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The Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society: an emergent community of practice

Social-ecological change: insights from the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society

Benchmarking a Decision Support System for Aquatic Toxicity Testing

  • Authors: Griffin, Neil J , Odume, Oghenekaro N , Mensah, Paul K , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437798 , vital:73413 , ISBN 978-0-6392-0108-5 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/2445_final1.pdf
  • Description: This book was written for the catchment management forum (CMF) in the Upper Komati Forum (UKF), and they share their experience in order to help other CMFs understand the damage coal mining does to our water resources. This booklet should be used with How to think and act in ways that make Adaptive IWRM practi-cally possible and How to establish and run a Catchment Management Forum.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

Exploring and expanding transdisciplinary research for sustainable and just natural resource management

  • Authors: Finca, Andiswa , Wolff, Margaret G , Cockburn, Jessica J , de Wet, Christopher J , Bezerra, Joana C , Weaver, Matthew J T , de Vos, Alta , Ralekhetla, Mateboho M , Libala, Notiswa , Mkabile, Qawekazi B , Odume, Oghenekaro N , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/416307 , vital:71337 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11077-240414"
  • Description: Transdisciplinarity is gaining acceptance in sustainability science research as an approach to work across disparate types of knowledge and practices in order to tackle complex social-ecological problems. On paper, transdisciplinarity appears to be substantially helpful, but in practice, participants may remain voiceless and disadvantaged. In this paper, we retrospectively investigate four case studies using recent design principles for transdisciplinary research, to explore a deeper understanding of the practical successes and failures of transdisciplinary research engagement. We show that the transdisciplinary way of working is time consuming, challenging, and insists that researchers and participants contribute reflexively. Careful attention to research design and methodology is central. The acceptance that complexity renders knowledge provisional, and complete honesty about the purpose of the research are critical to building relationships between researchers and participants. Gaining an understanding of the values people hold influences the research process and the possible outcomes toward sustainable and just natural resource management. We suggest that in order to enable sustainable and just natural resource management, transdisciplinary research should include values and ethics in the design, implementation, and reporting of projects.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

How to engage with challenges facing Water and Sanitation Services (WSS) in small municipalities

  • Authors: Clifford-Holmes, Jai K , Carnohan, Shane , Slinger, Jill W , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437869 , vital:73418 , ISBN 978-1 4312-0988-0 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/SP 120-18 web.pdf
  • Description: Smaller South African municipalities have many urgent calls on their resources AT THE SAME TIME. • The need to pay salaries is sometimes more important than other concerns. • It is not always clear how different problems affect each other. • It is difficult to decide what to do each day. • There are always urgent crises to attend to. • There are many meetings to attend. • Operational and political priorities can be different. Thinking of, and talking about your municipality as a SYSTEM will help you to ACT in ways that reduce the impact of these issues. This handbook relates specifically to water and sanitation issues.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

How to engage with coal mines through Catchment Management Forums

  • Authors: Munnik, Victor , Holleman, Helen , Wolff, Margaret G , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437882 , vital:73419 , ISBN 978-1 4312-0990-3 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/SP 122-18 web.pdf
  • Description: This book was written for the catchment management forum (CMF) in the Upper Komati Forum (UKF), and they share their experience in order to help other CMFs understand the damage coal mining does to our water resources. This booklet should be used with How to think and act in ways that make Adaptive IWRM practically possible and How to establish and run a Catchment Management Forum.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

How to manage water quantity and water quality together

  • Authors: Retief, Hugo , Holleman, Helen , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437907 , vital:73421 , ISBN 978-1 4312-0987-3 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/SP%20119-18%20web.pdf
  • Description: All over the world water resources are under pressure due to over-use and pollution, and finding ways to meet the need for water is becoming increasingly difficult. Nat-ural variation in rainfall also contributes to making planning and management of flow and water quality, and especially these together, complex and difficult. People have realised that it is important to consider many factors when managing water – they call this Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). Integrating many factors is in line with the ideas that all the “How to” handbooks are based on. Please do read the foundation handbook: “How to think and act in ways that make Adap-tive IWRM practically possible”. In this handbook we consider how to integrate flow and water quality. Although some writers think taking account of all the many fac-tors is too difficult, others – including the authors of this handbook – believe it is essential to try if we want to find the balance between use and protection. IWRM also recognises that it is vital to involve stakeholders in decision-making if protec-tion of our water resources is going to be successful.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

