Статті в журналах з теми "Lake (Vic ) Water rights"

Abstract. The competition for scarce water resources in the Upper Klamath River Basin, Oregon has generated conflict among its stakeholders, as demonstrated by recent regulations on withdrawals from Upper Klamath Lake. Information on agricultural water usage can help assess the hydrologic impacts of irrigation and support operational decisions. This paper presents an experimental satellite-based evapotranspiration estimation system that is combined with the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model to estimate irrigation consumption, which is then used to assess the effects of irrigated agriculture on lake storage volumes and water levels. The hydrological model is calibrated with streamflow observations and used to estimate unmeasured lake inflows and guide water balance calculations. When combined with the VIC model, the satellite-based evapotranspiration estimation system shows that irrigation caused a decline of 0.3 m in average annual water levels and 0.5 m in mean October water levels, and an increase of 0.5 m in annual water level ranges at the lake from 2001 to 2005. The results demonstrate the potential of satellite data for agricultural water resource management at the regional scale.

Abstract. Competition for scarce water resources in the Upper Klamath River Basin, Oregon has generated conflict among its stakeholders, as demonstrated by recent regulations on withdrawals from Upper Klamath Lake. Information on agricultural water usage can help assess the hydrologic impacts of irrigation and support operational decisions. This paper presents an experimental satellite-based evapotranspiration estimation system that is combined with the Variable Inflitration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model to estimate irrigation consumption, which is then used to assess the effects of irrigated agriculture on lake storage volumes and water levels. The hydrological model is calibrated with streamflow observations and used to estimate unmeasured lake inflows and guide water budget calculations. When combined with the VIC model, the satellite-based evapotranspiration estimation system shows that irrigation caused a decline of 0.3 m in average annual water levels and 0.5 m in mean October water levels, and an increase of 0.5 m in annual water level ranges at the lake from 2001 to 2005. The results demonstrate the potential of satellite data for agricultural water resource management at the regional scale.

Abstract Lakes and wetlands are prevalent around the Great Lakes and play an important role in the regional water and energy cycle. However, simulating their impacts on regional-scale hydrology is still a major challenge and not widely attempted. In the present study, the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model is applied and evaluated with a physically based lake and wetland algorithm, which can simulate the effect of lakes and wetlands on the grid cell energy and water balance. The VIC model was calibrated at 10 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) stream gauging stations against daily streamflow records for the period of 1985–95, and successfully evaluated for the period of 1996–2005. Single-grid sensitivity experiments showed that runoff, baseflow, and inundation area were sensitive to the lake model parameters. Simulations were also conducted to analyze the spatial and temporal variability of inundation area for the period of 1985–2005. Results indicated that water and energy fluxes were substantially affected when lakes and wetlands were included in model simulations. Domain-averaged annual mean evapotranspiration (ET) was increased by 5% while annual mean total runoff was decreased by 12% with lakes and wetlands. Latent heat flux increased while sensible heat flux decreased because of the inclusion of lakes and wetlands.

Vegetation influences the runoff through affecting rainfall interception, soil water infiltration capacity and surface evaporation and other factors etc. In this paper, remote sensing data is used to analyze the major vegetation types of Poyang Lake Basin, and then a hydrological model (VIC model) is employed to simulate and compare runoff under different vegetation type scenarios. The simulation results show that the presence of vegetation will reduce the runoff and rate of decrease varies according to vegetation type: runoff reduction reaches the maximum when the vegetation type were mixed forest, followed by evergreen coniferous forest follows, and reaches the lowest when the evergreen broad-leaved forest predominates.

Abstract Lakes, ponds, and wetlands are common features in many low-gradient arctic watersheds. Storage of snowmelt runoff in lakes and wetlands exerts a strong influence on both the interannual and interseasonal variability of northern rivers. This influence is often not well represented in hydrology models and the land surface schemes used in climate models. In this paper, an algorithm to represent the evaporation and storage effects of lakes and wetlands within the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) macroscale hydrology model is described. The model is evaluated with respect to its ability to represent water temperatures, net radiation, ice freeze–thaw, and runoff production for a variety of high-latitude locations. It is then used to investigate the influence of surface storage on the spatial and temporal distribution of water and energy fluxes for the Kuparuk and Putuligayuk Rivers, on the Alaskan arctic coastal plain. Inclusion of the lake and wetland algorithm results in a substantial improvement of the simulated streamflow hydrographs, as measured using the monthly Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency. Simulations of runoff from the Putuligayuk watershed indicate that up to 80% of snow meltwater goes into storage each year and does not contribute to streamflow. Approximately 46% of the variance in the volume of snowmelt entering storage can be explained by the year-to-year variation in maximum snow water equivalent and the lake storage deficit from the previous summer. The simulated summer lake storage deficit is much lower than the cumulative precipitation minus lake evaporation (−47 mm, on average) as a result of simulated recharge from the surrounding uplands.

Since the early 1990s Peru has experienced an expansion in mining activities and an expansion in what the Peruvian ombudsman defines as socioenvironmental conflicts. This article examines the dynamics through which an environmental issue is transformed into a matter of citizenship and social belonging during a weeklong uprising in defense of Lake Conococha. Highlighting the collective actions and personal narratives from participants in the region-wide blockade, the article therefore seeks to understand how dispossessions of environmental resources perceived as common property are cast in terms of individual rights that move well beyond the site of conflict. It is therefore argued that the actions to reclaim Lake Conococha were not only a battle for natural resources and clean water, but more fundamentally an attempt to repossess a citizenship that may be constitutionally secured but all too often fails to be a lived reality in the high Andes of Peru.

Abstract. GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite data monitor large-scale changes in total terrestrial water storage (ΔTWS), providing an invaluable tool where in situ observations are limited. Substantial uncertainty remains, however, in the amplitude of GRACE gravity signals and the disaggregation of TWS into individual terrestrial water stores (e.g. groundwater storage). Here, we test the phase and amplitude of three GRACE ΔTWS signals from five commonly used gridded products (i.e. NASA's GRCTellus: CSR, JPL, GFZ; JPL-Mascons; GRGS GRACE) using in situ data and modelled soil moisture from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) in two sub-basins (LVB: Lake Victoria Basin; LKB: Lake Kyoga Basin) of the Upper Nile Basin. The analysis extends from January 2003 to December 2012, but focuses on a large and accurately observed reduction in ΔTWS of 83 km3 from 2003 to 2006 in the Lake Victoria Basin. We reveal substantial variability in current GRACE products to quantify the reduction of ΔTWS in Lake Victoria that ranges from 80 km3 (JPL-Mascons) to 69 and 31 km3 for GRGS and GRCTellus respectively. Representation of the phase in TWS in the Upper Nile Basin by GRACE products varies but is generally robust with GRGS, JPL-Mascons, and GRCTellus (ensemble mean of CSR, JPL, and GFZ time-series data), explaining 90, 84, and 75 % of the variance respectively in "in situ" or "bottom-up" ΔTWS in the LVB. Resolution of changes in groundwater storage (ΔGWS) from GRACE ΔTWS is greatly constrained by both uncertainty in changes in soil-moisture storage (ΔSMS) modelled by GLDAS LSMs (CLM, NOAH, VIC) and the low annual amplitudes in ΔGWS (e.g. 1.8–4.9 cm) observed in deeply weathered crystalline rocks underlying the Upper Nile Basin. Our study highlights the substantial uncertainty in the amplitude of ΔTWS that can result from different data-processing strategies in commonly used, gridded GRACE products; this uncertainty is disregarded in analyses of ΔTWS and individual stores applying a single GRACE product.

Abstract Challenges to manage and secure a sustainable water supply are expected to become more acute in Egypt as the lowermost riparian country of the Nile basin with the construction of new transboundary water infrastructures in Ethiopia and Sudan. To understand the impact of such transboundary water projects on Egypt, it is first necessary to develop a modeling tool that can simulate potential flow and reservoir scenarios inside Egypt without requiring in situ hydrologic or transboundary dam data that are typically unavailable. This study presents the water management value of a modeling framework to predict the current and future reservoir operating rules in the lower Nile basin using satellite Earth observations and hydrologic models. The platform comprises the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model driven by high spatial and temporal resolution of satellite observations. Reservoir storage change is estimated using altimeter and visible imagery of lake area for Lake Nasser and then applied to infer reservoir operation for High Aswan Dam (HAD). The modeling framework based on satellite observations yielded a simulated streamflow at the outlet for Blue Nile basin (BNB) with a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency of 0.68 with a correlation and RMSE of 0.94 and 1095 m3 s−1, respectively. Storage and outflow discharge of HAD were estimated for the period of 1998–2002 within 1.4% accuracy (0.076 km3 month−1) when compared with published reports. Because BNB controls the lion’s share of the variability to HAD inflow inside Egypt, the proposed modeling framework is appropriate for policy-makers to understand the implications of transboundary projects on the future water security of Egypt.

The surface of the earth is very diverse, there are various elements on it that shape it: mountains, forests, and water. Not all elements of its shape are relevant to the concept of real estate or the scope of ownership rights. The regulations state that the majority of real estate may be owned by any civil law entities, without differentiating them and limiting the possibility of acquiring ownership rights. Some properties are in principle owned by the State Treasury (or municipalities, as a rule). Whether a property may be owned by any entity may depend on its type, location or what is on it. The following article discusses whether a lake can be treated as a property within the meaning of civil law. In addition, it was examined whether two land and mortgage registers could be kept for one lake.

In a changing environment, changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) in basins have a significant impact on potential floods and affect flood risk assessment. Therefore, we aimed to study the impact of TWS on potential floods. In this study, we reconstructed the TWS based on precipitation and temperature, evaluated the reconstructed TWS data based on Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)-TWS data, and analyzed and calculated the flood potential index (FPI) in the Yangtze River Basin (YRB). The related influencing factors were analyzed based on the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) data and Granger’s causality test. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) although the GRACE-TWS anomaly (GRACE-TWSA) in the YRB showed an increasing trend for the averaged TWSA over all grids in the whole basin (i.e., 0.31 cm/a, p < 0.05), the variable infiltration capacity-soil moisture anomalies (VIC-SMA) showed a decreasing trend (i.e., −0.048 cm/a, p > 0.05) during April 2002–December 2019; (2) a larger relative contribution of detrended precipitation to FPI was found in the Jialingjiang River Basin (JRB), Wujiang River Basin (WRB), Dongting Lake Rivers Basin (DLRB), YinBin-Yichang reaches (YB-YC), and Yichang-Hukou reaches (YC-HK), while the contribution of detrended TWS to FPI in the Poyang Lake Rivers Basin (PLRB) was larger than that in other basins; and (3) the original and detrended soil moisture (SM) and TWS in the YRB showed a significant positive correlation (p < 0.05), while the significant effect of SM on TWS caused a change in FPI in the YRB and its sub-basins. This study is of great significance for the correct understanding of the FPI and the accurate assessment of flood risk.

Based on longitudinal data, and relying on the tragedy of the commons and the tragedy of the anti-commons theoretical frameworks, we argue: (1) groundwater permit patterns in Oklahoma are likely to contribute to the tragic overuse of groundwater resources; and (2) involvement of large and opposing groups that operate within an environment of fragmented access rights undermines the emergence of an efficient water management regime for Sardis Lake on Native American land in southeastern Oklahoma. Based on quantitative and qualitative research approaches, this study seeks to reveal patterns of groundwater overexploitation and deconstruct the complex processes surrounding the water dispute over Sardis Lake so that policymakers understand the relevant dangers and are able to identify sound policy solutions to manage common pool resources.

The Mekong River basin supported a large population and ecosystem with abundant water and nutrient supply. However, the impoundments in the river can substantially alter the flow downstream and its timing. Using limited observations, this study demonstrated an approach to derive dam characteristics, including storage and flow rate, from remote-sensing-based data. Global Reservoir and Lake Monitor (GRLM), River-Lake Hydrology (RLH), and ICESat-GLAS, which generated altimetry from Jason series and inundation areas from Landsat 8, were used to estimate the reservoir surface area and change in storage over time. The inflow simulated by the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model from 2008 to 2016 and the reservoir storage change were used in the mass balance equation to calculate outflows for three dams in the basin. Estimated reservoir total storage closely resembled the observed data, with a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency and coefficient of determination more than 0.90 and 0.95, respectively. An average decrease of 55% in outflows was estimated during the wet season and an increase of up to 94% in the dry season for the Lam Pao. The estimated decrease in outflows during the wet season was 70% and 60% for Sirindhorn and Ubol Ratana, respectively, along with a 36% increase in the dry season for Sirindhorn. Basin-wide demand for evapotranspiration, about 935 mm, implicitly matched with the annual water diversion from 1000 to 2300 million m3. From the storage–discharge rating curves, minimum storage was also evident in the monsoon season (June–July), and it reached the highest in November. This study demonstrated the utility of remote sensing products to assess the impacts of dams on flows in the Mekong River basin.

The Murchison Bay catchment in the northern shoreline of Lake Victoria basin is a high valued ecosystem because of the numerous human-related activities it supports in Uganda. The catchment has undergone tremendous human-induced land use/cover changes, which have not been quantified. This study aimed at quantifying the land use/cover changes as well as the rate at which these changes occurred over the last three decades in the catchment. This was achieved using remote sensing techniques and Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyse and contextualize the changes. To that effect, images of Landsat satellites MSS, TM, ETM+ and OLI were interpreted using supervised image classification technique to determine the land use/land cover changes from 1984 to 2015. The obtained results indicated that the catchment has undergone huge land use and land cover transformations over the last three decades attributable to rapid population growth and urbanization. The prevailing changes in footprint between 1984 and 2015 were expansions of built–up land (20.58% to 49.59%) and open water bodies (not detected in 1984 to 1.74%), and decreases in the following sectors: agricultural lands (from 43.88% to 26.10%), forestland (from 23.78% to 17.49%), and wetlands (from 11.76% to 5.08%). The changes pose a threat to the environment and water quality of the Murchison Bay and consequently increases National Water and Sewerage Corporation water treatment costs. Therefore, there is the need to take critical and practical measures to regulate and police land use, water use rights and conserve the environment especially wetlands.

<p>Multiple dynamics produce the ecological present. For the past 30 years or more, in the southern Atacama salt pan (Salar) in northern Chile, extractive industries have been accumulating minerals and water in exhaustive quantities, taking ever more than may be regenerated. However, the exhaustion of the Salar de Atacama involves a more complex set of symptoms than demonstrable environmental depletion. Fragmented scientific knowledge of the salt pan due to the privatization of water and under-regulation of mining provides a partial explanation for this complexity. In this article, we discuss these political conditions of environmental knowledge and, using a range of methodologies, we show that the scale of resource extraction threatens social and environmental harm and exhaustion may manifest in unexpected ways. We used remote sensing data to elaborate maps that reflect environmental change (1985-2017), relative to the intensification of extractive activity for copper and lithium salts in the area. Using these data, we undertook ethnographic and participatory mapping work to discuss with people from the Peine Indigenous community how they have experienced ecological change related to mineral and water extraction in the southern Salar. A review of the historical and archaeological material helps us to show the depth of Indigenous people's relationships to and knowledge of the salt pan and surrounds, and how social memory may be ecological. Combining the different results of our research, we argue that ecological exhaustion emerges from social, environmental and political conditions driven by both tangible and uncertain impacts of industrial extraction. Revealing these conditions of exhaustion raises key questions about the complexity of the effects of extraction.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: Indigenous peoples; Salar de Atacama; participatory mapping; mining; water rights</p>

Co-management of common property aquatic habitats are increasingly implemented with a view to increasing fish production, ensuring fishers’ rights and to conserve biodiversity. This study investigates the current status and identifies barriers to fisheries management in an oxbow lake (baor) at Jessore district, Bangladesh. Using interviews, focus group discussions and secondary data, this study revealed that both capture and culture fisheries are practised at the same time at the same water-body. As the wetland was used solely for capture fisheries before, the introduction of aquaculture practice has increased the total fish production and income for some people. However, it has reduced the access to poor fishers and fish biodiversity. Particularly the biodiversity of Channa sp, Puntius sp, Mastacembelus sp, Mystus sp, and Colisa fasciatus has been reduced. A range of climatic, institutional, economic and social barriers have facilitated the reduced access of poor fishers and biodiversity. To overcome the barriers and ensure sustainable management of the baor this study proposes to implement a fair leasing system, increase financial and human resources together with an ecosystem-based approach to baor management. Bangladesh J. Zool. 46(2): 105-116, 2018

Detecting and assessing changes in the hydrologic cycle and its response to a changing environment is essential for maintaining regional ecological security and restoring degraded ecosystems. There is no clear scientific evidence on the effects of human activities and climate variability on runoff and its components in typical arid areas. Therefore, in this study, a heuristic segmentation algorithm, a variable infiltration capacity model (VIC), and remote sensing data to quantify the effects of human activities and climate variability on runoff in the catchment of Lake Ebinur, Xinjiang, China. The results found: (1) The heuristic segmentation algorithm divided the study period into reference period (1964–1985) and two impact periods: I (1986–2000) and II (2001–2017). (2) Cropland and forest land showed an increasing trend, with grassland and barren land accounting for most of the increase. At the same time, the leaf area index (LAI) increased by 0.002 per year during the growing season. (3) Compared with the reference period, runoff depth decreased by 108.80 mm in impact period I due to human activities, but increased by 110.5 mm due to climate variability, resulting in an overall increase in runoff depth of 1.72 mm. Runoff depth increased by 11.10 mm in the impact period II compared to the reference period, with climate variability resulting in an increase of 154.40 mm, but human activities resulted in a decrease of 143.30 mm. Our results shed light on decision-making related to water stress in changing circumstances in arid regions.

Bolivia has influenced the international water arenas as a pioneer of the Human Water Rights Declaration before the United Nations General Council. However, despite a positive but rather ideological evolution, the country is still facing several water challenges in practice. Water governance is extremely complex due to intricate social structures, important spatial and temporal differences in the availability of water resources, ecological fragility, and weak institutions. A Transdisciplinary Learning Community approach has been adopted by the Universidad Católica Boliviana to take into account the complexity of the water problems caused by social, hydrological, and ecological system imbalances. In this approach, researchers and non-academic actors work closely together to integrate different ways of conceiving, using, valuing, and deciding on water issues. The approach aims at co-creating resilient solutions by recovering and restoring not only the ecological system, but also the social system in which all actors are aware of their role and responsibility. We explain the challenges and concerns raised by this approach in a case study of the Katari River Basin (KRB), which is impacted by a high degree of contamination that is mainly caused while crossing El Alto city, leading to dramatic consequences for the Lake Titicaca ecosystem and its surrounding communities.

The water crisis can alternatively be called a governance crisis. Thus, the demand for good water governance to ensure effective water resources management and to attain specific water goals is growing. Many countries subscribe to the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach to achieve this goal. The Integrated Water Resources Management approach aims to ensure a process that promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land, and related resources in a drainage basin to maximise economic and social welfare equitably without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. The design of the Integrated Water Resources Management approach, including its pillars and principles, aspires to good water governance and effective resource management. However, empirical studies examining this hypothesis and analysing the impact of the Integrated Water Resources Management approach on water resources governance are limited, especially in developing countries. Therefore, we characterised and compared the water resources governance aspects of two catchments in Uganda’s Lake Albert basin. One of the catchments was exposed to integrated water resources management projects, while the other had no exposure to integrated water resources management projects. Some of the factors that supported the comparability of the two sites included spatial proximity linking into a related hydrological and social-economic setup, common water needs and belonging to the same water administration zone. Comparing both areas led us to analyse whether there was a difference in water resources governance actions, as well as in the quality of water resources governance, under the same overall water management and administrative zone. The data were based on field surveys using questionnaires and information guides in both catchments. The results show that the performance of water resources governance is markedly better in the catchment with Integrated Water Resources Management practices than the base catchment unaffected by these practices. Key themes examined include water resources governance styles, water resources governance systems presence, functionality, the performance of good governance principles, and water resources management effectiveness. The findings contribute to the aspirations for the promotion of integrated water management approaches for improved water resources governance, and the concept that the effectiveness of water resources management measures depends on governance effectiveness. Water governance is significant, as it spells out the power, rights, decisions, and priorities relating to given water resources and communities.

We present an integrated information system needed to address the climate-water-migration-conflict nexus in the Congo Basin. It is based on a rigorous and multidisciplinary methodological approach that consists of designing appropriate tools for field surveys and data collection campaigns, data analysis, creating a statistical database and creating a web interface with the aim to make this information system publicly available for users and stakeholders. The information system developed is a structured and organized set of quantitative and qualitative data on the climate-water-migration-conflict nexus and gender, consisting of primary data collected during field surveys. It contains 250 aggregated variables or 575 disaggregated variables, all grouped into 15 thematic areas, including identification; socio-demographic characteristics; access to resources; perception of climate change; perception of migration; financial inclusion (savings, access to credit and circulation of money); domination and control on water resources, land ownership and property rights, conflict resolution and community resilience; water uses; vulnerability to climate change; housing, household assets and household expenditure; food security; health, hygiene and sanitation; environmental risk management; women’s economic autonomy; and water transfer from the Congo Basin to Lake Chad. The information system can be used to model and understand the interface of human-environment interactions, and develop scenarios necessary to address the challenges of climate change and resilient development, while supporting key policy areas and strategies to foster effective stakeholder participation to ensure management and governance of climate and natural resources in the Congo Basin.

