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Health recommendations advocating increased fish consumption need to be placed in the context of the potential collapse of global marine capture fisheries.Literature overview.In economically developed countries, official healthy eating advice is to eat more fish, particularly that rich in omega-3 oils. In many less economically developed countries, fish is a key human health asset, contributing >20% of animal protein intake for 2.6 billion people. Marine ecologists predict on current trends that fish stocks are set to collapse in 40 years, and propose increased restrictions on fishing, including no-take zones, in order to restore marine ecosystem health. Production of fishmeal for aquaculture and other non-food uses (22 MT in 2003) appears to be unsustainable. Differences in fish consumption probably contribute to within-country and international health inequalities. Such inequalities are likely to increase if fish stocks continue to decline, while increasing demand for fish will accelerate declines in fish stocks and the health of marine ecosystems.Urgent national and international action is necessary to address the tensions arising from increasing human demand for fish and seafood, and rapidly declining marine ecosystem health.

Two laboratory-scale anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBRs) were built to investigate the effect of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) on their performance, and the recovery phase was also examined. Results showed that the addition of ZnO-NPs with 0.4 mg/L caused significant deteriorations of AnMBR performance, including decrements of chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency from 96.4% to 81.5% and biogas production from 0.36 to 0 L/g COD removal within 40 days. A significant increment from 13.2 to 52.1 mg/L in soluble microbial products (SMP) was obtained, while no obvious effect on colloids was observed except an increased fluctuation of colloid concentration. Additionally, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis revealed remarkable changes of compounds in effluent with exposure to ZnO-NPs, and some new alkanes and esters were produced, such as Cyclobutane, 1,2-diethyl-, trans-, Tetradecane, Cyclopropane, octyl-, and Butanoic acid, methyl ester. The microbial community was compared using high-throughput sequencing, clearly showing the changes in both bacteria and archaea communities. Furthermore, results for recovery phase indicated that the AnMBR performance can be recovered within around 60 days after stopping ZnO-NPs addition, accompanied by the decrement of zinc concentration mainly adsorbed by sludge.

Madagascar experienced a major faunal turnover near the end of the first millenium CE that particularly affected terrestrial, large-bodied vertebrate species. Teasing apart the relative impacts of people and climate on this event requires a focus on regional records with good chronological control. These records may document coeval changes in rainfall, faunal composition, and human activities. Here we present new paleontological and paleoclimatological data from southwestern Madagascar, the driest part of the island today. We collected over 1500 subfossil bones from deposits at a coastal site called Antsirafaly and from both flooded and dry cave deposits at Tsimanampesotse National Park. We built a chronology of Late Holocene changes in faunal assemblages based on 65 radiocarbon-dated specimens and subfossil associations. We collected stalagmites primarily within Tsimanampesotse but also at two additional locations in southern Madagascar. These provided information regarding hydroclimate variability over the past 120,000 years. Prior research has supported a primary role for drought (rather than humans) in triggering faunal turnover at Tsimanampesotse. This is based on evidence of: (1) a large freshwater ecosystem west of what is now the hypersaline Lake Tsimanampesotse, which supported freshwater mollusks and waterfowl (including animals that could not survive on resources offered by the hypersaline lake today); (2) abundant now-extinct terrestrial vertebrates; (3) regional decline or disappearance of certain tree species; and (4) scant local human presence. Our new data allow us to document the hydroclimate of the subarid southwest during the Holocene, as well as shifts in faunal composition (including local extirpations, large-vertebrate population collapse, and the appearance of introduced species). These records affirm that climate alone cannot have produced the observed vertebrate turnover in the southwest. Human activity, including the introduction of cattle, as well as associated changes in habitat exploitation, also played an important role.

The increasing energy demand in future will inevitably escalate pressures on water resources, as energy production needs huge amounts of water inputs. Globalization has resulted in the geographic separation between the source of water inputs for energy production and the sink of its final consumption, making it crucial to factor global supply chain effect into water-energy nexus management. Therefore, this paper investigates water use for energy from source of exploitation to sink of final consumption along global supply chains based on embodiment accounting method. In total, the energy-related water use embodied in international trade is in magnitude about 80% of global total energy-related water use in 2011. It should be noted that non-energy commodities contribute more than four fifths of energy-related water use embodied in international trade and global final consumption. China serves the largest exporter of energy-related water use while EU28 is the biggest receiver. From a perspective of global supply chains, two thirds of USA direct energy-related water use sinks into final consumption from rest of the world, and over a quarter of that embodied in Mainland China's final consumption is from USA, showing the tight relation between them on global supply chains. Findings highlight the urgent need to consider international trade (i.e., energy and non-energy commodity trade) and global supply chain effects for water-energy nexus policy-making to ensure the sustainable water supply for energy development.

Kicking out water: optimising the interaction between support hydrophobicity and surface acid sites in WOx/ZrOx/PMO catalysts unlocks an efficient route for the upgrading of low-quality waste bio-oil feedstocks to biodiesel.

Rural electrification (RE) has gained prominence over the past two decades as an effective means for improving living conditions. This growth has largely been driven by socio-economic and political imperatives to improve rural livelihood and by technological innovation. Based on a content analysis of 232 scholarly articles, the literature is categorized into four focal lenses: technology, institutional, viability and user-centric. We find that the first two dominate the RE debate. The viability lens has been used less frequently, whilst the user-centric lens began to engage scholars as late as 2007. We provide an overview of the technological, institutional and viability lenses, and elaborate upon the user-centric lens in greater detail. For energy policy and practice, we combine the four lenses to develop a business model framework that policy makers, practitioners and investors could use to assess RE projects or to design future rural electrification strategies.

This panel discussion session explores some of the central dimensions of the Crisis in the Anthropocene that constitute global social challenges in the context of development studies. The conference theme highlighted the profound human impact on our blue-green-brown planet, that is already breaching planetary boundaries and pushing us beyond the roughly 1.5°C tipping point. This threatens liveability and sustainability in many localities and regions and may well rapidly be ‘off the scale’ of imaginability and survivability. Inevitably, as mounting empirical evidence and increasingly clear projections by the IPCC and other authoritative bodies show, these impacts are unevenly spread, both socially and spatially, both now and over the coming decades. The urgency of appropriate action is undeniable and we already know many dimensions of the required adaptations and transformations. Yet progress mostly remains too slow. These challenges are vital to the development studies community – heterogenous as it is – with our concerns for tackling poverty, inequality, deprivation and environmental degradation globally and locally. Hence this symposium asks what the crisis means for development theory, policy and practice and what development studies can and should be contributing to – and, indeed, whether it is capable of – addressing some key dimensions that warrant greater attention.

This paper explores the concept of social sustainability in Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts in relation to access and mobility. Although ger districts are well-established in Mongolian culture as ephemeral encampments with transient residents, contemporary ger districts have become large and permanent residential districts that are now home to an estimated one-third of the country’s population. The more recent growth of the ger districts has taken place in three decades since Mongolia embraced market-based liberal economics, coinciding with waves of socially and economically-motivated urbanisation. More recently, difficult environmental conditions in rural Mongolia have created new waves of migration. The unfolding situation means that the ger districts have grown with little of the forward planning present in other built areas of the city. In turn, this has led to significant imbalances in the provision of transport services into the ger districts and the problems of access and mobility that this paper has highlighted. This paper has identified community-based local transport and delivery services as one potential means for addressing existing access and mobility shortcomings. Such approaches could provide temporary or complementary services alongside other public policy approaches.