Politics of technology in the informal governance of destructive fishing in Spermonde,Indonesia

Technology has politics and plays a role in societal governance. This article explores the fishing community of Karanrang island (Spermonde Archipelago, Indonesia) to consider how fishing technologies reinforce existing power structures in the local informal governance system. Informal governance actors deploy the politics of technology in order to manage a socially problematic and environmentally destructive fishing economy. In the punggawa-sawi system of patron-client relationships, fishers are economically dependent on patrons, who supply them with fishing technologies like boats, bombs, and cyanide. The patrons themselves are embedded in a complex governance network, encompassing corrupt police and officials, importers, and live food fish traders. The politics of technology contribute to maintaining the local informal governance system of patron-client relationships. This paper draws upon theories from science and technology studies and network governance to argue that although patron-client relationships are problematic in themselves, the politics of technology further maintain power imbalances.     

A multi-dimensional assessment of urban vulnerability to climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper, we develop and apply a multi-dimensional vulnerability assessment framework for understanding the impacts of climate change-induced hazards in Sub-Saharan African cities. The research was carried out within the European/African FP7 project CLimate change and Urban Vulnerability in Africa, which investigated climate change-induced risks, assessed vulnerability and proposed policy initiatives in five African cities. Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) was used as a main case with a particular focus on urban flooding. The multi-dimensional assessment covered the physical, institutional, attitudinal and asset factors influencing urban vulnerability. Multiple methods were applied to cover the full range of vulnerabilities and to identify potential response strategies, including: model-based forecasts, spatial analyses, document studies, interviews and stakeholder workshops. We demonstrate the potential of the approach to assessing several dimensions of vulnerability and illustrate the complexity of urban vulnerability at different scales: households (e.g., lacking assets); communities (e.g., situated in low-lying areas, lacking urban services and green areas); and entire cities (e.g., facing encroachment on green and flood-prone land). Scenario modeling suggests that vulnerability will continue to increase strongly due to the expected loss of agricultural land at the urban fringes and loss of green space within the city. However, weak institutional commitment and capacity limit the potential for strategic coordination and action. To better adapt to urban flooding and thereby reduce vulnerability and build resilience, we suggest working across dimensions and scales, integrating climate change issues in city-level plans and strategies and enabling local actions to initiate a ‘learning-by-doing’ process of adaptation.     

A bridge over troubled water: A contextual analysis of social vulnerability to climate change in a riverine landscape in south-east Norway

Local communities in the Gudbrandsdalen region in Norway are increasingly exposed to climate-induced hazards such as floods and landslides. A core question is how community members respond to climate change and what factors contribute to more resilient communities. The authors used a contextual approach to analyze data from semi-structured interviews along five dimensions. In Gaustad Muncipality they found that individuals’ motivation to adapt to climate change depended largely on subjective values such as identity, place attachment, cultural values, and social networks among individuals, which means it is crucial that strategic plans for adaptation to climate change at different policy levels are experienced as relevant by community members. While the studied community has experienced heavy floods in river systems and streams, little evidence of adaptation was observed. Instead, they appeared to adopt coping strategies. Landowners may have limited incentives to adapt to climate change due to contraproductive policy measures such as economic compensation for direct losses without requiring improved practices. Effective adaptation to climate change on the local level is likely to require making compensation mechanisms contingent upon landowners showing willingness to change from coping to adaptive practices, as well as a contextualized approach integrating local and scientific forms of knowledge.     

Market-driven organizational lock-in: A case study of a former first mover

ABSTRACT

The article addresses the question of how an innovative firm develops from being a first mover to an innovation laggard and whether this process can be reversed. Informed by the evolutionary perspective and path-dependence theory, the authors explore how a low-tech Norwegian firm in the oil and gas industry has lost its foothold as an innovator. They also employ the concept of organizational architecture as an analytical tool to investigate the agency for breaking organizational paths. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews, their study revealed that the innovation activity of the case firm is in a state of lock-in following a path-dependence development. Product development in the firm is linked to incremental changes to existing products based on the feedback from the customer, and the process is characterized by knowledge exploitation rather than knowledge exploration. The article adds to the literature on path dependence by identifying how a strong market pull can be a driver for organizational path dependence and lock-in.     

Bathymetry,substrate and fishing areas of Southeast Atlantic high-seas seamounts

Most of the Southeast Atlantic Ocean is abyssal, and global bathymetries suggest that only ～3.2% of the areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ; also known as the high seas, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS]) are shallower than 2 500 m. This study mapped bathymetry and characterised substrates in selected seamount summit areas, including several that have been or may become fishing areas. The southernmost location, the Schmitt-Ott Seamount, has exposed volcanic bedrock with surrounding flats covered by thin biogenic sediments and/or coral rubble that appears ancient. At Wüst, Vema, Valdivia and Ewing seamounts the basaltic base appears to be overlain by coral caps and other coral substrates (sheets, rubble). Adjacent summit plains have biogenic sediments of varying thickness. Vema has a flat, roughly circular summit, <100 m deep, with the shallowest point being a 22-m-deep summit knoll; the upper slopes have ancient coral framework, but the summit has a mixture of coralline and volcanic rock and coarse sediments, including extensive areas with coralline algae and kelp forests. Valdivia Bank is a 230-m-deep, flat, rocky area (～11 × 5 km), protruding steeply from the extensive multi-summit Valdivia subarea of the Walvis Ridge. The distribution of past fisheries in the Convention Area of the South East Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (SEAFO) was considered in relation to the new information on bathymetry and substrate.     

