Farming Within Limits

Global agricultural production is alarmingly unsustainable. Manipulating living beings, their genetics, and entire ecosystems to produce food has always been a technological feat. Advancements in farming technology have made it possible to surpass critical thresholds of planetary sustainability. Technological change in agriculture generates tension between those who benefit and those who bear the costs. Agriculture produces more than enough to feed the world’s human population, but the global economy allocates food inequitably among people and redirects food to industrial feedlots, biofuel refineries, and the waste stream. Technical solutions alone cannot fix the underlying socioeconomic systems that produce unjust and unsustainable food systems. Here we offer a starting point to guide the assessment of agricultural technology for both sustainability and justice, starting with their relationship to the logic of growth and domination that got us here. How can technology serve system change? And how can farming transform the unjust systems it literally feeds

Soils: A contemporary perspective

Soils are viewed in the context of ecosystem services, soil processes and properties, and key attributes and constraints. The framework used is based on the premise that the natural capital of soils that underlies ecosystem services is primarily determined by three core soil properties: texture, mineralogy, and soil organic matter. Up-to-date descriptions and geographical distribution of soil orders as well as soil attributes and constraints are given, along with the relationships between soil orders, properties, and biomes. We then relate ecosystem services to specific soil processes, soil properties, and soil constraints and attributes. Soil degradation at present is not adequately assessed and quantified. The use of an approach combining digital soil maps, pedotransfer functions, remote sensing, spectral analysis, and soil inference systems is suggested for simultaneous characterization of various chemical, physical, and biological properties to overcome the great limitations and costs of conventional methods of soil assessment

Cuban Land Use and Conservation, from Rainforests to Coral Reefs

Cuba is an ecological rarity in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its complex political and economic history shows limited disturbances, extinctions, pollution, and resource depletion by legal or de facto measures. Vast mangroves, wetlands, and forests play key roles in protecting biodiversity and reducing risks of hazards caused or aggravated by climate change. Cuba boasts coral reefs with some of the region’s greatest fish biomass and coral cover. Although Cuba has set aside major protected areas that safeguard a host of endemic species, its environment is by no means pristine. Its early history is one of deforestation and agricultural production for colonial and neo-colonial powers. Using remote sensing, we find Cuba’s land today is 45% devoted to agricultural, pasturage, and crop production. Roughly 77% of Cuba’s potential mangrove zone is presently in mangrove cover, much outside legal protection; this is likely the most intact Caribbean mangrove ecosystem and an important resource for coastal protection, fish nurseries, and wildlife habitat. Even the largest watersheds with the most agricultural land uses have a strong presence of forests, mangroves, and wetlands to buffer and filter runoff. This landscape could change with Cuba’s gradual reopening to foreign investment and growing popularity among tourists—trends that have devastated natural ecosystems throughout the Caribbean. Cuba is uniquely positioned to avoid and reverse ecosystem collapse if discontinuities between geopolitical and ecosystem functional units are be addressed, if protection and conservation of endemic species and ecosystems services accompany new development, and if a sound ecological restoration plan is enacted

Convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised controlled, open-label, platform trial

SummaryBackground Azithromycin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its immunomodulatoryactions. We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of azithromycin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19.Methods In this randomised, controlled, open-label, adaptive platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19Therapy [RECOVERY]), several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients admitted to hospitalwith COVID-19 in the UK. The trial is underway at 176 hospitals in the UK. Eligible and consenting patients wererandomly allocated to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus azithromycin 500 mg once perday by mouth or intravenously for 10 days or until discharge (or allocation to one of the other RECOVERY treatmentgroups). Patients were assigned via web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment andwere twice as likely to be randomly assigned to usual care than to any of the active treatment groups. Participants andlocal study staff were not masked to the allocated treatment, but all others involved in the trial were masked to theoutcome data during the trial. The primary outcome was 28-day all-cause mortality, assessed in the intention-to-treatpopulation. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, 50189673, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04381936.Findings Between April 7 and Nov 27, 2020, of 16 442 patients enrolled in the RECOVERY trial, 9433 (57%) wereeligible and 7763 were included in the assessment of azithromycin. The mean age of these study participants was65·3 years (SD 15·7) and approximately a third were women (2944 [38%] of 7763). 2582 patients were randomlyallocated to receive azithromycin and 5181 patients were randomly allocated to usual care alone. Overall,561 (22%) patients allocated to azithromycin and 1162 (22%) patients allocated to usual care died within 28 days(rate ratio 0·97, 95% CI 0·87–1·07; p=0·50). No significant difference was seen in duration of hospital stay (median10 days [IQR 5 to >28] vs 11 days [5 to >28]) or the proportion of patients discharged from hospital alive within 28 days(rate ratio 1·04, 95% CI 0·98–1·10; p=0·19). Among those not on invasive mechanical ventilation at baseline, nosignificant difference was seen in the proportion meeting the composite endpoint of invasive mechanical ventilationor death (risk ratio 0·95, 95% CI 0·87–1·03; p=0·24).Interpretation In patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19, azithromycin did not improve survival or otherprespecified clinical outcomes. Azithromycin use in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 should be restrictedto patients in whom there is a clear antimicrobial indication