How to think and act in ways that make Adaptive IWRM practically possible

  • Authors: Palmer, Carolyn G , Biggs, Harry , Rogers, Kevin H , du Toit, Derick , Pollard, Sharon
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437937 , vital:73423 , ISBN 978-1 4312-0984-2 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/SP 116-18 web.pdf
  • Description: “We cross the river by feeling the stones with our feet” (Chinese proverb). Most of the ideas in this handbook you already know from living your life. Here we put your everyday experience and knowledge into the language of managing water. In the last twenty years, there has been a lot of talk about new ways to make Integrated Water Resource Management or “IWRM” work, but not nearly as much useful knowledge about how to put those ideas into practice. We now know how to use a set of ideas and ways of understanding that help us to make IWRM really work prac-tically. We call this practical way of working: Adaptive IWRM. This is the first in a series of handbooks to come out of a WRC project Practising Adaptive IWRM (Inte-grated Water Resource Management (IWRM) in South Africa: towards practising a new paradigm* [TPNP]). The TPNP project researchers have had experience with many different situations in southern Africa, where people have grappled* with put-ting the ideas of complexity* and integration into practice.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

How to use Strategic Adaptive Management (SAM) and the Adaptive Planning Process (APP) to build a shared catchment future

  • Authors: Palmer, Carolyn G , Rogers, Kevin H , Holleman, Helen , Wolff, Margaret G
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437965 , vital:73425 , ISBN 978-1 4312-0991-0 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/SP 123-18 web.pdf
  • Description: For members of Catchment Management Forums (CMFs) and Catchment Manage-ment Agencies (CMAs). CMFs are made up of people who represent all the stake-holders in a catchment. They are the people who know the catchment best, and therefore are in the best position to alert CMAs to local issues and to help develop the strategic plans for their local catchment. However, catchments are dynamic*, complex* systems that need a special planning approach – and that is what this handbook is about. If one part of a catchment is neglected and damaged, it affects the whole system and everyone living in it. We use and recommend a flexible, adap-tive approach in which everyone involved in the planning is both a teacher and a learner, and where everyone contributes their special wisdom to developing a sustainable plan for the catchment.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

Developing a multi-sectoral integrative licensing and monitoring framework to align and integrate biodiversity and environmental water quality in the coal mining development life-cycle

  • Authors: Munnik, Victor , Humby, T , Van der Waals, J , Houdet, J , Thompson, Gareth , Keighley, Tia-Kristi , Cobbing, Ben , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437825 , vital:73415 , ISBN 978-0-6392-0001-9 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/2355_final.pdf
  • Description: This research report emanates from a fine, which was paid and then transferred to the Water Research Commission for purposes of re-search. As a result of a plea bargain, an agreement was reached in the Ermelo regional court (Mpumalanga) in 2009 (Case no ESH 82/11: Ermelo CAS 462/07/2009), the summary outcome of which is described below.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

How to establish and run a catchment management forum

  • Authors: Palmer, Carolyn G , Holleman, Helen , Wolff, Margaret G
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437894 , vital:73420 , ISBN 978-1 4312-0986-6 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/SP 118-18 web.pdf
  • Description: The user-friendly series of “How to….” handbooks are aimed at staff and stakehold-ers in catchment management forums (CMFs), catchment management agencies (CMAs) and municipalities. The handbooks are not all written at exactly the same level of “user-friendliness”, it depends on the topic, and target users.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

How to think about water for people and people for water: Some for all, forever

  • Authors: Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437922 , vital:73422 , ISBN 978-1 4312-0985-9 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/SP%20117-18%20web.pdf
  • Description: Water for people and people for water. We need water and water needs us. That is what this book is about. Water is the basis of all life. No plant, animal or person on earth can survive without it. In fact, all organisms are mostly made up of water. Wa-ter shapes the earth’s surface. It is a fundamental part of climate processes. Out in the natural world, water is not found in taps, buckets and glasses but in rivers, wet-lands, lakes, dams, estuaries, groundwater and the sea. It falls from the sky as rain, runs off the landscape, filters into the soil, flows to the sea in rivers, is stored in dams, evaporates into the sky, and rains back onto the earth. This is the water cycle. People need water for all sorts of things, for drinking, washing, cooking, growing food, in industries, and to dilute and transport wastes. But in the process of using water, people can damage rivers, wetlands, lakes and other watery places. Dam-aged ecosystems do not work very well and may fail us when we need them most. The message of this book is – look after water in the places where it is naturally found – look after water and water ecosystems because you need them so much.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

How to understand environmental water quality in water resources management

  • Authors: Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437951 , vital:73424 , ISBN 978-1 4312-0992-7 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/SP%20124-18%20web.pdf
  • Description: We all depend on water for life, well-being and economic prosperity. In our homes water is used for drinking, cooking and washing. In our workplaces water is used for agriculture and industry. Water provides for recreation and our need for natural beauty, and it can be part of our spiritual awareness. Water is so important and is used in so many ways that if it is overused, we risk damaging our very life source. This happens when we take too much water out of aquatic ecosystems, and put in too much waste. The South African National Water Act (NWA) (No. 36 of 1998) rec-ognises that water resources are part of the integrated water cycle made up of wa-ter ecosystems– rivers, wetlands, lakes, dams, estuaries and groundwater – and the processes of precipitation, transpiration, infiltration and evaporation. Closely con-nected to the water cycle is the use that people make of water resources. The NWA promotes protection of water resources so that people can use water both now and into the future. Water is at the heart of “a better life for all”. This handbook focuses on environmental water quality (EWQ), in particular the use of water resources for waste disposal, and the effect that waste disposal has on ecosystems. The term wa-ter quality is used to describe the microbial, physical, chemical and radiological properties of water. These properties affect both ecosystem health and the “fitness for use” of the water.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

