化学品足迹:概念、研究进展及挑战

化学品污染被联合国环境规划署列为影响人类生存与发展的全球重大环境问题之一。为实现可持续的化学品管理,需定量评价产品生命周期内由化学品排放造成的生态影响。然而,当前的化学品风险评价指标体系往往指向零碎的危害性或毒性终点,未能综合出整体性指标来定量表征生态系统所承受的损害,亦不能衡量人类活动排放的化学品总量与环境承载容量的相对大小。作为环境足迹一员,化学品足迹继承了"足迹"指标的特点,可定量表征生态系统受化学品影响的程度,并结合生态阈值及环境承载容量,有助于评价人类活动对环境可持续性的影响,有望成为公众、企业、决策者及利益相关者之间相互交流的重要工具。本文概述了化学品足迹的基本概念及其发展历程,介绍了现有的化学品足迹计算方法及其应用于不同空间尺度下的案例研究,讨论了化学品足迹研究中存在的问题与挑战,并对其应用前景进行了展望。     

A regional-scale sustainable development index: the case of Baja California Sur,Mexico

Sustainable development, as a multi-dimensional concept, is difficult to measure. Some efforts using indicators and indices have appeared in recent years, but most were developed on a national scale. Use of sustainability indicators has proven valuable for attaining better management of the environment by minimizing information gaps and maximizing community capabilities in terms of economic, social, environmental, and institutional sustainability dimensions. However, at least in the case of developing countries, the potential exists that national sustainability measures, based on national level indicators, may mask problems in sub-national zones with highly unsustainable conditions. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate sustainable development at a local level, the use of which could be helpful in comparing different regions within a country or even among different countries. National sustainability indicators should result from a combination (whether additive or proportional) of regional sustainability indicators, as developed in this paper.     

Beijing environmental sustainable development from 1983 to 2003

Ever since the Earth Summit was launched at Rio de Janeiro, research has been done on the problems of developing indices for the health of the environment and for its sustainable development. However, this research has concentrated more on national and regional levels than on local levels, more on spatial comparisons than on time series analysis, more on short-term than on long-time analysis, more on qualitative than on quantitative analysis. In contrast, therefore, this paper presents an indicator system procedure for measuring Beijing (the capital of China) environmental sustainability based on the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) philosophy, evaluates the trend of Beijing environmental sustainability index (BESI) quantitatively for 21 years, from 1983 to 2003, and suggests three great opportunities in the near future that are expected to provide some dependable information to policy makers. The results suggest that Beijing is still far from environmental sustainable development. The total trend was better in the 1980s than in the 1990s, and has improved slightly since 2000.     

流域水生态功能区划及其关键问题

作为流域生态系统管理和水资源保护的重要手段,如何科学合理地开展流域水生态功能区划,已成为世界各国可持续发展所面临的关键挑战之一.本文立足我国流域综合管理的特点和发展趋势,针对我国现行水功能区划的问题,结合国外流域水生态区划的经验,提出了基于流域生态学、地域分异规律、生态系统健康与生态完整性、流域生态系统管理等理论基础的,以恢复流域持续性、完整性生态系统健康为目标,反映流域水陆耦合体在不同时空尺度景观异质性的流域水生态功能区划及其原则,重点分析了流域水生态系统的空间格局、生态过程以及动态演替等3个区划的关键问题,并提出了区划的方法,以期为我国流域水生态功能区划和流域生态系统管理提供战略层次的科学依据.     