The study was aimed to assess the dynamics of risk indices for population health at main stages of surface source water treatment for centralized domestic water supply of the Leningrad region communities. Practical application issues of calculation procedure for the integrated assessment of drinking water from centralized water supply by chemical safety indices, as exemplified by Vsevolozhsk communities (Leningrad region) water supply from the Lake Ladoga and the Neva River as water sources, are discussed. Results of quality monitoring of water from centralized domestic supply system at the stage of water intake, at the output of water treatment, and in the distributing system, accomplished by Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing administration and Center of hygiene and epidemiology in the Leningrad region were used as study materials. The following study techniques were used: descriptive statistics, comparative analysis, risk assessment, generalization. Microsoft Excel program was used for analysis and statistical treatment. Integral water quality index appears to be quite an informative integrated index of the efficacy of the water treatment, however, the same index value can be derived by various combinations of risk values of reflex-olfactory, non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic effects. Therefore, during the calculations, a “risk index of the effects of chronic exposure” was introduced with a view to distinguishing them from effects caused by the adverse organoleptic properties of water (reflex-olfactory effects). For the population these properties are the main reason for refusal from the use drinking water, and at the same time they are physiological, lying outside the pathology. The risk of effects of chronic exposure, carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic, expresses the probability of the development of pathology in time, but not the likelihood of an immediate refusal to use drinking water due to its unsatisfactory organoleptic qualities.

The existence of small lakes, lakes, public ponds, and reservoirs for the Indonesian people is significant and has been used for various basic needs. The conditions of small lakes, lakes, public ponds and reservoirs generally show negative tendency namely pollution, silting, environmental damage and even some of them have been shifted function to land. This study aims to determine the importance of land registration for small lakes, lakes, public ponds, and reservoirs. The research method is descriptive qualitative. Data was collected through field observation for several samples and secondary data collection for several cases. Furthermore, the data are analyzed empirically by referring to the regulations and practices of the policy. The results obtained indicate that the sustainability of situ, lakes, reservoirs, and reservoirs (SDEW) is disturbed due to human activities. Land registration is one of the efforts to protect the existence of these public water areas. However, not all public water areas can be registered because of their land status. The area of ​​public water to be registered includes the surface area of ​​the water and its buffer zones. The stages of land registration for the area, lakes, reservoirs, and reservoirs are generally the same as for other land registrations. Following the registration of land for the territorial waters, the holder of land rights must actively maintain the control boundary and monitor the physical condition of the lake, reservoirs, and reservoirs from illegal exploitation efforts. In addition, the Government and Regional Governments must be able to raise community participation in maintaining territorial waters and establish cooperation with other parties related to the provisions governed by laws and regulations. This study concludes that land registration for the SDEW area is beneficial due to the improved management, monitoring, and maintenance system through the availability of accurate data and the strong legal basis.

Sylvia Plath’s mirror and Forough Farrokhzad’s the bird may die are two of the best known poems in the aspect of femininity, fighting for feminine rights and equality. The two poets though living distances apart, respectively in America and Iran, had the same poetic perspectives. These poems can be viewed in the aspect of mysticism and mystical state. The term mysticism defined by William James and Frederick Crossfield Happold, is a state of mind experiencing the finding of the hidden truth and the true self. Many have said that the poem mirror dictates the feministic aspect of Sylvia Plath's life, and how women are visualized or valued by men, or that the poem demonstrates the aging of Plath into a wise and old woman. In this paper however we aim to introduce another perspective in which claims Sylvia Plath's mirror seeks mysticism and finding the true self. The narrator in the poem, first a mirror and then a lake, thinks its reflections out loud. This paper also aims to relate this matter to Forough Farrokhzad's poem the bird may die, a poem believed by critics to state the sufferings from social injustice of her time, though now seen through mystical spectacles. In the poem Farrokhzad declares her sorrow of darkness, and seeks an invitation to the birds’ feast. Furthermore, this paper briefly introduces the troubled life of the two poets demonstrating the similarities of their situation and circumstances, and the effect of these difficulties on their poetry. On this paper first mysticism, it’s definition and theoretical studies by William James and Frederick Crossfield Happold are introduced, followed by a brief biography of Sylvia Plath and Forough Farrokhzad, stating the difficulties and problems they encountered, and then the mystical analysis of the two poems, analyzing each line for elements, metaphors, and symbolic features through a mystical point of view, are indicated accordingly. The bird, mirror, lake, night, water, fish, moon, and sun are all signs and symbols the poets used to demonstrate seeking mysticism, reality, and finding the true self, and also the obstacles which prevents them to do so. These two poems were the latest works of the poets, before they committed suicide.

We studied two medium size pristine rivers (Taz and Ket) of boreal and subarctic zone, western Siberia, for a better understanding of the environmental factors controlling major and trace element transport in riverine systems. Our main objective was to test the impact of climate and land cover parameters (permafrost, vegetation, water coverage, soil organic carbon, and lithology) on carbon, major and trace element concentration in the main stem and tributaries of each river separately and when considering them together, across contrasting climate/permafrost zones. In the permafrost-bearing Taz River (main stem and 17 tributaries), sizable control of vegetation on element concentration was revealed. In particular, light coniferous and broadleaf mixed forest controlled DOC, and some nutrients (NO2, NO3, Mn, Fe, Mo, Cd, Ba), deciduous needle-leaf forest positively correlated with macronutrients (PO4, Ptot, Si, Mg, P, Ca) and Sr, and dark needle-leaf forest impacted Ntot, Al, and Rb. Organic C stock in the upper 30–100 cm soil positively correlated with Be, Mn, Co, Mo, Cd, Sb, and Bi. In the Ket River basin (large right tributary of the Ob River) and its 26 tributaries, we revealed a correlation between the phytomass stock at the watershed and alkaline-earth metals and U concentration in the river water. This control was weakly pronounced during high-water period (spring flood) and mostly occurred during summer low water period. Pairwise correlations between elements in both river systems demonstrated two group of solutes—(1) positively correlated with DIC (Si, alkalis (Li, Na), alkaline-earth metals (Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba), and U), this link originated from groundwater feeding of the river when the labile elements were leached from soluble minerals such as carbonates; and (2) elements positively correlated with DOC (trivalent, tetravalent, and other hydrolysates, Se and Cs). This group reflected mobilization from upper silicate mineral soil profile and plant litter, which was strongly facilitated by element colloidal status, notably for low-mobile geochemical tracers. The observed DOC vs DIC control on riverine transport of low-soluble and highly mobile elements, respectively, is also consistent with former observations in both river and lake waters of the WSL as well as in soil waters and permafrost ice. A principal component analysis demonstrated three main factors potentially controlling the major and TE concentrations. The first factor, responsible for 26% of overall variation, included aluminum and other low mobile trivalent and tetravalent hydrolysates, Be, Cr, Nb, and elements strongly complexed with DOM such as Cu and Se. This factor presumably reflected the presence of organo-mineral colloids, and it was positively affected by the proportion of forest and organic C in soils of the watershed. The second factor (14% variation) likely represented a combined effect of productive litter in larch forest growing on carbonate-rich rocks and groundwater feeding of the rivers and acted on labile Na, Mg, Si, Ca, P, and Fe(II), but also DOC, micronutrients (Zn, Rb, Ba), and phytomass at the watershed. Via applying a substituting space for time approach for south-north gradient of studied river basins, we predict that climate warming in northern rivers may double or triple the concentration of DIC, Ca, Sr, U, but also increase the concentration of DOC, POC, and nutrients.

Several dozens of Karaims still residing in Trakai may be regarded as the true inhabitants of the town, considering that at least several generations of them lived there. While analyzing their life stories collected during fieldwork in 2008–2018, and comparing them to the testimonies of other Trakai dwellers describing Karaims, it becomes clear that Karaims have a number of definite places making up their “own” space and a meaningful topography. This typography comprises the northern part of the Trakai Peninsula, the northwestern suburban territories and the nearby lakes. In the oral tradition, part of the Trakai Peninsula attributed to Karaims bears the name Karaimščizna or Karaimų gatvė (‘Karaim Street’). It runs from the Chapel of St. John of Nepomuk to the so-called Iron Bridge in the neck between Galvė Lake and Totoriškės Lake. Not only Karaims, but also other ethnic groups residing in Trakai define this area as special in linguistic, religious, social, economic, and urban sense. From the social perspective, Karaims enjoy certain double status: being the “original” inhabitants of Trakai, they are also the most singular and the least known ones. Stories by the other ethnic groups abound in descriptions of certain “strangeness” of the Karaims. In the 15th – 18th centuries, Karaims enjoyed certain autonomy in this part of the town. At that period, two towns endowed with the Magdeburg rights co-existed in the small Trakai Peninsula – the Karaim town and the Christian town. Even today, Karaims consider their historical part of the town to be the “real Trakai”. Karaims are outstanding in terms of their particularly strong community bonds, including common religion, ethnic origins, history, and kinship. In general, the sense of community largely defines the special Karaim attitude to Trakai. For them, the town is not just a place of residence, but also a meaningful space in terms of the common historical, celebratory, family and everyday experiences. The common experience is also evident in the famous Karaim legend describing the miraculous horse of the Duke Vytautas. This legend starts with the time of the Karaims settling in Trakai under the rule of Vytautas the Great. After a particularly harsh winter, the spring tide causes the lakes surrounding Trakai to spill over, and the flood threatens to drown the part of the town inhabited by the Karaims. However, the horse of Vytautas gulps down the water, and the next morning a new lake appears in the horse’s pasture, emitting strange smell. Different variants of the legend point to several lakes, but all of them are within area that is meaningful to Karaims, and close to the former communal lands, the so-called Karaim fields. Historians and folklorists investigating this legend so far have mostly concentrated on the image of Vytautas. The author of this article treats this legend as a source presenting the places that Karaims consider important, and their daily routines (their main trade was growing vegetables, particularly cucumbers). This legend also provides evidence of the attempts undertaken by the 20th century Karaim intelligentsia at establishing the modern Karaim identity. The best-known variants of this legend were recorded in the 20th century by Abraomas Šišmanas (Abraham Szyszman) and the senior hazzan Simonas Firkovičius. Both of them paid great interest to the Karaim culture during the interwar period, spreading certain important messages in their folklore recordings as well. These include, for instance, the depiction of Karaims as warriors. This legend merits consideration in terms of space and the Karaim everyday life, particularly in the context of the fieldwork data collected in the 21st century, and observations of the Karaim life style. The legend in question emerges as the verbal testimony of the people coming from the Black Sea region and struggling to adapt in the completely new surroundings, characterized by entirely different climate – long winters and lots of water.

Although the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) was founded in 1842, it was not until 1872, two years after the transfer of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) lands to the Dominion of Canada, that the first GSC geologist, Director Alfred R. C. Selwyn, came to the western interior. One year later a drilling program he had been promoting in Ottawa saw two wells brought to completion and a third one started.During the period 1873-1875 five wells were drilled by or for the GSC at: Fort Garry (the first to be spudded and at 37 feet the shallowest), Shoal Lake, Rat Creek, Fort Carlton, and Fort Pelly (the deepest at 501 feet and the last to be abandoned). The main objective was to locate sources of water and coal for the future transcontinental railroad then planned to follow a northwesterly route from Winnipeg to Edmonton.Four wells were drilled with a rotary, diamond sieamdrill which had been used in the hard, coal-bearing rocks of Nova Scotia but proved unsuitable for penetrating the glacial drift, loose sands, and soft clays of the prairies.Besides having to deal with technical problems related to the transport of heavy equipment, a GSC drilling party became embroiled in a dispute between Government and Natives over land rights. After encountering an Indian blockade led by Chief Mistiwassis the crew retreated behind the stockade of HBC's Fort Carlton to drill a 175-foot well in August and September 1875.In 1874 an agreement was made between the GSC and John Henry Fairbank, Canada's most prominent oilman, for the drilling of a well at Fort Pelly. A percussion steamdrill, then in common use in the Petrolia, Ontario, oil fields, was the equipment of choice. Work at a drill site north of the fort in the Swan River valley started 25 August 1874 but on 30 October winter forced suspension. The stored equipment was used again the following year when drilling resumed on 6 July. The contracted 500 foot depth was exceeded by 1 foot on 9 October 1875 when the well was abandoned.

The Russian state exercises sovereignty over its waters and has exclusive criminal jurisdiction with respect to crimes infringing on the security of oil, research or other stationary platforms in these waters, although their status may differ, for example, Lake Baikal; part of a continental water body (the Caspian Sea); marine internal waters (the Peter the Great Gulf); the territorial sea of the Russian Federation. Despite certain differences in status, all these waters are united by being part of the Russian territory. They differ from the waters that are not part of the territory of the state, but are above the continental shelf of the Russian Federation; these are the waters of the exclusive economic zone of the Russian Federation, and the open sea waters start beyond the 200-mile distance from the baseline. Even in the latter case, since a platform is stationary on the continental shelf of the Russian Federation, it is within the exclusive criminal jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. Counteraction to crimes infringing of the security of platforms fixed to the seabed includes a wide range of legal and organizational-legal measures. Besides, an important part is played by the special norms of international and national laws, including the criminal legislation of the state that has jurisdiction over the water body where a fixed platform is located. This article presents suggestions on improving Russian criminal legislation taking into account Russia's participation in the Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Fixed Platforms Located on the Continental Shelf of 1988, other applicable norms of international law, the necessity to observe international law obligations and protect the national interests of the country. The authors suggest that unlawful acts of seizing a fixed platform or other violent actions infringing on the security of this object, the security of personnel operating it, aimed at forcing a state or an organization which is legally operating this object to perform or abstain form certain actions, and resulting in the intimidation of the population should be specifically included in the national criminal law as a separate type of terrorism crimes. The authors also recommend to add the norms on criminal liability for other unlawful, criminally punishable acts (which are not acts of terrorism and do not have the features of terrorism), including the attempts of illegal entry into a fixed platform or hindering its operation, to Chapter 24 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation «Crimes against Public Safety» as a separate Article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation among the norms regarding crimes that violate the security of the functioning of potentially dangerous objects (potentially dangerous operations). They recommend to use the most successful international legal experience to improve corporate acts within the framework of Russian legislation through the content specification of the scope and type of rights and obligations of business entities, including the relationships of the fixed platforms personnel with the law enforcement bodies with the purpose of a more effective inclusion of business entities in the system of measures of preventing and suppressing illegal interference in the functioning of fixed platforms in the Russian waters.

To conserve a resource without having adequate data and finance is difficult and frustrating. The situation of wildlife in Nigeria is nevertheless different. Except in the Yankari, Upper Ogun, and Kwiabaha, Game Reserves, and the Kainji Lake National Park, little efforts have been made to protect the Nigerian animal wildlife resources from human pressure and widespread extinction. To many, what remains of the wild animals are best seen in the few state-owned zoological gardens in Nigeria. However, because most indigenous large animal species—including Elephant, Buffalo, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Rhinoceros, Leopard, and Ostrich—have not been able to reproduce in the various zoological gardens so far, the hope to conserve these animals is brittle. The questions are, what factors are working against wildlife conservation? Indeed, what hopes exist for Nigerian animal wildlife?Animal wildlife is a declining resource in Nigeria because of unplanned land-use practices. For example, landuses in game reserves are often conflicting and contradictory. Four land-uses: timber extraction, hunting, food-crop production, and settlement, are simultaneously going on in game reserves, with little or no control measures and with no management plans. The excessive demands for land for these conflicting uses have greatly disturbed the ecosystems involved, thus making the survival of the wild animals uncertain. Specifically, the problems of wildlife conservation in Nigeria are: (a) poaching; (b) indiscriminate burning of the vegetation; (c) uncontrolled grazing activities in the reserves; (d) intensive logging for domestic and industrial uses; (e) user rights on the reserves enjoyed by the traditional owners of the land before reservation; (f) lack of adequate funds to manage the reserves; (g) ineffective legislation; (h) lack of trained manpower; (i) urban sprawl; and (j) infrastructural development of roads, electric and telegraph lines, and irrigation schemes, all within the game reserves.The future for Nigerian animal wildlife depends on the nation's ability to conserve what is left either in their natural habitat or, at least, in zoological gardens. The task is not simple under conditions of economic depression, with inadequate manpower and without effective management of game reserves. In these circumstances, the game reserves should be reduced to manageable numbers, while state governments should win public sympathy through adequate conservation publicity and the provision of sufficient vehicles and personnel to manage the game reserves.The policy of land-use in game reserves should be reviewed, while researches should be conducted on (a) the levels of land-use that could be consistent with maintaining wild animals in the reserves, (b) the number and species of animals hunted per year, (c) the population of animal species in the game reserves and their habitat suitability, (d) the endangered and extinct animal species and specific reasons for the decline in their populations, and (e) human problems peculiar to each reserve and ways of minimizing them.

Kastre (sometimes called Uue-Kastre) Castle on the north shore of the Emajõgi River has been almost totally destroyed. At one time it belonged to the Tartu bishops, and a trade route connecting the Baltic Sea countries and Russia through Tartu and Pskov ran past the castle. In the Middle Ages, this also marked the actual boundary of the Tartu bishopric, since only unsettled wetlands covered the area between the castle and the lake. The Kastre Castle is mentioned in the written records for the first time in 1392 as a customs checkpoint, in connection with a treaty between the Hanseatic towns and Novgorod. There was a barrier near the castle that was stretched over the river with a rope or chain, which stopped the boats and ships from sailing through without stopping. When the Pskovians launched a military expedition on their lodʼya boats against the Tartu bishopric in 1342, there is no mention of the Kastre Castle. The place name is probably based on the Old Russian word kosterʼ (костеръ), which meant stronghold and has been used as a loan word in the eastern Finnic languages. The German name of Kastre is Warbek, and the current explanation is that this meant “river defence” (Middle German were des bekes). However, were has also meant fish barrier, i.e. a fishing structure built across the flow of the river.In 1993, the owner of the castle property had the moats around surrounding the castle and outer bailey dredged and widened, which changed their location and appearance notably. The first archaeological studies at the castle were conducted to verify the damage caused by this unauthorised excavation work. In 1994, the profile of the ground exposed by excavator rooting around in the moats was documented. In 2001, the first archaeological excavations took place at the site of the Kastre Castle. There were plans to build a new structure between the walls of the tavern that had been built on the site of the castle in the late 18th and 19th century, and the necessary trenches were dug in the course of the archaeological rescue excavations. Supervision of the construction work, as well as excavation work related the cleanup of the moats and surrounding property, continued for the next few years. Depending on the location, the excavations reached the cobblestone paving that was located 40–120 cm below the prior ground level in the courtyard and interiors of the castle.In 2001, wood samples were taken from the logs that were revealed on the western slope of the western moat of the Kastre outer bailey, and had been used to fortify the incline. The dendrochronological study shows that the logs were fell after the 1376 growth period (summer). Therefore, the moat of the Kastre outer bailey was probably fortified in 1377. The direct motivation for building the castle may have been the border war between Pskov and the Tartu bishopric that lasted from 1367 to 1371. The main battlefield of the war was Lake Peipsi, and a dispute about the fishing rights in Lake Lämmijärv has been given as the main explanation for the war.Kastre was a very important medieval fishery centre for the lower Emajõgi River and Lake Peipsi. Here the import of fish was taxed. In the vicinity, one could find the fishing grounds of the Tartu bishop, the Cathedral Chapter, the town of Tartu, monasteries and private manors, as well as of the Teutonic Order. The water and winter roads that ran through Kastre from Tartu toward Russia or Narva comprised an important traffic zone, which the castle controlled. Kastre was the centre of the relevant Tartu bishopric’s administrative division. The bishops are said to have visited the border castle personally on many occasions, so suitable rooms must have existed at the castle. An idea of the castle is provided by plans from 17th century.The castle was built in at least two stages. Its foundations were built on log floats. First an unusual rectangular building of fieldstones and bricks was built, the longest wall of which was 17,5 metres and the shortest 12 metres; the walls were 2,5 to 2,8 metres thick. The walls on the north and northwest side of the castle were built later against the originally planned walls; whereas the upper parts of the original northern and eastern walls were demolished. A subsequent addition was the cannon tower on the southeast corner of the castle, which is indicted on plans from the late 17th century, and the diameter of which, based on these plans, would have been about 9,5 metres. Considering the location of the walls that have been revealed, most of the tower’s foundation walls have been washed away by the Emajõgi River. Apparently a wooden building was located in the northern part of the castle’s courtyard. The castle was surrounding by a moat that was up to 15 metres wide. It is not possible to determine the exact time of the different stages of construction. From the dendrochronological studies we can conclude that the outer bailey, or at least the area surrounded by moats, is not a later construction but most probably one of the oldest parts of the castle. Bricks typical of the 14th and 15th centuries have been used in the walls of the first construction stage; the addition, based on the dimensions of the bricks, is a later construction. There have been no finds on the entire property that date back to the period before the 15th century.On the west side of the castle, there is an area that is about 60 metres long and wide, and surrounded by a 10-metre-wide moat. The cultural layer here is only a ten or so centimetres thick. There were probably no stone buildings here; but it’s possible that wooden outbuildings were already located here when it was a bishopric castle. A tavern and outbuildings are indicated on the 17th century plans. In the course of cleaning the moats, wooden shore fortifications came to light in the northeast corner of the outer bailey. There was a small settlement near the castle, which, in 1601, included 21 households – 20 of them fishers and one brewer. A Mary Magdalene chapel is mentioned in 1613 here. A cemetery is located on the western side of the castle, which could have surrounded a chapel.The Kastre Castle has been repeatedly associated with military events, such as border wars and internal conflicts. In the Livonian War, Kastre was one of the first castles that fell into the hands of the Russians in 1558. Based on the Truce of Yam-Zapolsky, the castle was transferred to Poland in 1582. During the Russo-Swedish War in 1656, the Swedes were able make repairs the castle and make it defensible, and they stationed garrison there. However, it still fell into Russian hands until the Treaty of Kärde was signed in 1661. In the late 17th century, the Swedes planned to completely rebuild the castle. But as of 1704, the castle was still in ruins. After the Great Northern War, being inside the borders of the Russian Empire, the Kastre Castle lost its potential military importance. By the second half of the 18th century, the castle had turned into “a pile of stones”, from which a tavern was built.

