The present study aimed at investigating the heavy metals concentrations in the soils around “Larga de Sus” abandoned mine (Zlatna, Romania), evaluating the potential ecological risk of heavy metal pollution and highlighting ethical aspects related to risk assessment, ecological restoration, and soil remediation. The results of the chemical analysis showed that the soil in the study area is highly polluted with heavy metals since the average concentrations of Pb (32.4–2318.1 mg/kg), and Ni (321.6–562.8 mg/kg) in soil exceed (...) their corresponding threshold established by the Romanian legislation. The potential ecological risk index method developed by Hakanson was used to assess the potential risk of heavy-metal pollution. The results indicated that Pb and Ni showed severe and considerable potential ecological risk, while Cr had lightly ecological risk. In this case, remediation should be focused only on Pb or on all heavy metals even if they have lightly ecological risk? A scientific management technique cannot logically prescribe which choices should be selected. The interaction between human activity and the environment is complicated and difficult to quantify and risk management cannot and should not be based simply on risk assessment results. What is needed to make the right choice of the most appropriate alternative that fits our personality, culture, religion, and desires? The moral and ethical implications of ecological restoration and soil remediation (e.g. tolerance of uncertainty, responsibility, moral duty, etc.) have to be incorporated within the decision-making process in order to make optimum sustainable decisions and to achieve real environmental protection. (shrink)

Historians of science have attributed the emergence of ecology as a discipline in the late nineteenth century to the synthesis of Humboldtian botanical geography and Darwinian evolution. In this essay, I begin to explore another, largely neglected but very important dimension of this history. Using Sergei Vinogradskii’s career and scientific research trajectory as a point of entry, I illustrate the manner in which microbiologists, chemists, botanists, and plant physiologists inscribed the concept of a “cycle of life” into their investigations. (...) Their research transformed a longstanding notion into the fundamental approaches and concepts that underlay the new ecological disciplines that emerged in the 1920s. Pasteur thus joins Humboldt as a foundational figure in ecological thinking, and the broader picture that emerges of the history of ecology explains some otherwise puzzling features of that discipline – such as its fusion of experimental and natural historical methodologies. Vinogradskii’s personal “cycle of life” is also interesting as an example of the interplay between Russian and Western European scientific networks and intellectual traditions. Trained in Russia to investigate nature as a super-organism comprised of circulating energy, matter, and life; over the course of five decades – in contact with scientists and scientific discourses in France, Germany, and Switzerland – he developed a series of research methods that translated the concept of a “cycle of life” into an ecologically conceived soil science and microbiology in the 1920s and 1930s. These methods, bolstered by his authority as a founding father of microbiology, captured the attention of an international network of scientists. Vinogradskii’s conceptualization of the “cycle of life” as chemosynthesis, autotrophy, and global nutrient cycles attracted the attention of ecosystem ecologists; and his methods appealed to practitioners at agricultural experiment stations and microbiological institutes in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union. (shrink)

The present study aimed at investigating the heavy metals concentrations in the soils around “Larga de Sus” abandoned mine, evaluating the potential ecological risk of heavy metal pollution and highlighting ethical aspects related to risk assessment, ecological restoration, and soil remediation. The results of the chemical analysis showed that the soil in the study area is highly polluted with heavy metals since the average concentrations of Pb, and Ni in soil exceed their corresponding threshold established by the (...) Romanian legislation. The potential ecological risk index method developed by Hakanson was used to assess the potential risk of heavy-metal pollution. The results indicated that Pb and Ni showed severe and considerable potential ecological risk, while Cr had lightly ecological risk. In this case, remediation should be focused only on Pb or on all heavy metals even if they have lightly ecological risk? A scientific management technique cannot logically prescribe which choices should be selected. The interaction between human activity and the environment is complicated and difficult to quantify and risk management cannot and should not be based simply on risk assessment results. What is needed to make the right choice of the most appropriate alternative that fits our personality, culture, religion, and desires? The moral and ethical implications of ecological restoration and soil remediation have to be incorporated within the decision-making process in order to make optimum sustainable decisions and to achieve real environmental protection. (shrink)

Climate change is a wicked problem with causes and consequences overlapping with other wicked problems and no single solution (Hulme 2015). For example, the frequent droughts associated with climate change exacerbate another major problem facing humanity as we enter the Anthropocene: how to produce adequate food to feed a growing population without increasing pollution or “more food with low pollution (MoFoLoPo)” (Davidson et al. 2015). Soils represent an intersection of these two wicked problems, because they are integral to food production (...) through agriculture and also are an important component of global climate models. Recent focus in the field of soil carbon cycling has facilitated a transformation in our understanding of the processes that control this important resource. This understanding is critical to responding to both wicked problems. (shrink)

Considerable attention has focussed on the potential of indigenous agricultural knowledge for sustainable development. Drawing upon fieldwork on the soil and water management principles of rice farming systems in Senegambia, this paper examines the potential of the traditional system for a sustainable food security strategy. Problems with pumpirrigation are reviewed as well as previous efforts in swamp rice development. It is argued that sustainability depends on more than ecological factors and in particular, requires sensitivity to socio-economic parameters such as (...) the labor demands of the food security strategy, the sexual division of labor, and food pricing policies. (shrink)

