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California’s Central Valley is arguably the most productive agricultural region in the world. Despite making up only 1% of all farmland in the United States, it produces 250 different crops that make up a quarter of all food consumed in the U.S., including close to half of all fruit, nuts, and table foods. The map included below shows the variety and intensity of this kind of cultivation. This level of agricultural production has been made possible by the dominance of industrial agriculture interests at all levels of government, resulting in one of the most physically altered landscapes in the world. These alterations focused in large part on water, the biggest limiting factor for industrial agriculture in a region technically classified as a desert. Over the course of the 20th century, the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi–Tulare Lake–was drained to make more land available, the Central Valley Project and State Water Project built thousands of miles of canals and tens of dams to control the supply of water for irrigation, and massive groundwater aquifers were pumped nearly dry during drought years. These transformations were accomplished through the utilization of rhetoric that emphasizes the centrality of the farmer identity to the American political imaginary (despite the massive distance between Californian industrial agriculture and the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal) and the unique importance of providing the nation’s food. This kind of exceptionalism has characterized agriculture across the United States since its inception and has repeatedly produced other forms of social injustice (e.g., the exclusion of agricultural laborers from U.S. labor protections) that compound the hazardous effects of its environmental injustices.

Source

Vo, Katie, Taranjot Bhari and Margaret Tebbe. 2023. Industrial Agriculture in California's Central Valley. In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

California’s Central Valley is arguably the most productive agricultural region in the world. Despite making up only 1% of all farmland in the United States, it produces 250 different crops that make up a quarter of all food consumed in the U.S., including close to half of all fruit, nuts, and table foods. The map included below shows the variety and intensity of this kind of cultivation. This level of agricultural production has been made possible by the dominance of industrial agriculture interests at all levels of government, resulting in one of the most physically altered landscapes in the world. These alterations focused in large part on water, the biggest limiting factor for industrial agriculture in a region technically classified as a desert. Over the course of the 20th century, the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi–Tulare Lake–was drained to make more land available, the Central Valley Project and State Water Project built thousands of miles of canals and tens of dams to control the supply of water for irrigation, and massive groundwater aquifers were pumped nearly dry during drought years. These transformations were accomplished through the utilization of rhetoric that emphasizes the centrality of the farmer identity to the American political imaginary (despite the massive distance between Californian industrial agriculture and the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal) and the unique importance of providing the nation’s food. This kind of exceptionalism has characterized agriculture across the United States since its inception and has repeatedly produced other forms of social injustice (e.g., the exclusion of agricultural laborers from U.S. labor protections) that compound the hazardous effects of its environmental injustices.

Vo, Katie, Taranjot Bhari and Margaret Tebbe. 2023. "Industrial Agriculture in California's Central Valley." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Among those now working to oppose the long-term release of more than 1.3 million tons of Fukushima’s radioactive wastewater, contemporary activists can draw inspiration and perspective from an earlier transnational movement during the 1970s, when Pacific Islanders were central to stopping a plan by the Japanese government to dump 10,000 drums of nuclear waste into the Mariana Trench (Branch, 1984; Avenell, 2017). The mobilization of Pacific activists significantly contributed toward achieving the suspension and eventual cancellation of the ocean-dumping plan by taking their stories to audiences in Japan while working in collaboration with Japanese activists. In a strategy that proved crucial for influencing changes in Japanese attitudes toward ocean dumping, Pacific activists shared moving accounts of the environmental and historical injustices to which the Pacific Islanders had been subjected. They gave witness to the harm caused by 67 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1979, which had resulted in the loss of homelands as well as higher rates of leukemia, lymphatic cancers, and genetic defects. These powerful testimonies challenged Japanese audiences to oppose the committing of further aggressions against those with whom they could identify as fellow atomic victims. In “Pacific Solidarity and Atomic Aggression” (2017), historian Simon Avenell writes, “This Pacific iteration of environmental injustice opened the eyes of many antinuclear advocates to the ways Pacific activists connected the radioactive waste issue to a longer struggle for independence and the obliteration of nuclear neocolonialism.” That in turn complicated the victim consciousness which had long informed antinuclear protest in postwar Japan. The activists' intervention made plain the moral case for Japanese people to act in solidarity with their counterparts in the Pacific Islands, who had similarly suffered from the lethal toll wrought by the use of nuclear technology in ways that devalued human life and the natural world. Given the breakthrough achieved through transnational activist solidarity, this historical precedent serves as a reminder that the nuclear wastewater issue must not be relegated to the politicized nationalist frameworks that have become common in contemporary media accounts. Notably in 2021, the unilateral decision to release Fukushima's radioactive wastewater alienated not only residents of neighboring countries but also many of Japan's own citizens, resulting in a breach of public trust which needs to be addressed by stopping the release and pursuing a sincere dialogue with stakeholders - not simply a campaign to attempt persuasion - according to nuclear engineer and Nagasaki University professor Tatsujiro Suzuki (2023). To attain public trust and to honor the moral and ethical legacies surrounding questions regarding nuclear waste and the Pacific Ocean, such a dialogue must extend to transnational stakeholders, and Indigenous knowledge must factor highly into the debate over an issue with vital transboundary and transgenerational consequences. 

Image: GRID-Arendal, www.grida.no/resources/7365.

Kim, Nan. 2023. "A Precedent of Success: Pacific Islanders' Transnational Activism Against the Ocean Dumping of Radioactive Waste." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11. 

The educational program in Haiti organized by Handicap International aims to train citizens of Haiti for careers as rehabilitation technicians and orthopedic technicians. The program is designed to provide a recognized degree allowing graduates to work as technicians under the supervision of physical therapists and orthopedic doctors. 

Handicap International brings aid to places dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters. In this case the Rehabilitiation Technicians pogram was created in response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, during which thousands of Hatians needed orthopedic rehabilitation or prosthetics and there was a significant shortange of specialized medical professionals. The program was created to respond to the need for rehabilitation professionals to deal with the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and the continuing care of those permanently disabled.

This program is one of many run by Handicap International, and supported by the United States Agency for International Development. The program was run at Healing Hands for Haiti (http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-14990-haiti-health-first-in-haiti-tra…), with instructors from the Universidad de Don Bosco in El Salvador. 

The program is funded primarily by Handicap International, with additional funding from the United States Agency for International Development.

The program is devided into two degrees with different requirements, the rehabilitation technician degree is 18 months or in-class instruction and practical experience while the orthopedics technician degree is 2 years. Hatian citizens over the age of 18 are allowed to take the course. At the end of both courses the students must pass the International Society of Prosthetics and Orthotics Exam to graduate. 

The program is targeted for Hatian citizens over the age of 18 with an interest in the rehabilitaiton field as a career. 

The program provides the graduates with a degree, recognized by the Hatian government and the International Society of Prosthetics and Orthetics as officail proof of training and ability in the rehabilitation technician field.