China Shale-Gas Field Sets Production Record Sinopec recorded China’s highest daily output of shale gas at 20.62 million cubic meters (Mcm) at its Fuling shale-gas field in Chongqing, China, a key gas source for the Sichuan-East gas pipeline. The first major commercial shale-gas project in China, Fuling has continuously broken records for the shortest gasfield drilling cycle while significantly increasing the drilling of high-quality reservoirs covering more than 3 million m, according to Sinopec. Gasfield production construction was also expanded to raise production capacity. The company said the field maintains a daily output of 20 Mcm, producing an estimated 6.7 Bcm per year. Apache and Total Plan Suriname Appraisals Apache filed appraisal plans for its Maka and Sapakara oil discoveries in block 58 offshore Suriname. The company said another submission is expected for Kwaskwasi, the largest find in the block, by the end of the year. Operations continue for Keskesi, the fourth exploration target. There are plans to drill a fifth prospect at Bonboni in the North-Central portion of the concession. Partner company Total is assuming operatorship of the block ahead of next year’s campaigns. BP Emerges as Sole Bid for Offshore Canada Parcels BP was the only operator to place a bid in the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) Call for Bids NL20-CFB01, which offered 17 parcels (4,170,509 hectares) in the eastern Newfoundland region. The successful bid was for Parcel 9 (covering 264,500 hectares) for $27 million in work commitments from BP Canada Energy Group. Subject to BP satisfying specified requirements and receiving government approval, the exploration license will be issued in January 2021. No bids were received for the remaining 16 parcels, which may be reposted in a future Call for Bids. Criteria for selecting a winning bid is the total amount the bidder commits to spend on exploration of the parcel during the first period of a 9-year license, with a minimum acceptable bid of $10 million in work commitments for each parcel. Beach Energy To Drill Otway Basin Well Beach Energy plans to drill at its Artisan-1 well about 32 km offshore Victoria, Australia, in the Otway basin, before the end of 2021. The well, located on Block Vic/P43, was to be spudded in 1H 2020 but was delayed due to COVID-19. The timeframe for drilling was confirmed by the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, which also said Beach is keeping open the option to suspend the well and develop it, pending reservoir analysis. Anchors, mooring chains, and surface buoys have already been laid for the well, which is in a water depth of approximately 71 m. The well is expected to take approximately 35–55 days to drill, depending on the final work program and potential operational delays. Diamond Offshore’s semisubmersible Ocean Onyx was contracted for the drilling program. Artisan is the first of Beach’s planned multiwell campaigns, which also include development wells at the Geographe and Thylacine fields. Hess Completes Sale of Interest in Gulf of Mexico Field Hess completed the sale of its 28% working interest in the Shenzi Field in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) to BHP, the field’s operator, for $505 million. Shenzi is a six-lease development structured as a joint ownership: BHP (operator, 44%), Hess (28%), and Repsol (28%). The acquisition would bring BHP’s working interest to 72%, adding approximately 11,000 BOE/D of production (90% oil). The sale is expected to close by December 2020. Hess CEO John Hess said proceeds from the sale will help fund the company’s investment in Guyana. Greenland Opens New Offshore Areas Greenland opened three new offshore areas for application of oil and gas exploitation licenses off West Greenland. The areas are Baffin Bay, Disko West, and Davis Strait. The country also said it is working on an oil strategy to reduce geological uncertainty by offering an investment package to companies that engage in its Open Door Procedures. The procedures are a first-mover advantage to remove national oil company Nunaoil, as a carried partner, reducing turnover and surplus royalties. It is estimated to reduce the government take by 51.3% to 40.6%. Shell and Impact Oil & Gas Agree to South Africa Farmout Africa Oil announced Impact Oil & Gas entered into two agreements for exploration areas offshore South Africa. The company has a 31.10% share-holding in Impact, a privately owned exploration company. Impact entered into an agreement with BG International, a Shell subsidiary, for the farm-out of a 50% working interest and operatorship in the Transkei and Algoa exploration rights. Shell was also granted the option to acquire an additional 5% working interest should the joint venture (JV) elect to move into the third renewal period, expected in 2024. Algoa is located in the South Outeniqua Basin, east of Block 11B/12B, containing the Brulpadda gas condensate discovery and where Total recently discovered gas condensate. The Transkei block is northeast of Algoa in the Natal Trough Basin where Impact has identified highly material prospectivity associated with several large submarine fan bodies, which the JV will explore with 3D seismic data and then potential exploratory drilling. Impact and Shell plan to acquire over 6,000 km² of 3D seismic data during the first available seismic window following completion of the transaction. This window is expected to be in the Q1 2022. After the closing of the deal, Shell will hold a 50% interest as the operator and Impact will hold 50%. Impact also entered into an agreement with Silver Wave Energy for the farm-in of a 90% working interest and operatorship of Area 2, offshore South Africa. East and adjacent to Impact’s Transkei and Algoa blocks, Area 2 complements Impact’s existing position by extending the entire length of the ultradeepwater part of the Transkei margin. Together, the Transkei and Algoa Blocks and Area 2 cover over 124,000 km2. Area 2 has been opened by the Brulpadda and Luiperd discoveries in the Outeniqua Basin and will be further tested during 2021 by the well on the giant Venus prospect in ultradeepwater Namibia, where Impact is a partner. Impact believes there is good evidence for this Southern African Aptian play to have a common world-class Lower Cretaceous source rock, similar excellent-quality Apto-Albian reservoir sands, and a geological setting suitable for the formation of large stratigraphic traps. Following completion of the farm-in, Impact will hold 90% interest and serve as the operator; Silver Wave will hold 10%. Petronas Awards Sarawak Contract to Seismic Consortium The seismic consortium comprising PGS, TGS, and WesternGeco was awarded a multiyear contract by Petronas to acquire and process up to 105,000 km2 of multisensor, multiclient 3D data in the Sarawak Basin, offshore Malaysia. The contract award follows an ongoing campaign by the consortium in the Sabah offshore region, awarded in 2016, in which over 50,000 km2 of high-quality 3D seismic data have been acquired and licensed to the oil and gas industry to support Malaysia license round and exploration activity. The Sarawak award will allow for a multiphase program to promote exploration efforts in the prolific Sarawak East Natuna Basin (Deepwater North Luconia and West Luconia Province). The consortium is planning the initial phases and is engaging with the oil and gas industry to secure prefunding ahead of planned acquisition, covering both open blocks and areas of existing farm-in opportunities. Total Discovers Second Gas Condensate in South Africa Total made a significant second gas condensate discovery on the Luiperd prospect, located on Block 11B/12B in the Outeniqua Basin, 175 km off the southern coast of South Africa. The discovery follows the adjacent play-opening Brulpadda discovery in 2019. The Luiperd-1X well was drilled to a total depth of about 3,400 m and encountered 73 m of net gas condensate pay in well-developed, good-quality Lower Cretaceous reservoirs. Following a coring and logging program, the well will be tested to assess the dynamic reservoir characteristics and deliverability. The Block 11B/12B covers an area of 19,000 km2, with water depths ranging from 200 to 1800 m. It is operated by Total with a 45% working interest, alongside Qatar Petroleum (25%), CNR International (20%), and Main Street, a South African consortium (10%). The Luiperd prospect is the second to be drilled in a series of five large submarine fan prospects with direct hydrocarbon indicators defined utilizing 2D and 3D seismic data. BP Gas Field Offshore Egypt Begins Production BP started gas production from its Qattameya gasfield development ‎offshore Egypt in the North Damietta offshore concession. Through BP’s joint venture Pharaonic Petroleum Company working with state-owned Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Co., the field, which is ‎expected to produce up to 50 MMcf/D, was developed through a one-well subsea development and tieback to existing infrastructure.‎ Qattameya, whose discovery was announced in 2017, is located approximately 45 km west ‎of the Ha’py platform, in 108 m of water. It is tied back to the Ha’py and Tuart field ‎development via a new 50-km pipeline and connected to existing subsea ‎utilities via a 50-km umbilical. ‎BP holds 100% equity in the North Damietta offshore concession in the East Nile Delta. ‎Gas production from the field is directed to Egypt’s national grid.

By examining diverse water-related tension and conflict situations from the Tonle Sap area of Cambodia, the article seeks to contest the view that water-related conflicts are always about water scarcity. Tackling different dimensions of water-related conflicts, the three cases studied here all point to the importance of social, political, and historical aspects in water-related resource management. They also indicate that the water and resource conflicts in Tonle Sap are strongly related to problems with existing property and access rights. Challenges of access to and control over resources, rather than changes in the abundance of water and related resources, have lead to increasing tensions in the area.

The Mono Lake case is a lodestar in public trust jurisprudence. This article discusses that case and explains how it revolutionized California water law. The article identifies six principles established by the decision that place it in the vanguard of public trust case law. It also examines some of the progeny of the Mono Lake decision, both in California and in other western states. The article claims that in the wake of Mono Lake, a half dozen western states have recognized the application of the public trust doctrine to water rights, although no other state has embraced all six of the tenets of the Mono Lake doctrine. The article concludes that the the public trust doctrine's deep historical roots and conceptual coherence make it a promising vehicle by which to moderate the excesses of the prior appropriation doctrine of western water law and replace that doctrine's "all or nothing" approach with what the article refers to as the "accommodation principle," under which both diversionary and instream uses of water will be accommodated wherever feasible.

This handbook is designed to provide an accurate, current, and authoritative summary of the principle Federal and Florida laws that directly or indirectly relate to agriculture. This handbook should provide a basic overview of the many rights and responsibilities that farmers and farmland owners have under both Federal and Florida laws as well as the appropriate contact information to obtain more detailed information. However, the reader should be aware that because the laws, administrative rulings, and court decisions on which this handbook is based are subject to constant revision, portions of this publication could become outdated at anytime. Several details of cited laws are also left out due to space limitations. This document is FE610, one of a series of the Food and Resource Economics Department, UF/IFAS Extension. Published December 2005. FE610/FE610: 2021 Handbook of Florida Water Regulation: Northern Everglades and Estuaries Protection Program (ufl.edu)

Abstract. Sudrajat, Saleh HA. 2019. The potential of Mesangat Lake, East Kutai, Indonesia as an essential ecological area for habitat conservation of critically endangered Crocodylus siamensis. Biodiversitas 20: 3126-3133. The Siamese crocodile, Crocodylus siamensis, is one of the most threatened reptile species in the world with IUCN Red List status of Critically Endangered. This study aims to investigate and assess the biogeophysical conditions of Mesangat Lake area, Indonesia as an essential ecological area for C. siamensis conservation outside biodiversity conservation areas. Data was collected through direct survey using spotlight technique at night, tracking, observation and interviews with local fishermen. The results showed that the biogeophysical conditions of Mesangat Lake habitat in Long Balau, Loah Toh and Abang areas still support C. siamensis population which was marked by the presence of its nests and the occurrence of 17 individuals with sizes between 30 and 50 cm in length. Habitat conditions in the form of lake waters had depths between 30-110 cm, low currents, and covered with aquatic plant species for resting, nesting and basking, as well as contained sufficient diversity of fish and other prey. A nest was also found in the form of mound of plants measuring ± 45 cm high and ± 75 cm wide which contained 20 eggs with an average length of ± 8.45 cm, an average width of ± 4.9 cm. Potential factors that threaten C. siamensis habitat included siltation of water bodies caused by invasive weeds, over-exploitation of fishes and conversion of lake land into plantations and/or agriculture lands. Based on the results of this study, it can be stated that Mesangat Lake has the potential to be designated as an essential ecological area of C. siamensis habitat. Through this strategy, it is hoped that there will be good collaboration between local government and concession rights holders, NGOs and local communities to participate in the conservation of C. siamensis. In the area of the lake, zoning can be classified into areas of nesting, closed areas, playing and sunbathing, limited fishing, recreation.

Rational use of fish stocks in fishing reservoirs impliesa substantiated strategy of stocking water bodies by valuable fish juveniles. In reservoirs used for commercial fishing, ichthyofauna has a property of self-reproducing: in the process of natural spawning of fish there occurs further replenishment of fish abundance. Under intensive fishing and unstable hydrological regime ability of populations for self-reproduction is violated, so in order to maintain a sustainable fish population, measures are required to support fish populations. For this purpose, there is carried out stocking of natural reservoirs where commercial fishing is conducted. At present, the stocking of Kazakhstan fishery reservoirs is mainly carried out by larvae and fingerlings of carp and carnivorous fishes, giving a small commercial return. The analysis of results of the current practice and operating system of fish stocking by valuable fish juveniles shows its inefficiency. It is recommended to take into account the feeding area for a specific species, the biomass of the components of the food base used by this species, the survival at specific age stages of the invader when determining the amount of stocking. There have been proposed measures to increase stocking effectiveness, defined the age stages and principles of selecting producers to obtain fish planting material. For stocking, the genetic diversity of the producers is important, so the breeding stocks in hatcheries should be constantly replenished by wild producers. There has been stated the need of complete separating reproducing and commercial fishery, as well as for the rights of stocking for a particular user (a reservoir tenant), depending on the distributed catch quota. There are shown examples of calculating required stocking material for stocking a water reservoir with sazan and for using residual food supply (stocking Lake Balkhash by grass carp and the Ust-Kamenogorsk water reservoir by ripus).