Ecological sciences have informed environmental ethics from its inception as a scholarly pursuit in the 1970s-so much so that we now have ecological ethics, Deep Ecology, and ecofeminism. Throughout the 20th century, however, most ecologists remained enthralled by the myth that science is value-free. Closer study of science by philosophers reveals that metaphors are inescapable and cognitively indispensable to science, but that metaphors are value-laden. As we confront the enormous challenges of the 21st century-the prospect of a 6th mass (...) extinction, acidifying oceans, rising sea level, and global warming-ecologists can no longer remain aloof from public discourse about what actions to take to address these problems. And that means that 21st century ecologists understand that right action is guided by ethics. However, integration of ethical ideas into academic curricula and ecologists' research agendas is still meager. Aldo Leopold, 1947 President of the Ecological Society of America, keenly understood that latent in ecological sciences is an organizing worldview, with implications for reordering societal values and expanding ethics to embrace "soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." Going beyond Leopold's land ethic, contemporary environmental ethics includes eco-social justice and the realization that as important as biodiversity is cultural diversity, inter-cultural, inter-institutional, and international collaboration requiring a novel approach known as biocultural conservation. Right action in confronting the challenges of the 21st century requires science and ethics to be seamlessly integrated. Contemporary science proposes the concept of the inclusive ecosystem that recognizes humans as components. In this book, this "inclusive conviction is endorsed, fortunately, by over forty contributors sharing their accounts, of living well in place, combining nature and culture, residing on landscapes: biocultural ethics" (Holmes Rolston, III). (shrink)

The way we farm, the kinds of backyards and landscapes we favor, and the way we control patterns of development are creating an invisible crisis through their affects upon soil ecology. The invisibility of soil ecosystems, the seemingly alien properties of the organisms that inhabit them, and the specialized knowledge required to understand them create obstacles to moral concern for these fountains of life. Our treatment of soils has reached the point of crisis. Obstacles to moral thinking (...) about soils might be overcome by supplying the moral imagination with a deeper understanding of our own biological identity as ecosystems analogous in organization and functions to soil ecosystems. Not only have microbes created the conditions necessary for human life, but they have shaped our evolutionary history and helped constitute the human genome. Our biological identity encompasses communities of microbes, such that humans (and all organisms) are most properly understood as ecosystems. For this reason, moral concern for humans implies moral concern for ecosystems. (shrink)

The relationship between humanity and the soil is an increasingly important topic in social theory. However, conceptualisations of the soil developed by anticolonial thinkers at the high point of the movement for self-determination between the 1940s and the 1970s have remained largely ignored. This is a shame, not least because theorists like Eric Williams, Walter Rodney, Suzanne Césaire and Amílcar Cabral were concerned with the soil. Building on recent work on human-soil relations and decolonial ecology, (...) we argue that these four thinkers conceptualised the connection between soil, empire, and anticolonial revolt. Williams and Rodney ground understanding of soil degradation in global relations of economic power, while Césaire and Cabral reconceptualise postcolonial nationhood in terms of the mutability and diversity of the soil. The article concludes by suggesting that these two anticolonial counterpoints, global connectivity and more-than-human identification, anticipate and deepen contemporary attempts to decolonise ecological thinking. (shrink)

This article discusses multisensorial aesthetic experience of environmental materiality via a craft process. The locally situated study investigates the interrelations of humans and environment through soil. In focus is how craft practitioners use their material sensitivity to reflect the idea of interdependency in the context of the contemporary environmental discourse. This is done through presenting an artistic research project in which craft is used to explore the human imprint in a particular geological environment, the Venice Lagoon. The case study (...) Traces from the Anthropocene: Working with Soil combines environmental research methods of contaminated soil and artistic research in the field of ceramic art. Craft making provides an embodied way to engage with the local environment. The cultural value and environmental disruption of the lagoon area forms a context for reflecting the aesthetic experience to better understand how we are active participants, in continuous flux with our material environment. (shrink)

Communication is defined as an interaction between at least two living agents which share a repertoire of signs. These are combined according to syntactic, semantic and context-dependent, pragmatic rules in order to coordinate behavior. This volume deals with the important roles of soil bacteria in parasitic and symbiotic interactions with viruses, plants, animals and fungi. Starting with a general overview of the key levels of communication between bacteria, further reviews examine the various aspects of intracellular as well as intercellular (...) biocommunication between soil microorganisms. This includes the various levels of biocommunication between phages and bacteria, between soil algae and bacteria, and between bacteria, fungi and plants in the rhizosphere, the role of plasmids and transposons, horizontal gene transfer, quorum sensing and quorum quenching, bacterial-host cohabitation, phage-mediated genetic exchange and soil viral ecology. (shrink)

Communication is defined as an interaction between at least two living agents which share a repertoire of signs. These are combined according to syntactic, semantic and context dependent, pragmatic rules in order to coordinate behavior. This volume deals with the important roles of soil bacteria in parasitic and symbiotic interactions with viruses, plants, animals and fungi. Starting with a general overview of the key levels of communication between bacteria, further reviews examine the various aspects of intracellular as well as (...) intercellular biocommunication between soil microorganisms. Th is includes the various levels of biocommunication between phages and bacteria, between soil algae and bacteria, and between bacteria, fungi and plants in the rhizosphere, the role of plasmids and transposons, horizontal gene transfer, quorum sensing and quorum quenching, bacterial-host cohabitation, phage-mediated genetic exchange and soil viral ecology. (shrink)

This article examines India’s response to the global soil health crisis. A longstanding centre of agricultural production and innovation, India has recently launched an ambitious soil health programme. The country’s Soil Health Card (SHC) Scheme intervenes in farm-scale decisions about efficient fertiliser use, envisioning farmers as managers and soil as a substrate for production. India is also home to one of the world’s largest alternative agriculture movements: natural farming. This puts farmer expertise at the centre of (...) soil fertility and attends to the wider ecological health of soils. Despite emerging as a mode of resistance to dominant agricultural systems, natural farming is now being delivered in increasingly bureaucratic ways by India’s state governments. This article offers Himachal Pradesh as a case study in how the soil is governed, drawing on 38 semi-structured interviews with scientists, agricultural officers, non-governmental organisation leaders, and activists. Rather than assess approaches to soil health according to their ecological bottom line, we examine the differing forms of knowledge, expertise and ‘truth’ in the SHC and Natural Farming approaches. Our analysis reveals discontinuities in how farmers are imagined, as well as continuities in how quasi-spiritual language combines in a bionationalist project, positing assumptions about the correct arrangement of life in nationalist terms. We point to a shift toward hybrid and pick-and-mix approaches to soil health, as farmers and their organisers are increasingly invested with the capacities to combine multiple options. We see a fracturing of expertise and the opening up of epistemic pluralism in responses to the soil fertility crisis. (shrink)