ToSIA—A tool for sustainability impact assessment of forest-wood-chains

Within the forest sector, the sustainability concept has evolved from a narrow focus on sustainable wood production to a much broader evaluation of environmental, social, and economic sustainability for whole value chains. A new software tool - ToSIA - has been developed for assessing sustainability impacts of Forest-Wood-Chains (FWCs). In the approach, FWCs are defined as chains of production processes (e.g. harvesting-transport-industrial processing), which are linked with products (e.g. a timber frame house). Sustainability is determined by analysing environmental, economic, and social sustainability indicators for all the production processes along the FWC. The tool calculates sustainability values as products of the relative indicator values (i.e. indicator value expressed per unit of material flow) multiplied with the material flow entering the process. Calculated sustainability values are then aggregated for the segments of the FWC or for the complete chain. The sustainability impact assessment requires carefully specified system boundaries. ToSIA uses a data-oriented approach that is very flexible in the focus of the analysis and the selection of indicators of sustainability. An example of alternative Norway spruce management systems in Southern Germany and their effects on six sustainability indicators is presented. The less intensive management system with natural regeneration and motor-manual harvesting shows higher carbon storage and slightly less energy use. It creates more employment and higher labour costs, but the average rate of accidents is also higher. ToSIA offers a transparent and consistent methodological framework to assess sustainability impacts in the forest-based sector as affected, e.g. by changes in policies, market conditions, or technology. The paper discusses strengths and limitations of the approach and provides an outlook on further development perspectives of the methodology.     

Applying DPSIR to sustainable development

The DPSIR framework was devised in the late 1990s as a tool for the reporting and analysis of environmental problems, ranging in scale from global systems to localized watersheds. Since then, international organizations have begun to apply this framework to the evaluation of sustainable development initiatives, to better understand and overcome barriers to sustainability. While this may seem a logical application for an integrated environmental assessment tool, the use of DPSIR in sustainable development will likely perpetuate the least satisfactory outcomes of development. DPSIR cannot address the impact of aggregated, informal responses on the drivers and pressures related to environmental problems and sustainability challenges. This problem is not merely an oversight of the framework, but an issue that emerges within the structure of DPSIR itself through the unexamined, unacknowledged hierarchy of actors that this framework implicitly creates with its typology. Therefore, a DPSIR-centered approach is not a new direction for development within international organizations, but instead, a reproduction of existing inequalities between actors and stakeholders within current approaches.     

Need for sustainable development awareness management in Cuba

The present paper acknowledges the need for sustainable development education in Cuba, after a short review of their national health status and educational system. The environmental situation of the island is outlined, including the role played by environmental education (EE) in the current environment system. The-EE in Cuba is presented, and the problems related to its implementation are analyzed. Recommendations and possible solutions towards the use of education for sustainability as a tool for environmental management are presented, so as to prove the need for environmental awareness management in Cuba.     

Spatial distribution of ecological security status assessment of West-Liaohe River based on geographic information system

Eco-security assessment is a hot research area in resource and environmental science, which involves data with much spatial, non-linear, and random features. Geographic information system (GIS), as a useful tool to analyze and manage spatial information, has a superior advantage in this field. A case study in the western part of the Liaohe River featuring a method of eco-security spatial differences (ESSD) based on GIS is developed in this paper. The method includes four steps: 1) developing the pressure-state-response (P-S-R) framework with site data; 2) digitizing West-Liaohe River and setting its GRID database of ecosecurity assessment indicators; 3) figuring out the relative membership degree (RMD) of eco-security indicators by using the analytical hierarchy process with the weight of indicator; 4) classifying the security zone and mapping the assessment result of eco-security status in grid by GIS method of assigning and clustering. The visual spatial differences of eco-security based on GIS enables decision makers to know the status of eco-security better in making policies for achieving sustainability.     

Infrastructure and Conservation Policy in Brazil

Abstract:  The development of transportation and energy infrastructure has been a major driver in the conversion of natural ecosystems in Brazil since the nineteenth century. Although this pattern is present in most countries, Brazil differs in the scale of opportunities that are still available to build its physical infrastructure while pursuing an ambitious conservation agenda. This advantage stems from the magnitude of intact ecosystems, a dynamic policy environment, and the increasing availability of biological and economic data needed to harmonize conservation with public works. Success depends on integrating conservation and infrastructure planning, rather than relying on the project based, largely ineffective environmental assessment process. Front-loading environmental mitigation and compensation will also help, as will improving public access to, and understanding of, information on the environmental and economic values at stake in major infrastructure decisions.     