Introduction This article presents the trans-disciplinary encounters with and perspectives on embodiment of three creative-arts practitioners within the Deakin University research project Flows & Catchments. The project explores how creative arts participate in community and the possibility of well-being. We discuss our preparations for creative work exhibited at the 2012 Lake Bolac Eel Festival in regional Western Victoria, Australia. This festival provided a fertile time-place-space context through which to meet with one regional community and engage with scales of geological and historical time (volcanoes, water flows, first contact), human and animal roots and routes (settlement, eel migrations, hunting and gathering), and cultural heritage (the eel stone traps used by indigenous people, settler stonewalling, indigenous language recovery). It also allowed us to learn from how a festival brings to the surface these scales of time, place and space. All these scales also require an embodied response—a physical relation to the land and to the people of a community—which involves how specific interests and ways of engaging coordinate experience and accentuate particular connections of material to cultural patterns of activity. The focus of our interest in “embody” and embodiment relates to the way in which the term constantly slides from metaphor (figural connection) to description (literal process). Our research question, therefore, addresses the specific interaction of these two tendencies. Rather than eliminate one in preference to the other, it is the interaction and movement from one to the other that an approach through creative-arts practices makes visible. The visibility of these tendencies and the mechanisms to which they are linked (media, organising principle or relational aesthetic) are highlighted by the particular time-place-space modalities that each of the creative arts deploys. When looking across different creative practices, the attachments and elisions become more fine-grained and clearer. A key aim of practice-led research is to observe, study and learn, but also to transform the production of meaning and its relationship to the community of users (Barrett and Bolt). The opportunity to work collaboratively with a community like the one at Lake Bolac provided an occasion to gauge our discerning and initiating skills within creative-arts research and to test the argument that the combination of our different approaches adds to community and individual well-being. Our approach is informed by Gilles Deleuze’s ethical proposition that the health of a community is directly influenced by the richness of the composition of its parts. With this in mind, each creative-arts practitioner will emphasize their encounter with an element of community. Zones of Practice–Drawing Together (Jondi Keane) Galleries are strange in-between places, both destinations and non-sites momentarily outside of history and place. The Lake Bolac Memorial Hall, however, retains its character of place, participating in the history of memorial halls through events such as the Eel Festival. The drawing project “Stone Soup” emphasizes the idea of encounter (O’Sullivan), particularly the interactions of sensibilities shaped by a land, a history and an orientation that comprise an affective field. The artist’s brief in this situation—the encounter as the rupture of habitual modes of being (O’Sullivan 1)—provides a platform of relations to be filled with embodied experience that connects the interests, actions and observations produced outside the gallery to the amplified and dilated experience presented within the gallery. My work suggests that person-to person in-situ encounters intensify the movement across embodied ways of knowing. “Stone Soup”. Photograph by Daniel Armstrong.Arts practice and practice-led research makes available the spectrum of embodied engagements that are mixed to varying degrees with the conceptual positioning of material, both social and cultural. The exhibition and workshop I engaged with at the Eel Festival focused on three level of attention: memory (highly personal), affection (intra-personal) and exchange (communal, non-individual). Attention, the cognitive activity of directing and guiding perception, observation and interpretation, is the thread that binds body to environment, body to history, and body to the constructs of person, family and community. Jean-Jacques Lecercle observes that, for Deleuze, “not only is the philosopher in possession of a specific techne, essential to the well-being of the community, a techne the practice of which demands the use of specialized tools, but he makes his own tools: a system of concepts is a box of tools” (Lecercle 100). This notion is further enhanced when informed by enactive theories of cognition in which, “bodily practices including gesture are part of the activity in which concepts are formed” (Hutchins 429) Creative practices highlight the role of the body in the delicate interaction between a conceptually shaped gallery “space” and the communally constructed meeting “place.” My part of the exhibition consisted of a series of drawings/diagrams characterized under the umbrella of “making stone soup.” The notion of making stone soup is taken from folk tales about travelers in search of food who invent the idea of a magical stone soup to induce cooperation by asking local residents to garnish the “magical” stone soup with local produce. Other forms of the folk tale from around the world include nail soup, button soup and axe soup. Participants were able to choose from three different types of soup (communal drawing) that they would like to help produce. When a drawing was completed another one could be started. The mix of ideas and images constituted the soup. Three types of soup were on offer and required assistance to make: Stone soup–communal drawing of what people like to eat, particularly earth-grown produce; what they would bring to a community event and how they associate these foods with the local identity. Axe soup–communal drawing of places and spaces important to the participants because of connection to the land, to events and/or people. These might include floor plans, scenes of rooms or views, or memories of places that mix with the felt importance of spaces.Heirloom soup–communal drawing of important objects associated with particular persons. The drawings were given to the festival organizer to exhibit at the following year’s festival. "Story Telling”. Photograph by Daniel Armstrong.Drawing in: Like taking a breath, the act of drawing and putting one’s thought and affections into words or pictures is focused through the sensation of the drawing materials, the size of the paper, and the way one orients oneself to the paper and the activity. These pre-drawing dispositions set up the way a conversation might occur and what the tenor of that exchange may bring. By asking participants to focus on three types of attachments or attentions and contributing to a collective drawing, the onus on art skills or poignancy is diminished, and the feeling of turning inward to access feeling and memory turns outward towards inscription and cooperation. Drawing out: Like exhaling around vowels and consonants, the movement of the hand with brush and ink or pen and ink across a piece of paper follows our patterns of engagement, the embodied experience consistent with all our other daily activities. We each have a way of orchestrating the sequence of movements that constitute an image-story. The maker of stone soup must provide a new encounter, a platform for cooperation. I found that drawing alongside the participants, talking to them, inscribing and witnessing their stories in this way, heightened the collective activity and produced a new affective field of common experience. In this instance the stone soup became the medium for an emergent composition of relations. Zones of Practice–Embodying Photographic Space (Rozalind Drummond) Photography inevitably entails a certain characterization of reality. From being “out there” the world comes to be “inside” photographs—a visual sliver, a grab, and an upload, a perpetual tumble cycle of extruded images existing everywhere yet nowhere. While the outside, the “out there” is brought within the frame of the photograph, I am interested rather in looking, through the viewfinder, to spaces that work the other way, which suggest the potential to locate a “non-space”—where the inside suggests an outside or empty space. Thus, the photograph becomes disembodied to reveal space. I consider embodiment as the trace of other embodiments that frame the subject. Mark Auge’s conception of “non-places” seems apt here. He writes about non-places as those that are lived or passed through on the way to some place else, an accumulation of spaces that can be understood and named (94). These are spaces that can be defined in everyday terms as places with which we are familiar, places in which the real erupts: a borderline separating the outside from the inside, temporary spaces that can exist for the camera. The viewer may well peer in and look for everything that appears to have been left out. Thus, the photograph becomes a recollection of what Roland Barthes calls “a disruption in the topography”—we imagine a “beyond” that evokes a sense of melancholy or of irrevocably sliding toward it (238). How then could the individual embody such a space? The groups of photographs of Lake Bolac are spread out on a table. I play some music awhile, Glenn Gould, whose performing embodies what, to me, represents such humanity. Hear him breathing? It is Prelude and Fugue No. 16 in G Minor by Bach, on vinyl; music becomes a tangible and physical presence. When we close our eyes, our ears determine a sound’s location in a room; we map out a space, by listening, and can create a measureable dimension to sound. Walking about the territory of a living room, in suburban Melbourne, I consider too a small but vital clue: that while scrutinizing these details of a photographic image on paper, simultaneously I am returning to a small town in the Western District of Victoria. In the fluid act of looking at images in a house in Melbourne, I am now also walking down a road to Lake Bolac and can hear the incidental sounds of the environment—birdcalls and human voices—elements that inhabit and embody space: a borderline, alongside the photographs. What is imprinted in actual time, what is fundamental, is that the space of a photograph is actually devoid of sound and that I am still standing in a living room in Melbourne. In Against Architecture, Denis Hollier states of Bataille, “he wrote of the psychological power of space as a fluid, boundary effacing, always displaced and displacing medium. The non-spaces of cities and towns are locations where it is possible to be lost in a collective space, a progression of thoroughfares that are transitional, delivering the individual from one point and place to another—stairwells, laneways and roadsides—a constellation of streets….” (Hollier 79). Though photographs are sound-less, sound gives access to the outside of the image. “Untitled”. Photograph by Rozalind Drummond from “Stay with me here.” 2012 Type C Digital Print. Is there an outline of an image here? The enlargement of a snapshot of a photograph does not simply render what in any case was visible, though unclear. What is the viewer to look for in this photograph? Upon closer inspection a young woman stands to the right within the frame—she wears a school uniform; the pattern of the garment can be seen and read distinctly. In the detail it is finely striped, with a dark hue of blue, on a paler background, and the wearer’s body is imprinted upon the clothing, which receives the body’s details and impressions. The dress has a fold or pleat at the back; the distinct lines and patterns are reminiscent of a map, or an incidental grid. Here, the leitmotif of worn clothing is a poetic one. The young woman wears her hair piled, vertiginous, in a loosely constructed yet considered fashion; she stands assured, looking away and looking forward, within the compositional frame. The camera offers a momentary pause. This is our view. Our eye is directed to look further away past the figure, and the map of her clothing, to a long hallway in the school, before drifting to the left and right of the frame, where the outside world of Lake Bolac is clear and visible through the interior space of the hallway—the natural environment of daylight, luminescent and vivid. The time frame is late summer, the light reflecting and reverberating through glass doors, and gleaming painted surfaces, in a continuous rectangular pattern of grid lines. In the near distance, the viewer can see an open door, a pictorial breathing space, beyond the spatial line and coolness of the photograph, beyond the frame of the photograph and our knowing. The photograph becomes a signpost. What is outside, beyond the school corridors, recalled through the medium of photography, are other scenes, yet to be constructed from the spaces, streets and roads of Lake Bolac. Zones of Practice–Time as the “Skin” of Writing, Embodiment and Place (Patrick West) There is no writing without a body to write. Yet sometimes it feels that my creative writing, resisting its necessary embodiment, has by some trick of metaphor retreated into what Jondi Keane refers to as a purely conceptual mode of thought. This slippage between figural connection and literal process alerted me, in the process of my attempt to foster place-based well-being at Lake Bolac, to the importance of time to writerly embodiment. My contribution to the Lake Bolac Eel Festival art exhibition was a written text, “Stay with me here”, conceived as my response to the themes of Rozalind Drummond’s photographs. To prepare this joint production, we mixed with staff and students at the Lake Bolac Secondary College. But this mode of embodiment made me feel curiously dis-embodied as a place-based writer. My embodiment was apparently superficial, only skin deep. Still this experience started me thinking about how the skin is actually thickly embodied as both body and where the body encounters, not only other bodies, but place itself—conceivably across many times. Skin is also the embodiment of writing to the degree that writing suggests an uncertain and queered form of embodiment. Skin, where the body reaches its limit, expires, touches other bodies or not, is inevitably implicated with writing as a fragile and always provisional, indexical embodiment. Nothing can be more easily either here or somewhere else than writing. Writing is an exhibition or gallery of anywhere, like skin in that both are un-placed in place. The one-pager “Stay with me here” explores how the instantaneous time and present-ness of Drummond’s photographs relate to the profusion of times and relations to other places immanent in Lake Bolac’s landscape and community (as evidenced, for example, in the image of a prep student yawning at the end of a long day in the midst of an ancient volcanic landscape, dreaming, perhaps, of somewhere else). To get to such issues of time and relationality of place, however, involves detouring via the notion of skin as suggested to me by my initial sense of dis-embodiment in Lake Bolac. “Stay with me here” works with an idea of skin as answer to the implied question, Where is here? It creates the (symbolic) embodiment of place precisely as a matter of skin, making skin-like writing an issue of transitory topography. The only permanent “here” is the skin. Emphasizing something valid for all writing, “here” (grammatically a context-dependent deictic) is the skin, where embodiment is defined by the constant possibility of re-embodiment, somewhere else, some time else. Reminding us that it is eminently possible to be elsewhere (from this place, from here), skin also suggests that you cannot be in two places at the one time (at least, not with the same embodiment). My skin is a sign that, because my embodiment in any particular place (any “here”) is only ever temporary, it is time that necessarily sustains my embodiment in any place whatsoever into the future. According to Henri Bergson, time must be creative, as the future hasn’t happened yet! “Time is invention or it is nothing at all” (341). The future of place, as much as of writing and of embodiment itself, is thus creatively sheathed in time as if within a skin. On Bergson’s view, time might be said to be least and greatest embodiment, for it is (dis-embodied) time that enables all future and currently un-created modes of embodiment. All of these time-inspired modes will involve a relationship to place (time can only “happen” in some version of place). And all of them will involve writing too, because time is the ultimate (dis-)embodiment of writing. As writing is like a skin, a minimal embodiment shared actually or potentially with more than one body, so time is the very possibility of writing (embodiment) into the future. “Stay with me here” explores how place is always already embodied in a relationship to other places, through the skin, and to the future of (a) place through the creativity of time as the skin of embodiment. By enriching descriptive and metaphoric practices of time, instability of place and awarenesses of the (dis-)embodied nature of writing—as a practice of skin—my text is useful to well-being as an analogue to the lived experience, in time and place, of the people of Lake Bolac. Theoretically, it weaves Bergson’s philosophy of time (time richly composed) into the fabric of Deleuze’s proposition that the health of a community is linked to the richness of the composition of its parts. Creatively, it celebrates the identity that the notion of “here” might enable, especially when read alongside and in dialogue with Drummond’s photographs in exhibition. Here is an abridged text of “Stay with me here:” “Stay with me here” There is salt in these lakes, anciently—rectilinear lakes never to be without ripple or stir. Pooling waters the islands of otherwise oceans, which people make out from hereabouts, make for, dream of. Stay with me here. Trusting to lessons delivered at the shore of a lake moves one closer to a deepness of instruction, where the water also learns. From our not being where we are, there. Stay with me here. What is perfection to water if not water? A time when photographs were born out of its swill and slosh. The image swimming knowingly to the surface—its first breaths of the perceiving air, its glimpsing itself once. The portraits of ourselves we do not dare. Such magical chemical reactions, as in, I react badly to you. Such salts! Stay with me here, elsewhere. As if one had simply washed up by chance, onto this desert island or any other place of sand and water trickling. Daring to imagine we’ll be there together. This is what I mean by… stay with me here. Notice these things—how music sounds different as one walks away; the emotional gymnastics with which you plan to impress; the skin of the eye that watches over you. Stay with me here—in your spectacular, careless brilliance. The edge of whatever it is one wants to say. The moment never to be photographed. Conclusion It is not for the artists to presume that they can empower a community. As Tasmin Lorraine notes, community is not a single person’s empowerment but “the empowerment of many assemblages of which one is part” (128). All communities, regional communities on the scale of Lake Bolac or communities of interest, are held in place by enthusiasm and common histories. We have focused on the embodiment of these common histories, which vary in an infinite number of degrees from the most literal to the most figurative, pulling from the filigree of experiences a web of interpersonal connections. Oscillating between metaphor and description, embodiment as variously presented in this article helps promote community and, by extension, individual well-being. The drawing out of sensations into forms that produce new experiences—like the drawing of breath, the drawing of a hot bath, or the drawing out of a story—enhances the permeability of boundaries opened to what touches upon them. It is not just that we can embody our values, but that we are able to craft, manifest, enact, sense and evoke the connections that take shape as our richly composed world, in which, as Deleuze notes, “it is no longer a matter of utilizations or captures, but of sociabilities and communities” (126). ReferencesAuge, Mark. Non-Places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995. Barrett, Estelle, and Barbara Bolt. Eds. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1998. Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988. Hollier, Denis. Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. Hutchins, Edwin. “Enaction, Imagination and Insight.” Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. Eds. J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, and E.A. Di Paolo. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. 425–450.Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. Deleuze and Language. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.Lorraine, Tamsin. Deleuze and Guattari’s Immanent Ethics: Theory, Subjectivity and Duration. Albany: State University of New York at Albany, 2011.O’Sullivan, Simon. Art Encounters: Deleuze and Guattari—Thought beyond Representation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Special Care Notice This article contains images of deceased people that might cause sadness or distress to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers. Introduction Like many cities, Perth was founded on wetlands that have been integral to its history and culture (Seddon 226–32). However, in order to promote a settlement agenda, early mapmakers sought to erase the city’s wetlands from cartographic depictions (Giblett, Cities). Since the colonial era, inner-Perth’s swamps and lakes have been drained, filled, significantly reduced in size, or otherwise reclaimed for urban expansion (Bekle). Not only have the swamps and lakes physically disappeared, the memories of their presence and influence on the city’s development over time are also largely forgotten. What was the site of Perth, specifically its wetlands, like before British settlement? In 2014, an interdisciplinary team at Edith Cowan University developed a digital visualisation process to re-imagine Perth prior to colonisation. This was based on early maps of the Swan River Colony and a range of archival information. The images depicted the city’s topography, hydrology, and vegetation and became the centerpiece of a physical exhibition entitled Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands and a virtual exhibition hosted by the Western Australian Museum. Alongside historic maps, paintings, photographs, and writings, the visual reconstruction of Perth aimed to foster appreciation of the pre-settlement environment—the homeland of the Whadjuck Nyoongar, or Bibbulmun, people (Carter and Nutter). The exhibition included the narrative of Fanny Balbuk, a Nyoongar woman who voiced her indignation over the “usurping of her beloved home ground” (Bates, The Passing 69) by flouting property lines and walking through private residences to reach places of cultural significance. Beginning with Balbuk’s story and the digital tracing of her walking route through colonial Perth, this article discusses the project in the context of contemporary pressures on the city’s extant wetlands. The re-imagining of Perth through historically, culturally, and geographically-grounded digital visualisation approaches can inspire the conservation of its wetlands heritage. Balbuk’s Walk through the City For many who grew up in Perth, Fanny Balbuk’s perambulations have achieved legendary status in the collective cultural imagination. In his memoir, David Whish-Wilson mentions Balbuk’s defiant walks and the lighting up of the city for astronaut John Glenn in 1962 as the two stories that had the most impact on his Perth childhood. From Gordon Stephenson House, Whish-Wilson visualises her journey in his mind’s eye, past Government House on St Georges Terrace (the main thoroughfare through the city centre), then north on Barrack Street towards the railway station, the site of Lake Kingsford where Balbuk once gathered bush tucker (4). He considers the footpaths “beneath the geometric frame of the modern city […] worn smooth over millennia that snake up through the sheoak and marri woodland and into the city’s heart” (Whish-Wilson 4). Balbuk’s story embodies the intertwined culture and nature of Perth—a city of wetlands. Born in 1840 on Heirisson Island, Balbuk (also known as Yooreel) (Figure 1) had ancestral bonds to the urban landscape. According to Daisy Bates, writing in the early 1900s, the Nyoongar term Matagarup, or “leg deep,” denotes the passage of shallow water near Heirisson Island where Balbuk would have forded the Swan River (“Oldest” 16). Yoonderup was recorded as the Nyoongar name for Heirisson Island (Bates, “Oldest” 16) and the birthplace of Balbuk’s mother (Bates, “Aboriginal”). In the suburb of Shenton Park near present-day Lake Jualbup, her father bequeathed to her a red ochre (or wilgi) pit that she guarded fervently throughout her life (Bates, “Aboriginal”).Figure 1. Group of Aboriginal Women at Perth, including Fanny Balbuk (far right) (c. 1900). Image Credit: State Library of Western Australia (Image Number: 44c). Balbuk’s grandparents were culturally linked to the site. At his favourite camp beside the freshwater spring near Kings Park on Mounts Bay Road, her grandfather witnessed the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Irwin, cousin of James Stirling (Bates, “Fanny”). In 1879, colonial entrepreneurs established the Swan Brewery at this significant locale (Welborn). Her grandmother’s gravesite later became Government House (Bates, “Fanny”) and she protested vociferously outside “the stone gates guarded by a sentry [that] enclosed her grandmother’s burial ground” (Bates, The Passing 70). Balbuk’s other grandmother was buried beneath Bishop’s Grove, the residence of the city’s first archibishop, now Terrace Hotel (Bates, “Aboriginal”). Historian Bob Reece observes that Balbuk was “the last full-descent woman of Kar’gatta (Karrakatta), the Bibbulmun name for the Mount Eliza [Kings Park] area of Perth” (134). According to accounts drawn from Bates, her home ground traversed the area between Heirisson Island and Perth’s north-western limits. In Kings Park, one of her relatives was buried near a large, hollow tree used by Nyoongar people like a cistern to capture water and which later became the site of the Queen Victoria Statue (Bates, “Aboriginal”). On the slopes of Mount Eliza, the highest point of Kings Park, at the western end of St Georges Terrace, she harvested plant foods, including zamia fruits (Macrozamia riedlei) (Bates, “Fanny”). Fanny Balbuk’s knowledge contributed to the native title claim lodged by Nyoongar people in 2006 as Bennell v. State of Western Australia—the first of its kind to acknowledge Aboriginal land rights in a capital city and part of the larger Single Nyoongar Claim (South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council et al.). Perth’s colonial administration perceived the city’s wetlands as impediments to progress and as insalubrious environments to be eradicated through reclamation practices. For Balbuk and other Nyoongar people, however, wetlands were “nourishing terrains” (Rose) that afforded sustenance seasonally and meaning perpetually (O’Connor, Quartermaine, and Bodney). Mary Graham, a Kombu-merri elder from Queensland, articulates the connection between land and culture, “because land is sacred and must be looked after, the relation between people and land becomes the template for society and social relations. Therefore all meaning comes from land.” Traditional, embodied reliance on Perth’s wetlands is evident in Bates’ documentation. For instance, Boojoormeup was a “big swamp full of all kinds of food, now turned into Palmerston and Lake streets” (Bates, “Aboriginal”). Considering her cultural values, Balbuk’s determination to maintain pathways through the increasingly colonial Perth environment is unsurprising (Figure 2). From Heirisson Island: a straight track had led to the place where once she had gathered jilgies [crayfish] and vegetable food with the women, in the swamp where Perth railway station now stands. Through fences and over them, Balbuk took the straight track to the end. When a house was built in the way, she broke its fence-palings with her digging stick and charged up the steps and through the rooms. (Bates, The Passing 70) One obstacle was Hooper’s Fence, which Balbuk broke repeatedly on her trips to areas between Kings Park and the railway station (Bates, “Hooper’s”). Her tenacious commitment to walking ancestral routes signifies the friction between settlement infrastructure and traditional Nyoongar livelihood during an era of rapid change. Figure 2. Determination of Fanny Balbuk’s Journey between Yoonderup (Heirisson Island) and Lake Kingsford, traversing what is now the central business district of Perth on the Swan River (2014). Image background prepared by Dimitri Fotev. Track interpolation by Jeff Murray. Project Background and Approach Inspired by Fanny Balbuk’s story, Re-imagining Perth’s Lost Wetlands began as an Australian response to the Mannahatta Project. Founded in 1999, that project used spatial analysis techniques and mapping software to visualise New York’s urbanised Manhattan Island—or Mannahatta as it was called by indigenous people—in the early 1600s (Sanderson). Based on research into the island’s original biogeography and the ecological practices of Native Americans, Mannahatta enabled the public to “peel back” the city’s strata, revealing the original composition of the New York site. The layers of visuals included rich details about the island’s landforms, water systems, and vegetation. Mannahatta compelled Rod Giblett, a cultural researcher at Edith Cowan University, to develop an analogous model for visualising Perth circa 1829. The idea attracted support from the City of Perth, Landgate, and the University. Using stories, artefacts, and maps, the team—comprising a cartographer, designer, three-dimensional modelling expert, and historical researchers—set out to generate visualisations of the landscape at the time of British colonisation. Nyoongar elder Noel Nannup approved culturally sensitive material and contributed his perspective on Aboriginal content to include in the exhibition. The initiative’s context remains pressing. In many ways, Perth has become a template for development in the metropolitan area (Weller). While not unusual for a capital, the rate of transformation is perhaps unexpected in a city less than 200 years old (Forster). There also remains a persistent view of existing wetlands as obstructions to progress that, once removed, are soon forgotten (Urban Bushland Council). Digital visualisation can contribute to appreciating environments prior to colonisation but also to re-imagining possibilities for future human interactions with land, water, and space. Despite the rapid pace of change, many Perth area residents have memories of wetlands lost during their lifetimes (for example, Giblett, Forrestdale). However, as the clearing and drainage of the inner city occurred early in settlement, recollections of urban wetlands exist exclusively in historical records. In 1935, a local correspondent using the name “Sandgroper” reminisced about swamps, connecting them to Perth’s colonial heritage: But the Swamps were very real in fact, and in name in the [eighteen-] Nineties, and the Perth of my youth cannot be visualised without them. They were, of course, drying up apace, but they were swamps for all that, and they linked us directly with the earliest days of the Colony when our great-grandparents had founded this City of Perth on a sort of hog's-back, of which Hay-street was the ridge, and from which a succession of streamlets ran down its southern slope to the river, while land locked to the north of it lay a series of lakes which have long since been filled to and built over so that the only evidence that they have ever existed lies in the original street plans of Perth prepared by Roe and Hillman in the early eighteen-thirties. A salient consequence of the loss of ecological memory is the tendency to repeat the miscues of the past, especially the blatant disregard for natural and cultural heritage, as suburbanisation engulfs the area. While the swamps of inner Perth remain only in the names of streets, existing wetlands in the metropolitan area are still being threatened, as the Roe Highway (Roe 8) Campaign demonstrates. To re-imagine Perth’s lost landscape, we used several colonial survey maps to plot the location of the original lakes and swamps. At this time, a series of interconnecting waterbodies, known as the Perth Great Lakes, spread across the north of the city (Bekle and Gentilli). This phase required the earliest cartographic sources (Figure 3) because, by 1855, city maps no longer depicted wetlands. We synthesised contextual information, such as well depths, geological and botanical maps, settlers’ accounts, Nyoongar oral histories, and colonial-era artists’ impressions, to produce renderings of Perth. This diverse collection of primary and secondary materials served as the basis for creating new images of the city. Team member Jeff Murray interpolated Balbuk’s route using historical mappings and accounts, topographical data, court records, and cartographic common sense. He determined that Balbuk would have camped on the high ground of the southern part of Lake Kingsford rather than the more inundated northern part (Figure 2). Furthermore, she would have followed a reasonably direct course north of St Georges Terrace (contrary to David Whish-Wilson’s imaginings) because she was barred from Government House for protesting. This easier route would have also avoided the springs and gullies that appear on early maps of Perth. Figure 3. Townsite of Perth in Western Australia by Colonial Draftsman A. Hillman and John Septimus Roe (1838). This map of Perth depicts the wetlands that existed overlaid by the geomentric grid of the new city. Image Credit: State Library of Western Australia (Image Number: BA1961/14). Additionally, we produced an animated display based on aerial photographs to show the historical extent of change. Prompted by the build up to World War II, the earliest aerial photography of Perth dates from the late 1930s (Dixon 148–54). As “Sandgroper” noted, by this time, most of the urban wetlands had been drained or substantially modified. The animation revealed considerable alterations to the formerly swampy Swan River shoreline. Most prominent was the transformation of the Matagarup shallows across the Swan River, originally consisting of small islands. Now traversed by a causeway, this area was transformed into a single island, Heirisson—the general site of Balbuk’s birth. The animation and accompanying materials (maps, images, and writings) enabled viewers to apprehend the changes in real time and to imagine what the city was once like. Re-imagining Perth’s Urban Heart The physical environment of inner Perth includes virtually no trace of its wetland origins. Consequently, we considered whether a representation of Perth, as it existed previously, could enhance public understanding of natural heritage and thereby increase its value. For this reason, interpretive materials were exhibited centrally at Perth Town Hall. Built partly by convicts between 1867 and 1870, the venue is close to the site of the 1829 Foundation of Perth, depicted in George Pitt Morrison’s painting. Balbuk’s grandfather “camped somewhere in the city of Perth, not far from the Town Hall” (Bates, “Fanny”). The building lies one block from the site of the railway station on the site of Lake Kingsford, the subsistence grounds of Balbuk and her forebears: The old swamp which is now the Perth railway yards had been a favourite jilgi ground; a spring near the Town Hall had been a camping place of Maiago […] and others of her fathers' folk; and all around and about city and suburbs she had gathered roots and fished for crayfish in the days gone by. (Bates, “Derelicts” 55) Beginning in 1848, the draining of Lake Kingsford reached completion during the construction of the Town Hall. While the swamps of the city were not appreciated by many residents, some organisations, such as the Perth Town Trust, vigorously opposed the reclamation of the lake, alluding to its hydrological role: That, the soil being sand, it is not to be supposed that Lake Kingsford has in itself any material effect on the wells of Perth; but that, from this same reason of the sandy soil, it would be impossible to keep the lake dry without, by so doing, withdrawing the water from at least the adjacent parts of the townsite to the same depth. (Independent Journal of Politics and News 3) At the time of our exhibition, the Lake Kingsford site was again being reworked to sink the railway line and build Yagan Square, a public space named after a colonial-era Nyoongar leader. The project required specialised construction techniques due to the high water table—the remnants of the lake. People travelling to the exhibition by train in October 2014 could have seen the lake reasserting itself in partly-filled depressions, flush with winter rain (Figure 4).Figure 4. Rise of the Repressed (2014). Water Rising in the former site of Lake Kingsford/Irwin during construction, corner of Roe and Fitzgerald Streets, Northbridge, WA. Image Credit: Nandi Chinna (2014). The exhibition was situated in the Town Hall’s enclosed undercroft designed for markets and more recently for shops. While some visited after peering curiously through the glass walls of the undercroft, others hailed from local and state government organisations. Guest comments applauded the alternative view of Perth we presented. The content invited the public to re-imagine Perth as a city of wetlands that were both environmentally and culturally important. A display panel described how the city’s infrastructure presented a hindrance for Balbuk as she attempted to negotiate the once-familiar route between Yoonderup and Lake Kingsford (Figure 2). Perth’s growth “restricted Balbuk’s wanderings; towns, trains, and farms came through her ‘line of march’; old landmarks were thus swept away, and year after year saw her less confident of the locality of one-time familiar spots” (Bates, “Fanny”). Conserving Wetlands: From Re-Claiming to Re-Valuing? Imagination, for philosopher Roger Scruton, involves “thinking of, and attending to, a present object (by thinking of it, or perceiving it, in terms of something absent)” (155). According to Scruton, the feelings aroused through imagination can prompt creative, transformative experiences. While environmental conservation tends to rely on data-driven empirical approaches, it appeals to imagination less commonly. We have found, however, that attending to the present object (the city) in terms of something absent (its wetlands) through evocative visual material can complement traditional conservation agendas focused on habitats and species. The actual extent of wetlands loss in the Swan Coastal Plain—the flat and sandy region extending from Jurien Bay south to Cape Naturaliste, including Perth—is contested. However, estimates suggest that 80 per cent of wetlands have been lost, with remaining habitats threatened by climate change, suburban development, agriculture, and industry (Department of Environment and Conservation). As with the swamps and lakes of the inner city, many regional wetlands were cleared, drained, or filled before they could be properly documented. Additionally, the seasonal fluctuations of swampy places have never been easily translatable to two-dimensional records. As Giblett notes, the creation of cartographic representations and the assignment of English names were attempts to fix the dynamic boundaries of wetlands, at least in the minds of settlers and administrators (Postmodern 72–73). Moreover, European colonists found the Western Australian landscape, including its wetlands, generally discomfiting. In a letter from 1833, metaphors failed George Fletcher Moore, the effusive colonial commentator, “I cannot compare these swamps to any marshes with which you are familiar” (220). The intermediate nature of wetlands—as neither land nor lake—is perhaps one reason for their cultural marginalisation (Giblett, Postmodern 39). The conviction that unsanitary, miasmic wetlands should be converted to more useful purposes largely prevailed (Giblett, Black 105–22). Felicity Morel-EdnieBrown’s research into land ownership records in colonial Perth demonstrated that town lots on swampland were often preferred. By layering records using geographic information systems (GIS), she revealed modifications to town plans to accommodate swampland frontages. The decline of wetlands in the region appears to have been driven initially by their exploitation for water and later for fertile soil. Northern market gardens supplied the needs of the early city. It is likely that the depletion of Nyoongar bush foods predated the flourishing of these gardens (Carter and Nutter). Engaging with the history of Perth’s swamps raises questions about the appreciation of wetlands today. In an era where numerous conservation strategies and alternatives have been developed (for example, Bobbink et al. 93–220), the exploitation of wetlands in service to population growth persists. On Perth’s north side, wetlands have long been subdued by controlling their water levels and landscaping their boundaries, as the suburban examples of Lake Monger and Hyde Park (formerly Third Swamp Reserve) reveal. Largely unmodified wetlands, such as Forrestdale Lake, exist south of Perth, but they too are in danger (Giblett, Black Swan). The Beeliar Wetlands near the suburb of Bibra Lake comprise an interconnected series of lakes and swamps that are vulnerable to a highway extension project first proposed in the 1950s. Just as the Perth Town Trust debated Lake Kingsford’s draining, local councils and the public are fiercely contesting the construction of the Roe Highway, which will bisect Beeliar Wetlands, destroying Roe Swamp (Chinna). The conservation value of wetlands still struggles to compete with traffic planning underpinned by a modernist ideology that associates cars and freeways with progress (Gregory). Outside of archives, the debate about Lake Kingsford is almost entirely forgotten and its physical presence has been erased. Despite the magnitude of loss, re-imagining the city’s swamplands, in the way that we have, calls attention to past indiscretions while invigorating future possibilities. We hope that the re-imagining of Perth’s wetlands stimulates public respect for ancestral tracks and songlines like Balbuk’s. Despite the accretions of settler history and colonial discourse, songlines endure as a fundamental cultural heritage. Nyoongar elder Noel Nannup states, “as people, if we can get out there on our songlines, even though there may be farms or roads overlaying them, fences, whatever it is that might impede us from travelling directly upon them, if we can get close proximity, we can still keep our culture alive. That is why it is so important for us to have our songlines.” Just as Fanny Balbuk plied her songlines between Yoonderup and Lake Kingsford, the traditional custodians of Beeliar and other wetlands around Perth walk the landscape as an act of resistance and solidarity, keeping the stories of place alive. Acknowledgments The authors wish to acknowledge Rod Giblett (ECU), Nandi Chinna (ECU), Susanna Iuliano (ECU), Jeff Murray (Kareff Consulting), Dimitri Fotev (City of Perth), and Brendan McAtee (Landgate) for their contributions to this project. The authors also acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands upon which this paper was researched and written. References Bates, Daisy. “Fanny Balbuk-Yooreel: The Last Swan River (Female) Native.” The Western Mail 1 Jun. 1907: 45.———. “Oldest Perth: The Days before the White Men Won.” The Western Mail 25 Dec. 1909: 16–17.———. “Derelicts: The Passing of the Bibbulmun.” The Western Mail 25 Dec. 1924: 55–56. ———. “Aboriginal Perth.” The Western Mail 4 Jul. 1929: 70.———. “Hooper’s Fence: A Query.” The Western Mail 18 Apr. 1935: 9.———. The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent among the Natives of Australia. London: John Murray, 1966.Bekle, Hugo. “The Wetlands Lost: Drainage of the Perth Lake Systems.” Western Geographer 5.1–2 (1981): 21–41.Bekle, Hugo, and Joseph Gentilli. “History of the Perth Lakes.” Early Days 10.5 (1993): 442–60.Bobbink, Roland, Boudewijn Beltman, Jos Verhoeven, and Dennis Whigham, eds. Wetlands: Functioning, Biodiversity Conservation, and Restoration. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2006. Carter, Bevan, and Lynda Nutter. Nyungah Land: Records of Invasion and Theft of Aboriginal Land on the Swan River 1829–1850. Guildford: Swan Valley Nyungah Community, 2005.Chinna, Nandi. “Swamp.” Griffith Review 47 (2015). 29 Sep. 2015 ‹https://griffithreview.com/articles/swamp›.Department of Environment and Conservation. Geomorphic Wetlands Swan Coastal Plain Dataset. Perth: Department of Environment and Conservation, 2008.Dixon, Robert. Photography, Early Cinema, and Colonial Modernity: Frank Hurley’s Synchronized Lecture Entertainments. London: Anthem Press, 2011. Forster, Clive. Australian Cities: Continuity and Change. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.Giblett, Rod. Postmodern Wetlands: Culture, History, Ecology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1996. ———. Forrestdale: People and Place. Bassendean: Access Press, 2006.———. Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland. Bristol: Intellect, 2013.———. Cities and Wetlands: The Return of the Repressed in Nature and Culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Chapter 2.Graham, Mary. “Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews.” Australian Humanities Review 45 (2008). 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-November-2008/graham.html›.Gregory, Jenny. “Remembering Mounts Bay: The Narrows Scheme and the Internationalization of Perth Planning.” Studies in Western Australian History 27 (2011): 145–66.Independent Journal of Politics and News. “Perth Town Trust.” The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News 8 Jul. 1848: 2–3.Moore, George Fletcher. Extracts from the Letters of George Fletcher Moore. Ed. Martin Doyle. London: Orr and Smith, 1834.Morel-EdnieBrown, Felicity. “Layered Landscape: The Swamps of Colonial Northbridge.” Social Science Computer Review 27 (2009): 390–419. Nannup, Noel. Songlines with Dr Noel Nannup. Dir. Faculty of Regional Professional Studies, Edith Cowan University (2015). 29 Sep. 2015 ‹https://vimeo.com/129198094›. (Quoted material transcribed from 3.08–3.39 of the video.) O’Connor, Rory, Gary Quartermaine, and Corrie Bodney. Report on an Investigation into Aboriginal Significance of Wetlands and Rivers in the Perth-Bunbury Region. Perth: Western Australian Water Resources Council, 1989.Reece, Bob. “‘Killing with Kindness’: Daisy Bates and New Norcia.” Aboriginal History 32 (2008): 128–45.Rose, Deborah Bird. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 1996.Sanderson, Eric. Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2009.Sandgroper. “Gilgies: The Swamps of Perth.” The West Australian 4 May 1935: 7.Scruton, Roger. Art and Imagination. London: Methuen, 1974.Seddon, George. Sense of Place: A Response to an Environment, the Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia. Melbourne: Bloomings Books, 2004.South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council and John Host with Chris Owen. “It’s Still in My Heart, This is My Country:” The Single Noongar Claim History. Crawley: U of Western Australia P, 2009.Urban Bushland Council. “Bushland Issues.” 2015. 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.bushlandperth.org.au/bushland-issues›.Welborn, Suzanne. Swan: The History of a Brewery. Crawley: U of Western Australia P, 1987.Weller, Richard. Boomtown 2050: Scenarios for a Rapidly Growing City. Crawley: U of Western Australia P, 2009. Whish-Wilson, David. Perth. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2013.