The study of agriculture in ancient societies is of vital importance for the understanding of their ecological basis. This article discusses data gathered from Alonso de Molina's dictionary, published in Mexico City in 1571. Molina's information on soil, rain, plants, technology, and human labor applied to agricultural activities gives a picture of the complexity of the several native agricultural systems practiced at that time. Since the Sixteenth Century, native agriculture was impacted by the introduction of new plants, animals, agricultural (...) equipment, and techniques from the Old World. A combination of the two agricultural models conform a new Mexican model of agriculture along the Colonial times. The knowledge of Sixteenth Century agricultural systems is fundamental for the understanding of the history and the conformation of contemporary agro-ecosystems. Recent studies on ecology and social anthropology agree on the necessity to take into account historical data for the discussion of ecological sustainability. (shrink)

The roots of social ecology are embedded in the fertile soil that was the Hawkesbury Diploma in Rural Extension, first offered in 1970, at what was then known as Hawkesbury Agricultural College and now the University of Western Sydney. The program changed its title to Graduate Diploma in Extension in 1974, and again in 1982, to Graduate Diploma in Social Communication. During this period the key features of the program remained the same: it was always highly experiential; it (...) overtly fostered the learner's growth in self esteem; and it espoused the goal of measuring learning against a yardstick of social relevance. (shrink)

It is necessary to complement next‐generation sequencing data on the soil resistome with theoretical knowledge provided by ecological studies regarding the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) in the abiotic and, especially, biotic fraction of the soil ecosystem. Particularly, when ARB enter agricultural soils as a consequence of the application of animal manure as fertilizer, from a microbial ecology perspective, it is important to know their fate along the soil food web, that is, throughout that complex (...) network of feeding interactions among members of the soil biota that has crucial effects on species richness and ecosystem productivity and stability. It is critical to study how the ARB that enter the soil through the application of manure can reach other taxonomical groups (e.g., fungi, protists, nematodes, arthropods, earthworms), paying special attention to their presence in the gut microbiomes of mesofauna‐macrofauna and to the possibilities for horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic resistant genes. (shrink)

The article traces the motif of decomposition in Derrida’s Geschlecht III. It distinguishes Derrida’s understanding of the way decomposition affects sex, language, humanity and place through a logic of dissemination and divisibility from Heidegger’s reversal of decomposition in the polysemic gathering of the land. It shows how the working of the spectral figure of mother in its link to land through natality in Geschlecht III can be extended in its biodeconstructive formulation to a question of soil as multispecies (...) class='Hi'>ecology. (shrink)

This paper offers an assessment of the agricultural eco-politics of Edward Hyams, novelist, gardener, historian, broadcaster and anarchist. It focuses in particular on his collaboration with the conservative writer on rural England, and founding member of the Soil Association, H.J. Massingham which resulted in a book, Prophecy of Famine — a fundamental critique of the effects of industrial capitalism on farming and a call for agricultural self-sufficiency and soil conservation. This collaboration between two writers with very different political (...) views raises important questions about the nature of eco-politics and whether its critique of the dominant ideology of 'progress' can still constitute a radical 'progressive' politics. Hyams' writings, and his differences from Massingham, particularly over the issue of private ownership of land, are illustrative of this apparent tension. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive coverage of the role of ecological constraints in limiting the availability of natural resources for economic development. It discusses in detail the notion of sustainable development, the concept of ecological footprints, and population theory. It also analyses how the development of technology, policies, and institutions can relax these constraints in the context of major resources. The analytical discussion is carried out both at the conceptual and theoretical level and also at the applied level in the (...) context of Indian development. Addressing challenges arising from ecological limits, the book engages with the dynamics of and policies for conservation of an entire range of major resources-land and soil, water, forests, biodiversity, energy, non-energy, material, and waste absorption. It identifies the role of knowledge, values, human capital, and institutions in overcoming nature's constraints. This book has a good potential to be used as a supplementary reader in universities offering courses on environment and economics. (shrink)

The most pressing problems facing humanity today - over-population, energy shortages, climate change, soil erosion, species extinctions, the risk of epidemic disease, the threat of warfare that could destroy all the hard-won gains of civilization, and even the recent fibrillations of the stock market - are all ecological or have a large ecological component. in this volume philosophers turn their attention to understanding the science of ecology and its huge implications for the human project. To get the application (...) of ecology to policy or other practical concerns right, humanity needs a clear and disinterested philosophical understanding of ecology which can help identify the practical lessons of science. Conversely, the urgent practical demands humanity faces today cannot help but direct scientific and philosophical investigation toward the basis of those ecological challenges that threaten human survival. This book will help to fuel the timely renaissance of interest in philosophy of ecology that is now occurring in the philosophical profession. Provides a bridge between philosophy and current scientific findings Covers theory and applications Encourages multi-disciplinary dialogue. (shrink)

The notion of reparation in ethical, political and legal discourse has become popular in recent years. Reparation refers to a category of actions for which there are morally compelling reasons to perform due to wrongful action in the past. ‘Reparation’ is often, but not merely, used in the context of collective responsibility. The debate around the concept has mainly focussed on humans, but the wrongs done to humans can be indirect, such as contaminating the soil or polluting the air, (...) in cases of which the quality of human life has been significantly deteriorated. In the paper, it will be examined whether the concept of reparation is applicable to characterise our responsibilities to the rest of nature? And can ecological restoration be understood as an exemplification of reparation? In restoration,ecological system or natural landscape returned to some historically existed condition. In the context of reparations, the scope of concern would be limited to those changes that involve human presence or activity. Reparation is to be understood as corrective action when one has done something wrong. Ecological restoration aims to restore a situation that has prevailed at some point earlier. To say that ecological restoration is also moral reparation, we must assumethat nature or non-human entities and processes be wronged in the morally relevant sense. There are, of course, reasons for being sceptical over this assumption and its practical implications. (shrink)

