Recommendations for developing and applying genetic tools to assess and manage biological invasions in marine ecosystems

The European Union’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) aims to adopt integrated ecosystem management approaches to achieve or maintain “Good Environmental Status” for marine waters, habitats and resources, including mitigation of the negative effects of non-indigenous species (NIS). The Directive further seeks to promote broadly standardized monitoring efforts and assessment of temporal trends in marine ecosystem condition, incorporating metrics describing the distribution and impacts of NIS. Accomplishing these goals will require application of advanced tools for NIS surveillance and risk assessment, particularly given known challenges associated with surveying and monitoring with traditional methods. In the past decade, a host of methods based on nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) analysis have been developed or advanced that promise to dramatically enhance capacity in assessing and managing NIS. However, ensuring that these rapidly evolving approaches remain accessible and responsive to the needs of resource managers remains a challenge. This paper provides recommendations for future development of these genetic tools for assessment and management of NIS in marine systems, within the context of the explicit requirements of the MSFD. Issues considered include technological innovation, methodological standardization, data sharing and collaboration, and the critical importance of shared foundational resources, particularly integrated taxonomic expertise. Though the recommendations offered here are not exhaustive, they provide a basis for future intentional (and international) collaborative development of a genetic toolkit for NIS research, capable of fulfilling the immediate and long term goals of marine ecosystem and resource conservation.     

Challenges to global surveillance of disease patterns

Surveillance systems for foodborne disease vary in capacity by country, especially for marine-related illnesses. Generally, the more developed the country is, the more funding that is put into its surveillance programs, but no country has an outstanding system that could serve as a model for all others. An additional problem is lack of consistency. Approaches to surveillance and available resources change over time, so that apparent trends may reflect more of an administrative function. Most countries have some passive system that allows data on foodborne illnesses to be sent to centralized authorities where summaries are generated. However, these depend on the uneven quality of the source data that vary according to the resources allocated at the local level. Active surveillance systems collect data targeted to answer specific epidemiological questions more efficiently, but at such a high cost that most countries do not have the resources, except on a occasional basis. There is also the issue of what to do with the collected data. There has to be a conscious effort to translate the problems identified from the surveillance programs to consider strategies for prevention and control of foodborne disease. Otherwise, there is little value in having these kinds of monitoring programs. Another problem is lack of coordination in surveillance systems between most countries, so that information can be rapidly and efficiently shared. That being said, surveillance over the years had generated much interesting information on how disease agents are transmitted through the food supply, and where contamination and growth by pathogens in the food production and preparation chain typically occur. In addition, attempts are being made to create regional networks in different parts of the world usually initiated by organizations like WHO and PAHO. The kinds of information collected and programs being introduced are discussed in examples taken from both the developed and less developed world, followed by a series of recommendations for improving surveillance on a global basis. A recent burden in the surveillance system is the potential for a deliberate attack on the food supply with agents not usually involved with foodborne illness. At least in the US, a major concern is for the rapid detection and containment of a massive contamination of the food supply.     

Surveillance and state-making through EU agricultural policy in Hungary

This paper explores how the implementation of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and agri-environment measures in particular have been used to increase state oversight into rural affairs and land use in Hungary. The governmentalities of the agricultural sector through Europeanisation include stringent inspections and controls as part and parcel of accountability drives around the disbursement of subsidies. Agricultural surveillance mechanisms and processes are recounted here as holistic, perpetual and immediate, composed of the remote, administrative, as well as embodied physical encounters. Through ethnographic engagement with the Hungarian state’s interactions with its farmers during inspections, the forms and consequences of neoliberal governmentality are given life in a post-socialist context. I elucidate the numerous subjectivities involved in these encounters, and how bureaucratic and administrative requirements underlie the rise of private consultants, where social capital and informal networks are of great importance for the successful navigation of the agricultural system. On the part of farmers, subsidies’ accountability systems were lived as unjust, giving rise to speculation around the ‘real’ intended purposes of agri-environment legislation, which in turn undermines the expert authority of the state and heightens skepticism towards the European ‘project’.     

香港数字化地震监测台网

香港天文台于１９９７年建立了一套设有８个短周期地震台站的地震监测网络。台网运用数字化及实时数据传送和处理等技术,增强地震数据接收及分析的效能和准确性。本文介绍了地震台站的选址和监测系统的特性与功能。     

A swamp and its subjects: conservation politics, surveillance and resistance in Trinidad, the West Indies

Once overlooked or scorned for its purportedly “unscientific” and culturally contextual nature, local knowledge has recently become a key ingredient in conservation and development planning in developing countries. However, this abrupt shift in the conceptualization and assumed utility of local knowledge has not received widespread theoretical attention. In addition, the literature on local knowledge is dominated by discussions of the scientific and applied merits of local epistemologies, and little theorization has been devoted to the explicitly spatial and social contexts that inform the encounters between local and scientific knowledge. This article draws on Michel Foucault's notions of subjectification, surveillance, and subjugated knowledge to analyze the liberatory potential of local knowledge through its embodiment in spatially situated subjects. The article builds on a case study in Trinidad, focusing on the subjectification of local fishermen through constructions of local knowledge, and the ways in which this subjectification was reversed and employed in the performance of resistance and intracommunal conflicts.