Competing biosecurity and risk rationalities in the Chittagong poultry commodity chain, Bangladesh

This paper anthropologically explores how key actors in the Chittagong live bird trading network perceive biosecurity and risk in relation to avian influenza between production sites, market maker scenes and outlets. They pay attention to the past and the present, rather than the future, downplaying the need for strict risk management, as outbreaks have not been reported frequently for a number of years. This is analysed as ‘temporalities of risk perception regarding biosecurity’, through Black Swan theory, the idea that unexpected events with major effects are often inappropriately rationalized (Taleb in The Black Swan. The impact of the highly improbable, Random House, New York, 2007). This incorporates a sociocultural perspective on risk, emphasizing the contexts in which risk is understood, lived, embodied and experienced. Their risk calculation is explained in terms of social consent, practical intelligibility and convergence of constraints and motivation. The pragmatic and practical orientation towards risk stands in contrast to how risk is calculated in the avian influenza preparedness paradigm. It is argued that disease risk on the ground has become a normalized part of everyday business, as implied in Black Swan theory. Risk which is calculated retrospectively is unlikely to encourage investment in biosecurity and, thereby, points to the danger of unpredictable outlier events

Human plague: An old scourge that needs new answers

Yersinia pestis, the bacterial causative agent of plague, remains an important threat to human health. Plague is a rodent-borne disease that has historically shown an outstanding ability to colonize and persist across different species, habitats, and environments while provoking sporadic cases, outbreaks, and deadly global epidemics among humans. Between September and November 2017, an outbreak of urban pneumonic plague was declared in Madagascar, which refocused the attention of the scientific community on this ancient human scourge. Given recent trends and plague’s resilience to control in the wild, its high fatality rate in humans without early treatment, and its capacity to disrupt social and healthcare systems, human plague should be considered as a neglected threat. A workshop was held in Paris in July 2018 to review current knowledge about plague and to identify the scientific research priorities to eradicate plague as a human threat. It was concluded that an urgent commitment is needed to develop and fund a strong research agenda aiming to fill the current knowledge gaps structured around 4 main axes: (i) an improved understanding of the ecological interactions among the reservoir, vector, pathogen, and environment; (ii) human and societal responses; (iii) improved diagnostic tools and case management; and (iv) vaccine development. These axes should be cross-cutting, translational, and focused on delivering context-specific strategies. Results of this research should feed a global control and prevention strategy within a “One Health” approach

Inverting the impacts: Mining, conservation and sustainability claims near the Rio Tinto/QMM ilmenite mine in Southeast Madagascar

This paper traces a genealogy of land access and legitimization strategies culminating in the current convergence of mining and conservation in Southeast Madagascar, contributing to recent debates analyzing the commonalities and interdependencies between seemingly discrete types of land acquisitions. Drawing upon research carried out near the Rio Tinto/QMM ilmenite mine in 2009 (January–March), it focuses on how local Malagasy land users are incorporated into new forms of inclusion (into the neoliberal capitalist economy) and exclusion (from land-based, subsistence activities) resulting from private sector engagements in conservation and sustainability. Sustainability tropes and corporate partnerships with international conservation NGOs were found to play a part in land access, in part through the neoliberal project of commodifying, economically valuing and objectifying nature. Through a process of mimesis (of conservation NGOs) and alterity (‘othering’ land users), Rio Tinto's process of creating scarcity of biodiversity paradoxically lends support to the company's claim to be ‘saving’ biodiversity from local Malagasy people; this is described as a process of inversion, wherein actual mining impacts are abstracted and remediated as part of a broader sustainable development strategy