Introduction 2021 was the year that NFTs got big—not just in value but also in terms of the cultural consciousness. When digital artist Beeple sold the portfolio of his 5,000 daily images at Christie’s for US$69 million, the art world was left intrigued, confused, and outraged in equal measure. Depending on who you asked, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seemed to be either a quick cash-grab or the future of the art market (Bowden and Jones; Smee). Following the Beeple sale, articles started to appear indicating that the film industry was abuzz for NFTs. Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith was quick to announce that he planned to release his horror film Killroy Was Here as an NFT (Alexander); in September 2021 the James Bond film No Time to Die also unveiled a series of collectibles to coincide with the film’s much-delayed theatrical release (Natalee); the distribution and collectible platforms Vuele, NFT Studios, and Mogul Productions all emerged, and the industry rumour mill suggests more start-ups are en route (CurrencyWorks; NFT Studios; NewsBTC). Blockchain disciples say that the technology will solve all the problems of the Internet (Tewari; Norton; European Business Review); critics say it will only perpetuate existing accessibility and equality issues (Davis and Flatow; Klein). Those more circumspect will doubtless sit back until the dust settles, waiting to see what parts of so-called web3 will be genuinely integrated into the architecture of the Internet. Pamela Hutchinson puts it neatly in terms of the arts sector: “the NFT may revolutionise the art market, film funding and distribution. Or it might be an ecological disaster and a financial bubble, in which few actual movies change hands, and fraudsters get rich from other people’s intellectual property” (Hutchinson). There is an uptick in the literature around NFTs and blockchain (see Quiniou; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel); however, the technology remains unregulated and unstandardised (Yeung 212-14; Dimitropoulos 112-13). Similarly, the sheer amount of funding being put into fundamental technical, data, and security-related issues speaks volumes to the nascency of the space (Ossinger; Livni; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel 52-6). Put very briefly, NFTs are part of a given blockchain system; think of them, like cryptocurrency coins, as “units of value” within that system (Roose). NFTs were initially rolled out on Ethereum, though several other blockchains have now implemented their own NFT frameworks. NFTs are usually not the artwork itself, but rather a unique, un-copyable (hence, non-fungible) piece of code that is attached, linked, or connected to another digital file, be that an image, video, text, or something else entirely. NFTs are often referred to as a digital artwork’s “certificate of authenticity” (Roose). At the time of writing, it remains to be seen how widely blockchain and NFT technology will be implemented across the entertainment industries. However, this article aims to outline the current state of implementation in the film trade specifically, and to attempt to sort true potential from the hype. Beginning with an overview of the core issues around blockchain and NFTs as they apply to film properties and adjacent products, current implementations of the technology are outlined, before finishing with a hesitant glimpse into the potential future applications. The Issues and Conversation At the core of current conversations around blockchain are three topics: intellectual property and ownership, concentrations of power and control, and environmental impact. To this I would like to add a consideration of social capital, which I begin with briefly here. Both the film industry and “crypto” — if we take the latter to encompass the various facets of so-called ‘web3’ — are engines of social capital. In the case of cinema, its products are commodified and passed through a model that begins with exclusivity (theatrical release) before progressing to mass availability (home media, streaming). The cinematic object, i.e., an individual copy of a film, is, by virtue of its origins as a mass product of the twentieth century, fungible. The film is captured, copied, stored, distributed, and shared. The film-industrial model has always relied on social phenomena, word of mouth, critical discourse, and latterly on buzz across digital social media platforms. This is perhaps as distinct from fine art, where — at least for dealers — the content of the piece does not necessarily matter so much as verification of ownership and provenance. Similarly, web3, with its decentralised and often-anonymised processes, relies on a kind of social activity, or at least a recorded interaction wherein the chain is stamped and each iteration is updated across the system. Even without the current hype, web3 still relies a great deal on discourse, sharing, and community, particularly as it flattens the existing hierarchies of the Internet that linger from Web 2.0. In terms of NFTs, blockchain systems attach scarcity and uniqueness to digital objects. For now, that scarcity and uniqueness is resulting in financial value, though as Jonathan Beller argues the notion of value could — or perhaps should — be reconsidered as blockchain technology, and especially cryptocurrencies, evolve (Beller 217). Regardless, NFT advocates maintain that this is the future of all online activity. To questions of copyright, the structures of blockchain do permit some level of certainty around where a given piece of intellectual property emerged. This is particularly useful where there are transnational differences in recognition of copyright law, such as in France, for instance (Quiniou 112-13). The Berne Convention stipulates that “the subsistence of copyright does not rest on the compliance with formal requirements: rights will exist if the work meets the requirements for protection set out by national law and treaties” (Guadamuz 1373). However, there are still no legal structures underpinning even the most transparent of transactions, when an originator goes out of their way to transfer rights to the buyer of the accompanying NFT. The minimum requirement — even courtesy — for the assignment of rights is the identification of the work itself; as Guadamuz notes, this is tricky for NFTs as they are written in code (1374). The blockchain’s openness and transparency are its key benefits, but until the code can explicitly include (or concretely and permanently reference) the ‘content’ of an NFT, its utility as a system of ownership is questionable. Decentralisation, too, is raised consistently as a key positive characteristic of blockchain technology. Despite the energy required for this decentralisation (addressed shortly), it is true that, at least in its base code, blockchain is a technology with no centralised source of truth or verification. Instead, such verification is performed by every node on the chain. On the surface, for the film industry, this might mean modes of financing, rights management, and distribution chains that are not beholden to multinational media conglomerates, streamers like Netflix, niche intermediaries, or legacy studios. The result here would be a flattening of the terrain: breaking down studio and corporate gatekeeping in favour of a more democratised creative landscape. Creators and creative teams would work peer-to-peer, paying, contracting, servicing, and distribution via the blockchain, with iron-clad, publicly accessible tracking of transactions and ownership. The alternative, though, is that the same imbalances persist, just in a different form: this is outlined in the next section. As Hunter Vaughan writes, the film industry’s environmental impact has long been under-examined. Its practices are diverse, distributed, and hard to quantify. Cinematic images, Vaughan writes, “do not come from nothing, and they do not vanish into the air: they have always been generated by the earth and sun, by fossil fuels and chemical reactions, and our enjoyment of them has material consequences” (3). We believe that by watching a “green” film like Avatar we are doing good, but it implicates us in the dirty secret, an issue of “ignorance and of voluntary psychosis” where “we do not see who we are harming or how these practices are affecting the environment, and we routinely agree to accept the virtual as real” (5). Beyond questions of implication and eco-material conceptualisation, however, there are stark facts. In the 1920s, the Kodak Park Plant in New York drew 12 million gallons of water from Lake Ontario each day to produce film stock. As the twentieth century came to a close, this amount — for a single film plant — had grown to 35-53 million gallons per day. The waste water was perfunctorily “cleaned” and then dumped into surrounding rivers (72-3). This was just one plant, and one part of the filmmaking process. With the shift to digital, this cost might now be calculated in the extraction of precious metals used to make contemporary cameras, computers, or storage devices. Regardless, extrapolate outwards to a global film industry and one quickly realises the impact is almost beyond comprehension. Considering — let alone calculating — the carbon footprint of blockchain requires outlining some fundamentals of the technology. The two primary architectures of blockchain are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), both of which denote methods of adding and verifying new blocks to a chain. PoW was the first model, employed by Bitcoin and the first iteration of Ethereum. In a PoW model, each new block has a specific cryptographic hash. To confirm the new block, crypto miners use their systems to generate a target hash that is less than or equal to that of the block. The systems process these calculations quickly, as the goal is to be “the first miner with the target hash because that miner is the one who can update the blockchain and receive crypto rewards” (Daly). The race for block confirmation necessitates huge amounts of processing power to make these quick calculations. The PoS model differs in that miners are replaced by validators (or staking services where participants pool validation power). Rather than investing in computer power, validators invest in the blockchain’s coins, staking those coins (tokens) in a smart contract (think of this contract like a bank account or vault). When a new block is proposed, an algorithm chooses a validator based on the size of their stake; if the block is verified, the validator receives further cryptocurrency as a reward (Castor). Given the ubiquity and exponential growth of blockchain technology and its users, an accurate quantification of its carbon footprint is difficult. For some precedent, though, one might consider the impact of the Bitcoin blockchain, which runs on a PoW model. As the New York Times so succinctly puts it: “the process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million” (Huang, O’Neill and Tabuchi). The current Ethereum system (at time of writing), where the majority of NFT transactions take place, also runs on PoW, and it is estimated that a single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to nearly nine days of power consumption by an average US household (Digiconomist). Ethereum always intended to operate on a PoS system, and the transition to this new model is currently underway (Castor). Proof of Stake transactions use significantly less energy — the new Ethereum will supposedly be approximately 2,000 times more energy efficient (Beekhuizen). However, newer systems such as Solana have been explicit about their efficiency goals, stating that a single Solana transaction uses less energy (1,837 Joules, to be precise) than keeping an LED light on for one hour (36,000 J); one Ethereum transaction, for comparison, uses over 692 million J (Solana). In addition to energy usage, however, there is also the question of e-waste as a result of mining and general blockchain operations which, at the time of writing, for Bitcoin sits at around 32 kilotons per year, around the same as the consumer IT wastage of the Netherlands (de Vries and Stoll). How the growth in NFT awareness and adoption amplifies this impact remains to be seen, but depending on which blockchain they use, they may be wasting energy and resources by design. If using a PoW model, the more valuable the cryptocurrency used to make the purchase, the more energy (“gas”) required to authenticate the purchase across the chain. Images abound online of jerry-rigged crypto data centres of varying quality (see also efficiency and safety). With each NFT minted, sold, or traded, these centres draw — and thus waste, for gas — more and more energy. With increased public attention and scrutiny, cryptocurrencies are slowly realising that things could be better. As sustainable alternatives become more desirable and mainstream, it is safe to predict that many NFT marketplaces may migrate to Cardano, Solana, or other more efficient blockchain bases. For now, though, this article considers the existing implementations of NFTs and blockchain technology within the film industry. Current Implementations The current applications of NFTs in film centre around financing and distribution. In terms of the former, NFTs are saleable items that can raise capital for production, distribution, or marketing. As previously mentioned, director Kevin Smith launched Jay & Silent Bob’s Crypto Studio in order to finish and release Killroy Was Here. Smith released over 600 limited edition tokens, including one of the film itself (Moore). In October 2021, renowned Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai sold an NFT with unreleased footage from his film In the Mood for Love at Sotheby’s for US$550,000 (Raybaud). Quentin Tarantino entered the arena in January 2022, auctioning uncut scenes from his 1994 film Pulp Fiction, despite the threat of legal action from the film’s original distributor Miramax (Dailey). In Australia, an early adopter of the technology is director Michael Beets, who works in virtual production and immersive experiences. His immersive 14-minute VR film Nezunoban (2020) was split into seven different chapters, and each chapter was sold as an NFT. Beets also works with artists to develop entry tickets that are their own piece of generative art; with these tickets and the chapters selling for hundreds of dollars at a time, Beets seems to have achieved the impossible: turning a profit on a short film (Fletcher). Another Australian writer-producer, Samuel Wilson, now based in Canada, suggests that the technology does encourage filmmakers to think differently about what they create: At the moment, I’m making NFTs from extra footage of my feature film Miles Away, which will be released early next year. In one way, it’s like a new age of behind-the-scenes/bonus features. I have 14 hours of DV tapes that I’m cutting into a short film which I will then sell in chapters over the coming months. One chapter will feature the dashing KJ Apa (Songbird, Riverdale) without his shirt on. So, hopefully that can turn some heads. (Wilson, in Fletcher) In addition to individual directors, a number of startup companies are also seeking to get in on the action. One of these is Vuele, which is best understood as a blockchain-based streaming service: an NFT Netflix, if you like. In addition to films themselves, the service will offer extra content as NFTs, including “behind the scenes content, bonus features, exclusive Q&As, and memorabilia” (CurrencyWorks). Vuele’s launch title is Zero Contact, directed by Rick Dugdale and starring Anthony Hopkins. The film is marketed as “the World’s First NFT Feature Film” (as at the time of writing, though, both Vuele and its flagship film have yet to launch). Also launching is NFT Studios, a blockchain-based production company that distributes the executive producer role to those buying into the project. NFT Studios is a decentralised administrative organisation (DAO), guided by tech experts, producers, and film industry intermediaries. NFT Studios is launching with A Wing and a Prayer, a biopic of aeronaut Brian Milton (NFT Studios), and will announce their full slate across festivals in 2022. In Australia, Culture Vault states that its aim is to demystify crypto and champion Australian artists’ rights and access to the space. Co-founder and CEO Michelle Grey is well aware of the aforementioned current social capital of NFTs, but is also acutely aware of the space’s opacity and the ubiquity of often machine-generated tat. “The early NFT space was in its infancy, there was a lot of crap around, but don’t forget there’s a lot of garbage in the traditional art world too,” she says (cited in Miller). Grey and her company effectively act like art dealers; intermediaries between the tech and art worlds. These new companies claim to be adhering to the principles of web3, often selling themselves as collectives, DAOs, or distributed administrative systems. But the entrenched tendencies of the film industry — particularly the persistent Hollywood system — are not so easily broken down. Vuele is a joint venture between CurrencyWorks and Enderby Entertainment. The former is a financial technology company setting up blockchain systems for businesses, including the establishment of branded digital currencies such as the controversial FreedomCoin (Memoria); the latter, Enderby, is a production company founded by Canadian film producer (and former investor relations expert in the oil and uranium sectors) Rick Dugdale (Wiesner). Similarly, NFT Studios is partnered with consulting and marketing agencies and blockchain venture capitalists (NFT Investments PLC). Depending on how charitable or cynical one is feeling, these start-ups are either helpful intermediaries to facilitate legacy media moving into NFT technology, or the first bricks in the capitalist wall to bar access for entry to other players. The Future Is… Buffering Marketplaces like Mintable, OpenSea, and Rarible do indeed make the minting and selling of NFTs fairly straightforward — if you’ve ever listed an item for sale on eBay or Facebook, you can probably mint an NFT. Despite this, the current major barrier for average punters to the NFT space remains technical knowledge. The principles of blockchain remain fairly opaque — even this author, who has been on a deep dive for this article, remains sceptical that widespread adoption across multiple applications and industries is feasible. Even so, as Rennie notes, “the unknown is not what blockchain technology is, or even what it is for (there are countless ‘use cases’), but how it structures the actions of those who use it” (235). At the time of writing, a great many commentators and a small handful of scholars are speculating about the role of the metaverse in the creative space. If the endgame of the metaverse is realised, i.e., a virtual, interactive space where users can interact, trade, and consume entertainment, the role of creators, dealers, distributors, and other brokers and players will be up-ended, and have to re-settle once again. Film industry practitioners might look to the games space to see what the road might look like, but then again, in an industry that is — at its best — somewhat resistant to change, this may simply be a fad that blows over. Blockchain’s current employment as a get-rich-quick mechanism for the algorithmic literati and as a computational extension of existing power structures suggests nothing more than another techno-bubble primed to burst (Patrickson 591-2; Klein). Despite the aspirational commentary surrounding distributed administrative systems and organisations, the current implementations are restricted, for now, to startups like NFT Studios. In terms of cinema, it does remain to be seen whether the deployment of NFTs will move beyond a kind of “Netflix with tchotchkes” model, or a variant of crowdfunding with perks. Once Vuele and NFT Studios launch properly, we may have a sense of how this all will play out, particularly alongside less corporate-driven, more artistically-minded initiatives like that of Michael Beets and Culture Vault. It is possible, too, that blockchain technology may streamline the mechanics of the industry in terms of automating or simplifying parts of the production process, particularly around contracts, financing, licensing. This would obviously remove some of the associated labour and fees, but would also de-couple long-established parts and personnel of the industry — would Hollywood and similar industrial-entertainment complexes let this happen? As with any of the many revolutions that have threatened to kill or resurrect the (allegedly) long-suffering cinematic object, we just have to wait, and watch. References Alexander, Bryan. “Kevin Smith Reveals Why He’s Auctioning Off New His Film ‘Killroy Was Here’ as an NFT.” USA TODAY, 15 Apr. 2021. <https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2021/04/15/kevin-smith-auctioning-new-film-nft-killroy-here/7244602002/>. Beekhuizen, Carl. “Ethereum’s Energy Usage Will Soon Decrease by ~99.95%.” Ethereum Foundation Blog, 18 May 2021. <https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/>. Beller, Jonathan. “Economic Media: Crypto and the Myth of Total Liquidity.” Australian Humanities Review 66 (2020): 215-225. Beller, Jonathan. The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College P, 2006. Bowden, James, and Edward Thomas Jones. “NFTs Are Much Bigger than an Art Fad – Here’s How They Could Change the World.” The Conversation, 26 Apr. 2021. <http://theconversation.com/nfts-are-much-bigger-than-an-art-fad-heres-how-they-could-change-the-world-159563>. Cardano. “Cardano, Ouroboros.” 14 Feb. 2022 <https://cardano.org/ouroboros/>. Castor, Amy. “Why Ethereum Is Switching to Proof of Stake and How It Will Work.” MIT Technology Review, 4 Mar. 2022. <https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/04/1046636/ethereum-blockchain-proof-of-stake/>. CurrencyWorks. “Vuele - CurrencyWorks™.” 3 Feb. 2022 <https://currencyworks.io/project/vuele/>. Dailey, Natasha. “Quentin Tarantino Will Sell His ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFTs This Month despite a Lawsuit from the Film’s Producer Miramax.” Business Insider, 5 Jan. 2022. <https://www.businessinsider.com.au/quentin-tarantino-to-sell-pulp-fiction-nft-despite-miramax-lawsuit-2022-1>. 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What NFTs Mean for Film.” BFI, 22 July 2021. <https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/nfts-non-fungible-tokens-blockchain-film-funding-revolution-hype>. Klein, Ezra. “A Viral Case against Crypto, Explored.” The Ezra Klein Show, n.d. 7 Apr. 2022 <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-dan-olson.html>. Livni, Ephrat. “Venture Capital Funding for Crypto Companies Is Surging.” The New York Times, 1 Dec. 2021. <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/business/dealbook/crypto-venture-capital.html>. Memoria, Francisco. “Popular Firearms Marketplace GunBroker to Launch ‘FreedomCoin’ Stablecoin.” CryptoGlobe, 30 Jan. 2019. <https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2019/01/popular-firearm-marketplace-gunbroker-to-launch-freedomcoin-stablecoin/>. 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Unconventional energy sources have become increasingly important to the global energy mix. These include coal seam gas, shale gas and shale oil. The unconventional gas industry was pioneered in the United States and embraced following the first oil shock in 1973 (Rogers). As has been the case with many global resources (Hiscock), many of the same companies that worked in the USA carried their experience in this industry to early Australian explorations. Recently the USA has secured significant energy security with the development of unconventional energy deposits such as the Marcellus shale gas and the Bakken shale oil (Dobb; McGraw). But this has not come without environmental impact, including contamination to underground water supply (Osborn, Vengosh, Warner, Jackson) and potential greenhouse gas contributions (Howarth, Santoro, Ingraffea; McKenna). The environmental impact of unconventional gas extraction has raised serious public concern about the introduction and growth of the industry in Australia. In coal rich Australia coal seam gas is currently the major source of unconventional gas. Large gas deposits have been found in prime agricultural land along eastern Australia, such as the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales and the Darling Downs in Queensland. Competing land-uses and a series of environmental incidents from the coal seam gas industry have warranted major protest from a coalition of environmentalists and farmers (Berry; McLeish). Conflict between energy companies wanting development and environmentalists warning precaution is an easy script to cast for frontline media coverage. But historical perspectives are often missing in these contemporary debates. While coal mining and natural gas have often received “boosting” historical coverage (Diamond; Wilkinson), and although historical themes of “development” and “rushes” remain predominant when observing the span of the industry (AGA; Blainey), the history of unconventional gas, particularly the history of its environmental impact, has been little studied. Few people are aware, for example, that the first shale gas exploratory well was completed in late 2010 in the Cooper Basin in Central Australia (Molan) and is considered as a “new” frontier in Australian unconventional gas. Moreover many people are unaware that the first coal seam gas wells were completed in 1976 in Queensland. The first four wells offer an important moment for reflection in light of the industry’s recent move into Central Australia. By locating and analysing the first four coal seam gas wells, this essay identifies the roots of the unconventional gas industry in Australia and explores the early environmental impact of these wells. By analysing exploration reports that have been placed online by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines through the lens of environmental history, the dominant developmental narrative of this industry can also be scrutinised. These narratives often place more significance on economic and national benefits while displacing the environmental and social impacts of the industry (Connor, Higginbotham, Freeman, Albrecht; Duus; McEachern; Trigger). This essay therefore seeks to bring an environmental insight into early unconventional gas mining in Australia. As the author, I am concerned that nearly four decades on and it seems that no one has heeded the warning gleaned from these early wells and early exploration reports, as gas exploration in Australia continues under little scrutiny. Arrival The first four unconventional gas wells in Australia appear at the beginning of the industry world-wide (Schraufnagel, McBane, and Kuuskraa; McClanahan). The wells were explored by Houston Oils and Minerals—a company that entered the Australian mining scene by sharing a mining prospect with International Australian Energy Company (Wiltshire). The International Australian Energy Company was owned by Black Giant Oil Company in the US, which in turn was owned by International Royalty and Oil Company also based in the US. The Texan oilman Robert Kanton held a sixteen percent share in the latter. Kanton had an idea that the Mimosa Syncline in the south-eastern Bowen Basin was a gas trap waiting to be exploited. To test the theory he needed capital. Kanton presented the idea to Houston Oil and Minerals which had the financial backing to take the risk. Shotover No. 1 was drilled by Houston Oil and Minerals thirty miles south-east of the coal mining town of Blackwater. By late August 1975 it was drilled to 2,717 metres, discovered to have little gas, spudded, and, after a spend of $610,000, abandoned. The data from the Shotover well showed that the porosity of the rocks in the area was not a trap, and the Mimosa Syncline was therefore downgraded as a possible hydrocarbon location. There was, however, a small amount of gas found in the coal seams (Benbow 16). The well had passed through the huge coal seams of both the Bowen and Surat basins—important basins for the future of both the coal and gas industries. Mining Concepts In 1975, while Houston Oil and Minerals was drilling the Shotover well, US Steel and the US Bureau of Mines used hydraulic fracture, a technique already used in the petroleum industry, to drill vertical surface wells to drain gas from a coal seam (Methane Drainage Taskforce 102). They were able to remove gas from the coal seam before it was mined and sold enough to make a profit. With the well data from the Shotover well in Australia compiled, Houston returned to the US to research the possibility of harvesting methane in Australia. As the company saw it, methane drainage was “a novel exploitation concept” and the methane in the Bowen Basin was an “enormous hydrocarbon resource” (Wiltshire 7). The Shotover well passed through a section of the German Creek Coal measures and this became their next target. In September 1976 the Shotover well was re-opened and plugged at 1499 meters to become Australia’s first exploratory unconventional gas well. By the end of the month the rig was released and gas production tested. At one point an employee on the drilling operation observed a gas flame “the size of a 44 gal drum” (HOMA, “Shotover # 1” 9). But apart from the brief show, no gas flowed. And yet, Houston Oil and Minerals was not deterred, as they had already taken out other leases for further prospecting (Wiltshire 4). Only a week after the Shotover well had failed, Houston moved the methane search south-east to an area five miles north of the Moura township. Houston Oil and Minerals had researched the coal exploration seismic surveys of the area that were conducted in 1969, 1972, and 1973 to choose the location. Over the next two months in late 1976, two new wells—Kinma No.1 and Carra No.1—were drilled within a mile from each other and completed as gas wells. Houston Oil and Minerals also purchased the old oil exploration well Moura No. 1 from the Queensland Government and completed it as a suspended gas well. The company must have mined the Department of Mines archive to find Moura No.1, as the previous exploration report from 1969 noted methane given off from the coal seams (Sell). By December 1976 Houston Oil and Minerals had three gas wells in the vicinity of each other and by early 1977 testing had occurred. The results were disappointing with minimal gas flow at Kinma and Carra, but Moura showed a little more promise. Here, the drillers were able to convert their Fairbanks-Morse engine driving the pump from an engine run on LPG to one run on methane produced from the well (Porter, “Moura # 1”). Drink This? Although there was not much gas to find in the test production phase, there was a lot of water. The exploration reports produced by the company are incomplete (indeed no report was available for the Shotover well), but the information available