The Food-Energy-Water Nexus, Embodied Injustices, And Transboundary Sustainability

Intersections of food, energy, and water systems (the FEW nexus) pose many sustainability and governance challenges, including risks to ecosystems, inequitable distribution of benefits and harms across populations, and reliance on distant sources for food, energy, and water. Nexus-based approaches can offer more holistic pathways for societal transitions to FEW systems that are just and sustainable, but tend to focus narrowly on inputs (e.g. water ‘for’ energy) in ways that do little to address the historical roots and structural underpinnings of current system inadequacies, thus risking their perpetuation. This dissertation widens the FEW nexus in two contexts in which the nexus extends well beyond inputs, and uses network analysis to characterize the rapidly-shifting global energy system at the core of extractive activities in both cases. Chapter 2 provides an integrated assessment of the trans-boundary FEW nexus in the Denver region, considering impacts of extensive hydraulic fracturing of the Niobrara shale on both agricultural activity and water resources. Chapter 3 extends the FEW nexus to incorporate materials and directly address embodied injustices and transboundary sustainability, and illustrates this expanded framing by linking the northward expansion of the ‘forest frontier’ to the James Bay hydroelectric megaproject in Eeyou Istchee/ Jamesie, Quebec. We estimate the region\u27s interlinked forest disturbances from hydropower, mining, clearcutting, fire, and roads since 1975 to be about 106,000 km2, an area four times the size of Vermont, which receives about one-third of its electricity from Hydro-Quebec. Finally, Chapter 4 employs network analysis to examine global oil and gas extraction from 2014 to 2018, highlighting cooperation (‘collusion’) among global investor-owned, hybrid, and national oil and gas companies in the face of existential threats to the industry that crystallized around the US election of 2016. At a system level, the interdependence, global reach, and combined power of the major extractors point to the necessity of a supply-side approach to the reduction of global carbon emissions

Chemistry of Knowledge Elements: Elements of Knowledge as Elements In Nature

In this paper, we propose that knowledge can be reduced to its elementary (elemental) size consisting of quantized noun objects, their quantized verb functions, and the incremental type the convolutions that bind such noun objects and verb functions. Though knowledge may not be quantized as matter can be quantized in quantum sciences, it is possible to fragment knowledge finely enough to ask three basic elements who does what, what is being done, and how is what being done. Such a bundle that answers these three questions makes up one knowledge element. These elements of knowledge (kels) exhibit statistical properties and their dynamics are be based on the properties of a large variety of kels, their origin, their environment, the media, and their recipients. Further, we define the elementary particles as a kuantum of knowledge, even though a kuantum is not a quantum in the traditional sense. In maintaining a working relation with other sciences, we explore the flow of these kels. A quantum of knowledge (kel) is like a particle of matter or a pulse of energy. We present this concept to investigate if such kels will explain all the intricacies in the flow of knowledge in societies, cultures and groups. Even though a kel is not as defined precisely as quantum (an electron) in physics, but in the framework of theory presented here, the statistical properties of kels explains a statistical differences in the way in which noun objects communicate i.e., transmit and receive such kuanta and kels. This approach holds the maximum promise but the quantization of a kel to a workable size becomes unique and depends on the direction in which knowledge is being explored and/or constituted. The generic quantum of knowledge or kel still appears as a mystic entity, even though specific kuanta are feasible that the modern computers can tackle, build, process, constitute, reconstitute, reprocess to generate artificial knowledge. Such artificial knowledge is then verified, validated and accepted or challenged, disputed and rejected by AI routines and by natural intelligence of human beings to build large and realistic bodies of knowledge (boks) or knowledge centric objects (kcos) of any size, shape or form

ICT, Agricultural Development and Environmental Justice

<b>Abstract: </b>Within the overarching context of accelerating ecological crises and technological change, information and communication technologies (ICT) have the potential to transform decision-making in environmental management. While there are opportunities for strengthening participatory processes in data collection and information access, the dangers of emerging ICT-centered environmental monitoring are profound. One risk is the ossification of already deep divides in access to and control over natural resources. Here we focus on data sovereignty and decision-making criteria that are embedded within nontransparent systems, specifically considering the use of ICTs in data collection for environmental sustainability. We explore these issues in two agricultural settings: Vermont and Ethiopia. First, we articulate the social-ecological challenges that ICT is employed to solve. Second, we identify and discuss the points in the data lifecycle that are problematic. Third, we connect these points to broader questions of information systems within the context of global sustainable development. Finally, we explore the application of an environmental justice lens to ask: how can we do the least damage and support concerns about data sovereignty?<div><br></div><div>This poster was presented at ICT4S 2018. </div