Sustainability indicators for environmental performance and sustainability assessment of the productions of four fine Italian wines

Increased awareness of the importance of environmental protection and the introduction of international standards like ISO 14001 stimulated development of environmental sustainability indicators as a means to measure systems environmental performance. Here, a thermodynamic approach, emergy analysis (Odum, 1988) was used to obtain sustainability indicators able to analyse and quantify the productive and ecological performance of four famous Italian wine productions: Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino, Nobile di Montepulciano, and Barbera d'hti. The application to agricultural production was motivated by the growing need for productive and environmentally sound development in modern agriculture, in which the resource base, the environment, is preserved. The choice of wines, more precisely, grape production, is due to their importance for Italian agriculture and the economy. All the wines demonstrated a good long-term environmental sustainability, especially in view of their high quality and in comparison with the average Italian wine production. Emergy analysis proved a powerful tool for assessing environmental performance of these systems, and its use could easily be extended to other wine productions to obtain a form of environmental performance classification of this product. Systematic use of emergy analysis to assess environmental performance of different processes and products, not necessarily in agriculture, could be useful for environmental certification.     

Use of thermodynamic indices as ecological indicators of the development state of lake ecosystems: 2. Exergy and specific exergy indices

The effectiveness of exergy and specific exergy indices as ecological indicators of the trophic state of lake ecosystems is here tested on a small homogeneous set of shallow lakes which, in spite of their similar nutrient concentrations, morphology and hydrology, show a different trophic state and structure, species composition and abundance. The findings reveal that exergy and specific exergy indices have good negative correlation with phytoplankton biomass and Carlson's trophic state index (TSI) and strong positive correlation to water transparency (the relationship between exergy and eutrophication is clearer if the exergy refers to surface units, rather than volume units) and, hence, that they may be used as ecological indicators of the trophic state of lake ecosystems. The relationship between the responses of the thermodynamic approach and other conventional trophic classification methods (Vollenweider's eutrophication model based on phosphorus loading, the Hillbrich-Ilkowska method and the Vollenweider–OECD classification criterion) previously applied to Lake Trasimeno, was also investigated. The decreasing trend of exergy and specific exergy indices with eutrophication increase appears to be essentially due to the change in species composition and trophic structure, rather than to a different trophic potentiality of the ecosystems investigated. Concerning the identification of the environmental factors responsible for exergy and specific exergy trends, the coherence of the correlation structure between water depth, TSI, exergy and specific exergy indices, suggests that the lake's mean water depth plays a significant role in determining the changes in trophic structure and state (and consequently in exergetic indices) within the set of lakes examined and emphasises the importance of lake morphology in the development and ageing of lake ecosystems.     

An interregional ecological approach for modelling sustainability in a globalizing world—Reviewing existing approaches and emerging directions

In recent decades international trade has become a major source of supplying the need and wants of billions of people around the world. Virtually everyone now consumes resource commodities and manufactured products imported from ‘elsewhere’. In effect, globalization and trade enable consuming populations to support themselves on the output of distant ecosystems half a world away. However, while economic integration implies greater ‘connectivity’ within the global village, the spatial separation of material production (including resource extraction) from consumption eliminates some of the signals i.e., the negative feedbacks coming from supporting eco-systems from reaching those who depend on these ecosystems for their sustainability. At present, despite increasing global connectedness, most environmental studies and models apply to a single spatial scale: local, national or global; analysing diverse pressures on human well-being and ecosystems integrity. This paper argues that both economic globalization and global ecological change should force us to add an interregional scale for quantifying and modelling sustainability. Such an approach recognizes that, in a globalizing world, the sustainability of any given region increasingly depends, directly and indirectly, on the sustainability of many other regions. The following pages describe the interregional approach and illustrate some existing and emerging methods for quantifying, analysing and modelling interregional linkages. It then identifies some of what is still missing, and discusses some of the implications in a changing world.     

