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This paper explores the theory of ‘Thoughtful Intelligence’. This theory proposes that the capacity to realize the impact of one’s statements and actions on the continued existence, dignity, and development of other people and nations is ‘Thoughtful Intelligence’. I show that the 4 unique thoughtful features (self point of reference, human point of reference, nature point of reference, and creator point of reference) result in a ‘Thoughtful’ leadership role. Applying this to climate change management enables one to characterize and visualize the forthcoming flow of Thoughtful Intelligence. A Delphi-focused method helped identify 7 dynamics of thoughtful climate statesmanship, including carbon neutrality, offsetting carbon in neighboring countries, fighting climate change, integrity of social well-being, preserving environment and culture, caring use of limited resources, and gross national happiness. A Delphi-exploratory method was used to clarify thoughtful climate statesmanship. The consensual 95% results documented that the best thoughtful climate statesmanship belonged to Bhutan. The documentation of thoughtful climate statesmanship is strengthening the literature on statesmanship. Summit leaders, scientists, and people in business globally can benefit from this study.

Ecotheology involves the fundamental awareness of local communities and their social solidarity to protect the sustainability of nature. Therefore, it is critical to address problems in nature caused by increasing tourism industry development. This article discusses social movements sparked by religious and critical awareness of the development issue in conservation zones. We conducted a qualitative participatory interview with 9 key actors in Batu, Indonesia, using an ecotheological approach. Group discussions were held with the participants during demonstrations, festivals, and cultural rituals. This research found that individuals who rely for their daily needs only on water springs have significant connections to ecological and spiritual values, and they resist with their cultural capital when the government’s actions threaten the sustainability of the springs. Environmental ethics as a theological belief has shaped the community’s traditions and cultural traits. Thus, the current study serves as the basis for policymakers in planning development, prioritizing a cultural approach, and considering the possibility of environmental degradation.

Our aim is to defend the Precautionary Principle (PP) against the main theoretical and practical criticisms that it has raised by proposing a novel conception and a specific formulation of the principle. We first address the theoretical concerns against the idea of there being a principle of precaution by arguing for a distinctively political conception of the PP as opposed to a moral one. Our claim is that the rationale of the PP is grounded in the fact that contemporary societies wish to avoid morally unacceptable risks while at the same time pursuing other goals, aspirations and values. Following this political conception of the PP, we propose a specific formulation in terms of an argumentation scheme—the Argumentation Scheme for Appealing to Precaution—which is meant to solve, in turn, the main practical concerns that the PP has raised. We explain the advantages of our proposal by analysing appeals to precaution in the cases of (1) the European restrictions on the free movement of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) the discharge of nuclear wastes into the Irish Sea.

Wildlife conservation seems unaffected by decolonization movements that recently led to removing or vandalizing several statues of geographers and colonizers worldwide. Instead, we observe an increased emphasis on total protection of species and habitats that, although strategic in a period of environmental crisis, may have grossly negative impacts on living standards of local indigenous communities. In this regard, we should decolonize society, and specifically conservation, by adding new metaphoric statues to the old ones, preferably of those living side by side with wildlife. In this essay, we suggest that zoos, as popular places where urbanized people meet biodiversity, should change their messages that too often reinforce the subtle colonial ideology pervading international environmentalism and often driven by increasing animal rights activism. For example, a new storytelling ethos in zoos should communicate that, in some sensitive contexts (e.g. most tropical countries), the current over-emphasis on protected areas and military law enforcement is also causing serious human rights violations. We need ‘humanised zoos’, i.e. places where conservation of biodiversity is put in a broader socio-ecological context and a central role for the future of ecosystems is given to local communities, ethnic minorities and ‘wise people’ (i.e. people having local traditional knowledge). Zoos should direct more resources toward community-based conservation; foremost, they should shape urban and ‘Western’ attitudes toward wildlife with a less colonized perspective, including spreading the importance of traditional ecological knowledge in ecosystem management.

While the causes of human-animal conflict are numerous, many are intertwined with food production systems and the wildlife trade. The emergence and spread of Covid-19 exemplify this. Indeed, the wildlife population in South Asian countries has seen an increase in the risk of both human and nonhuman death in recent months, and as the economy slows, the search for food and extra income will intensify, negatively impacting wildlife. This paper aims to address some of the ethical issues concerning our treatment of nonhuman creatures and the environment in relation to the global food system and wildlife trade following the Covid-19 crisis.

At the current level of economic development, the digital transformation of society is an important factor in advancing any social structure. The purpose of the present study was to explore the transformation of a traditional society into a digital one, with a focus on ethical and environmental aspects. The study draws on a variety of information analysis methods to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of digitalization, including the environmental aspect. Our research revealed that in Russia, the only highly digitalized sectors were information technology and finance. Digitalization is strikingly different in the European countries, where only transport and building industries slowly implemented digital technologies into their business processes. We also examined digitalization levels in 7 Moscow universities. The universities managed to improve their digitalization scores with the help of recommendations developed for online learning, such as selection of quality software, having qualified teaching staff, constant monitoring, and evaluation of knowledge. The findings can be used in economic, social, and environmental spheres since they highlight the ambiguous effects of digitalization using practical examples.