This paper studies the capture of organisms and materials in soil construction – a branch of ecological engineering dedicated to making soil in order to compensate for soil degradation. This approach takes all organisms to be ‘ecosystem engineers’, and often refers to earthworms as ‘collaborators’ in making soil. I examine the claim that such a convocation of worms amounts to a redistribution of agency and the underlying assumption that form-taking is the shaping of raw matter according (...) to pre-existing forms. Drawing on processual anthropology, I question the distinction between living and material components of soils, and between growing and making. I elaborate on soil scientists’ description of soil growth as pedogenesis in order to propose a view in which soil materials, along with organisms, participate in soil’s transformative and generative fluxes. I envisage the process as a concrescence, an experimentation that brings humans, worms, and soil materials together in new ways. (shrink)

Is ecology in the process of becoming the object of our contemporary passions, in the same way that Fascism was in the 30s, or Communism under Stalin? In _The New Ecological Order_, Luc Ferry offers a penetrating critique of the ideological roots of the "Deep Ecology" movement spreading throughout Germany, France, and the United States. Traditional ecological movements, or "democratic ecology," seek to protect the environment of human societies; they are pragmatic and reformist. But another movement has (...) become the refuge both of nostalgic counterrevolutionaries and of leftist illusions. This is "deep ecology." Its followers go beyond practical critiques of human greed and waste: they call into question the very possibility of human coexistence with nature. The human species is no longer at the center of the world, but subject to a new god called Nature. For these purists, man can only soil the harmony of the universe. In order to secure natural equilibrium, the only solution is to grant rights to animals, to trees, and to rocks. Ferry launches his critique by examining early European legal cases concerning the status and rights of animals, including a few notorious cases where animals were brought to trial, found guilty, and publicly hanged. He then demonstrates that German Romanticism embraced certain key ideas of the deep ecology movement concerning the protection of animals and the environment. Later adopted by the Nazis, many of these ideas point to a profoundly antihumanistic component of deep ecology that is compatible with totalitarianism. Ferry shows how deep ecology casts aside all the gains of human autonomy since the Enlightenment. He deciphers the philosophical and political assumptions of a movement that threatens to infantalize human society by preying on the fear of the authority of a new theological-political order. Far from denying our "duty in relation to nature," _The New Ecological Order_ offers a bracing caution—against the dangers of environmental claims and, more important, against the threat to democracy contained in the deep ecology doctrine when pushed to its extreme. "A book of intellectual power, full of insights, invention, and not without temerity, from one of the best political philosophers today."—_Le Figaro_ "Few books have analyzed in depth this phenomenon of the ecological movement as the most recent book by Luc Ferry has done.... It is a book that absolutely must be read."—_Le Point_. (shrink)

A decision-tree model of an indigenous forest management system centered around shamu (Cunninghamia lanceolata),an important timber species in China, was constructed from extensive interviews with peasants in two villages in Fujian Province, China. From this model additional interviews were conducted to elicit from these peasants their reasons for selecting among decision alternatives. Those reasons that were of an ecological nature were discussed in detail with the peasants to elicit indigenous interpretations of ecological processes in order to test an hypothesis that (...) a strong analogy exists between traditional indigenous and scientific knowledge of ecological processes.Three cases are presented that test this hypothesis. These three cases concern the effect of intercrops on the growth of shamu,the relative merits of seedlings and root collar sprout cuttings for forest regeneration, and the effects of repeated plantings of shamuon soil chemistry. All three cases provide strong support for the research hypothesis and suggest that, even in the absence of a formalized scientific method, humans exercise mental processes typical of scientific thinking. This phenomenon is called proto-science. (shrink)

Mainstream environmental ethics grew out of an approach to value that was rooted in a particular conception of rationality and rational choice. As weaknesses in this approach have become more evident, environmental philosophers have experimented with both virtue ethics and with pragmatism as alternative starting points for developing a more truly ecological orientation to environmental philosophy. However, it is possible to see both virtue ethics and pragmatism as emerging from older philosophical traditions that are here characterized as “agrarian.” Agrarian philosophy (...) stresses the role of nature, soil and climate in the formation of moral character as well as social and political institutions. As such, reaching back to the agrarian tradition may provide a way to move forward with both virtue oriented themes as well as pragmatist themes in developing ecological ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kings and Gods as Ecological Agents:From Reciprocity to Unilateralism in the Management of Natural ResourcesSimon Simonse (bio)1. IntroductionThe questions this article addresses are as follows: do non-Western societies have a qualitatively better, more balanced relationship with nature than modern Western societies? Can the difference between the two be described in terms of an opposition between a reciprocal and an exploitative relationship? What difference does the Judeo-Christian tradition make in (...) shaping the modern relationship with nature?To answer these questions I will give brief descriptions of the way in which three cultural traditions have structured the relationship between man and nature: societies that are ruled by sacred kings, societies where power over nature is attributed to divinities, and the Old Testament tradition. As cases of sacred kinship, I present ethnographic material taken from my anthropological fieldwork among the Lulubo, Lokoya, and Lotuho peoples from the East Bank of the Nile in Southern Sudan. I will use the term "Eastern Nilotic" as shorthand for this complex of peoples. For the societies where divinities play the central role, I take the Western Nilotic Dinka, Nuer, and Atuot living in the flood plains of the Nile north of the kingship societies.In comparing these three traditions my point of departure is René Girard's analysis of culture as a mechanism to resolve conflict by directing the aggression of the members of society onto a victim and so achieving a new consensus. We shall see that in the kingship societies what we call natural phenomena play an integral part in culturally staging the scapegoat mechanism. They are the stage of human rivalries and their resolution. Among the polytheistic Western Nilotes they are the instrument through which the gods make their power felt and demand attention from humans. In the Old Testament, natural phenomena remain the domain of God's power. Humans should not try to interfere. Their mission is to combat human evil as defined in Mosaic law. [End Page 31]2. Kings as Ecological AgentsThe survival of the communities of the Lokoya and Lulubo on the East Bank of the Nile who traditionally live in well-fortified village-polities, counting in the precolonial period between 1500 and 2500 inhabitants, is dependent on forces that are unpredictable (Simonse 1992). As agriculturists they are dependent on regular rains. However, the rains in their area are erratic and localized. As a result there is always a risk that the harvest may fail. The soil is of varying quality, giving varying yields in different places. The birth rate is another major concern. It determines the security of the community in its relationship to neighboring, frequently hostile, communities. There is the concern for epidemics, crop-eating insects and birds, and root-eating worms. Violent winds may destroy the crop, and lions and leopards may kill humans and cattle. A concern of a different order is the extent of the effectiveness of weapons, spears, and bows and arrows, in assuring security.When adversity affects the community, the first question asked by those affected is that regarding its cause. Frequently the cause is a breach of the social rules: an act of violence and a failure to perform or properly perform a ritual of purification necessitated by the violence. It may also be unconscious resentment on the part of a person or group that feels excluded from benefits enjoyed by others. It may be the cry of a neglected relative. It may be incest. It may be an attack by outsiders.Among the Lulubo and Lokoya, responsibility for the various aspects of the natural environment that can be critical for community survival is allocated to the different clans. In the case of a crisis (drought, infertility) the clan associated with the problem is the target of investigations. The main investigation strategy is to check, one by one, the quarrels in which members of that clan have been involved. When a conflict has been identified, a solution is suggested by way of reconciliation or restitution. Of particular interest are attempts to provoke the responsible clan official. If a settlement of the dispute fails to bring the required result, there will be more rounds of investigation... (shrink)