shows that a large amount of water was extracted before gas started to flow (Porter, “Carra # 1”; Porter, “Moura # 1”; Porter, “Kinma # 1”). As Porter’s reports outline, prior to gas flowing, the water produced at Carra, Kinma and Moura totalled 37,600 litres, 11,900 and 2,900 respectively. It should be noted that the method used to test the amount of water was not continuous and these amounts were not the full amount of water produced; also, upon gas coming to the surface some of the wells continued to produce water. In short, before any gas flowed at the first unconventional gas wells in Australia at least 50,000 litres of water were taken from underground. Results show that the water was not ready to drink (Mathers, “Moura # 1”; Mathers, “Appendix 1”; HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 21-24). The water had total dissolved solids (minerals) well over the average set by the authorities (WHO; Apps Laboratories; NHMRC; QDAFF). The well at Kinma recorded the highest levels, almost two and a half times the unacceptable standard. On average the water from the Moura well was of reasonable standard, possibly because some water was extracted from the well when it was originally sunk in 1969; but the water from Kinma and Carra was very poor quality, not good enough for crops, stock or to be let run into creeks. The biggest issue was the sodium concentration; all wells had very high salt levels. Kinma and Carra were four and two times the maximum standard respectively. In short, there was a substantial amount of poor quality water produced from drilling and testing the three wells. Fracking Australia Hydraulic fracturing is an artificial process that can encourage more gas to flow to the surface (McGraw; Fischetti; Senate). Prior to the testing phase at the Moura field, well data was sent to the Chemical Research and Development Department at Halliburton in Oklahoma, to examine the ability to fracture the coal and shale in the Australian wells. Halliburton was the founding father of hydraulic fracture. In Oklahoma on 17 March 1949, operating under an exclusive license from Standard Oil, this company conducted the first ever hydraulic fracture of an oil well (Montgomery and Smith). To come up with a program of hydraulic fracturing for the Australian field, Halliburton went back to the laboratory. They bonded together small slabs of coal and shale similar to Australian samples, drilled one-inch holes into the sample, then pressurised the holes and completed a “hydro-frac” in miniature. “These samples were difficult to prepare,” they wrote in their report to Houston Oil and Minerals (HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 10). Their program for fracturing was informed by a field of science that had been evolving since the first hydraulic fracture but had rapidly progressed since the first oil shock. Halliburton’s laboratory test had confirmed that the model of Perkins and Kern developed for widths of hydraulic fracture—in an article that defined the field—should also apply to Australian coals (Perkins and Kern). By late January 1977 Halliburton had issued Houston Oil and Minerals with a program of hydraulic fracture to use on the central Queensland wells. On the final page of their report they warned: “There are many unknowns in a vertical fracture design procedure” (HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 17). In July 1977, Moura No. 1 became the first coal seam gas well hydraulically fractured in Australia. The exploration report states: “During July 1977 the well was killed with 1% KCL solution and the tubing and packer were pulled from the well … and pumping commenced” (Porter 2-3). The use of the word “kill” is interesting—potassium chloride (KCl) is the third and final drug administered in the lethal injection of humans on death row in the USA. Potassium chloride was used to minimise the effect on parts of the coal seam that were water-sensitive and was the recommended solution prior to adding other chemicals (Montgomery and Smith 28); but a word such as “kill” also implies that the well and the larger environment were alive before fracking commenced (Giblett; Trigger). Pumping recommenced after the fracturing fluid was unloaded. Initially gas supply was very good. It increased from an average estimate of 7,000 cubic feet per day to 30,000, but this only lasted two days before coal and sand started flowing back up to the surface. In effect, the cleats were propped open but the coal did not close and hold onto them which meant coal particles and sand flowed back up the pipe with diminishing amounts of gas (Walters 12). Although there were some interesting results, the program was considered a failure. In April 1978, Houston Oil and Minerals finally abandoned the methane concept. Following the failure, they reflected on the possibilities for a coal seam gas industry given the gas prices in Queensland: “Methane drainage wells appear to offer no economic potential” (Wooldridge 2). At the wells they let the tubing drop into the hole, put a fifteen foot cement plug at the top of the hole, covered it with a steel plate and by their own description restored the area to its “original state” (Wiltshire 8). Houston Oil and Minerals now turned to “conventional targets” which included coal exploration (Wiltshire 7). A Thousand Memories The first four wells show some of the critical environmental issues that were present from the outset of the industry in Australia. The process of hydraulic fracture was not just a failure, but conducted on a science that had never been tested in Australia, was ponderous at best, and by Halliburton’s own admission had “many unknowns”. There was also the role of large multinationals providing “experience” (Briody; Hiscock) and conducting these tests while having limited knowledge of the Australian landscape. Before any gas came to the surface, a large amount of water was produced that was loaded with a mixture of salt and other heavy minerals. The source of water for both the mud drilling of Carra and Kinma, as well as the hydraulic fracture job on Moura, was extracted from Kianga Creek three miles from the site (HOMA, “Carra # 1” 5; HOMA, “Kinma # 1” 5; Porter, “Moura # 1”). No location was listed for the disposal of the water from the wells, including the hydraulic fracture liquid. Considering the poor quality of water, if the water was disposed on site or let drain into a creek, this would have had significant environmental impact. Nobody has yet answered the question of where all this water went. The environmental issues of water extraction, saline water and hydraulic fracture were present at the first four wells. At the first four wells environmental concern was not a priority. The complexity of inter-company relations, as witnessed at the Shotover well, shows there was little time. The re-use of old wells, such as the Moura well, also shows that economic priorities were more important. Even if environmental information was considered important at the time, no one would have had access to it because, as handwritten notes on some of the reports show, many of the reports were “confidential” (Sell). Even though coal mines commenced filing Environmental Impact Statements in the early 1970s, there is no such documentation for gas exploration conducted by Houston Oil and Minerals. A lack of broader awareness for the surrounding environment, from floral and faunal health to the impact on habitat quality, can be gleaned when reading across all the exploration reports. Nearly four decades on and we now have thousands of wells throughout the world. Yet, the challenges of unconventional gas still persist. The implications of the environmental history of the first four wells in Australia for contemporary unconventional gas exploration and development in this country and beyond are significant. Many environmental issues were present from the beginning of the coal seam gas industry in Australia. Owning up to this history would place policy makers and regulators in a position to strengthen current regulation. The industry continues to face the same challenges today as it did at the start of development—including water extraction, hydraulic fracturing and problems associated with drilling through underground aquifers. Looking more broadly at the unconventional gas industry, shale gas has appeared as the next target for energy resources in Australia. Reflecting on the first exploratory shale gas wells drilled in Central Australia, the chief executive of the company responsible for the shale gas wells noted their deliberate decision to locate their activities in semi-desert country away from “an area of prime agricultural land” and conflict with environmentalists (quoted in Molan). Moreover, the journalist Paul Cleary recently complained about the coal seam gas industry polluting Australia’s food-bowl but concluded that the “next frontier” should be in “remote” Central Australia with shale gas (Cleary 195). It appears that preference is to move the industry to the arid centre of Australia, to the ecologically and culturally unique Lake Eyre Basin region (Robin and Smith). 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There is a moment in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth devised to expose the sheer audacity of fossil fuel lobby groups in the United States. In their attempts to address significant scientific consensus and growing public concern over climate change, these groups are resorting to what Gore’s film suggests are grotesque distortions of fact. A particular example highlighted in the film is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CPE—a lobby group funded by ExxonMobil) “pro” energy industry advertisement: “Carbon dioxide”, the ad states. “They call it pollution, we call it life.” While on the one hand employing rhetoric against the “inconvenient truth” that carbon dioxide emissions are ratcheting up the Earth’s temperature, these advertisements also pose a question – though perhaps unintended – that is worth addressing. Where does life reside? This is not an issue of essentialism, but relates to the claims, materials and technologies through which life as a political object emerges. The danger of entertaining the vested interests of polluting industry in a discussion of climate change and its biopolitics is countered by an imperative to acknowledge the ways in which multiple positions in the climate change debate invoke and appeal to ‘life’ as the bottom line, or inviolable interest, of their political, social or economic work. In doing so, other questions come to the fore that a politics of climate change framed in terms of moral positions or competing values will tend to overlook. These questions concern the manifold practices of life that constitute the contemporary terrain of the political, and the actors and instruments put in this employ. Who speaks for life? And who or what produces it? Climate change as a matter of concern (Latour) has gathered and generated a host of experts, communities, narratives and technical devices all invested in the administration of life. It is, as Malcom Bull argues, “the paradigmatic issue of the new politics,” a politics which “draws people towards the public realm and makes life itself subject to the caprices of state and market” (2). This paper seeks to highlight the politics of life that have emerged around climate change as a public issue. It will argue that these politics appear in incremental and multiple ways that situate an array of actors and interests as active in both contesting and generating the terms of life: what life is and how we come to know it. This way of thinking about climate change debates opposes a prevalent moralistic framework that reads the practices and discourses of debate in terms of oppositional positions alone. While sympathies may flow in varying directions, especially when it comes to such a highly charged and massively consequential issue as climate change, there is little insight to be had from charging the CPE (for example) with manipulating consumers, or misrepresenting well-known facts. Where new and more productive understandings open up is in relation to the fields through which these gathering actors play out their claims to the project of life. These fields, from the state, to the corporation, to the domestic sphere, reveal a complex network of strategies and devices that seek to secure life in constantly renovated terms. Life Politics Biopolitical scholarship in the wake of Foucault has challenged life as a pre-given uncritical category, and sought to highlight the means through which it is put under question and constituted through varying and composing assemblages of practitioners and practices. Such work regards the project of human well-being as highly complex and technical, and has undertaken to document this empirically through close attention to the everyday ecologies in which humans are enmeshed. This is a political and theoretical project in itself, situating political processes in micro, as well as macro, registers, including daily life as a site of (self) management and governance. Rabinow and Rose refer to biopolitical circuits that draw together and inter-relate the multiple sites and scales operative in the administration of life. These involve not just technologies, rationalities and regimes of authority and control, but also politics “from below” in the form of rights claims and community formation and agitation (198). Active in these circuits, too, are corporate and non-state interests for whom the pursuit of maximising life’s qualities and capabilities has become a concern through which “market relations and shareholder value” are negotiated (Rabinow and Rose 211). As many biopolitical scholars argue, biopower—the strategies through which biopolitics are enacted—is characteristic of the “disciplinary neo-liberalism” that has come to define the modern state, and through which the conduct of conduct is practiced (Di Muzio 305). Foucault’s concept of governmentality describes the devolution of state-based disciplinarity and sovereignty to a host of non-state actors, rationalities and strategies of governing, including the self-managing subject, not in opposition to the state, but contributing to its form. According to Bratich, Packer and McCarthy, everyday life is thus “saturated with governmental techniques” (18) in which we are all enrolled. Unlike regimes of biopolitics identified with what Agamben terms “thanopolitics”—the exercise of biopower “which ultimately rests on the power of some to threaten the death of others” (Rabinow and Rose 198), such as the Nazi’s National Socialism and other eugenic campaigns—governmental arts in the service of “vitalist” biopolitics (Rose 1) are increasingly diffused amongst all those with an “interest” in sustaining life, from organisations to individuals. The integration of techniques of self-governance which ask the individual to work on themselves and their own dispositions with State functions has broadened the base by which life is governed, and foregrounded an unsettled terrain of life claims. Rose argues that medical science is at the forefront of these contemporary biopolitics, and to this effect “has […] been fully engaged in the ethical questions of how we should live—of what kinds of creatures we are, of the kinds of obligations that we have to ourselves and to others, of the kinds of techniques we can and should use to improve ourselves” (20). Asking individuals to self-identify through their medical histories and bodily specificities, medical cultures are also shaping new political arrangements, as communities connected by shared genetics or physical conditions, for instance, emerge, evolve and agitate according to the latest medical knowledge. Yet it is not just medicine that provokes ethical work and new political forms. The environment is a key site for life politics that entails a multi-faceted discourse of obligations and entitlements, across fields and scales of engagement. Calculating Environments In line with neo-liberal logic, environmental discourse concerned with ameliorating climate change has increasingly focused upon the individual as an agent of self-monitoring, to both facilitate government agendas at a distance, and to “self-fashion” in the mode of the autonomous subject, securing against external risks (Ong 501). Climate change is commonly represented as such a risk, to both human and non-human life. A recent letter published by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in two leading British medical journals, named climate change as the “biggest global health threat of the twenty-first century” (Morton). As I have argued elsewhere (Potter), security is central to dominant cultures of environmental governance in the West; these cultures tie sustainability goals to various and interrelated regimes of monitoring which attach to concepts of what Clark and Stevenson call “the good ecological citizen” (238). Citizenship is thus practiced through strategies of governmentality which call on individuals to invest not just in their own well-being, but in the broader project of life. Calculation is a primary technique through which modern environmental governance is enacted; calculative strategies are seen to mediate risk, according to Foucault, and consequently to “assure living” (Elden 575). Rationalised schemes for self-monitoring are proliferating under climate change and the project of environmentalism more broadly, something which critics of neo-liberalism have identified as symptomatic of the privatisation of politics that liberal governmentality has fostered. As we have seen in Australia, an evolving policy emphasis on individual practices and the domestic sphere as crucial sites of environmental action – for instance, the introduction of domestic water restrictions, and the phasing out of energy-inefficient light bulbs in the home—provides a leading discourse of ethico-political responsibility. The rise of carbon dioxide counting is symptomatic of this culture, and indicates the distributed fields of life management in contemporary governmentality. Carbon dioxide, as the CPE is keen to point out, is crucial to life, but it is also—in too large an amount—a force of destruction. Its management, in vitalist terms, is thus established as an effort to protect life in the face of death. The concept of “carbon footprinting” has been promoted by governments, NGOs, industry and individuals as a way of securing this goal, and a host of calculative techniques and strategies are employed to this end, across a spectrum of activities and contexts all framed in the interests of life. The footprinting measure seeks to secure living via self-policed limits, which also—in classic biopolitical form—shift previously private practices into a public realm of count-ability and accountability. The carbon footprint, like its associates the ecological footprint and the water footprint, has developed as a multi-faceted tool of citizenship beyond the traditional boundaries of the state. Suggesting an ecological conception of territory and of our relationships and responsibilities to this, the footprint, as a measure of resource use and emissions relative to the Earth’s capacities to absorb these, calculates and visualises the “specific qualities” (Elden 575) that, in a spatialised understanding of security, constitute and define this territory. The carbon footprint’s relatively simple remit of measuring carbon emissions per unit of assessment—be that the individual, the corporation, or the nation—belies the ways in which life is formatted and produced through its calculations. A tangled set of devices, practices and discourses is employed to make carbon and thus life calculable and manageable. Treading Lightly The old environmental adage to “tread lightly upon the Earth” has been literalised in the metaphor of the footprint, which attempts both to symbolise environmental practice and to directly translate data in order to meaningfully communicate necessary boundaries for our living. The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2008 exemplifies the growing popularity of the footprint as a political and poetic hook: speaking in terms of our “ecological overshoot,” and the move from “ecological credit to ecological deficit”, the report urges an attendance to our “global footprint” which “now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 per cent” (1). Angela Crombie’s A Lighter Footprint, an instruction manual for sustainable living, is one of a host of media through which individuals are educated in modes of footprint calculation and management. She presents a range of techniques, including carbon offsetting, shifting to sustainable modes of transport, eating and buying differently, recycling and conserving water, to mediate our carbon dioxide output, and to “show […] politicians how easy it is” (13). Governments however, need no persuading from citizens that carbon calculation is an exercise to be harnessed. As governments around the world move (slowly) to address climate change, policies that instrumentalise carbon dioxide emission and reduction via an auditing of credits and deficits have come to the fore—for example, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Chicago Climate Exchange. In Australia, we have the currently-under-debate Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a part of which is the Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (AETS) that will introduce a system of “carbon credits” and trading in a market-based model of supply and demand. This initiative will put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, and cap the amount of emissions any one polluter can produce without purchasing further credits. In readiness for the scheme, business initiatives are forming to take advantage of this new carbon market. Industries in carbon auditing and off-setting services are consolidating; hectares of trees, already active in the carbon sequestration market, are being cultivated as “carbon sinks” and key sites of compliance for polluters under the AETS. Governments are also planning to turn their tracts of forested public land into carbon credits worth billions of dollars (Arup 7). The attachment of emission measures to goods and services requires a range of calculative experts, and the implementation of new marketing and branding strategies, aimed at conveying the carbon “health” of a product. The introduction of “food mile” labelling (the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the transportation of the food from source to consumer) in certain supermarkets in the United Kingdom is an example of this. Carbon risk analysis and management programs are being introduced across businesses in readiness for the forthcoming “carbon economy”. As one flyer selling “a suite of carbon related services” explains, “early action will give you the edge in understanding and mitigating the risks, and puts you in a prime position to capitalise on the rewards” (MGI Business Solutions Worldwide). In addition, lobby groups are working to ensure exclusions from or the free allocation of permits within the proposed AETS, with degrees of compulsion applied to different industries – the Federal Government, for instance, will provide a $3.9 billion compensation package for the electric power sector when the AETS commences, to enable their “adjustment” to this carbon regime. Performing Life Noortje Mares provides a further means of thinking through the politics of life in the context of climate change by complicating the distinction between public and private interest. Her study of “green living experiments” describes the rise of carbon calculation in the home in recent years, and the implementation of technologies such as the smart electricity meter that provides a constantly updating display of data relating to amounts and cost of energy consumed and the carbon dioxide emitted in the routines of domestic life. Her research tracks the entry of these personal calculative regimes into public life via internet forums such as blogs, where individuals notate or discuss their experiences of pursing low-carbon lifestyles. On the one hand, these calculative practices of living and their public representation can be read as evidencing the pervasive neo-liberal governmentality at work in contemporary environmental practice, where individuals are encouraged to scrupulously monitor their domestic cultures. The rise of auditing as a technology of self, and more broadly as a technique of public accountability, has come under fire for its “immunity-granting role” (Charkiewicz 79), where internal audits become substituted for external compliance and regulation. Mares challenges this reading, however, by demonstrating the ways in which green living experiments “transform everyday material practices into practices of public involvement” that (118) don’t resolve or pin down relations between the individual, the non-human environment, and the social, or reveal a mappable flow of actions and effects between the public realm and the home. The empirical modes of publicity that these individuals employ, “the careful recording of measurements and the reliable descriptions of sensory observation, so as to enable ‘virtual witnessing’ by wider audiences”, open up to much more complex understandings than one of calculative self-discipline at work. As “instrument[s] of public involvement” (120), the experiments that Mares describe locate the politics of life in the embodied socio-material entanglements of the domestic sphere, in arrangements of humans and non-human technologies. Such arrangements, she suggests, are ontologically productive in that they introduce “not only new knowledge, but also new entities […] to society” (119), and as such these experiments and the modes of calculation they employ become active in the composition of reality. Recent work in economic sociology and cultural studies has similarly contended that calculation, far from either a naturalised or thoroughly abstract process, relies upon a host of devices, relations, and techniques: that is, as Gay Hawkins explains, calculative processes “have to be enacted” (108). Environmental governmentality in the service of securing life is a networked practice that draws in a host of actors, not a top-down imposition. The institution of carbon economies and carbon emissions as a new register of public accountability, brings alternative ways to calculate the world into being, and consequently re-calibrates life as it emerges from these heterogeneous arrangements. All That Gathers Latour writes that we come to know a matter of concern by all the things that gather around it (Latour). This includes the human, as well as the non-human actors, policies, practices and technologies that are put to work in the making of our realities. Climate change is routinely represented as a threat to life, with predicted (and occurring) species extinction, growing numbers of climate change refugees, dispossessed from uninhabitable lands, and the rise of diseases and extreme weather scenarios that put human life in peril. There is no doubt, of course, that climate change does mean death for some: indeed, there are thanopolitical overtones in inequitable relations between the fall-out of impacts from major polluting nations on poorer countries, or those much more susceptible to rising sea levels. Biosocial equity, as Bull points out, is a “matter of being equally alive and equally dead” (2). Yet in the biopolitical project of assuring living, life is burgeoning around the problem of climate change. The critique of neo-liberalism as a blanketing system that subjects all aspects of life to market logic, and in which the cynical techniques of industry seek to appropriate ethico-political stances for their own material ends, are insufficient responses to what is actually unfolding in the messy terrain of climate change and its biopolitics. What this paper has attempted to show is that there is no particular purchase on life that can be had by any one actor who gathers around this concern. Varying interests, ambitions, and intentions, without moral hierarchy, stake their claim in life as a constantly constituting site in which they participate, and from this perspective, the ways in which we understand life to be both produced and managed expand. This is to refuse either an opposition or a conflation between the market and nature, or the market and life. It is also to argue that we cannot essentialise human-ness in the climate change debate. For while human relations with animals, plants and weathers may make us what we are, so too do our relations with (in a much less romantic view) non-human things, technologies, schemes, and even markets—from carbon auditing services, to the label on a tin on the supermarket shelf. As these intersect and entangle, the project of life, in the new politics of climate change, is far from straightforward. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Village Roadshow, 2006. Arup, Tom. “Victoria Makes Enormous Carbon Stocktake in Bid for Offset Billions.” The Age 24 Sep. 2009: 7. Bratich, Jack Z., Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy. “Governing the Present.” Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality. Ed. Bratich, Packer and McCarthy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 3-21. Bull, Malcolm. “Globalization and Biopolitics.” New Left Review 45 (2007): 12 May 2009 . < http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2675 >. Charkiewicz, Ewa. “Corporations, the UN and Neo-liberal Bio-politics.” Development 48.1 (2005): 75-83. Clark, Nigel, and Nick Stevenson. “Care in a Time of Catastrophe: Citizenship, Community and the Ecological Imagination.” Journal of Human Rights 2.2 (2003): 235-246. Crombie, Angela. A Lighter Footprint: A Practical Guide to Minimising Your Impact on the Planet. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe, 2007. Di Muzio, Tim. “Governing Global Slums: The Biopolitics of Target 11.” Global Governance. 14.3 (2008): 305-326. Elden, Stuart. “Governmentality, Calculation and Territory.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (2007): 562-580. Hawkins, Gay. The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004): 225-248. Mares, Noortje. “Testing Powers of Engagement: Green Living Experiments, the Ontological Turn and the Undoability and Involvement.” European Journal of Social Theory 12.1 (2009): 117-133. MGI Business Solutions Worldwide. “Carbon News.” Adelaide. 2 Aug. 2009. Ong, Aihwa. “Mutations in Citizenship.” Theory, Culture and Society 23.2-3 (2006): 499-505. Potter, Emily. “Footprints in the Mallee: Climate Change, Sustaining Communities, and the Nature of Place.” Landscapes and Learning: Place Studies in a Global World. Ed. Margaret Somerville, Kerith Power and Phoenix de Carteret. Sense Publishers. Forthcoming. Rabinow, Paul, and Nikolas Rose. “Biopower Today.” Biosocieties 1 (2006): 195-217. Rose, Nikolas. “The Politics of Life Itself.” Theory, Culture and Society 18.6 (2001): 1-30. World Wildlife Fund. Living Planet Report 2008. Switzerland, 2008.