Anthropocentrism has been claimed to be the root of the global environmental crisis. Based on a multidisciplinary (e.g. environmental philosophy, animal ethics, anthropology, law) and multilingual (English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese) literature review, this article proposes a conceptual analysis of ‘anthropocentrism’ and reconstructs the often implicit argument that links anthropocentrism to the environmental crisis. The variety of usages of the concept of ‘anthropocentrism’ described in this article reveals many underlying disagreements under the apparent unanimity of the calls to reject anthropocentrism, both regarding what exactly is the root of the problem, and the nature of the possible solutions. It highlights the limitations of the argument of anthropocentrism as the scapegoat of the environmental crisis and identifies two main challenges faced by attempts to go beyond anthropocentrism: an epistemological challenge regarding knowledge and the place of sciences, and a metaethical challenge related to values and cultural pluralism. Beyond the issue of an anthropocentric point of view, the core of the problem might be an intertwinement of views and assumptions that work together to undermine attempts to protect the environment from the greed of some humans, such as the human-nature dichotomy, capitalism, consumerism, industrialism, etc. Finally, this article suggests that making the nuances and the presuppositions that underlie various versions of the anti-anthropocentric rhetoric explicit is necessary to foster constructive dialogue among different anti-anthropocentrism proponents, as well as with their detractors.

There is a growing movement in online social networks and within some governments to deny the long-established scientific consensus regarding climate change. Scientific research has shown that a series of climatic events in Latin America, and especially in Brazil, are being exacerbated by global warming. These events have had a profound impact on populations. Disruptions to Brazilian rainfall patterns with their devastating environmental and economic effects on agriculture have been directly linked with Amazonian deforestation. Furthermore, the Bolsonaro government, with its erratic environmental policies and ardent followers, has promoted misinformation about climate change and conservation of the Amazon. It is necessary to simultaneously inform society about scientific misunderstandings regarding the environment and the way these misunderstandings are amplified via the internet and social networks.

Sanitary engineering is burdened by several challenges that attract bioethical attention: (1) there are many ambiguities regarding the definition of the profession; (2) its methodology seems to be a combination of several approaches from different sciences; and (3) it often appears to be an amalgam of different disciplines. We argue that the bioethical perspective helps to show that these features can be taken as a stimulating challenge. Moreover, bioethics may illuminate how these features can become an asset to sanitary engineering in light of the growing need for holistic approaches. First, we present a bioethical analysis of the aforementioned features as a useful way to clarify and strengthen the identity of the profession. Second, we argue that professional ethics have received the least attention, but are crucial to giving the profession stronger independence and professional identity and to creating a unique worldview at the crossroads of environmental and public health ethics. Finally, we propose a general framework of sound professional ethics of sanitary engineering as a necessary step towards rethinking the core values of the profession, clearly articulating a genuine professional ethic, and reforming educational politics related to professional education.

Vietnam is a vibrant and emerging South East Asian economy. However, the country faces a challenging task in meeting rising energy demand and the need to securitize energy while addressing the negative environmental impact of fossil fuel utilization. Growing concerns about sustainable development have led Vietnam to develop civilian nuclear energy for electricity generation. Nuclear power is widely recognized as a clean, mature and reliable energy source. Its inclusion in Vietnam’s energy mix by 2030 is expected to supplement other energy sources from fossil fuel, hydropower plants, renewable resources and energy imports. Despite strong reservations in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, Vietnam has pursued its national nuclearization program. Civilian nuclear energy development has been widely regarded as a controversial issue, although it is intended for peaceful purposes and as a solution for long-term energy security. Anxiety over nuclear safety measures, inadequate nuclear regulatory mechanisms, lack of institutionalized radioactive waste management, the threat of nuclear accident, theft and terrorism, and nuclear proliferation have marred public perception. The apprehension towards nuclear energy development has raised serious questions on the ethics and risks of the technology. Using a qualitative approach of reviewing published scholarly research, we investigated the ethical and risk issues that manifest in civilian nuclear energy development in Vietnam. Our findings reveal that the conundrum of civilian nuclear energy revolves around balancing energy security, environment preservation and societal well-being with ethical and risk predicaments of nuclear energy.

Over the last 20 yr, neurosurgical robots have been increasingly assisting in neurosurgical procedures. Surgical robots are considered to have noticeable advantages over humans, such as reduction of procedure time, surgical dexterity, no experience of fatigue and improved healthcare outcomes. In recent years, neurosurgical robots have been developed to perform various procedures. Public demand is informing the direction of neurosurgery and placing greater pressure on neurosurgeons to use neurosurgical robots. The increasing diversity and sophistication of neurosurgical robots have received ethical scrutiny due to the surgical complications that may arise as well as the role of robots in the future. In this paper, we address 3 ethical areas regarding neurosurgical robots: (1) Loss of neurosurgical skills due to increasing dependency on robots; (2) How far do we want to go with neurosurgical robots? (3) Neurosurgical robots and conflict of interest and medical bias.

Engagement in marine science has historically been the privilege of a small number of people with access to higher education, specialised equipment and research funding. Such constraints have often limited public engagement and may have slowed the uptake of ocean science into environmental policy. Recognition of this disconnect has spurred a growing movement to promote ocean literacy, defined as one’s individual understanding of how the ocean affects people and how people affect the ocean. Over the last 2 decades, this concept has gained significant traction in marine biology and environmental education circles and now plays a prominent role in the UN’s Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030). Here, we argue that the ocean literacy agenda has largely been shaped and discussed by marine scientists and educators but needs to be expanded to a much larger constituency to be more effective, accessible and inclusive. We discuss diverse cultural settings from around the world and provide examples of indigenous, spiritual, art, ocean user and other groups that are already deeply engaged with the ocean and could provide a variety of perspectives to enrich the ocean literacy concept beyond an understanding of marine science. We suggest that such inclusiveness could remove the historic barriers that have surrounded the field, transform our collective awareness of and relationship with the ocean and help support ongoing efforts to restore marine biodiversity.

