A case study of intra-community conflict as facility impact

Through a qualitative case study, this paper describes the everyday experience of conflict as a serious impact of noxious facilities. It describes intra-community conflict over two existing waste facilities (a regional landfill and a low-level hazardous waste facility) in Ryley, Alberta, Canada. Twenty-seven in-depth face-to-face interviews and one focus group reveal deep conflict presented as frustration, anger, social isolation and strained social relations between locals who ‘support’ the facilities as a means of bolstering the local economy and those who do not (mainly long-time resident farmers). Although the type of hazard exposure (i.e. existing facilities) is important for explaining why conflict developed and became entrenched, it is argued that the nature of community, and in particular differences in ways of life, are also critical determinants. The findings are compared to theory and other case studies concerning why social conflict develops over technological hazards. Implications for environmental impact assessment and environmental appeals are discussed, as well as compensation as one avenue for equitably reducing conflict.     

基于大数据的“邻避”设施环境社会风险评估方法研究

着力防范化解环境社会风险是社会和谐稳定的重要前提。本文基于国内全网2019—2020年关于“垃圾焚烧”的网络舆情数据，通过情感词典、TF-IDF关键词提取和人工识别方法进行“邻避”冲突的原因分析，在此基础上构建本土化的“邻避”设施环境社会风险指标体系和评估方法，结合环境、人口和社会等多源大数据，基于自然断点法对风险等级进行分类，以全国生活垃圾焚烧发电设施的重点区域为案例开展环境社会风险的分析评估。结果表明，担忧破坏生态环境、反对选址位置、担忧排放物有毒是贯穿2019—2020年两年的主要反对原因，占据反对原因的50%以上。之后，本文对各项反对因素进行归纳汇总，构建了12项指标的风险评价指标体系，其中环境因素、人口因素和社会因素为一级指标，其权重分别达到0.33、0.49和0.18，人口因素是影响程度最大的因素；对案例风险评估结果表明全国范围和六大重点区域的大多数设施拟建设于重大风险或特大风险地区，需着重关注这些地区的生活垃圾焚烧发电项目规划布局和风险防控问题。     

New York City Environmental Justice Alliance Waterfront Justice Project

This paper reviews key challenges and opportunities addressed by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance's (NYC-EJA) Waterfront Justice Project, a citywide campaign to promote climate resilience and sustainability in urban industrial waterfront communities of New York City. NYC-EJA is a non-profit membership-driven network linking grassroots organisations from low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour in their struggle for environmental justice. The Waterfront Justice Project is documenting community vulnerability in the context of climate change impacts, sources of industrial pollution, and demographic and socio-economic trends. This campaign is enabling community-based organisations, environmental justice communities, city planners, local and state government agencies, local business-owners, and other stakeholders to work in partnership to achieve community resilience while advocating for local jobs and promoting best practices in pollution prevention. New York City's waterfront policies ease the siting and clustering of public infrastructure, water pollution control plants, waste transfer stations, energy facilities, and heavy manufacturing uses in six areas designated as Significant Maritime and Industrial Areas (SMIAs). The SMIAs are located in environmental justice communities, largely low-income communities and communities of colour, in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. New York City's local waterfront land use and zoning policies create cumulative risk exposure not only to residents and workers in the host waterfront communities, but also, in the event of storm surge or sea-level rise, to neighbouring, upland communities.     

“十三五”医疗废物综合管理思路与对策研究

本文首先总体分析了"十二五"期间我国医疗废物环境管理和技术在完善制度建设、加快处理设施建设、打击环境违法行为和创新开展医疗废物处置示范等方面取得的进展和成效,分析了当前医疗废物管理中存在的包括缺乏针对性制度、处理设施总体技术水平不高、新增布局缺乏指导、收费水平偏低等突出问题。面向"十三五",本文提出环境管理四个方面的主要思路,从思路出发,提出"十三五"重点开展的任务,包括开展基础性调查评估、修订医疗废物管理条例、优化医疗废物处理设施布局、建立区域医疗废物协同处理模式、开展处理设施稳定排放达标整治工程、创新医疗废物环境管理和加快解决医疗废物处理收费中的突出问题等,为相关环境管理部门提供决策参考。     