The coastal zone of Bangladesh is endowed with dynamic ‘Terrestrial’ and ‘Coastal and Marine ecosystem’. The zone confronts with declined environmental quality owing to unethical anthropogenic interventions. Few studies regarding ethical attitudes of local communities to conserve the coast were conducted earlier. Two objectives, such as (i) heavy metal concentration, and (ii) physio-chemical quality of sample soil and water were selected to reveal the environmental state of study area. Five heavy metals like- Cadmium, Copper, Iron, Lead, and Zinc; and (...) four physio-chemical parameters such as, the pH, Electrical Conductivity, Temperature, and Turbidity of sample soil and water were measured. The average concentration of Pb in soil is 10 times higher than world average (0.03 mg/g), while Cd concentration in soil is two times more than world average (0.11 mg/L). The concentration of Fe at Inani beach water is 1.54 mg/g more than world average (3.4 mg/g). The physio-chemical parameters are within standard range. Unethical discharge of toxic effluents from shrimp hatcheries, and municipal garbage are main sources of pollution, which ensue into environmental degradations. Concentration of five heavy metals and Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) in sample mollusk shells exhibit biodiversity deterioration. The mollusk shells from Inani beach contains 0.04 mg/L Cd,0.08 mg/L Cu, 0.42 mg/L Fe, 0.38 mg/L Pb, and 0.07 mg/L Zn. The CaCO3 content in mollusk shells at Inani beach is 49.5%, which indicates the degradation of the mollusks, as shells normally are made with 95% - 97% Calcium Carbonate. Hence, the Department of Environment (DOE), Bangladesh (GoB) declared the area as an ‘Ecologically Critical Area’ (ECA). The concerned stakeholders, like- CPP volunteers and officials, Forest Division, Fisheries Research Institute, Bangladesh Water Development Board, Union Chairman and Journalists of Cox’s Bazar recommended insertion of moral values among local stakeholders through trainings, motivational lectures, demonstrations and dramas, as well as, incorporation of lessons about consequences of unethical activities upon geo-environment into text books. Though least practice has been found regarding moral values during survey, the present research advocates in developing ‘Knowledge pool’ about coastal environment, creating awareness, and developing moral ethics among the local, regional and national stakeholders. (shrink)

Political ecology and science studies have found fertile meeting ground in environmental studies. While the two distinct areas of inquiry approach the environment from different perspectives—one focusing on the politics of resource access and the other on the construction and perception of knowledge—their work is actually more closely aligned now than ever before. Knowing Nature brings together political ecologists and science studies scholars to showcase the key points of encounter between the two fields and how this intellectual mingling creates (...) a lively and more robust ecological framework for the study of environmental politics. The contributors all actively work at the interface between these two fields, and here they use empirical material to explore questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics that surround nature-society relations, from wildlife management in the Yukon to soil fertility in Kenya. In addition, they examine how various environmental knowledge claims are generated, packaged, promoted, and accepted (or rejected) by the different actors involved in specific cases of environmental management, conservation, and development. Finally, they ask what is at stake in the struggles surrounding environmental knowledge, how such struggles shape conceptions of the environment, and whose interests are served in the process. (shrink)

Ecological weed management is a scientifically established management approach that uses ecological patterns to reduce weed seedbanks. Such an approach can save organic farmers time and labor costs and reduce the need for repeated cultivation practices that may pose risks to soil and water quality. However, adoption of effective EWM in the organic farm community is perceived to be poor. In addition, communication and collaboration between the scientific community, extension services, and the organic farming community in the US is (...) historically weak. In order to uncover the most persistent obstacles to promoting effective weed management in organic agroecosystems, we use the mental models approach to generate an expert model based on interviews with experts and theories from the behavioral sciences. The expert model provides two main insights: EWM is a complex strategy that may cause farmers to use heuristics in management decisions and the long-term benefits of EWM, rather than the risks, need to be emphasized in communication with and outreach to organic farmers. The basis for new research topics and outreach material that incorporates these insights from the expert model are discussed. We briefly explain how the expert model is an incomplete picture of on-farm practices, but provides the basis for the second step of our mental models research, the farmer interviews and farmer decision model development. (shrink)