As if 2020 was not a peculiar enough year, its fifth month saw the relatively quiet publication of a preprint describing the most powerful natural language processing (NLP) system to date—GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer-3)—created by the Silicon Valley research firm OpenAI. Though the software implementation of GPT-3 is still in its initial beta release phase, and its full capabilities are still unknown as of the time of this writing, it has been shown that this artificial intelligence can comprehend prompts in natural language, on virtually any topic, and generate relevant original text content that is indistinguishable from human writing. Moreover, access to these capabilities, in a limited yet worrisome enough extent, is available to the general public. This paper presents examples of original content generated by the author using GPT-3. These examples illustrate some of the capabilities of GPT-3 in comprehending prompts in natural language and generating convincing content in response. I use these examples to raise specific fundamental questions pertaining to the intellectual property of this content and the potential use of GPT-3 to facilitate plagiarism. The goal is to instigate a sense of urgency, as well as a sense of present tardiness on the part of the academic community in addressing these questions.

Recent forest fires in Brazil and Australia have been the subject of irrational discussions on social networks without any legitimate scientific basis. These discussions often overlook or ignore fundamental questions about how limited government reactions, especially from the Brazilian government, to climate change affect these disasters. This article seeks to foster a discussion supported by data about climate change, the consequences of increased frequency of catastrophic weather events, and ways in which aggressiveness and ignorance via the internet and social networks do nothing to address the underlying issues.

Despite decades of management and conservation efforts, we have seen only limited success in rebuilding marine life and restoring ocean ecosystems from human-inflicted damage on a global scale. I suggest that we need to harness both our emotional (love) and rational (knowledge) sides to create a more powerful movement to heal the ocean and rebuild its abundance and diversity. Love and compassion fuel our desire and urge for change and provide a compass that can guide our actions. Science and knowledge provide ways for collecting and interpreting data and information that can enhance our understanding and support our decisions and actions. Combining our emotional and rational sides can inspire our thinking and transform our actions in new, creative ways. In order to affect wide-ranging and long-lasting change, love and knowledge need to work together to transform our collective relationship with the ocean.

The 2019-2020 pandemic of the SARS-CoV-2 virus—the cause of the novel COVID-19 disease—is an exceptional moment in modern human history. The abrupt and intense cessation of human activities in the first months of the pandemic, when large parts of the global human population were in lockdown, had noticeable effects on the environment that can serve to identify key learning experiences to foster a deep reflection on the human relationship with nature, and their interdependence. There are precious lessons to be learned. A global, tangible threat was needed to trigger a global lockdown, where different societies adopted different strategies and management measures to adapt or transform their activities. Humanity is still coming to terms with how to relaunch the economy while preventing further outbreaks. Here, I summarize the immediate positive and negative effects that the pandemic has had on the natural environment, with emphasis on marine ecosystems. I reflect on key lessons learned from this unprecedented situation so far. The essential role that the oceans play in maintaining the functioning of natural systems and key socio-economic activities is exceptionally relevant, and I discuss key not-to-miss opportunities to add the ‘Blue Recovery’ to the international agenda under the new ‘Build Back Better’ or ‘Healthy Recovery’ context after the acute phase of COVID-19. Achieving sustainable use of the ocean is one of the grand challenges of the new decade, and marine ecologists must play a more proactive role.

Long-term studies of whales, dolphins, and porpoises (the cetaceans) in nature abruptly began about 50 yr ago, preceded by several decades of terrestrial animal studies, often of charismatic large mammals. Fifty years ago, intensive whaling was still occurring, and arguments against whaling largely centered around impending extinctions due to over-hunting, not the idea that cetaceans should not be killed due to natural or inherent goodness. In the 1970s, several USA and other government agencies promulgated rules to help control pollution and other insults to nature, often effective in the short term but not in stopping an overall decline in the health of nature. While there appeared a general societal awakening towards greater appreciation of nature and intrinsic animal rights, researchers largely stayed focused on their research, with little attention to using knowledge to increase ecosystem and animal health. Attitudes of direct scientific involvement in calling for environmental action have changed, as it is becoming increasingly (but not universally) appreciated that researchers who know the problems are well-suited to alert governments, industry, and society to them, and loudly call for action. I have no good answers for how to accomplish large-scale rapid reversals of environmental declines. One laudable action is to be an active vocal part of appropriate web-based conservation advocacy groups. Involving the young of all genders and races for a groundswell of support is likely most effective in generating a new world view of so much respect for nature that we radically alter our present ways of subjugating and diminishing it in the name of supposed human progress. Above all, we scientists must no longer dither with opinions on environmental problems and urgent needs for action; we must proclaim them intelligently, forcefully, and as broadly as possible.

