The Autonomy of Science as a Civilian Casualty of Economic Warfare: Inadvertent Censorship of Science Resulting from Unilateral Economic Sanctions.

Unilateral coercive international political, diplomatic, and economic sanctions are regular events of international relations and international law within the landscape of foreign affairs. However, while they may be prescribed by international law, or national legal systems, for peace and security reasons they have also been imposed for political grounds by powerful States such as the United States. The US sanctions are now targeting science, academic and university domains. When applied in this way, these sanctions violate international law, principles of human rights, ethics, the autonomy of scientific institutions, and the norm of universalism in science. All of which protect and promote scientific freedom of expression. It is vital that international and domestic law be correctly applied to uphold proper ethical standards and scientific independence in order to protect the work and the freedom of scholarship. In this way, law is the solution, rather than the problem.

A conjunctive management framework for the optimal design of pumping and injection strategies to mitigate seawater intrusion.

Coastal aquifer management (CAM) considering conjunctive optimization of pumping and injection system for seawater intrusion (SI) mitigation poses significant decision-making challenges. CAM needs to pose multiple objectives and massive decision variables to explore tradeoff strategies between the conflicting resources, economic, and environmental requirements. Here, we investigate a joint artificial injection scheme for ameliorating SI by establishing an evolutionary multi-objective decision-making framework that combines simulation-optimization (S-O) modelling with a cost-benefit analysis, and demonstrate the framework on a large-scale CAM case in Baldwin County, Alabama. First, a SI numerical model, using SEAWAT, was configured to predict the vulnerable region as an SI encroachment area with the scenarios of minimum and maximum pumping capacity. As a result, a smaller number of candidate sites were selected in the SI encroachment area for implementing groundwater injection to avoid the computationally infeasible SI optimization with an inordinate number of injection related decision variables. Second, the effective S-O methodology of niched Pareto tabu search combined with a genetic algorithm (NPTSGA), which considers the moving-well option, was applied to discover optimal pumping/injection (P/I) strategies (including P/I rates and injection well locations) between three conflicting management objectives under complicated SI constraints. Third, for practical operation of the P/I schemes, a cost-benefit analysis provides judgment criteria to allow decision-makers to implement more sustainable P/I strategies to capture the different realistic preferences. The implementation of three extreme optimization solutions for the case study indicates that, compared to the initial unoptimized scheme, a maximum increase of a factor of 3 in groundwater extraction rates, a maximum reduction of 17% in extent of SI, and a maximum 82.3 million US dollars in comprehensive benefits are specifically achieved by conjunctive P/I optimization. The robustness in the decision alternatives attributed to the uncertainty in physical parameters of hydraulic conductivity was discovered through global sensitivity analysis. The proposed framework provides a decision support system for multi-objective CAM with combined pumping control and engineering measures for SI mitigation.

Assessment of sustainable groundwater resources management using integrated environmental index: Case studies across Iran.

Assessing environmentally sustainable GW management (ESGM) needs a deep knowledge of the present and the projected status of GW (GW) quantity and quality. Translations of these data into policy relevant information are usually done through quantitative indices. Despite the availability of a dozen GW sustainability indicators, defining an integrated index based on internationally accepted scientific standards indicators is required. To fill this gap, an in-depth review on the developed indicators/index for evaluation of GW sustainable management (GWSM) from an environmental viewpoint at aquifer scales is provided in this study. Thirteen environmentally related quantitative indicators are adopted for assessment of GWSM, especially in arid regions, depending upon data availability, and relevance of indicators. An integrated ESGM index (ESGMI) is developed based on weighted aggregation of thirteen adopted indicators through multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methods. ESGMI value ranged between 0 and 100, zero value denotes to the worst state or unsustainable GW management (GWM) and 100 indicates the ideal state or GWM is sustainable. Thirty important aquifers across Iran are chosen to implement the ESGMI at the national scale of a country known to be the fifth largest global GW user. ESGMI values for thirty of Iran's aquifers are obtained in the range 15.40 to 68.50 (on average, 49.96). This reveals the unsustainable status of GWM in this country. The results of this study demonstrate that the ESGMI is a promising tool to determine the current state of GW quantity and quality, reveals the effect of policy actions and plans, and contributes to the development and operation of effective sustainable management policies for GW resources. Due to uncertainties and spatio-temporal variabilities of key controlling variables in GW management, sustainability evaluation should be understood as a dynamic and iterative process, requiring persistent monitoring, analysis, prioritization, and modification.