No abstract

Marine plastic pollution is a global environmental concern. With reference to approaches in contemporary archaeology, object biographies and psychology, this article presents the application of a novel participatory ('World Café') methodology that aims both to understand how marine plastic pollution occurs and to demonstrate the value of the approach for encouraging behaviour change. As proof of concept, the authors present the preliminary results of fieldwork involving local people in the Galápagos archipelago to demonstrate the benefits of an archaeological approach in developing new frameworks to help mitigate this critical environmental threat.

Abstract. The Galápagos Archipelago and Galápagos Marine Reserve lie 1000 km off the coast of Ecuador and are among the world's most iconic wildlife refuges. However, plastic litter is now found even in this remote island archipelago. Prior to this study, the sources of this plastic litter on Galápagos coastlines were unidentified. Local sources are widely expected to be small, given the limited population and environmentally conscious tourism industry. Here, we show that remote sources of plastic pollution are also fairly localised and limited to nearby fishing regions and South American and Central American coastlines, in particular northern Peru and southern Ecuador. Using virtual floating plastic particles transported in high-resolution ocean surface currents, we analysed the plastic origin and fate using pathways and connectivity between the Galápagos region and the coastlines as well as known fishery locations around the east Pacific Ocean. We also analysed how incorporation of wave-driven currents (Stokes drift) affects these pathways and connectivity. We found that only virtual particles that enter the ocean from Peru, Ecuador, and (when waves are not taken into account) Colombia can reach the Galápagos region. It takes these particles a few months to travel from their coastal sources on the American continent to the Galápagos region. The connectivity does not seem to vary substantially between El Niño and La Niña years. Identifying these sources and the timing and patterns of the transport can be useful for identifying integrated management opportunities to reduce plastic pollution from reaching the Galápagos Archipelago.

This essay offers a Humanities approach to leadership scholarship by viewing the practice of responsible leadership through the lens of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas's ethics is phenomenologically inter-subjective where in temporal human encounters the face of the Other commands responsibility. Levinas's philosophy has been utilized in business ethics scholarship, but has limited presence in leadership studies. Through an interpretive analysis, this essay first demonstrates the connection between ethics and leadership, and then illuminates six primary leadership lessons from Levinas in order to philosophically orient and enlarge the contemporary practice of responsible leadership.

Abstract. The Galápagos Archipelago and Marine Reserve lies 1000 km off the coast of Ecuador and is among the world's most iconic wildlife refuges. However, plastic litter is now found even in this remote and iconic island archipelago. Prior to this study, the sources of this plastic litter on Galápagos coastlines were unidentified. Local sources are widely expected to be small, given the limited population and environmentally-conscious tourism industry. Here, we show that remote coastal sources of plastic pollution are also fairly localized and limited to South and Central American coastlines, in particular Northern Peru and Southern Ecuador. Using virtual floating plastic particles transported in high-resolution ocean surface currents, we analysed the backward-in-time and forward-in-time pathways and connectivity between the Galápagos region and the coastlines around the East Pacific Ocean. We also analysed how incorporation of wave-driven currents (Stokes drift) affects these pathways and connectivity. We found that only virtual particles that enter the ocean from Peru, Ecuador and (when waves are not taken into account) Colombia can reach the Galápagos. It takes these particles a few months to travel from their coastal sources on the American continent to the Galápagos region. The connectivity does not seem to vary substantially between El Niño and La Niña years. Identifying these sources and the timing and patterns of the transport can be useful for identifying integrated management opportunities to reduce plastic pollution from reaching the Galápagos Archipelago.