Keynote Talks
Serge Morand, CNRS – CIRAD, Montpellier Université, France – Kasetsart University, Thailand
The ecology of wildlife-parasite interactions in the era of global defaunation
The Convention on Biological Diversity has set the 20 Aichi targets for biodiversity by 2020. However, almost all indicators of the Aichi targets currently show negative trends. Anthropogenic pressure (human appropriation of biological productivity), biodiversity (Living Planet Index), biodiversity benefits (domesticated breeds, Red List of pollinators) show declines with negative consequences on resources and ecosystem services. Many academic studies and reports conducted by international organizations stressed that environmental changes drive biodiversity loss ultimately affecting ecosystem resilience but also human health and well-being.
I will present results of our ongoing projects on rodent-borne diseases in Southeast Asia as a model to explore the effects of human-driven environmental changes on zoonotic risks. Then, I will discuss how the social-ecology approach that links ecological and biological metabolism with social metabolism, where social systems are seen as hybrid systems between cultures, socio-economics and environments, may help to address the link between biodiversity and health.
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Dr. Julie Trottier, CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), France.
Co-producing irrigation: Origin and consequences
Irrigation means bringing water to a plot of cultivated land. As a social practice, irrigation is located at the intersection between land tenure and water tenure. Traditionally, anthropologists and legal experts have studied land tenure. But water engineers and hydrologists have dominated the literature on water. Consequently, tenure, i.e. the relationship, either legally or customarily defined, between people, as individuals or groups with respect to a resource, has been approached very differently depending on whether the resource was land or water. The water literature co-produced notions, such as irrigation efficiency, virtual water, or wastewater reuse that relied on specific hypotheses concerning the interactions between humans and nature. This talk explores the origins of such coproductions and their consequences. It explores the social order that is co-produced together with irrigation by various actors deploying different regimes of appropriations to govern their interactions with the land, water, and plants. This leads us to reexamine water development. Case studies from the West Bank provide an opportunity to examine water driven pioneer fronts where actors deploying strategies over very different scalar levels develop irrigation. Donors, agribusinesses and small farmers enroll the scientific discourse to promote date palm progression in the Jordan Valley. They co-produce, collectively, a social order few of them had intended.
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Robert D. Holt, Eminent Scholar and Arthur R. Marshall, Jr., Chair in Ecology, University of Florida
Apparent competition, a retrospective: Reflections on humans as agents and victims
Most species have one or more natural enemies, e.g., predators, parasites, pathogens, and herbivores, among others. These species in turn typically attack multiple victim species. This leads to the possibility of indirect interactions among those victims, both positive and negative. Humans can be enemies of other species -- and victims themselves. The term apparent competition commonly denotes negative indirect interactions between victim species that arise because they share a natural enemy. This indirect interaction, which in principle can be reflected in many facets of the distribution and abundance of species and more broadly govern the structure of ecological communities in time and space. It also is a central theme in many episodes of human history, and in many contemporary applied ecological problems, including the control of agricultural pests, harvesting, the conservation of endangered species, and the dynamics of emerging diseases. Humans can be agents of -- and victims of -- apparent competition, and an appreciation of this indirect interaction can inform understanding of our past, present, and future.