Some approaches to the construction of a sustainable development index for the Philippines

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a convenient tool used in aggregating the indicators of sustainable development and providing indices where different weights are assigned to the various indicators. There are, however, problems in interpreting of indices, especially if time series data are used. This study explores the feasibility of applying recent developments in PCA of time series using Philippine data. We present the comparative advantages of SPCA (Sparse Principal Component Analysis) relative to averaging of an adequacy/inadequacy index and PCA in index construction from various indicators of sustainable development in the Philippines in terms of usefulness and validity of indices being developed. SPCA can attain sparse and non-overlapping loadings without losing a large amount of explained variance compared to PCA. Because of the non-overlapping contribution of variables in SPCA components, indices can have clear and mutually exclusive meanings, facilitating interpretation. Even with a more complicated algorithm, reduced dimensions and simpler interpretation of indices justify the advantages of SPCA over PCA in index construction. The indices are interpreted in terms of the milestone of sustainability in the Philippines. The resulting indices provide an adequate summary of the sustainable indicators and evidence of the importance of leadership and political will in sustainable development.     

Assessment of the state of agroecosystem sustainability using landscape indicators: a comparative study of three rural areas in Greece

The research was based on a comparative study of three representative rural areas (Dovras, Larissa, and Messapia) in Greece. Remote sensing data were collected (maps, aerial photographs) for the landscape analysis and elaborated using GIS linked with economic and social parameters regarding land use. By using a selected core set of landscape indicators, this research aims at providing a useful tool for assessing agroecosystem management at territorial level and hopefully assist decision-making for the promotion of sustainability. The selected tool showed that the study area of Messapia presented the highest level of environmental sustainability, while the area of Dovras showed the best combination of agricultural productivity and landscape management. Results showed that the ecoregions of Dovras, Larissa, and Messapia presented a landscape composed of important ecological function areas in the percentages of 40%, 15%, and 70%, respectively, and of cultivated areas in the percentages of 55%, 71.19%, and 19.75%, respectively.     

Using decision science to evaluate global biodiversity indices

Global biodiversity indices are used to measure environmental change and progress toward conservation goals, yet few indices have been evaluated comprehensively for their capacity to detect trends of interest, such as declines in threatened species or ecosystem function. Using a structured approach based on decision science, we qualitatively evaluated 9 indices commonly used to track biodiversity at global and regional scales against 5 criteria relating to objectives, design, behavior, incorporation of uncertainty, and constraints (e.g., costs and data availability). Evaluation was based on reference literature for indices available at the time of assessment. We identified 4 key gaps in indices assessed: pathways to achieving goals (means objectives) were not always clear or relevant to desired outcomes (fundamental objectives); index testing and understanding of expected behavior was often lacking; uncertainty was seldom acknowledged or accounted for; and costs of implementation were seldom considered. These gaps may render indices inadequate in certain decision-making contexts and are problematic for indices linked with biodiversity targets and sustainability goals. Ensuring that index objectives are clear and their design is underpinned by a model of relevant processes are crucial in addressing the gaps identified by our assessment. Uptake and productive use of indices will be improved if index performance is tested rigorously and assumptions and uncertainties are clearly communicated to end users. This will increase index accuracy and value in tracking biodiversity change and supporting national and global policy decisions, such as the post-2020 global biodiversity framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity.     

Emergy analysis of the urban metabolism of Beijing

Cities can be modeled as if they were superorganisms with a range of metabolic processes. Research on this urban metabolism can contribute to solving urban environmental problems by revealing details of the metabolic throughput of the system. A key issue is how to find a common basis for measuring the environmental and economic values. By providing a single unified unit, emergy theory integrates the natural and socioeconomic systems and thoroughly evaluates a system's metabolism. We analyzed Beijing's urban metabolic system using emergy synthesis to evaluate its environmental resources, economy, and environmental and economic relations with the regions outside the city during 14 years of development. We compared Beijing's emergy indices with those of five other Chinese cities and of China as a whole to assess Beijing's relative development status. These indices are the emergy self-support ratio (metabolic dependence), the environmental load ratio (metabolic loading), empower density (metabolic pressure), emergy used per person (metabolic intensity per capita), and the monetary equivalent of emergy (emdollars; metabolic intensity). Based on our emergy analysis, Beijing's socioeconomic system is not self-sufficient, and depends greatly on external environmental resources. Its GDP is supported by a high percentage of emergy purchased from outside the city. During the study period, Beijing's urban system showed an increasing dependence on external resources for its economic development. Beijing's loading and pressure on the ecological environment is continuously increasing, accompanied by continuously increasing human emergy consumption. In the future, it will become increasingly necessary to improve Beijing's metabolic efficiency.     

