in the interaction of the horizontal, vertical, and political-ecological dynamics of protected areas that conservation-related power-geometries are altered. A topographical analysis results in a nuanced understanding of how power and related security practices and technologies work to (re-)shape human environment and territorial relations

Inclusive Anti-poaching? Exploring the Potential and Challenges of Community-based Anti-Poaching

As it is acknowledged that the largely (para)militarised approach to anti-poaching has its limitations, alternative approaches to conservation law enforcement are being sought. One alternative, what we call inclusive anti-poaching, focuses on including people from local communities in antipoaching initiatives. Using a case study of a community programme from southern Mozambique, located adjacent to South Africa’s Kruger National Park, we examine the potential of a community ranger initiative to move towards a more inclusive and sustainable approach to anti-poaching and conservation. While highlighting its challenges and potential drawbacks, we argue that including local people in conservation law enforcement efforts can help address poaching and the problematic aspects of current anti-poaching measures. However, to be a genuine and sustainable alternative, community ranger programmes must be part of a broader shift towards developing local wildlife economies that benefit local communities, as opposed to supporting pre-existing antipoaching interventions

Effects of energy correlations and superexchange on charge transport and exciton formation in amorphous molecular semiconductors:an ab initio study

In this study, we investigate on the basis of ab initio calculations how the morphology, molecular on-site energies, reorganization energies, and charge transfer integral distribution affect the hopping charge transport and the exciton formation process in disordered organic semiconductors. We focus on three materials applied frequently in organic light-emitting diodes: α-NPD, TCTA, and Spiro-DPVBi. Spatially correlated disorder and, more importantly, superexchange contributions to the transfer integrals, are found to give rise to a significant increase of the electric field dependence of the electron and hole mobility. Furthermore, a material-specific correlation is found between the HOMO and LUMO energy on each specific molecular site. For α-NPD and TCTA, we find a positive correlation between the HOMO and LUMO energies, dominated by a Coulombic contribution to the energies. In contrast, Spiro-DPVBi shows a negative correlation, dominated by a conformational contribution. The size and sign of this correlation have a strong influence on the exciton formation rate

Ab initio modeling of steady-state and time-dependent charge transport in hole-only α-NPD devices

We present an ab initio modeling study of steady-state and time-dependent charge transport in hole-only devices of the amorphous molecular semiconductor α–NPD [N,N ′ −Di(1–naphthyl)−N,N ′ −diphenyl−(1,1 ′ −biphenyl)−4,4 ′ −diamine] α–NPD [N,N′-Di(1–naphthyl)-N,N′-diphenyl-(1,1′-biphenyl)-4,4′-diamine]. The study is based on the microscopic information obtained from atomistic simulations of the morphology and density functional theory calculations of the molecular hole energies, reorganization energies, and transfer integrals. Using stochastic approaches, the microscopic information obtained in simulation boxes at a length scale of ∼10 nm is expanded and employed in one-dimensional (1D) and three-dimensional (3D) master-equation modeling of the charge transport at the device scale of ∼100 nm. Without any fit parameter, predicted current density-voltage and impedance spectroscopy data obtained with the 3D modeling are in very good agreement with measured data on devices with different α-NPD layer thicknesses in a wide range of temperatures, bias voltages, and frequencies. Similarly good results are obtained with the computationally much more efficient 1D modeling after optimizing a hopping prefacto

Sea ice and biological production variability reconstructed in the Adélie Basin, East Antarctica, during the late Holocene

第3回極域科学シンポジウム　横断セッション「海・陸・氷床から探る後期新生代の南極寒冷圏環境変動」11月26日（月）、27日（火） ２階ラウン

Repetitions in infinite palindrome-rich words

Rich words are characterized by containing the maximum possible number of distinct palindromes. Several characteristic properties of rich words have been studied; yet the analysis of repetitions in rich words still involves some interesting open problems. We address lower bounds on the repetition threshold of infinite rich words over 2 and 3-letter alphabets, and construct a candidate infinite rich word over the alphabet $\Sigma_2=\{0,1\}$ with a small critical exponent of $2+\sqrt{2}/2$. This represents the first progress on an open problem of Vesti from 2017.Comment: 12 page

Arctic seabirds and shrinking sea ice: egg analyses reveal the importance of ice-derived resources

In the Arctic, sea-ice plays a central role in the functioning of marine food webs and its rapid shrinking has large effects on the biota. It is thus crucial to assess the importance of sea-ice and ice-derived resources to Arctic marine species. Here, we used a multi-biomarker approach combining Highly Branched Isoprenoids (HBIs) with δ13C and δ15N to evaluate how much Arctic seabirds rely on sea-ice derived resources during the pre-laying period, and if changes in sea-ice extent and duration affect their investment in reproduction. Eg