Innovation and access to technologies for sustainable development: diagnosing weaknesses and identifying interventions in the Transnational Arena

Sustainable development – improving human well-being across present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – is a central challenge for the 21st century. Technological innovation can play an important role in moving society toward sustainable development. However, poor, marginalized, and future populations often do not fully benefit from innovation due to their lack of market or political power to influence innovation processes. As a result, current innovation systems fail to contribute as much as they might to meeting sustainable development goals. This paper focuses on how actors and institutions operating in the transnational arena can mitigate such shortfalls. To identify the most important transnational functions required to meet sustainable development needs our analysis undertook three main steps. First, we developed a framework to diagnose blockages in the global innovation system for particular technologies. This framework was built on existing theory and new empirical analysis. On the theory side, we drew from the literatures of systems dynamics; technology and sectoral innovation systems, science and technology studies, the economics of innovation, and global governance. On the empirical front, we conducted eighteen detailed case studies of technology innovation in multiple sectors relevant to sustainable development: water, energy, health, food, and manufactured goods. We use the framework to analyze our case studies in the common language of (1) technology stocks, (2) non-linear flows between stocks substantiated by specific mechanisms, and (3) characteristics of actors and socio-technical conditions (STCs) which mediate the flows between stocks . We identify blockages in the innovation system for each of the cases, diagnosing where in the innovation system flows were hindered and which specific sets of STCs and actor characteristics were associated with these blockages. Figure E.1 displays the components of our framework and how they relate

Freshwater Mussels of Money and Six Mile Creeks, McLean County, Illinois

For the past six years, The Lake Bloomington Partnership Project has focused on wetland construction and nitrogen management conservation practices to improve local drinking water quality, environmental protection, and agricultural sustainability in two drinking water supply watersheds of the Mackinaw River, near Bloomington, Illinois (Money Creek and Six Mile Creek). In 2017, a project funded by The Nature Conservancy was completed to establish a baseline for interpreting the impact of water quality modifications on fresh water mussels in these drainages. These surveys will provide comprehensive results for the entire watershed for Six Mile and Money creeks.The Nature Conservancyunpublishednot peer reviewedOpe

Danville Dam 2018 Salvage Report: Results of the fish and freshwater mussel surveys following the removal of the Danville Dam on the Vermilion River

The Danville Dam on the Vermilion River (Wabash River drainage) in the city of Danville, Vermilion County, Illinois, was removed during the summer and autumn of 2018. During the project, 1 fish and 905 live individuals of 23 species of freshwater mussels were relocated. These included : 1 Smallmouth Bass (Micropterus dolomieu); 1 state-threatened Purple Wartyback (Cyclonaias tuberculata); 6 state-endangered Wavyrayed Lampmussel (Lampsilis fasciola); 1 state-endangered Rainbow (Villosa iris); 264 Mapleleaf (Quadrula quadrula); 217 Giant Floater (Pyganodon grandis); 130 Fragile Papershell (Leptodea fragilis); 91 Pink Heelsplitter (Potamilus alatus); 86 Plain Pocketbook (Lampsilis cardium). One side effect of dam removal is stranding, desiccation, and predation of mussels within the former impounded areas. In addition to the live individuals, 116 fresh-dead individuals representing 18 species were observed, including 1 fresh-dead Purple Wartyback; 2 fresh-dead Wavyrayed Lampmusselo1fresh-dead Rainbow; Nearly half of these individuals (e.g., 41 Giant Floater, 7 Mapleleaf, and 3 Plain Pocketbook) were observed during the last sampling eventand were found on the gravel bar that formed at the mouth of the North Fork. Given time, fishes and mussels should naturally recolonize the former impounded areas of the Danville Dam if habitat conditions are optimal and source populations are in close proximity.Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Endangered Species Programunpublishednot peer reviewedOpe

Geographies of science and technology 1:Boundaries and crossings

In a world of accelerating environmental crises, global pandemics and seemingly unstoppable datafication of anything that moves, thinks or feels, the politics of science and technology are pervasive. In this first of three progress reports on the geographies of science and technology, I home in on some definitional questions which an account of anything like a new or emerging subfield must necessarily concern itself. I examine how geographers have addressed the spatial effects of the making and unmaking of boundaries between science, technology and their various outsides. While work on historical and contemporary geographies of technoscience has often pulled in slightly different directions, I identify some promising convergences around questions of political economy and on the topic of scale as an emergent property of technoscientific practices. New attention is also falling on the spatial practices through which technoscience gets plugged into wider worlds, such as politics and policymaking, while geographers have also been busy disrupting, in a more experimental mode, conventional boundaries and hierarchies of technoscientific practice. Finally, the report examines recent and welcome efforts to convene new conversations around the geography of technology but cautions against the potential seduction of the new, the innovative and the ‘disruptive’. Important recent work in cultural geography has purposively unsettled assumed hierarchies of ‘high’ and ‘low’ tech, new and old, and suggests that any nascent subfield of ‘geography of technology’ needs to reflexively attend to how boundaries get drawn around ‘technology’, and with what effects

A constructive role for social science in the development of automated vehicles

Automated vehicles (AVs) have the potential to cause profound shifts across a wide range of areas of human life, including economic structures, land use, lifestyles and personal well-being. Most current social science on AVs is narrowly framed. Research on public attitudes has focused on whether people are likely to accept and use AVs. We contend that failing to anticipate a wider range of profound social implications may have serious negative consequences, and that social scientists from a range of disciplinary perspectives can provide invaluable insights. Our conclusions are the product of a workshop in London held in 2018 to discuss the place of social science research in relation to the development of AVs. This paper summarises a core selection of our concerns, interests, theoretical and substantive points of reference and aspirations for a constructive role in this field of research and development

Moving forward <b>The Road Taken The History and Future of America's Infrastructure</b> <i>Henry Petroski</i> Bloomsbury, 2016. 335 pp.

A history of America's bridges and roadways offers lessons for the future of physical infrastructure</jats:p