Working with indicators: description of states of territorial adjustment for protected natural areas

As is the case to date with respect to sustainability indicators, there is an enormous quantity of information available about their basic components (social, economic and environmental), but these are generally dealt with in a sectoral and fragmented manner, and the components have been analysed and approached in a more or less independent fashion. On the other hand, it is difficult to find indicators that encompass all the dimensions of sustainability. The topic chosen for this research is sustainability organised in a systematic fashion, which entails taking the combination of issues that affect each subsystem and investigating the states of territorial adjustment that exist between each of them. In short, it is the possibility of establishing a sustainable territorial development pattern, accepting that the economic and social activities that utilise the natural resources influence sustainability, and that they will do so to a greater or lesser extent depending on the effectiveness of the conservation of the stock of resources. The Territorial Adjustment Indicator System (TAIS) is a good tool that enables the management, assessment and monitoring of development processes in PNAs (protected natural areas), facilitating homogeneity and uniformity to aid comparison between protected areas in the centre-south of Spain, principally those areas designated as natural parks (NPs).     

Relationships of the dimensions of sustainability as measured by the sustainable society index framework

This article presents a study of the interrelationships between the different dimensions of sustainability as measured by the sustainable society index framework. We examine the statistical relationships between the four indices making up the sustainable society index framework. The analysis uses the complete existing data set provided by Sustainable Society Foundation for the years 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012 and for 151 countries. While the time period where data are available is quite short, we can make some preliminary observations about the apparent trends in the interrelationships of the different dimensions of sustainability. This study shows that the three dimensions of sustainability are far from all being synergic and positively correlated. There is a strong negative correlation between human well-being and environmental well-being. This is problematic from the point of view of the Brundtland Commission’s three-pillar definition of sustainability. However, the trade-off relationship between economic and environmental development measured by the economic well-being index and environmental well-being index is decreasing and the dimensions are becoming more de-linked. This trend is promising from the sustainability perspective.     

Information indices as a tool for quantifying development of below-ground terrestrial ecosystems

Information indices from ecosystem network analysis (ENA) describe the size and organization of an ecosystem and are claimed to quantify ecosystem development [Ulanowicz, R.E., 1986, Growth and Development, Springler-Verslag, New York, 203 pp.]. To date, these indices were not used to describe a gradient of ecosystem development for a field situation. Here we used information indices to quantify soil succession with soils of different age on the island Schiermonnikoog, The Netherlands. We evaluated whether information indices describe ecosystem development as predicted by ENA.For the Island of Schiermonnikoog the biomasses of soil organisms and roots were measured on four stages of succession (0, 10, 25 and 100 years old soils). Organisms were grouped based on their feeding characteristics. With these data consumption, respiration, excretion, external input and output flows to, from and between groups were calculated. These flows, in turn, were used to calculate the information indices. Relative information indices describe the organization of an ecosystem; i.e. level of organisation (specialization of flows), diversity and evenness of flows, and disorganisation. Absolute indices describe both size (in terms of energy flow) and organisation of the system. System size is used to scale the absolute indices and will be analysed separately as well.We found that the absolute indices increased when succession processed, as predicted by theory. This pattern could have been due to the build-up of biomass, which apparently did not level off. Because the succession gradient deals mostly with young soils (0, 10 and 25 years old) and only one older field (100 years old), the gradient should include more soils of around 100 years old and older to exclude this possibility. Relative indices, on the other hand, increased initially, but then levelled off. We think that this was due to the strong aggregation of functional groups, especially at lower trophic levels, because information in some functional groups showed (expected) trends.Our results suggest that the absolute indices are able to describe ecological succession of terrestrial below-ground ecosystems. The relative indices, in contrast, appeared to be insensitive to subtle succesional changes.