The main characteristic of the modern environment is the negative change by its people – destruction and pollution. Man is part of the biosphere and the technogenic transformations of the biosphere inevitably affect him. Under the influence of technogenic civilization, all spheres of human activity undergo changes, and science above all. Ecology is especially keenly aware of the challenges of technogenic civilization. It focuses on anthropogenic factors, works with the human environment. At the same time, its problem field is (...) expanding due to interdisciplinary research and the allocation of knowledge of new environmental disciplines into an independent industry. The interdisciplinarity of modern ecology is most clearly visible on the example of such a direction as informational ecology. The presence of the digital environment in human life has grown so much that it requires the separation of the digital information environment into a separate subsystem. Information ecology studies the laws of the influence of information on the formation and functioning of man. In turn, interdisciplinarity, assuming the use of knowledge from various branches of science, brings us to the problems of the collective agent of cognition and distributed knowledge. In ecology, the problems of the collective agent of cognition are implemented through crowd-sourcing technology. Ecology is a science that requires massive collection of observation data (samples of water, air, soil pollution in various, sometimes hard-to-reach corners of the planet, observation of fluctuations in the number of species of animals and plants). The popularity of crowdsourcing projects in the field of ecology is explained by the fact that the challenges and threats of anthropogenic civilization have generated such a trend of our time as environmental orientation or environmentalism. Ecological crowdsourcing projects, inspired by the philosophy of environmentalism, can serve as an answer to the challenges of technogenic civilization. (shrink)

A large section of the population (70%) of Uttarakhand largely depends upon agricultural based activities for their livelihood. Rural community of the mountains has developed several indigenous and traditional methods of farming to conserve the crop diversity and rejoice agrodiversity with religious and cultural vehemence. Traditional food items are prepared during occasion, festivals, weddings, and other religious rituals from diversified agrodiversity are a mean to maintain agrodiversity in the agriculture system. Agrodiversity is an insurance against disease and extreme climatic fluctuations, (...) as a coping mechanism in times of scarcity, as a means to enhance overall productivity of farms, as a source of critical nutrition and medicine in the Himalayan region. The different traditional system of agriculture and indigenous method of maintaining soil fertility, socio-cultural and religious rituals has saved many crops that are under threatened category. But all these system and practices are ignored nauseatingly in hill agriculture policy, where more emphasis was given for plain areas. Less emphasis is being put on local systems that rely on existing natural, human, and social assets such as biodiversity, traditional knowledge, and social capital underpinning collective action to ensure food security. Of late, development planners have realized the importance of appropriate technologies and therefore have stressed the need for on-site training, and capacity building of user groups in rural areas of the region. Rural technology demonstration and training center have been supposed as a means disseminating technologies enabling improvement in the yield potential of farms, income generation from off-farm activities, and conservation and efficient use of natural resources. There is a strong need to bring desirable changes in the agricultural policy, research, and development in reference to mountainous regions. The present paper describe present scenario of agriculture, traditional, and socio-cultural practices of retaining soil fertility and agrodiversity, policy dimensions, and strategies for management of the Himalayan agroecosystems. (shrink)

The term “legacy effect” has been used in ecology since the early 1990s by authors studying plant succession, invasive-plant impacts, herbivory impacts, ecosystem engineering, and human land-use impacts. Although there is some variability in usage, the term is normally used to describe impacts of a species on abiotic or biotic features of ecosystems that persist for a long time after the species has been extirpated or ceased activity and which have an effect on other species. For example, human agricultural (...) activities may have a legacy effect on soil structure and vegetative communities that lasts for centuries and which alters current communities. The concept may be related to the idea of ecological inheritance in evolutionary biology but would refer only to a subset of the features of this concept. In particular, legacy effects could refer to those kinds of ecological inheritance where a physical or biological change in ecosystem state is caused by one species, where this change persists after the extirpation of the causal species and alters selection pressure of another species much later in time. (shrink)

Why was Hensen unsuccesful in the quantification of ecological sampling? No aspect of plankton research itself seems to have hindered quantification; both collecting methods and taxonomy were sufficiently advanced. The reason is probably that at the time he began sampling, Hensen had to devise his own statistical methods for expressing the reproducibility and validity of samples. Hensen might have succeeded in this if he had overcome prevalent nineteenth-century attitudes toward randomness.The statistical literature of medicine and physics with which Hensen was (...) probably familiar gave methods for expressing reproducibility and for comparing differences between means of different sets of observations. For example, a student of Poisson writing on medical statistics advocated using Poisson's limit (standard error 2√2) to test the difference between two means56. Other authors suggested that differences between means were most meaningful if very large numbers of observations were used.57 In his laboratory subsampling, Hensen used the propable error as a limit about means. In this and other ways, he seems most indebted to the physicist Ernst Abbe for statistical methods.58 However, all the methodology available to Hensen had been developed for situations in which errors are a property of the measurement or sampling process, and not of the phenomena themselves. The available methods for measuring reproducibility were based on the assumption that differences from the average were small and that they tended to accumulate about the mean in a bell-shaped pattern. Hensen constantly reinvestigated the distribution of plankton numbers about the average using a different method each time. Westergaard points out that medical statisticians did not make such investigations with their biological data.59To a considerable extent, biological sampling problems forced development of theory because samples afforded the only information on a pattern in water or soil which could not be directly observed. The sampling methods of Laplace and the late nineteenth-century government statisticians contrasted strongly with Hensen's because, either through subjective knowledge of the population sampled or through censuses, they attempted to choose representative or typical samples.60 The high reproducibility and validity of representative sampling is attained by knowing more about a population than a biologist can ordinarily know. The uncertain reproducibility and validity of biological sampling spurred the development of formal sampling theory.A formal sampling theory developed only after change in the general intellectual attitude toward randomness, which was reflected in nineteenth-century statistics.61 The ninteenth-century attitude that randomness is not part of nature changed in the twentieth century to a view of randomness as a property of nature.62 The physicist's incorporation of randomness into physical models in response to this intellectual change late in the nineteenth-century is discussed by Bork.63 In biology, the change was initiated by the attention Darwin focused on morphological variation. The English biometricians — Francis Galton and W. F. R. Weldon, for example — were prominent in developing methods for the analysis of biological variation.64 Most pertinent to the development of sampling theory was Karl Pearson's use of frequency distributions as models of biological variation. In ecology, quantification was brought about by Ronald Fisher more than by anyone else; he incorporated randomness into sampling plans and built upon the methods developed earlier for analysis of individual variation. Fisher's use of random sampling allowed comparison between the sample collections and the collections expected from a model population of known patterning (calculated with a frequency distribution). This is a much more efficient method of determining the validity of a sample than Hensen's comparison of collections with a model uniform collection. Intellectual background and accumulated biological information caused Fisher to find variability where Hensen had seen uniformity.In summary, Victor Hensen became interested in fisheries research because of the economic importance of fishing to Germany. Hensen had considerable understanding of the prerequisites for valid sampling, but the value of his quantitative approach was limited by the general preconceptions shared by most nineteenth-century biologists. Through Hensen's efforts many other biologists were stimulated to undertake quantitative samples, even though the statistical methods for analyzing variation among populations developed only after methods for analyzing variation among individuals had been developed. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402011 00003. (shrink)