Impact of invasive alien plants on water provision in selected catchments

  • Authors: Preston, Ian R , Le Maitre, D C , Blignaut, J N , Louw, Lynette , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437979 , vital:73426 , ISBN 1816-7950 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/44_04_20_33741.pdf
  • Description: We analyse the impact of failing to control invasive alien plants (IAPs) on the water supply to the Berg River and De Hoop Dams, in other words, the opportunity cost of not clearing IAPs in these two catch-ments. To do this we used models to assess and compare the impact of current and future invasions on inflows into the dams. Although the clearing of current invasions would only provide a modest increase in the amount of water compared to, for example, the construction of an-other dam, failure to clear the invasion will have a negative impact on water security in the long term. We estimated that the Berg River Dam could lose up to 51% of its mean annual inflows to IAPs over a 45-year period, and the De Hoop Dam catchment could lose up to 44%. These impacts would continue to increase over time, and the costs of control could become very high as the plants invade rugged terrain. Major in-frastructural development requires Ministerial approval, supported by advice from senior officials. We suggest that such advice should sub-stantively take sufficient account of the benefits of clearing existing in-vasions, or at least of preventing further invasions. Our results suggest that serious consequences arise from insufficient investment in catch-ment management. An integrated approach to the management of the supply of and demand for water, that ensures long-term sustainability, is essential in informed decision-making and the early control of IAPs is a key component of that approach.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

Navigating Multiple Tensions for Engaged Praxis in a Complex Social-Ecological System

  • Authors: Cockburn, Jessica J , Palmer, Carolyn G , Biggs, Harry , Rosenberg, Eureta
  • Date: 2018
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127886 , vital:36052 , https://doi.org/10.3390/land7040129
  • Description: Recently, the 33-year journey of the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE) was the subject of reflection during an Open Access Publishing week convened by Rhodes University Library Services. Two former and current editors-in-chief shared the SAJEE’s story of publishing ‘from the margins into the centre’. In the early 1990s, the Journal was mailed to the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA) membership from the foyer of the Rhodes Education Department (which had the floor space for stuffing and stacking A4 envelopes). In the first decade of this century, the Journal arrived at a symbolic ‘centre’ with digital distribution, first on the EEASA website and then from the Open Access platform provided by African Journals Online (AJOL). The digital move was vital for sustained and increased distribution in a time of shrinking budgets and growing costs. The results, shared with the EEASA Council earlier this year, were nothing short of spectacular: In March 2017, the SAJEE received more than 1 250 article downloads (www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee), and the number of downloads have stayed above 500 each month subsequently (Figure 1). Views and downloads are recorded around the world including,
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  • Date Issued: 2018

Practising Adaptive IWRM (Integrated Water Resources Management) in South Africa

  • Authors: Palmer, Carolyn G , Munnik, Victor , du Toit, Derick , Rogers, Kevin H , Pollard, Sharon , Hamer, Nick , Weaver, Matthew J T , Retief, Hugo , Sahula, Asiphe , O’Keeffe, Jay H
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/438005 , vital:73428 , ISBN 978-1-4312-0983-5 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/2248-1-18.pdf
  • Description: This chapter serves as a general introduction to the TPNP case stud-ies, with feedback from the progress of the RESILIM-O project. We draw attention here, and note clearly, that each case is set in a different context and scale, and proceeded in different ways, as well as combin-ing in use different discourses/practices and methodologies. To ensure a basis for comparability, each case study was required to use the Adaptive IWRM approach and methodologies, while not being required to record results in the same format. Case studies were designed to enable an exploration of scale effects–a core theoretical concept in complex social-ecological systems. We will be in a position to write a scholarly paper on a scale-comparison of practice-based Adaptive IWRM learning at different spatial and governance (institutional and social) scales, as a result of these findings.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

Cultural adaptations of Dance Movement Psychotherapy experiences: from a UK higher education context to working with communities in southern Africa facing water related inequality

