The role of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, and the Barcelona Convention on the Mediterranean has grown increasingly important, in the context of conservation management, during the last decade as human impacts intensify and cross national boundaries more often. In resorting to MEAs it is important to maintain a clear focus on their opportunities and limitations. They are a means to resolve transboundary problems with neighbouring states and adopt harmonized approaches, they increasingly offer access to worldwide knowledge, tools and financial resources, and they can give conservation agencies a stronger mandate domestically. But they are specialized instruments focused on particular problems or sectors. The threats they address and the solutions they outline have to be evaluated in relation to overall environmental and socio-economic priorities. This entails linkages among different problems and sectors at various scales. Regional and ecosystem-level approaches are most appropriate for sorting out linkages and priorities. Extensive capacity building is needed at these levels to foster the requisite skills for integrated approaches. In addition, new mechanisms may be required at these levels to coordinate diverse specialized regimes. This does not require a monolithic, top-down approach but rather ongoing flexibility and responsiveness informed from the bottom up. We should take advantage of the new directions highlighted by the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, in 2002 and other recent international conferences to build these abilities into international governance. Conservation managers have an important role to play. By working nationally and internationally they can inform and influence the shift towards integrated and coordinated efforts, suggesting ways to accomplish this on a larger, international scale based on concrete experience in situ.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Port State Control in the Caribbean Region is the fourth in a series commencing in 1982 with the Paris Memorandum (Europe). The other two cover the Latin American (1992) and Asia Pacific (1993) regions, and further regional developments are in the offing. These documents represent an innovative exercise by port states at the regional level to guard against accidents and pollution caused by vessels that do not conform with generally accepted international rules and standards. Following the practice of the Paris MOU, most also ensure conformity with international standards for seafarers to ensure acceptable living and working conditions on board ships. Each MOU identifies the relevant rules by reference to specific conventions adopted under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO).

An energy dispersive spectrometer is used to measure the temperature dependence of the Magnetic Circular X-ray Dichroism (MCXD) effect at the gadolinium (Gd metal) LIII absorption edge from 94 K to 335 K. In ferromagnetic Gd, the MCXD spectrum consists of the main positive peak with pre- and post-edge features. Only the main positive peak exhibits a temperature dependence similar to that of Gd magnetization. All other features decrease as the temperature increases and vanish slightly above the transition temperature (293 K). Well above the ordering temperature (paramagnetic Gd), the MCXD consists only of the positive peak, with a post-edge background that slowly decays away from it over a range of 90 eV.

We report the results of temperature dependent, Mn K-edge X-ray Absorption measurements: Magnetic X-ray Circular Dichroism (MXCD) for local magnetic properties and X-ray Absorption Near Edge (XANES) for electronic and structural properties of Mn-based oxide magnetoresistive compounds La1−xSrxMnO3. This is the first report of an MXCD signal of the Mn K-edge in Mn oxide systems. By studying the integrated peak intensity of the first peak in the MXCD signal, it can be determined that the magnetic properties of the system are independent of temperature in the range 94 to 223K.

Mössbauer effect and neutron diffraction measurements have been made as a function of composition for YBa2(Cu1−xFex)3O7+δ. A chemically driven disordering of the sublattices is observed with increasing Fe concentration which results in a transition from the orthorhombic to a tetragonal phase. However, as the occupancy of the oxygen site 0(1) in the chain is depleted and the site of the ordered vacancy 0(5) between the chains becomes occupied, the total oxygen content is not reduced but remains near seven in contrast to behavior observed in the quenched tetragonal phases. Mössbauer spectra for x =0.05 at temperatures below 15K show magnetic hyperfine splitting which is characteristic of a spin glass; i.e., a distribution of magnetic fields. It is inferred from Mössbauer results that Fe preferentially occupies the Cu(1) site.