Classifier ensembles for land cover mapping using multitemporal SAR imagery

SAR data are almost independent from weather conditions, and thus are well suited for mapping of seasonally changing variables such as land cover. In regard to recent and upcoming missions, multitemporal and multi-frequency approaches become even more attractive. In the present study, classifier ensembles (i.e., boosted decision tree and random forests) are applied to multi-temporal C-band SAR data, from different study sites and years. A detailed accuracy assessment shows that classifier ensembles, in particularly random forests, outperform standard approaches like a single decision tree and a conventional maximum likelihood classifier by more than 10% independently from the site and year. They reach up to almost 84% of overall accuracy in rural areas with large plots. Visual interpretation confirms the statistical accuracy assessment and reveals that also typical random noise is considerably reduced. In addition the results demonstrate that random forests are less sensitive to the number of training samples and perform well even with only a small number. Random forests are computationally highly efficient and are hence considered very well suited for land cover classifications of future multifrequency and multitemporal stacks of SAR imagery.     

Seasonal cycles and long-term trends of plankton in shelf and oceanic habitats of the Norwegian Sea in relation to environmental variables

The plankton abundance data of the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) route from Bergen or Rotterdam to Weather Station Mike (6444^′N, 2E) from 1949 to 1981 were analysed for long-term trends and seasonal production cycles, and were related to environmental data. The data were explored using the canonical correlation analysis and nonparametric techniques like the Nadaraya–Watson regression. While large copepods such as Calanus spp. and Metridia lucens did not show any temporal trends, a sharp decrease in the abundances of smaller copepods and phytoplankton was observed after 1960. The temporal trends were not related to the NAO, but did show a correlation with the wind direction. Seasonal abundance curves showed that production of both phytoplankton and zooplankton taxa started earlier in coastal water compared to Atlantic water. From the 1950s to the 1970s most taxa showed a delay in the start of the seasonal production cycles, indicating a reduction in the length of the productive cycle. This may to some extent explain the reduced abundance of smaller copepods, phytoplankton and other species during the 1960s and 1970s.     

A common garden experiment with larval Northeast Arctic and Norwegian coastal cod cohorts in replicated mesocosms

A replicated mesocosm experiment was carried out to evaluate differential effects of feeding conditions for larval Northeast Arctic (NA) cod and Norwegian coastal (NC) cod. The two populations were (1) reared together with a 6-day older NA cohort (mixed) in high (HC) and low prey concentration (LC; 2000 and 200 prey/L initially), and (2) reared separately in HC treatments (non-mixed) to be able to evaluate both the effect of feeding conditions and possible effects of size interaction within mesocosms. The larvae were fed natural zooplankton, and the two stocks were identified in the mixed mesocosms by otolith marking. NA larvae hatched at a larger size, had higher growth rates, and survived better than NC larvae in both mixed and non-mixed mesocosms in the HC treatment. The second cohort clearly survived better in the non-mixed than in the mixed mesocosms, indicating the presence of an interaction effect before cannibalism could occur. We found a significant higher weight-at-length between NC and NA larvae (<12 mm), which was bigger than the effect difference due to feeding conditions. Furthermore, a positive relation between survival and initial growth within mesocosms was found. We suggest that lower growth at early larval stages was accompanied by lower survival, and suggest that this was further enhanced when larvae interacted with older and larger larvae.     

Scour below pipelines and around vertical piles due to second-order random waves plus a current

This paper provides a method by which the scour depth below pipelines and around single vertical piles for combined random waves plus current including effects of second-order wave asymmetry can be derived. Here the empirical formulas proposed by Sumer and Fredsøe [1996. Scour below pipelines in combined waves and current. In: Proceedings of the 15th OMAE Conference, Florence, Italy. Vol. 5, ASME, New York, pp. 595–602] for pipelines, and by Sumer and Fredsøe [2002. The mechanics of scour in the marine environment. World Scientific, Singapore] for vertical piles are used together with Stokes second-order wave theory by assuming the basic harmonic wave motion to be a stationary Gaussian narrow-band random process. Comparisons are made with the Sumer and Fredsøe [1996. Scour below pipelines in combined waves and current. In: Proceedings of the 15th OMAE Conference, Florence, Italy. Vol. 5, ASME, New York, pp. 595–602; 2001. Scour around pile in combined waves and current. Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 127(5), 403–411] data for linear random waves plus current. An example of calculation is also presented.