Important marine mammal areas (IMMAs)—‘discrete habitat areas, important for one or more marine mammal species, that have the potential to be delineated and managed for conservation’ (IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force 2018, p. 3)—were introduced in 2014 by the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force to support marine mammal and wider ocean conservation. IMMAs provide decision-makers with a user-friendly, actionable tool to inform them of the whereabouts of habitat important for marine mammal survival. However, in view of their non-prescriptive, evidence-based and biocentric nature, the conservation effectiveness of IMMAs is strictly dependent on politicians’ willingness to make use of them. It has been the customary task of advocacy non-governmental organisations to lobby decision-makers to stimulate respect for environmental law, but the scientific community is increasingly joining this effort. Scientists can effectively strengthen a healthy relationship between scientific objectivity and political advocacy without damaging the credibility of conservation science. Thus, those undertaking the identification of IMMAs can be among those responsible for strongly advocating the implementation of IMMAs and other conservation initiatives.

Humanity’s self-ordained mandate to subdue and dominate nature is part of the cognitive foundation of the modern world—a perspective that remains deeply ingrained in science and technology. Marine biology has not been immune to this anthropocentric bias. But this needs to change, and the gaps between basic scientific disciplines and the global conservation imperatives of our time need to be bridged. In the face of a looming ecological and climate crisis, marine biologists must upgrade their values and professional standards and help foster the radical transformation needed to avert a climate and ecological breakdown. To prevent some of the damage, they must cross the imaginary line that separates science from science-based activism and consciously pursue the health and durability of human and natural communities. To this end, they can (1) develop compelling narratives that engage human society, with emphasis on care for the wild living world; (2) move beyond marine conservation on paper and avoid self-serving complaisance; (3) advocate constructive changes in market and human behaviour, not only by documenting damage but also by clarifying how the extraction, production and consumption system can be steered away from practices that harm nature; (4) push for systemic change in politics through individual and collective efforts, supporting environmental activism and those who demand biosphere-saving policies; and (5) endorse a more ecocentric and holistic world vision, relinquishing contempt for spiritual wisdom and liaising with (or at least not dismissing) spiritual traditions that encourage equality, self-restraint and environmental sustainability.

This paper shows that ecological and legal culture is an integral part of the generic scientific category ‘ecological culture’, which reveals only partly the relationship between society and nature that falls under the rules of international and national law. Another, no less important, distinguishing feature of the sub-category ‘ecological and legal culture’ is that it assumes the presence not only of knowledge about the state of nature or its internal interrelationships, but also of skills through legal means to protect nature from negative anthropogenic influence. In the context of the emergence of new environmental threats of the 21st century (e.g. climate change, ozone holes, and the impact on nature of bio- and nanotechnologies), it is necessary to form a new public system of values, knowledge and practical skills for legal (including judicial) environmental protection by the citizens of Russia, which will require the alteration of education, training programs and upbringing.

Despite significant research in environmental sociology, environmental sustainability, and cultural geography, the following questions remain ambiguous for many Indigenous communities: What constitutes land-based research and what is its purpose? How are researcher and participants situated in land-based research? Who has the power to select the research topic, research objectives, and research site? Who has the power to determine research protocols, data analysis and dissemination procedures? What can be learned from land-based research? Focusing on a relational participatory action research (PAR) project with the Laitu Khyeng Indigenous community in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh, this paper addresses the above questions as a means of advocating for land-based research. My learning journey in land-based research is a relational ceremony that not only reinforces my desire to create a bridge between researcher and participant needs but also serves as inspiration in rethinking the meaning of research from the participants’ perspectives.

Activist groups which oppose so-called ‘genetically modified organisms’ (GMOs) frequently affirm that they want to fight corporations and capitalism. While I do not discuss whether this legitimate ideological-political attitude is good or bad, right or wrong, I try to show that such avowed anti-industrial struggle in the field of green biotechnologies not only fails to hit the supposed target, but benefits and supports a sector of the industry whose products have a greater environmental impact than recombinant DNA (rDNA) cultivars. Therefore, GMO opponents are exploited by a part of the capitalistic front they are combating. In the meantime, steadfast resistance to GMOs as an indiscriminate whole creates heavy collateral damage, impeding the development of public and philanthropic biotech outcomes; such crops would help those whom activists declaredly want to protect: the poor. This detrimental action is based on one counterproductive and enormous mistake: the indiscriminate rejection of GMOs takes away precious energies from productive environmental and social battles.

The concept of morality underpins the moral responsibility that not only depends on the outward practices (or ‘output’, in the case of humanoid robots) of the agents but on the internal attitudes (‘input’) that rational and responsible intentioned beings generate. The primary question that has initiated extensive debate, i.e. ‘Can humanoid robots be moral?’, stems from the normative outlook where morality includes human conscience and socio-linguistic background. This paper advances the thesis that the conceptions of morality and creativity interplay with linguistic human beings instead of non-linguistic humanoid robots, as humanoid robots are indeed docile automata that cannot be responsible for their actions. To eradicate human ethics in order to make way for humanoid robot ethics highlights the moral actions and adequacy that hinges the myth of creative agency and self-dependency, which a humanoid robot can scarcely express.

Marine data are held by hundreds of different institutions in Europe: hydrographic offices, geological surveys, local authorities, environmental agencies, research institutes and universities. The increasing prevalence of open data policies helps to make these data more accessible and usable. But, on its own, this is not enough. The European Union is therefore supporting a partnership of approximately 150 organisations who are rendering the data more interoperable and therefore more usable through common standards, nomenclature and baselines. The data are accompanied by confidence intervals. This change is already increasing productivity, stimulating innovation, and reducing uncertainty in the blue economy.