Medical waste management in Korea

The management of medical waste is of great importance due to its potential environmental hazards and public health risks. In the past medical waste was often mixed with municipal solid waste and disposed of in residential waste landfills or improper treatment facilities (e.g. inadequately controlled incinerators) in Korea. In recent years, many efforts have been made by environmental regulatory agencies and waste generators to better manage the waste from healthcare facilities. This paper presents an overview of the current management practices of medical waste in Korea. Information regarding generation, composition, segregation, transportation, and disposal of medical wastes is provided and discussed. Medical waste incineration is identified as the most preferred disposal method and will be the only available treatment option in late 2005. Faced with increased regulations over toxic air emissions (e.g. dioxins and furans), all existing small incineration facilities that do not have air pollution control devices will cease operation in the next few years. Large-scale medical waste incinerators would be responsible for the treatment of medical waste generated by most healthcare facilities in Korea. It is important to point out that there is a great potential to emit air toxic pollutants from such incinerators if improperly operated and managed, because medical waste typically contains a variety of plastic materials such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Waste minimization and recycling, control of toxic air emissions at medical waste incinerators, and alternative treatment methods to incineration are regarded to be the major challenges in the future.     

The ISO 14001 environmental management standard in Japan: results from a national survey of facilities in four industries

Since establishment of the ISO 14001 environmental management system in 1996, Japanese facilities have led the world in numbers of certifications. This research utilises survey data from more than 1700 Japanese facilities as well as follow-up interviews to identify the determinants of ISO certification, to examine the differences between early, recent and in-process certifiers, and to understand how ISO 14001 certification affects various environmental and managerial outcomes in Japan. Findings show that ISO certified facilities are larger and report higher levels of environmental management capacity. In addition, early certifiers are more likely to have established voluntary environmental agreements and are more active in international trade and business. Findings also provide evidence that while many facilities believe that ISO 14001 certification is excessively costly, they also report that certification has resulted in the establishment of new energy efficiency and waste reduction targets and higher target levels. Nevertheless, evidence indicates that certification does not generally result in longer-term outcomes such as post-certification adjustment of non-regulated targets.     

Waste in the Inner City: asset or assault?

In an unequal society, undesirable wastes often end up in the poorest and least powerful communities, becoming part of the economic and environmental milieu of the inner city. Two contradictory responses to waste reflect contrasting theoretical paradigms. Some wastes can become assets in local economic development, creating incomes through scavenging, industrial jobs in recycling plants or new businesses using locally available materials. Other wastes are an assault on the community that receives them; toxic wastes, polluting facilities and industrial by-products often create local health hazards rather than development. Waste as an asset is consistent with the free market model of economics. The inner city, 'endowed' with waste materials and low-wage labour, has a comparative advantage in labour-intensive processing of materials that the rest of society has discarded. Waste as an assault on the community is consistent with a different model of environmental risk. Some by-products of industry are so hazardous that they should not be produced, or should be tightly regulated. Each model has a realm of validity; the balance between the two depends on which wastes are hazardous, and which are just ugly resources waiting to be discovered.     

Waste in the Inner City: Asset or assault?

In an unequal society, undesirable wastes often end up in the poorest and least powerful communities, becoming part of the economic and environmental milieu of the inner city. Two contradictory responses to waste reflect contrasting theoretical paradigms. Some wastes can become assets in local economic development, creating incomes through scavenging, industrial jobs in recycling plants or new businesses using locally available materials. Other wastes are an assault on the community that receives them; toxic wastes, polluting facilities and industrial by-products often create local health hazards rather than development. Waste as an asset is consistent with the free market model of economics. The inner city, 'endowed' with waste materials and low-wage labour, has a comparative advantage in labour-intensive processing of materials that the rest of society has discarded. Waste as an assault on the community is consistent with a different model of environmental risk. Some by-products of industry are so hazardous that they should not be produced, or should be tightly regulated. Each model has a realm of validity; the balance between the two depends on which wastes are hazardous, and which are just ugly resources waiting to be discovered.     

Historical paths of environmental injustice: a century of placing industrial facilities in Helsinki,Finland

The article explores the historical process of creating unjust environmental conditions in one geographical area in the Finnish capital, Helsinki. The study traces back the decision-making processes about placing environmentally burdensome, communal facilities, such as power plants, waste disposal and other infrastructural facilities. Also the lack of environmental amenities is investigated. The study covers a time period from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the 1980s. The historical analysis of the development of land-use decisions in the city is based on documentary and archival sources about the decision-making processes and it is conducted in the framework of distributive and procedural environmental justice. Four different periods of siting policies are identified. The motives for land-use decisions at each phase reflect geographical, political and historical reasoning. The concept of path dependency is introduced to explain, how environmental injustices were reproduced because of past paths of siting policies locked in subsequent decisions and created a negative twist of accumulating environmental burden.     