I spent more than two years in Bangladesh and lived through several incarnations—as a volunteer for aid organisations, an expatriate socialite, a bidesi (foreigner) trying to live sodesi (locally)—before becoming an ethnographer and, simultaneously, a lover and fighter of my adopted country. During the winter of my second lifetime I was sexually assaulted and at the beginning of my third lifetime, I recounted the experience at an academic conference in Dhaka. Smitten by the possibility that personal revelation could overcome cross-cultural barriers, I read A Night Out to compel others to sympathise and share, perhaps even loosen the somewhat restricted discussion of sexual intimidation in Bangladesh. Yet the response to A Night Out was quiet, absorbed by the static of courtesy, and taught me that disclosure alone cannot transcend differences to reach a space of mutual understanding. Later, when I posted A Night Out online, I observed the continued and changing capacity of revelation to evoke responses from people across genders and cultures. This article argues that the impact of revelation, although difficult to quantify, is never static and depends significantly on context: first, by describing autoethnography, a way of writing about other cultures that connects the "autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political" (Ellis xix), in the "Before" section to give background to A Night Out; secondly, the "After" section considers the various responses to the story and discusses it as "both a process and a product" of cultural research (xix). Before A Night Out Switching lives between Australia and Bangladesh has shown me the value of cultural research that deconstructs traditional conceptions of the "Western" and "Eastern" worlds. In terms of the representations of women, those in the East are too often prescribed the characteristics of ignorance, poverty, illiteracy, domesticity, maternity, and victimization, while the Western woman is depicted as modern, educated, in control of her body and sexuality (Gandhi 86). As a researcher, ultimately, of the life stories of Bangladeshi women, I sought to decrease the misconceptions surrounding those who were, like me, never only "West" or "East", influenced but never solely defined by their culture. Autoethnography is a method of cultural research that makes connections between "individual experience and social processes" in ways that emphasise the essential falsity of cultural categories (Sparkes 217). To transcend these boundaries of people, place and time, autoethnographers make use of narrative, believing it to be "the best way to understand the human experience" because it is "the way humans understand their own lives" (Richardson 218). As a writer, I likewise believe that narrative provides a way to make sense of or negotiate one's place in relation to any space or group of people. In particular, telling personal stories "bears fruit" of "reaching out to others," provoking their own stories and emotional responses, thereby becoming an effective cultural research method (Four Arrows 106). I remember my admiration for the Bangladeshi writer Shabnam Nadiya, who in Woman Alone describes her isolating experiences of sexual molestation as a girl and, later, the realisation via the writing of Taslima Nasrin that "it happened everywhere, everyday ... to anyone" (2008). For Nadiya, self-reflexivity created a "bridge" between the interior practise of reading and the exterior "everyday lived life" of communal experience and identity (2008). While connections on such an intimate scale may be difficult or unwelcome, making them is significant as "the process of revolution itself" (Ware 239). Inspired by Nadiya to write a piece with enough emotional power to reach over the public space of the conference room, my revelation concerned one of my own experiences as a woman in Bangladesh. A Night Out I was never afraid of my city at night. The time I liked Dhaka best was when the day wore down to dusk and the sky looked like it had been brushed clean. When I lived near Dhanmondi Lake I would walk through the drab hues of the surrounding park with its concrete paths and dusty trees that stretched their reflections across the pond-green water. The park was always crowded with raucous wallahs (vendors) and power walking women in bright dresses, yet even so I was the focus of attention, haunted by exclamations of "Koto lomba!" (How tall!) until my shadows became longer than myself in the quartzy light, and I was not so noticeable. When I moved to the Newmarket area I would spend the twilight hours sitting barefoot on my balcony in a voluminous housedress, watching Dhaka's night stage. Children played games on the rooftop of the lower apartment block opposite, women unhooked lines of fresh laundry and groups of friends would chat or play guitar. Even when the evening azan growled from the megaphones of nearby mosques there was activity on the street below, figures moving under the marigold glare of the sodium streetlights or, in winter, stretching nets across the street for badminton matches. Rickshawallahs rang their bells to the call of the crows and there was always an obnoxious motorist laying into his car horn. I felt more a part of my neighbourhood at this distance than when I became, eight floors down, the all-too-visible spectacle of the only foreigner in the district. The flat, my only source of solitude in Dhaka, was in a peaceful building set at the end of a road that turned three corners before coming to a blind halt. Walking its length day and night to reach the main thoroughfare, I got to know the road well. A few old bungalows remained, with comfortably decaying verandas behind wrought-ironwork and the shade of banana trees. Past the first corner the road became an entry for Dhaka College and the high school opposite; houses gave way to walls papered with adverts, a cluster of municipal bins surrounded by litter and wooden shacks that served cha (tea) and fried snacks. I was on friendly terms with the grey-haired wallah who stalked the area daily with his vegetable cart and one betel-chewing woman who sorted the neighbourhood rubbish. Once I neared the college attention from the chawallahs and students became more harassing than friendly, but I continued to walk to and from my house and most of the time, I walked alone. When solitude turns oppressive, the solution is to open all windows and doors and let air and friends in. One evening I invited Mia and Farad, both journalists and wine-drinkers, who arrived before sunset and stayed almost til midnight. We all knew the later it became the harder it would be for Mia to reach her home across the city. A call to one of the less dodgy cab companies proved us right—there were no taxis available in the area. It would be better, said Farad, to walk to the main road and hail a cab from there. Reluctant to end the evening at the elevator, I locked my door and joined my friends on the walk out to Mipur Road, which even at midnight stirred with the occasional activity of tradesmen and drivers. After a few attempts, Farad flagged down a cab, negotiated a fare and recorded the driver's number. It was part of the safety training Mia and I had imbibed as foreigners over the years. Other examples included "Never buy spices from the sacks at the market" and "Never wear gold necklaces while riding rickshaws." "I should catch my bus," Farad announced after Mia's departure. "But you've left your books in my house," I replied. "I thought you were coming back to get them." Farad was incredibly sexy with his brooding face and shaggy black beard and I had hoped more time would reveal reciprocal interest. From one writer to another it was not a suggestive line, but I was too shy to be more explicit with my male friends in Bangladesh, who treated me as one of the boys and silenced me sometimes with their unexpectedly conservative views of women. Farad considered my comment. "I'll collect them later, or we can meet at the university in a few days. Do you need to catch a rickshaw to your door?" "I don't have any taka on me," I said, "and it's not far." I was, after all, in my own street, not being chauffeured home by a bleary-eyed driver. "Thanks for coming! Abar dekha hobe (see you again)." "Goodnight," Farad replied and as he turned to leave I saw him grin into his beard, amused by my tipsy pronunciation. Fatigue dropped heavily on my shoulders as I strolled back down the road. My flat, with its small clean bed and softly purring ceiling fans, seemed far away at the end of the alley. It was very quiet, as quiet as home when I used to walk through the city to the train station after late night shifts on the suicide hotline. The dim light in the street exposed its emptiness. The stalls along the road had shut hours earlier and the only movement came from a middle-aged man taking his exercise, swinging his arms widely from side to side as he strode home. As I turned the first corner of the alley, another man approached me from behind. I glanced at him, probably because he had glanced at me. "Are you OK?" he asked. "Fine." "What is your country?" "Look," I said, unaccountably feeling my heart rate increase, "I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk now." "No problem, no problem," he assured me, spreading his hands and smiling, displaying two charming rows of teeth. "Relax. You're very nice." My instinct was to smile back. We walked past the waste piles that had been emptied from the bins, ready for sorting. The woman I exchanged greetings with worked here on most days and instructed me on how to wear my orna (scarf) when it wasn't placed correctly over my chest. I wondered now where she slept at night. Calculating the closeness of my friend seemed less like idle speculation when the man who was walking beside me stepped directly into my path. He was tall and lean and wore a dark blue shirt. His face gleamed, as if he had been sweating during the day and had not washed off the residue. It occurred to me to twist past him and walk faster, maybe even run. I considered how fast and how far I could go in my thongs and wondered if I should kick them off, and then start to run. "No problem," the man repeated, holding out his hands again, placing them tightly behind my neck. He pulled me towards the wall as he forced me back by moving closer. Instant wetness struck me as I felt the concrete—my pelvic floor had made the first start of surprise. The strong hands moved quickly from my neck to my breasts. "I just want to…" said the man, squeezing both breasts like he was selecting fruit. He added, "You're very nice." I was wearing the only remotely attractive bra I owned, purchased from the supermarket on Dhanmondi 27. The cups, moulded from black synthetic lace, made my chest stick out in jaunty cones like a 1950s sex-bomb and the underwire dug into my chest. Clothes can be armour, yet in this case had depleted my self-preservation. I stood quite still, thinking only of what might happen next. I was against a wall in an alleyway at midnight, with no-one around except the man who was groping me. Finally I reacted, though it was not the reaction I would have guessed at my most objective self. Cowgirls get the blues, rough beasts slouch to be born and six foot one kick-boxing world travelling feminists scream like frightened cats with the shock of even minor violation. And certain men, I learned on my night out, chuckle at the distress they cause and then run away. After A Night Out The personal and public impacts of A Night Out proved to be cumulative over time and throughout retellings. When I read the piece at the Dhaka conference I was set to unleash the "transformative and efficacious potential" that autoethnography legendarily contains (Spry 712), though if my revelation achieved anything close to such a transformation, it was unclear. A female academic who had been chatting with me before my presentation, left the room directly after it. The students, mainly female undergraduates, had no questions to ask about any aspect of my paper. Whatever reactions my audience felt, if any, were not discussed. After my presentation, the male convenor privately expressed his regret over my experience and related more horrific examples. Sexual harassment of women is prevalent in Bangladesh yet so too is the culture of blaming the victim and denying the crime (cf. Lodhi; Mudditt; Nadiya), an attitude reflected through the use of the term "Eve Teasing," which assigns the provocative role to the woman and normalises the aggressive or sexual actions of the perpetrator (Kabeer 149). The response of this liberal and thoughtful man to my revelation was the only one that was articulated. By this measurement, A Night Out had failed to make the desired impact. One of the greatest reasons for this was the tension between the personal motivation behind my revelation and the public impact I had optimistically expected. A Night Out omits the reactions of my community immediately after my assault, when I was chastised for walking alone at such at late hour and for failing to defend myself, particularly given my size. In my street, gossip spread that I had not been groped but mugged, a less lecherous so perhaps more acceptable offense. I read A Night Out partly to gain some retrospective acknowledgement of my experience and in my determination I defied the complexities of a conservative country…[in which] women do not live alone, do not have male friends, do not travel by themselves or smoke cigarettes publicly and most definitely [...] do not talk or write about sexual topics. In Dhaka these things matter and 'decent women' are supposed to play by the rules. (Deen 35) Although I observed this conservatism to varying degrees in Bangladesh, I know that when women play outside the rules, negotiating cultural norms becomes a process of "alliance and conflict" that requires sensitivity to practise (Akhter 22)—a sensitivity that is difficult to grasp. The career of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin illustrates this: credited with opening doors of feminist discussion "that had been shuttered by genteel conservatism, by niceness, by ignorance and denial" (Nadiya), Nasrin diminished this effect and alienated her audience through subsequent "shock tactics and sensationalism" (Deen 56). Although my revelation had also alienated my audience, it was not the impact I had hoped for. While Linda Park-Fuller celebrates autoethnographic performance as a "transgressive act—a revealing of what has been kept hidden, a speaking of what has been silenced" (26), the conference experience made me realise the significance of cultural context to the impact of revelation. I considered recasting A Night Out in a setting that was more intimate than academic, to an audience prepared for the content and united by achieving a specific outcome, where responses could be given privately if desired. I would also have to shift my role from defiant storyteller to one who welcomed all types of feedback. By posting A Night Out online as a Facebook note, I not only fulfilled the requirements above but made the story accessible to a large audience of men and women of diverse cultural backgrounds, including Bangladeshi. The written replies I received were easier to decipher than the faces after the conference presentation. Among the responses, some from people I did not know at all, many conveyed their appreciation for the description of Bangladesh. Others commented on the risk I took in walking down the road at night and suggested ways I could defend myself in future. I was told I was tough to write the account and was invited to share more of my experiences. One friend in Bangladesh shared my note with others and wrote to describe the reaction of a female friend of his who was "terribly shocked" by what I had written about my breasts, more than my attraction to Farad or the sexual assault itself. This anonymous respondent's "pure cultural shock", which my conference audience may also have felt, was better communicated through the Facebook retelling of A Night Out, although I am unable to interpret the silence of the other Bangladeshi women I sent the note to. While the responses I received indicated my revelation had made some impact in its online context, I could not help being especially touched when a male friend wrote, "And as a Bangladeshi I feel sorry for [your trouble]." It is one matter to write up a personal experience and another to have it make a public impact. As my first reading of A Night Out shows, autoethnographic revelation contains the potential to alienate as well as to create sympathy with an audience. Combined with the second, more private and accessible, distribution of A Night Out, this "Before" and "After" analysis shows the evolution of the revelation's impact on my audience as well as myself, over time and within different cultural contexts, in the academic, social and online arenas. Although my experience confirms the impact autoethnography can make as a form of cultural research, it can only be strengthened by continued attempts to seek a balance between the projections and inflections of culture, self and audience. It is not only in the telling but in the re-telling that personal revelations will gather and continue to give impact, which is why I now present A Night Out to a new audience in a new context and await your new responses. References Akhter, Farida. Seeds of Movements: On Women's Issues In Bangladesh. Dhaka: Narigrantha Prabartana, 2007. Deen, Hanifa. Broken Bangles. New Delhi: Penguin, 1998. Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek: AltaMira P, 2004. Four Arrows. The Authentic Dissertation: Alternate Ways of Knowing, Research, and Representation. London: Routledge, 2008. Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998. Kabeer, Naila. Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought. London: Verso, 1994. Lodhi, Muhamad. "Reply." Unheard Voice: All Things Bangladesh. 25 Jun. 2011. 5 Oct. 2011 ‹http://unheardvoice.net/blog/2011/06/24/silence/#comments›. Mudditt, Jessica. "Mugged, Dragged and Scarred: Harrowing Tales from Foreigners In Dhaka." The Independent Digital 23 Aug. 2011: 1-2. Nadiya, Shabnam. "Woman Alone." The Daily Star—Features. 29 Sep. 2008. 5 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.thedailystar.net/suppliments/2008/eid_special/woman.htm›. Park-Fuller, Linda. "Performing Absence: The Staged Personal Narrative as Testimony." Text and Performance Quarterly 20 (2000): 20–42. Richardson, Laurel. "Narrative Sociology." Representation in Ethnography. Ed. John Van Maanen, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995. 198–221. Sparkes, Andrew C. "Autoethnography: Self-Indulgence or Something More?" Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature and Aesthetics. Eds. Arthur Bochner and Carolyn Ellis. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 2002. 209–32. Spry, Tami. "Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis." Qualitative Inquiry 7.6 (2001): 706–32. Ware, Vron. Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History. London: Verso, 1992.