The unintended negative consequences of the drive towards open access publishing are becoming increasingly apparent. This paper examines the nature of open access publishing from the perspectives of authors and readers, considering issues of payment and ownership, and the question of open access for data. It discusses the origins of open access, its costs and the extent to which delivers on its aims, and reviews its advantages and disadvantages, including economic restrictions on access to publishing, the rise in predatory journals and degradation of quality control, and the consequent potential of open access to damage the standing of science in society. Given the recognised importance of ‘crafting the message’, i.e. communicating scientific results to each category of end-users in the most appropriate way, it should also be asked why the ‘one size fits all’ solution of publishing results in open access journal papers (which usually follow the standard format of scientific papers, which remains off-putting to the casual reader) is considered necessary. There is a need for greater rigour in choice of publication outlets, avoiding predatory journals and promoting benign open access options, and ensuring that funding bodies and policymakers are aware of the unexpected negative impacts of unregulated open access publishing.

Full and open access is promoted as the international norm for the exchange of scientific data by numerous scientific and political bodies. In the contemporary digital era, since scientists are both consumers and producers of data, they inevitably play a crucial role in defining the level of data accessibility. Yet, it is individual researchers usually who resist the release of their data. Through a global online questionnaire survey, the perception of 858 life scientists with respect to open data was investigated. Differences in scientists’ perceptions were tested per major country, rank position and academic performance in order to identify partial and global preferences. The ‘Selfish Scientist Paradox’ was identified: although the majority of respondents were in favour of open access to life sciences data, and most acknowledged that data gathered by others is vital to their work, the same group of people were quite reluctant to share their own data; only a third of them were willing to make their data available unconditionally. Scientists with >10 yr professional experience were twice as likely to oppose open access, while almost half of junior researchers would rather not share their data prior to publishing. Senior scientists argued that although project funding in general was a significant incentive towards making their data available, at the same time certain confidentiality agreements in some projects become a main barrier to data sharing. Country of professional location largely affected most responses, revealing that southern Europeans had a ‘conservative’ attitude towards open access, being more unwilling to share their data. Analyses based on academic performance (publications and citations) indicated that established individuals were more dependent on data collected by others and more opposed to open access.

A systematic European Union (EU)-wide data framework for the collection of fisheries data in support of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) was first implemented in 2002. Since that time, EU data collection regulation has undergone 2 revisions in response to evolving policy needs. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) is responsible for conducting research and providing advice on fisheries management under the CFP, and since 2005 has worked closely with the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF). JRC and STECF have an open data policy, and aggregated data submitted by EU member states in response to data calls issued under the provisions of the data collection regulation are published via the website of the STECF. This paper provides an overview of the fisheries data activities carried out by the JRC in support of and in collaboration with the STECF and discusses some of the benefits and drawbacks of such activities.

Anecdotal information provided by local fishers is an invaluable tool in the study of marine mammal-fisheries interactions. This paper summarizes empirical and anecdotal information voluntarily provided by fishers during a survey monitoring the damage to coastal fisheries caused by dolphins. We visited 23 fishing harbours along the northern Aegean Sea coastline and monitored the fishing gear of 113 coastal fishers in order to identify the damage caused by dolphins. While we were monitoring the damage, the fishers voluntarily shared their general views on marine mammals and fisheries interactions, which were recorded and are presented here. The majority of fishers indicated that fishing gear, mesh size, depth and target species were important factors that determine depredation frequency and gear damage, whereas soaking time, time of day and season were not considered crucial. These findings provide useful insight in the study of dolphin-fishery interactions, especially for data-poor areas such as the northeastern Mediterranean Sea. The empirical knowledge of the fishers and their views is also important from an ethical perspective because, historically, dolphins in the Mediterranean had been culled and hunted for bounties for many years; even today, occasional deliberate dolphin killings are still recorded. Such information is required in the design of any management strategy that aims to minimize the conflicts with dolphins, thus preserving the fishers’ livelihood.

The sharing of marine mammal data is a worthwhile practice, but there are caveats. Data interpretation may be difficult, sometimes resulting in misleading information or inappropriate formulation of research questions. Here, we point out some of the challenges when dealing with shared marine mammal datasets. We emphasize the importance of collecting, publishing and sharing data in ways that can produce unbiased and meaningful knowledge, ultimately inspiring and directing management action. Finally, we suggest that bridging the gap between data sharing and data reuse will require enhanced spatially referenced online databases as well as direct collaboration between the data analysts and the field researchers who possess relevant place-based expertise.

Water, a finite natural resource, is vital for the generation, sustenance and flourishing of all life forms. Rampant use and misuse of water make it a depleting natural resource. Consequently, conflicts and stresses have emerged involving the availability, accessibility, and quality of water. The shortage of water has also contributed to the spread of waterborne diseases. The crisis of availability and accessibility of quality water and the emergence and prevalence of these waterborne diseases have pushed some groups and individuals to suffer more than others. This disparate impact has contributed to inequities—especially health inequities—by failing to prevent the avoidable impacts of water shortage and waterborne disease on the health of individuals and groups. Considering this fact, the central argument of this paper is that water-related inequities are actually inequities caused at the level of health capabilities of groups and individuals. To address such inequities, this paper suggests that there is a need for a new foundation of water ethics because the existing frameworks fail to capture and address water-related inequities that are caused at the level of health capabilities. With a focus on India, this paper then argues that the new water ethics can be founded on Jennifer Prah Ruger’s social justice theory of the ‘Health Capability Paradigm (HCP)’. This paper then identifies and recommends some desirable changes to be made in the implementation of Indian water policy.

