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Sensibilisation is a French term often translated to awareness raising but which encompasses a broader set of practices and philosophies intended to foster behavior change among target audiences. For those working on biodiversity conservation, sensibilisation is central to their work yet its meanings and methods vary. In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in Kanaky/New Caledonia to examine discourses of sensibilisation among conservationists using a political ecology framework. I use the concept of conservation morality to demonstrate how the moral imperative of conservation drives conservationists to use sensibilisation to enroll others into adopting specific attitudes and behavior. Two models of sensibilisation emerged: a Francophone and a Kanak model. The Francophone model centered scientific knowledge and was motivated by biodiversity protection, whereas the Kanak model was rooted in hands-on learning and motivated by perpetuating cultural and familial heritage. Both models seek to shape the territory's ecological future, but their power to capacitate change is predicated on asymmetrical knowledge and resource flows. I argue that the drive, and different motivations, for sensibilisation are reflective of broader tensions over the fate of the territory's political future as Independent from or a territory of France. 

Co-management is an environmental governance framework that seeks to empower communities in decision-making and action, but which risks overburdening them in assigning management actions. Management plans codify co-management objectives and actions and offer a dataset for analyzing project discourses, how responsibilities are distributed, and how projects may either empower or overburden management partners. Here, I combine insights from ethnographic research with content and discourse analysis of five co-management plans from Province Nord, Kanaky/New Caledonia using a technique I name action-verb analysis. I use action-verb analysis to assess the responsibilization—or task assignment—of the eight most responsibilized actors. Results show that actors have generalized or specialized roles and that Indigenousled associations were tasked with a diversity of tasks but sometimes lacked resources to complete them. I consider how co-management arrangements may avoid overburdening Indigenous partners and how Indigenous sovereignty can be supported in co-management so that empowerment is achieved. 

One of the dominant narratives about pastoral systems is that livestock populations have the potential to grow exponentially and destroy common-pool grazing resources. However, longitudinal, interdisciplinary research has shown that pastoralists are able to sustainably manage common-pool resources and that livestock populations are not growing exponentially. The common explanation for limits on livestock population growth is that reoccurring droughts, diseases, and other disasters keep populations in check. However, we hypothesize that coupled demographic processes at the level of the household also may keep livestock population growth in check. Our hypothesis is that two mechanisms at the herd-household level explain why livestock populations grow much slower in pastoral systems than predicted by conventional Malthusian models. The two mechanisms are: (1) the domestic cycle of the household, and (2) the effects of scale and stochasticity. We developed an agent-based model of a pastoral system to evaluate the hypothesis. The results from our simulations show that the couplings between herd and household do indeed constrain the growth of both human and livestock populations. In particular, the domestic cycle of the household limits herd growth and ultimately constrains the growth of livestock populations. The study shows that the misfortunes that affect individual households every day cumulatively have a major impact on the growth of human and livestock populations. 

Hydrogen sulfide has been recently identified as the third biological gasotransmitter, along with the more well studied nitric oxide (NO) and carbon monoxide (CO). Intensive studies on its potential as a therapeutic agent for cardiovascular, inflammatory, infectious and neuropathological diseases have been undertaken. Here we review the possible direct targets of H2S in mammals. H2S directly interacts with reactive oxygen/nitrogen species and is involved in redox signaling. H2S also reacts with hemeproteins and modulates metal-containing complexes. Once being oxidized, H2S can persulfidate proteins by adding -SSH to the amino acid cysteine. These direct modifications by H2S have significant impact on cell structure and many cellular functions, such as tight junctions, autophagy, apoptosis, vesicle trafficking, cell signaling, epigenetics and inflammasomes. Therefore, we conclude that H2S is involved in many important cellular and physiological processes. Compounds that donate H2S to biological systems can be developed as therapeutics for different diseases.