One of EANET’s biggest successes has been the establishment of its data collection sites. There are two main types of sites, and below is a map of the sites established through the network (Acid Deposition and Oxidant Research Center, Outline):
51 Wet/Dry Deposition Monitoring sites:
19 Ecological Monitoring Sites:
There is detailed information about each of these sites and their data collection capacity. Here is an example of a site in China. This level of scientific uniformity is crucial in analyzing the sources and trouble spots of acid rain chemicals. This data is also synthesized in yearly reports, offering services usually provided at a national or subnational scale by institutions like the EPA and USGS or Japan’s ADORC, as well as universities or research hubs, at a supernational scale. Whereas combining information can be quite difficult and time consuming, as in the case of the US-Mexico data fusion along the shared border by the USGS and INEGI (BEHI), EANET’s data is easily analyzed. Below is a graph representation of deposition in all 51 wet deposition sites in EANET (click picture to see close up).
Citation
It is clear this data provides useful, functional and potentially implementable information to nations in EANET. While the USGS requires many grants to combine large quantities of data and conduct analysis is Mexico’s INEGI, these costs are covered by EANET’s financial program. Although this does not constitute firm action by any of the players in this regional agreement, it does enable better informed policy making.
This structure does, however, follow the problematic pattern that arises in other places in this organiztion of Japanese domination. The technological superiority of the Japanese in their efforts to integrate the rest of their region into their data collection methods rises out of their particular interest in the issue, but can also be understood in what Sletto describes as environmental geopolitics. He describes the role of the power holders (often Northern industrialized countries or Western states) as one that views developing countries as “an object of management and control” (Sletto 184). He further suggests that the scientific understanding of the environment is one developed by these powerful states and thrust upon others. He claims, “knowledge is not neutral” (Sletto 184). In this way Japan, one of the most Westernized powers in Asia, and certainly one of the strongest economies, takes the role of scientific expert and knowledge disseminator. This creates a further imbalance of power over the way that acid rain is defined, monitored and therefore potentially addressed.