Some of the amalgam of activities which comprise traditional science (‘real’ science) has fragmented into new modes under pressure from internal and external factors. The adoption of the internet and the World Wide Web (which have created cyberscience and are internal factors) can be equated with the introduction of the microscope and other instruments and procedures, though they have revolutionized the whole of science rather than some of its branches. External factors discussed here include post-modernism, neoliberalism, and McDonaldization. In post-modern science, the traditional model has become burdened by social and political interests, and concerns for practical problems in which scientific expertise can assist decision making; however scientific knowledge in itself is not a priority. Neoliberal guile has parasitized science as it has so much else in search of profit, and has seriously damaged its host. There are also degraded or pathological activities, ‘McScience’, in which the pursuit of knowledge has been corrupted by an excess of bureaucratic control and over-emphasis on personal rankings. The ethos which guides traditional science has been warped by these various outside interests, secrecy is rewarded, and practices once considered dishonest are prospering.

This essay suggests that humanity has experienced several instances where lots of information (‘big data’) had to be accommodated, which led to new structures for channeling the subsequent data flows. These structures, such as articulated speech and writing, would be analogs to the ‘dissipative structures’ that emerge in physical systems characterized by strong energy (i.e. heat) gradients. Additional examples from oceanography, meteorology and ecology are given, with some emphasis on the prescient work of Alexander von Humboldt, whose identification of ecological communities was based on the occurrence records of multiple species. His lead was initially not followed up, but it can be now, as millions of occurrence records are available, along with the technology to manipulate them. The structures that will emerge in the process, however, are as unpredictable as dissipative structures in physical systems.

The efficiency of conservation measures largely depends on our ability to understand numerous biotic and abiotic factors, and the broad array of their interactions and dependencies, which are often scale-sensitive. To generate precise evidence for causes, outputs and processes, and thus to translate knowledge into conservation actions, advanced methods and an unbiased synthesis of data are required. Following scientific advances, along with the support of new technologies, research questions in conservation biology have gradually evolved. To deal with these questions, new methods and approaches have been developed aiming to capture a more holistic picture of the dynamic and multidimensional processes structuring biodiversity patterns. Such modern methodological tools can be satisfied through the use of transparent and credible data, collected over various spatial and temporal scales. Here, the basic concept behind recent methodological advances—viz. (1) decision support tools for spatial conservation planning, (2) cumulative effect assessments and (3) ecological niche models—which offer innovative analyses for conservation of biodiversity, is briefly presented. The need for standardized analytical methodologies seems to be properly acknowledged. Yet, the application, precision and validation of any such modern tool largely depend on the available data. The need for transparent and credible open-access data is more urgent than ever.

Wide-ranging animals often traverse more than one country, making it important to establish international management co-operations and agreed protocols; however, accessing all available information on a given species, or even a population of interest, compiled by local, national and international organisations, is often complicated. In the case of sea turtles, this issue is further compounded because different life stages of the same population occupy different types of habitat; even as adults, while part of the population aggregates to breed at a single site in a given year, all other adult individuals are dispersed across foraging habitats up to 1000 km or more in distance. Information on the number of individuals, movement patterns and habitat use are needed to: (1) identify, select and conserve key breeding, foraging and developmental habitat effectively, (2) develop realistic models to predict current and future threat status of animals as accurately as possible, and (3) mitigate pressures operating in distant areas that, otherwise, might not be detected or linked to the population of interest. Here, I use sea turtles as a case study to show how our current knowledge on wide-ranging marine species is currently incomplete and, in many cases, disjointed. In particular, different techniques are often used to assimilate different types of information in different settings for different purposes (e.g. mark-recapture, genetics, strandings and nesting data). Ultimately, opening access to these data sources would facilitate major advances in research, as well as the transfer of knowledge and information to practitioners, allowing the effective implementation of conservation management.

Despite the historically close connection between humans and fish, the question ‘What is the most famous fish species?’ has never been asked. I used Google Ngram viewer to estimate the frequency of times the common names of 250 fishes appear in the corpus of digitized English books published between 1800 and 2000. I propose the ‘famon’ as a unit of fame, with 1 famon = 10-6 relative % Ngram frequency. Twelve of the 250 common names are words which also have other uses in English and were thus not considered here, and 57 species had 0 famons. For the remaining 181 species, fame increased for 139 (76.8%), during or part of 1800-2000. Goldfish Carassius auratus, the most common laboratory and aquarium fish and the second fish to be domesticated, is the most famous fish, reaching 80 to 117 famons after 1930. It was introduced to Europe from China about 325 to 450 yr ago and then to North America around 1850. Goldfish have penetrated into cultural aspects of human civilization (e.g. stamps, art, music). ‘Goldfish’ also appears in the corpus of simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish books. The results show the universality and dominance of goldfish in the digitized published heritage. This likely indicates that non-consumptive cultural aspects, including aesthetic, spiritual, and recreational components, play a central role in defining the relationship of humans with fish, being equally important as provisioning, regulating, and supporting services, and thus should be valued accordingly for conservation. However, cultural services have not yet been adequately integrated within the ecosystem service framework and are generally excluded from economic evaluations, a fact raising ethical issues with respect to their relative evaluation.