Background “The sense of taste,” write Nelson and colleagues in a 2002 issue of Nature, “provides animals with valuable information about the nature and quality of food. Mammals can recognize and respond to a diverse repertoire of chemical entities, including sugars, salts, acids and a wide range of toxic substances” (199). The authors go on to argue that several amino acids—the building blocks of proteins—taste delicious to humans and that “having a taste pathway dedicated to their detection probably had significant evolutionary implications”. They imply, but do not specify, that the evolutionary implications are positive. This may be the case with some amino acids, but contemporary tastes, and changes in them, are far from universally beneficial. Indeed, this article argues that modern food production shapes and distorts human taste with significant implications for health and wellbeing. Take the western taste for fried chipped potatoes, for example. According to Schlosser in Fast Food Nation, “In 1960, the typical American ate eighty-one pounds of fresh potatoes and about four pounds of frozen french fries. Today [2002] the typical American eats about forty-nine pounds of fresh potatoes every year—and more than thirty pounds of frozen french fries” (115). Nine-tenths of these chips are consumed in fast food restaurants which use mass-manufactured potato-based frozen products to provide this major “foodservice item” more quickly and cheaply than the equivalent dish prepared from raw ingredients. These choices, informed by human taste buds, have negative evolutionary implications, as does the apparently long-lasting consumer preference for fried goods cooked in trans-fats. “Numerous foods acquire their elastic properties (i.e., snap, mouth-feel, and hardness) from the colloidal fat crystal network comprised primarily of trans- and saturated fats. These hardstock fats contribute, along with numerous other factors, to the global epidemics related to metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease,” argues Michael A. Rogers (747). Policy makers and public health organisations continue to compare notes internationally about the best ways in which to persuade manufacturers and fast food purveyors to reduce the use of these trans-fats in their products (L’Abbé et al.), however, most manufacturers resist. Hank Cardello, a former fast food executive, argues that “many products are designed for ‘high hedonic value’, with carefully balanced combinations of salt, sugar and fat that, experience has shown, induce people to eat more” (quoted, Trivedi 41). Fortunately for the manufactured food industry, salt and sugar also help to preserve food, effectively prolonging the shelf life of pre-prepared and packaged goods. Physiological Factors As Glanz et al. discovered when surveying 2,967 adult Americans, “taste is the most important influence on their food choices, followed by cost” (1118). A person’s taste is to some extent an individual response to food stimuli, but the tongue’s taste buds respond to five basic categories of food: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. ‘Umami’ is a Japanese word indicating “delicious savoury taste” (Coughlan 11) and it is triggered by the amino acid glutamate. Japanese professor Kikunae Ikeda identified glutamate while investigating the taste of a particular seaweed which he believed was neither sweet, sour, bitter, or salty. When Ikeda combined the glutamate taste essence with sodium he formed the food additive sodium glutamate, which was patented in 1908 and subsequently went into commercial production (Japan Patent Office). Although individual, a person’s taste preferences are by no means fixed. There is ample evidence that people’s tastes are being distorted by modern food marketing practices that process foods to make them increasingly appealing to the average palate. In particular, this industrialisation of food promotes the growth of a snack market driven by salty and sugary foods, popularly constructed as posing a threat to health and wellbeing. “[E]xpanding waistlines [are] fuelled by a boom in fast food and a decline in physical activity” writes Stark, who reports upon the 2008 launch of a study into Australia’s future ‘fat bomb’. As Deborah Lupton notes, such reports were a particular feature of the mid 2000s when: intense concern about the ‘obesity epidemic’ intensified and peaked. Time magazine named 2004 ‘The Year of Obesity’. That year the World Health Organization’s Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health was released and the [US] Centers for Disease Control predicted that a poor diet and lack of exercise would soon claim more lives than tobacco-related disease in the United States. (4) The American Heart Association recommends eating no more than 1500mg of salt per day (Hamzelou 11) but salt consumption in the USA averages more than twice this quantity, at 3500mg per day (Bernstein and Willett 1178). In the UK, a sustained campaign and public health-driven engagement with food manufacturers by CASH—Consensus Action on Salt and Health—resulted in a reduction of between 30 and 40 percent of added salt in processed foods between 2001 and 2011, with a knock-on 15 percent decline in the UK population’s salt intake overall. This is the largest reduction achieved by any developed nation (Brinsden et al.). “According to the [UK’s] National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), this will have reduced [UK] stroke and heart attack deaths by a minimum of 9,000 per year, with a saving in health care costs of at least £1.5bn a year” (MacGregor and Pombo). Whereas there has been some success over the past decade in reducing the amount of salt consumed, in the Western world the consumption of sugar continues to rise, as a graph cited in the New Scientist indicates (O’Callaghan). Regular warnings that sugar is associated with a range of health threats and delivers empty calories devoid of nutrition have failed to halt the increase in sugar consumption. Further, although some sugar is a natural product, processed foods tend to use a form invented in 1957: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). “HFCS is a gloopy solution of glucose and fructose” writes O’Callaghan, adding that it is “as sweet as table sugar but has typically been about 30% cheaper”. She cites Serge Ahmed, a French neuroscientist, as arguing that in a world of food sufficiency people do not need to consume more, so they need to be enticed to overeat by making food more pleasurable. Ahmed was part of a team that ran an experiment with cocaine-addicted rats, offering them a mutually exclusive choice between highly-sweetened water and cocaine: Our findings clearly indicate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus lead to addiction. (Lenoir et al.) The Tongue and the Brain One of the implications of this research about the mammalian desire for sugar is that our taste for food is about more than how these foods actually taste in the mouth on our tongues. It is also about the neural response to the food we eat. The taste of French fries thus also includes that “snap, mouth-feel, and hardness” and the “colloidal fat crystal network” (Rogers, “Novel Structuring” 747). While there is no taste receptor for fats, these nutrients have important effects upon the brain. Wang et al. offered rats a highly fatty, but palatable, diet and allowed them to eat freely. 33 percent of the calories in the food were delivered via fat, compared with 21 percent in a normal diet. The animals almost doubled their usual calorific intake, both because the food had a 37 percent increased calorific content and also because the rats ate 47 percent more than was standard (2786). The research team discovered that in as little as three days the rats “had already lost almost all of their ability to respond to leptin” (Martindale 27). Leptin is a hormone that acts on the brain to communicate feelings of fullness, and is thus important in assisting animals to maintain a healthy body weight. The rats had also become insulin resistant. “Severe resistance to the metabolic effects of both leptin and insulin ensued after just 3 days of overfeeding” (Wang et al. 2786). Fast food restaurants typically offer highly palatable, high fat, high sugar, high salt, calorific foods which can deliver 130 percent of a day’s recommended fat intake, and almost a day’s worth of an adult man’s calories, in one meal. The impacts of maintaining such a diet over a comparatively short time-frame have been recorded in documentaries such as Super Size Me (Spurlock). The after effects of what we widely call “junk food” are also evident in rat studies. Neuroscientist Paul Kenny, who like Ahmed was investigating possible similarities between food- and cocaine-addicted rats, allowed his animals unlimited access to both rat ‘junk food’ and healthy food for rats. He then changed their diets. “The rats with unlimited access to junk food essentially went on a hunger strike. ‘It was as if they had become averse to healthy food’, says Kenny. It took two weeks before the animals began eating as much [healthy food] as those in the control group” (quoted, Trivedi 40). Developing a taste for certain food is consequently about much more than how they taste in the mouth; it constitutes an individual’s response to a mixture of taste, hormonal reactions and physiological changes. Choosing Health Glanz et al. conclude their study by commenting that “campaigns attempting to change people’s perception of the importance of nutrition will be interpreted in terms of existing values and beliefs. A more promising strategy might be to stress the good taste of healthful foods” (1126). Interestingly, this is the strategy already adopted by some health-focused cookbooks. I have 66 cookery books in my kitchen. None of ten books sampled from the five spaces in which these books are kept had ‘taste’ as an index entry, but three books had ‘taste’ in their titles: The Higher Taste, Taste of Life, and The Taste of Health. All three books seek to promote healthy eating, and they all date from the mid-1980s. It might be that taste is not mentioned in cookbook indexes because it is a sine qua non: a focus upon taste is so necessary and fundamental to a cookbook that it goes without saying. Yet, as the physiological evidence makes clear, what we find palatable is highly mutable, varying between people, and capable of changing significantly in comparatively short periods of time. The good news from the research studies is that the changes wrought by high salt, high sugar, high fat diets need not be permanent. Luciano Rossetti, one of the authors on Wang et al’s paper, told Martindale that the physiological changes are reversible, but added a note of caution: “the fatter a person becomes the more resistant they will be to the effects of leptin and the harder it is to reverse those effects” (27). Morgan Spurlock’s experience also indicates this. In his case it took the actor/director 14 months to lose the 11.1 kg (13 percent of his body mass) that he gained in the 30 days of his fast-food-only experiment. Trivedi was more fortunate, stating that, “After two weeks of going cold turkey, I can report I have successfully kicked my ice cream habit” (41). A reader’s letter in response to Trivedi’s article echoes this observation. She writes that “the best way to stop the craving was to switch to a diet of vegetables, seeds, nuts and fruits with a small amount of fish”, adding that “cravings stopped in just a week or two, and the diet was so effective that I no longer crave junk food even when it is in front of me” (Mackeown). Popular culture indicates a range of alternative ways to resist food manufacturers. In the West, there is a growing emphasis on organic farming methods and produce (Guthman), on sl called Urban Agriculture in the inner cities (Mason and Knowd), on farmers’ markets, where consumers can meet the producers of the food they eat (Guthrie et al.), and on the work of advocates of ‘real’ food, such as Jamie Oliver (Warrin). Food and wine festivals promote gourmet tourism along with an emphasis upon the quality of the food consumed, and consumption as a peak experience (Hall and Sharples), while environmental perspectives prompt awareness of ‘food miles’ (Weber and Matthews), fair trade (Getz and Shreck) and of land degradation, animal suffering, and the inequitable use of resources in the creation of the everyday Western diet (Dare, Costello and Green). The burgeoning of these different approaches has helped to stimulate a commensurate growth in relevant disciplinary fields such as Food Studies (Wessell and Brien). One thing that all these new ways of looking at food and taste have in common is that they are options for people who feel they have the right to choose what and when to eat; and to consume the tastes they prefer. This is not true of all groups of people in all countries. Hiding behind the public health campaigns that encourage people to exercise and eat fresh fruit and vegetables are the hidden “social determinants of health: The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system” (WHO 45). As the definitions explain, it is the “social determinants of health [that] are mostly responsible for health iniquities” with evidence from all countries around the world demonstrating that “in general, the lower an individual’s socioeconomic position, the worse his or her health” (WHO 45). For the comparatively disadvantaged, it may not be the taste of fast food that attracts them but the combination of price and convenience. If there is no ready access to cooking facilities, or safe food storage, or if a caregiver is simply too time-poor to plan and prepare meals for a family, junk food becomes a sensible choice and its palatability an added bonus. For those with the education, desire, and opportunity to break free of the taste for salty and sugary fats, however, there are a range of strategies to achieve this. There is a persuasive array of evidence that embracing a plant-based diet confers a multitude of health benefits for the individual, for the planet and for the animals whose lives and welfare would otherwise be sacrificed to feed us (Green, Costello and Dare). Such a choice does involve losing the taste for foods which make up the lion’s share of the Western diet, but any sense of deprivation only lasts for a short time. The fact is that our sense of taste responds to the stimuli offered. It may be that, notwithstanding the desires of Jamie Oliver and the like, a particular child never will never get to like broccoli, but it is also the case that broccoli tastes differently to me, seven years after becoming a vegan, than it ever did in the years in which I was omnivorous. When people tell me that they would love to adopt a plant-based diet but could not possibly give up cheese, it is difficult to reassure them that the pleasure they get now from that specific cocktail of salty fats will be more than compensated for by the sheer exhilaration of eating crisp, fresh fruits and vegetables in the future. Conclusion For decades, the mass market food industry has tweaked their products to make them hyper-palatable and difficult to resist. They do this through marketing experiments and consumer behaviour research, schooling taste buds and brains to anticipate and relish specific cocktails of sweet fats (cakes, biscuits, chocolate, ice cream) and salty fats (chips, hamburgers, cheese, salted nuts). They add ingredients to make these products stimulate taste buds more effectively, while also producing cheaper items with longer life on the shelves, reducing spoilage and the complexity of storage for retailers. Consumers are trained to like the tastes of these foods. Bitter, sour, and umami receptors are comparatively under-stimulated, with sweet, salty, and fat-based tastes favoured in their place. Western societies pay the price for this learned preference in high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity. Public health advocate Bruce Neal and colleagues, working to reduce added salt in processed foods, note that the food and manufacturing industries can now provide most of the calories that the world needs to survive. “The challenge now”, they argue, “is to have these same industries provide foods that support long and healthy adult lives. And in this regard there remains a very considerable way to go”. If the public were to believe that their sense of taste is mutable and has been distorted for corporate and industrial gain, and if they were to demand greater access to natural foods in their unprocessed state, then that journey towards a healthier future might be far less protracted than these and many other researchers seem to believe. References Bernstein, Adam, and Walter Willett. “Trends in 24-Hr Sodium Excretion in the United States, 1957–2003: A Systematic Review.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 92 (2010): 1172–1180. Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. 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