While the ethic of care has generally been regarded as an appropriate attitude for nurses, it has not received equal attention as a mode of ethical problem solving. The primary nursing model is exp...

Comprising almost a third of greenhouse gas emissions and having an equally prominent role in pollution of soils, fresh water, coastal ecosystems, and food chains in general, agriculture is, alongside industry and electricity/heat production, one of the three biggest anthropogenic causes of breaching the planetary boundaries. Most of the problems in agriculture, like soil degradation and diminishing biodiversity, are caused by unfit uses of existing technologies and approaches mimicking the agriculturally-relevant functioning natural ecosystems seem necessary for appropriate organization of (...) our toxic and entropic agro-technologies. Our thesis is that eco-curative and sustainable uses of agro-technology require a paradigm shift from the chemical model of agro-systems to the ecological system-design model of agriculture. Particularly, following the new biomimetic paradigm of ecological innovation, we question in what sense can we mimic natural solutions in agriculture. We discern among Integrated agriculture and Permaculture, analyze their biomimetic status from the perspective of the philosophy of biomimicry, and argue that the former nature-mentored approach is a more appropriate solution for sustainable broadscale agriculture necessary for the growing world. However, it is not clear how this agricultural bio-integration will interact with the predicted automatization of work, urban demographic momentum, and the Earth system instability, and can the Permaculture alternative emerge as a social safety-net for the anticipated technologically-redundant or economically or environmentally endangered workers. We argue both for the importance to understand Permaculture as a social safety-net and as experimental testing ground for cutting edge biomimetic technologies. (shrink)

Comprising almost a third of greenhouse gas emissions and having an equally prominent role in pollution of soils, fresh water, coastal ecosystems, and food chains in general, agriculture is, alongside industry and electricity/heat production, one of the three biggest anthropogenic causes of breaching the planetary boundaries. Most of the problems in agriculture, like soil degradation and diminishing biodiversity, are caused by unfit uses of existing technologies and approaches mimicking the agriculturally-relevant functioning natural ecosystems seem necessary for appropriate organization of (...) our toxic and entropic agro-technologies. Our thesis is that eco-curative and sustainable uses of agro-technology require a paradigm shift from the chemical model of agro-systems to the ecological system-design model of agriculture. Particularly, following the new biomimetic paradigm of ecological innovation, we question in what sense can we mimic natural solutions in agriculture. We discern among Integrated agriculture and Permaculture, analyze their biomimetic status from the perspective of the philosophy of biomimicry, and argue that the former nature-mentored approach is a more appropriate solution for sustainable broadscale agriculture necessary for the growing world. However, it is not clear how this agricultural bio-integration will interact with the predicted automatization of work, urban demographic momentum, and the Earth system instability, and can the Permaculture alternative emerge as a social safety-net for the anticipated technologically-redundant or economically or environmentally endangered workers. We argue both for the importance to understand Permaculture as a social safety-net and as experimental testing ground for cutting edge biomimetic technologies. (shrink)

This article unveils how the local, literally the soil, contains hidden and revelatory global histories, narrating how the little settlement at the edge of Manhattan was connected and indeed enmeshed in a vast network of human activity that was global in reach. Referencing the frames of big history, the universe story, and justice, the author demonstrates that the discovery of the African Burial Ground exposes hidden narratives of race, the city, and the genesis of global economic power. Among the (...) lessons—historical, social, and environmental—that can be drawn from this story: walls can no longer protect us from the dangers we face in the twenty-first century, and social equity and environmental protection must go hand in hand. (shrink)

The American environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott argues that we human beings are ethically obliged to promote and protect the environment as an intrinsic value. To do so, we should adopt a scientifically and philosophically informed postmodern land ethic which protects and nurtures the great chain of being (pyramids of energy) from soil to civilization. The practice of this Leopoldian land ethic requires that we transform our modernist utilitarian and Cartesian ethics which instrumentalize and alienate nature. Two key works (...) by Callicott outline his position as a mainstream academic deep ecologist: Earth’s Insights (1994) and Beyond the Land Ethic (1999). The French cultural and political philosopher, Luc Ferry, argues that deep ecological ideologies, such as Callicott’s, threatenthe historical enterprise of modernist humanism. The appeal of deep ecologists lies in their romantic and anti-Cartesian ideologies. In his book, The New Ecological Order (1995; Le nouvel ordre écologique, 1992), Ferry criticizes the deep ecologists (and he includes Callicott in this group) for their unjustified attacks on the traditions of humanism. In the conclusion to his book, deep ecological radicalism is equated with an anti-cosmopolitan “barbarism”. Ferry feels that the ideals of the European enlightenment and its modernist anthropocentrism which privileges human autonomy, freedom, and democratic ideals, have been undermined by the forces of the political left. (shrink)