Open Access (OA) databases and publications are revolutionizing the storage and communication of scientific results. OA databases of physical and chemical measurements have been available for a long time, thanks to automated procedures of data acquisition and processing, whereas this is still not possible with marine biodiversity data. The pay-per-view policy is being replaced by the pay-to-be-viewed policy, with authors paying the expenses of the OA to their work. The ethical side of OA is clear: the whole world should be able to profit from new knowledge, not only those who can afford it, especially because research is often paid with public funds. Since funding agencies increasingly ask their beneficiaries to publish their work with OA, OA journals with unclear quality standards are proliferating, and some are publishing unreliable results. Private companies, with either pay-per-view (Scopus, The Web of Knowledge) or OA (Google Scholar) policies, rate the outputs of research. Funding agencies (e.g. Wellcome) are experimenting a further development of the OA strategy, launching OA platforms that they manage directly, with signed peer reviews. Similar experiments are being conducted with databases of raw data. Public funding agencies should also fully embrace this policy. OA policies are still developing, but the route towards a more democratic fashion of making the results of scientific research openly available is mapped out.

The claims made in a manifesto resulting in the European quantum technologies flagship initiative in quantum technology and similar enterprises are taken as a starting point to critically review some potential quantum resources, such as coherent superposition and entanglement, and their dormant usefulness for parallelism and communication. Claims of absolute, irreducible (non-epistemic) randomness are argued to be metaphysical. Cryptanalytic man-in-the-middle attacks on quantum cryptography are well known to be feasible but hardly mentioned. If all of this is taken into account, a more sober perspective on quantum capacities emerges, but it may be ethically more justified than the ‘hype and magic’ that drives many current initiatives.

The Greek economic crisis has attracted much attention during recent years, as its depth and duration have been far greater than in crises experienced elsewhere. Structural similarities and peculiarities between the Greek economy and fishery sector are identified in terms of the large number of small enterprises and artisanal vessels, as well as inefficiencies in data collection and tax compliance (unreported income or landings). These highly differentiate Greece from most of the rest of the developed world. In the absence of domestic reforms geared to the specific case of Greece, policy solutions applied elsewhere are being imported into the country, with little success so far. We argue that structural characteristics should be taken into account in order to facilitate economic recovery and improve the efficiency of fisheries.

The objective of this research is to propose an indicator to assess and rank environmental problems caused by production within the services sector of Thailand. Factors used to calculate real benefit (defined as revenue for a sector, minus the environmental costs) included the costs of (1) natural resources materials, (2) energy and transportation, (3) fertilizer and pesticides, and (4) sanitary and similar services. The highest environmental cost in terms of natural resources materials and energy and transportation was in the service sector—hotels and places of lodging, while the highest environmental cost in terms of fertilizer and pesticides was in the service sector—personal services. The service sector—movie theaters had the highest environmental cost for sanitary and similar services. Overall, the service sector—real estate gained the highest real benefit, while the service sector—repair not classified elsewhere had the lowest real benefit. If Thailand were to use an indicator of environmental harm, especially within the services sector, it could help to formulate efficient policies and strategies for the country in 3 areas of development (social, economic, and environmental development).

This paper discusses the evolution of large scientific systems in general and the system of formal scientific communications in particular in the context of their gradual transition to private hands. This in turn results in increased ‘phony’ research fronts, fueled by the interests of big business, pools of inaccessible hi-impact Anglo-American journals whose authors cite each other (author’s citation cartels), and non-transparent global university rankings, which can be manipulated. Furthermore, the authors argue that the functioning of national scientific systems by means of having them linked to the global system of formal scientific communications and rankings is organized as an unrestrained race for publications, citations, impact factors, and rankings in which strong systems only get stronger and the weak ones get weaker. Such a race therefore cannot lead to sustainable development of the scientific system. The authors also look at the feudalism of knowledge and identify 3 steps to oppose this process.

The new media offer a valuable tool to spread the results of academic research outside the boundaries of academia, but they can also have a chilling effect on academic freedom. In this paper, I argue that we need to rethink academic freedom in the light of the enormous changes in communication and dissemination of ideas provided by the new media. I also argue that we need to develop strategies that would help us best use the potential of the Internet, while limiting as much as possible its potential threats to academic freedom.

The introduction of market forces into higher education (i.e. marketization) in recent decades goes along with a sharp decline in tenured positions offered, accompanied by polemic voices against tenure. The main claim, that tenure reduces the productivity of senior faculty, has not been thoroughly tested, with existing scarce evidence being controversial. We tested this hypothesis by analyzing the number of publications of 2136 currently full professors of natural sciences, drawn from 123 universities distributed in 15 countries, during the period 1996 to 2014. Our results showed that long-term productivity of full professors increased, irrespectively of subject field, geographic area, and university rank. This suggests that tenure does not lead to motivation loss and academic deadwood. Our results have policy, academic, and ethical implications related to human resource management, academic freedom, and educational quality, and tenure polemicists should find an argument other than lowered post-tenure productivity to support their stand.

The frenzy for evaluation metrics recognizes the value of research based on the impact factor of the journals that publish the results. Only some areas of science are conducive to publication in the best tribunes. In biology, for instance, organismal biology, or taxonomy, are not very fashionable, whereas molecular or global approaches are trendy. The citation system to measure the quality of a scientist’s work is based on the acceptance of what is published: the more the rest of the scientific community likes it, the higher the value. In this framework there is little space for deviation from norms. Some examples are given here, within the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology, that show how difficult it is to enforce ideas, either new or old, that do not follow mainstream thought. In order to obtain tenure it is advisable to conform to mainstream, and publish your results in journals with high impact factors. New things can be attempted ‘after’ tenure has been granted; but ‘after’ is very often ‘too late’.