  • Authors: Copteros, Athina , Karkou, Vicky , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141995 , vital:38022 , ISBN 9780199949298 , https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199949298.001.0001
  • Description: Water plays a key role in all our lives and in South Africa epitomizes a space in which political inequalities have played themselves out with devastating consequences. The current ecological crisis demands new ways of engaging with ourselves, each other and nature. This research is an initial exploration on the use of a body-based creative movement approach within a transdisciplinary complex social-ecological systems researcher group. The research objective discussed in this chapter is to develop culturally relevant themes from professional Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) training in the UK for application in a South African water resource management context. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to identify culturally relevant themes based on the recorded perceptions of the phenomenon of the training while it was taking place. The themes of: Awareness of Power and Difference; Therapeutic Adaptability; Sharing Leadership and Connecting with the Environment were identified. Artistic Inquiry was used to creatively reflect on the themes and add an embodied response to the discussion. The cultural adaptations of DMP can contribute to a more engaged and non-hierarchical collaboration between practitioners and the people and communities they serve, which would facilitate a therapeutic practice that works with both internal, external (and even transcendental) factors.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

Generation of New Ecotoxicity Data for Salts Using Indigenous South African Freshwater Macroinvertebrate: Updating the National Salts Toxicity Database

  • Authors: Mensah, Paul K , Mgaba, Ntombekhaya , Griffin, Neil J , Odume, Oghenekaro N , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , report
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437854 , vital:73417 , ISBN 978-1-4312-0747-3 , https://wrcwebsite.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/KV%20353.pdf
  • Description: Scherman and Palmer (2013) reviewed the historical and current trends of Environmental Water Quality (EWQ) in South Africa. Based on the review, they identified research gaps for which they proposed a co-ordinated set of projects that need to be commissioned and executed to fill these gaps. These co-ordinated set of projects include update of TEACHA (Tool for Ecological Aquatic Chemical Habitat Assessment); update of the national salt toxicity database; integration of Resource Directed Measures (RDM) components (ie Ecological Reserve, Re-source Quality Objectives (RQOs) and Classification); integrating water quality and quantity; evaluation of the RDM participatory process based on research and current understandings of complex social-ecological systems and ecosystem services; and integrating RDM and SDC (Source Direct Control) to ensure coherent link between the two. The overarching aim of the above set of projects is to support implementa-tion of the National Water Resource Strategy 2 (NWRS2). Therefore, the main objective of this project to contribute to addressing the second research gap listed above (ie updating the national salt toxicity data-base). Noting that the database contains only data on single salts with nothing on salt mixtures, the project also generated binary salt mixtures data for the database, in addition to generating data for single salts.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

The relationship between concurrently measured SASS (South African Scoring System) and turbidity data archived in the South African River Health Programme’s Rivers Database

  • Authors: Gordon, Andrew K , Griffin, Neil J , Palmer, Carolyn G
  • Date: 2015
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , Article
  • Identifier: vital:7098 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015956
  • Description: The need for monitoring the biological impacts of instream sediments has long been recognised, yet robust and scientifically defensible tools for doing so are still in the early stages of development because of the difficulties experienced by researchers in characterising the complicated mechanisms of biological effect elicited by sediment particles. Biological monitoring is one such tool, and this paper reports on the initial stages of a study to determine the most applicable approach for measuring the effects of instream sediments on aquatic macroinvertebrates in the South African context. In this first instance, the suitability of the rapid macroinvertebrate biomonitoring tool (the South African Scoring System) was investigated by determining the extent of the correlation between concurrently measured SASS metrics and turbidity data collected for the South African River Health Programme. All three SASS metrics – SASS score, number of taxa (NOT), and average score per taxon (ASPT) – were found to be significantly negatively correlated with turbidity, although variation in the data was high. Turbidity was found to be the major driver of change in ASPT. In contrast, electrical conductivity was the major driver of SASS scores and NOT, with turbidity a close second. When combined, electrical conductivity and turbidity accounted for 80 percent (SASS score) and 75 percent (NOT) of the variation in the regression model. Consequently, SASS metrics are a crude, but reliable, indicator of the negative biological implications of excessive instream sedimentation as measured by turbidity. A number of other potential biomonitoring approaches for detecting the impacts of fine sediment exposure are identified for further investigation: spatial analyses of macroinvertebrate assemblages; and the use of structural and functional metrics.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

Transformative processes in environmental education: A case study

  • Authors: Fox, Helen E , Palmer, Carolyn G , O'Donoghue, Rob B
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387323 , vital:68225 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/137680"
  • Description: This paper presents a case study on the severely degraded Boksburg Lake’s (Gauteng, South Africa) social–ecological system, and on an environmental-education initiative that aimed to support the lake’s transformation with a view to its improved social and ecological well-being. In this case study, three key characteristics of the initiative which appeared to support the transformative process are discussed, namely: 1. Learning was aligned with the local social–ecological context; 2. Human-to-human and human-to-ecological connections were encouraged; and 3. The youth played a key role in initiating and effecting transformation.
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  • Date Issued: 2015
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