Various structural factors influenceorganic farmer decision-making. Analyses that combinestructure and agency provide an opportunity forunderstanding farmers' perceptions of the political,economic, and social ``world'' in which they operate.Rich conversational interviews, conducted with twentycertified organic farmers in Illinois and analyzedwith multiple qualitative methods, show how farmersmediate structural concerns. In addition to political,economic, and social structures, a fourth structure isneeded. Indeed these organic farmers emphasize theimportance of ecological factors in theirdecision-making. Within the perceived economic,political, social, and ecological structures, numeroustopics (i.e., marketing, policy, family, (...) ecosystems)and subtopics (i.e., diversification, farm programs,traditions, soils) exist. Farmers' quotations providedetailed information of how they view and mediatestructures in their daily on-farm decision-making. (shrink)

Microbial genome sequencing has entered a new phase, where DNA sequence information is gathered from entire microbial communities (metagenomics or environmental genomics) rather than from individual microorganisms. By providing access to the genetic material of vast numbers of organisms, most of which are organisms that have never been isolated or cultivated, a new level of insight is being gained into the diversity and extent of the microbial processes that are presently occuring in environmental communities. By extending metagenomic‐based approaches to the (...) study of very complex and methodologically recalcitrant soil environments, a recent study has found that ammonia‐oxidizing archaea are more abundant in many soils than bacteria.1 These findings not only highlight the undoubtedly critical yet unknown roles that archaea play in global nutrient cycles but illustrate the importance of genomic studies for informing us about the functional capacity of life on Earth. BioEssays 29: 11–14, 2007. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate relationships between care and justice reasoning, dispositional empathy variables and meta‐ethical thinking among 128 students from a university of applied sciences. The measures were Skoe’s Ethic of Care Interview, the Defining Issues Test, Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index and Meta‐Ethical Questionnaire. The results showed that levels of care reasoning were positively related to the post‐conventional schema and negatively related to the personal interest schema in justice reasoning. Age, meta‐ethical thinking, the post‐conventional schema and (...) perspective taking predicted care reasoning. Sympathy was positively related to both modes of moral reasoning among men and predicted their care reasoning. The results point out common elements for care and justice reasoning, underscore the importance of perspective taking for moral reasoning and indicate that the relationship between affective‐based empathy and moral reasoning is gender‐specific and far more complex than previous theories suggest. (shrink)

Dilemma discussions have been proven to be one of the most effective methods to enhance students’ moral reasoning in ethics education. Dilemma discussions are increasingly arranged online, but research on the topic has remained sparse, especially in the context of continuing professional education. The aim of the present paper was to develop a method of dilemma discussions for professional ethics. The method was based on asynchronous discussions in small groups. Health and social care students raised work-related dilemmas from their experiences (...) and discussed them in terms of professional values, ethical guidelines and theories. Participants in this quasi-experimental study were 87 first-term graduate students at a Finnish university of applied sciences. Health and social care students in two consecutive ethics courses constituted two experiment groups, whereas health and social care students and business students in other programmes served as control groups. Students filled in a Defining Issues Test (DIT2) at the beginning of their studies and three months apart. Statically significant increase in moral reasoning was evidenced for experiment group 2, when discussion groups were purportedly composed to maximise differences in initial levels of moral reasoning. Findings suggest that online dilemma discussions can advance students’ moral reasoning development, especially when students’ exposure to higher-level arguments is ensured through complementary means, such as instructions, examples and plenary discussions. Online real-life dilemma discussions may also serve other important goals of ethics education, especially acquiring ethical concepts, and they can promote other components of ethical decision making: ethical sensitivity and motivation, and acquisition of implementation skills. (shrink)

This article ponders the influences ofthe dichotomous nature of our understanding law andto questions that starting point on different levels oflegal thinking.The purpose of law is to make rules for our socialbehaviour but there are no specific images of humanbeings behind law. When there are no defined images,subconscious cultural images shape our thinkingsometimes even without our realizing it, and withoutserious discussion. The division between family andthe market has to do with gender divisions as well aswith the division between family and (...) contract law. Thelogic and human image behind these two branches of lawis different.Even if we may behave differently in differentsituations we do not become altogether differentkinds of human beings with different values when wechange surroundings. Thus, we might instead develop asa starting point human co-operation law where familyand business partnerships are seen as specialbranches. The starting point of this co-operation lawwould be many-sided and pluralistic human beings, who would be atthe same time loving and egotistic, communal andindividual, feminine and masculine. Such human beingsmay be regarded as multicoloured instead of white orblack. (shrink)

There is no doubt that soybean is the most important crop for Argentina, with a planted surface that rose 11,000,000 hectares and a production of around 35,000,000 metric tons. During the 1990s, there was a significant agriculture transformation in the country, motorize by the adoption of transgenic crops (soy-bean, maize, and cotton) under the no-tillage system. The expansion of this model has been spread not only in the Pampas but also in very rich areas with high biodiversity, opening a new (...) agricultural border to important eco-regions like the Yungas, Great Chaco, and the Mesopotamian Forest. Transgenic cropping is a powerful technology. This produced relevant transformations over the environment and society where it is allowed. Migration, concentration of agribusiness, and loss of food sovereignty are some of the social results. Landscape transformation in the rural sector is evident, and the appearance of tolerance weeds to glyphosate is a reality. Nutrient depletion, soil-structure degradation, potential desertification, and loss of species are other consequences on the environmental level. (shrink)

The question of whether there are laws in ecology is important for a number of reasons. If, as some have suggested, there are no ecological laws, this would seem to distinguish ecology from other branches of science, such as physics. It could also make a difference to the methodology of ecology. If there are no laws to be discovered, ecologists would seem to be in the business of merely supplying a suite of useful models. These models would (...) need to be assessed for their empirical adequacy but not for their ability to capture fundamental truths, or the like. If, on the other hand, ecology does have laws, this prompts further questions about what these laws are and why even the best candidates for ecological laws fall short of what might be expected of laws. (shrink)