This essay seeks to place the subject of academic freedom in the larger context of the management of the contemporary university. It does so first by reviewing the legal history of academic freedom, a narrative that reveals its steady erosion over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The second section of the essay explores incursions by university administrators into the ownership of teaching materials. Though it was long taken for granted that instructors owned the content of the courses they taught, the transformation of pedagogy through technology has changed that, as administrators can now monitor, control and indeed commodify the courses they offer. Taken together, the legal redefinition of academic freedom and the erosion of what used to be called the ‘teacher exception’ to the work-for-hire rule have turned universities into more manageable workplaces and university instructors into ordinary workers.

This paper explores the cultural and organisational dimensions of academic life that lay the foundations for academic freedom. We briefly review the relationship between university autonomy and academic freedom, the relationship between ethics and freedom and the impact of increased commercialisation on scholarly independence, particularly how the increasing casualization of employment limits the freedom of academics to teach critically and publish freely. We examine the geopolitics of knowledge and how the hegemony of Western thinking frames dominant epistemologies and imposes constraints on academic freedom. We also explore the ways in which Cartesian rationalism underpins contemporary understanding of what constitutes valid knowledge, and how this can and does act as a constraint in what we come to know and study, not least in terms of values but also in terms of how caring (affective) relations impact research and teaching. Our paper highlights the silenced doxa in the organisation of the academy, including the impact of care-lessness on women and primary care givers in particular. We examine the social class biases in how higher education is organised, and how class exclusions are themselves constraints on being an academic or a student in a university. Finally, the paper illustrates the importance of distinguishing between the institutional autonomy of the university, the personal and professional freedoms of individual academics, and each of these from subject autonomy, namely the freedom of scholars to create and maintain new disciplinary fields, especially fields of scholarship that are critical and challenging of prevailing academic orthodoxies.

In Canada, a persistent myth of academic life is that tenure was initiated and developed in order to protect academic freedom. However, an examination of the historical record shows that in both its forms—viz. tenure during pleasure, whereby professors could be stripped of their employment if it suited a president and governing board, and tenure during good behavior, whereby professors were secure in their employment unless gross incompetence, neglect of duty, or moral turpitude could be proven against them—the institution took shape as the main defense of academic employment. In this paper, I explore the development of tenure since the middle of the 19th century, and the concepts of academic freedom with which tenure has become closely associated. I also make the case that tenure during good behavior has become a major support of the academic freedom of professors even as that freedom is undergoing new challenges.

In this essay we describe the different blows that research in Greece has suffered because of the economic crisis (i.e. drastic budgetary cuts, hiring freezes for new positions, severe salary cuts, and austerity-driven brain-drain), despite the fact that Greek research is prospering in terms of publications and citations. In addition, we discuss the last blow to Greek research; notably, the abolishment of tenure and the change in the status of researchers through the new law for research passed in December 2014, and its effects on ‘academic’ freedom.

A series of intersecting trends now threatens fundamental changes in the character of higher education. The gradual replacement of full-time tenured faculty with part-time teachers is the bedrock change, but it simultaneously serves the political impulse to defund higher education and makes it easier to impose the corporate model of instrumental education devoted narrowly to skills acquisition and job training. Humanities education should resist these trends with an alternative educational model.

In this article, I treat ‘academic freedom’ as referring to the autonomy that academics need if they are to do their work well, on analogy with what is required in other professional occupations. In these terms, I argue that there are 2 aspects of academic freedom: the degree of autonomy that universities have from governments, and the autonomy that academics have within universities. Using this framework, I explore how, from the 1980s onwards, UK governments have increasingly intervened in higher education, on the basis of the assumption that universities must serve the economy, seeking to maximize and measure the ‘returns’ on public investment. I argue that these external developments have promoted internal changes within universities away from collegial modes of organization and towards more managerial ones, and as a result have significantly reduced academic freedom. I conclude by briefly examining developments in the UK in terms of a rather different conception of academic freedom, one that is currently quite influential, which virtually identifies it with ‘free speech’ for academics and students.

European researchers across heterogeneous disciplines voice concerns and argue for new paths towards a brighter future regarding scientific and knowledge creation and communication. Recently, in biological and natural sciences concerns have been expressed that major threats are intentionally ignored. These threats are challenging Europe’s future sustainability towards creating knowledge that effectively deals with emerging social, environmental, health, and economic problems of a planetary scope. Within social science circles, however, the root cause regarding the above challenges has been linked with macro-level forces of neo-liberal ways of valuing and relevant rules in academia and beyond which we take for granted. These concerns raised by heterogeneous scholars in natural and the applied social sciences concern the ethics of today’s research and academic integrity. Applying Bourdieu’s sociology, there is little hope that intentional human agency may change the current habitus. Rather than attributing the replication of neo-liberal habitus in intentional agent and institutional choices, Bourdieu’s work raises the importance of thoughtlessly internalised habits in human and social action. Accordingly, most action within a given paradigm (in this case, neo-liberalism) is understood as habituated, i.e. unconsciously reproducing external social fields, even ill-defined ways of valuing. This essay analyses these and how they may help critically analyse the current habitus surrounding research and knowledge production, evaluation, and communication and related aspects of academic freedom. Although it is acknowledged that transformation is not easy, this essay presents arguments and recent theory paths to suggest that change nevertheless may be a realistic hope once certain action logics are encouraged.