关于环境保护税法(草案)几个问题的探讨

《环境保护税法(草案)》已经初次审议并公布草案全文征求意见,本文对草案中有关问题进行了探讨,期望这些建议能为修改法律草案条文提供参考。关于水污染物环境保护税的纳税人,建议按照直接向环境排放污水的企业事业单位和其他生产经营者、城镇污水集中处理设施、园区污水集中处理设施等三类区分;关于大气污染物、水污染物的征税范围与方法,建议近期将大气污染物中的重金属项目也纳入应税污染物,与水污染物征税范围保持一致,远期考虑与排放标准脱钩,重新审视、确定应税污染物的范围、筛选原则与当量值;关于综合利用固体废物征收环境保护税问题,建议对综合利用过程在满足环保标准要求条件下,免征环境保护税,而综合利用形成的原材料或产品则不适用本法。另外本文还提出了未来环境保护税应覆盖产品全生命周期的生产、使用、废弃等环节的观点。     

Ethnicity and hazard information dissemination

Citizens from two communities were questioned regarding the sources from which they have previously obtained information about environmental hazards and their preferences for different communication channels. Three ethnic groups—whites, blacks, and Mexican-Americans—were represented among those questioned. While all three ethnic groups described similar patterns of past information receipt, it was found that Mexican-Americans obtained more information through social network contacts than whites or blacks. Ethnic differentials emerged when citizens were asked about preferred sources for information receipt. While radio was identified as desirable by all three groups, only minority citizens expressed a preference for local television as a dissemination mode and only Mexican-Americans favored neighborhood meetings. Mailed dissemination and newspapers were preferred primarily by whites and blacks. The implications of the results for the conduct of hazard information dissemination are examined.     

“十一五”期间昌黎县环境空气质量变化分析及建议

＂十一五＂期间,昌黎县采取多项措施进行环境空气综合整治,城区环境空气质量持续改善,但还存在绿化水平低,废气处理设施落后,机动车尾气污染,城市建设带来的扬尘污染以及环保机构监管力量薄弱等因素。为了进一步改善环境空气质量,针对上述问题从提高绿化水平,深入开展大气污染源治理,控制机动车尾气污染和扬尘污染,加强环境监管等方面提出了切实可行的防治对策及建议。     

Disposition toward environmental hazards in Hong Kong Chinese: validation of a Chinese version of the environmental appraisal inventory (EAI-C)

This paper extends prior research on risk perceptions in the West to the Hong Kong Chinese context by studying the nature of the responses of 229 Hong Kong Chinese to an adapted environmental appraisal inventory (EAI-C), which consisted of three scales with one related to the self and the other two related to the local and global environments, respectively. Results lent support to a local–global dichotomy: hazards were appraised to be more threatening in the global than the local context. Responses to the three-scale adaptation were factor analysed and three subscales were extracted for each of the EAI scales. As with findings reported in a previous study with an Irish sample, the subscales could be considered to represent techno-human, everyday-life and natural hazards. Results also indicated that Hong Kong Chinese appraised environmental hazards as more threatening than did Western samples surveyed in prior studies. This was most striking when hazards were appraised in relation to the self. Similar findings have also been reported in recent studies with Japanese samples. It was suggested that the accentuated threat to self observed in the current study might stem from a heightened sensitivity to environmental hazards in the Chinese people, which is determined by self-construction processes specific to Asian cultures. Using the EAI as a measurement for hazard appraisal may provide insights to how people from different cultures construe the impact of environmental hazards in various contexts.     

Situating Hazard Vulnerability: People’s Negotiations with Wildfire Environments in the U.S. Southwest

This article is based on a multimethod study designed to clarify influences on wildfire hazard vulnerability in Arizona’s White Mountains, USA. Findings reveal that multiple factors operating across scales generate socially unequal wildfire risks. At the household scale, conflicting environmental values, reliance on fire insurance and firefighting institutions, a lack of place dependency, and social vulnerability (e.g., a lack of financial, physical, and/or legal capacity to reduce risks) were found to be important influences on wildfire risk. At the regional-scale, the shift from a resource extraction to environmental amenity-based economy has transformed ecological communities, produced unequal social distributions of risks and resources, and shaped people’s social and environmental interactions in everyday life. While working-class locals are more socially vulnerable than amenity migrants to wildfire hazards, they have also been more active in attempting to reduce risks in the aftermath of the disastrous 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire. Social tensions between locals and amenity migrants temporarily dissolved immediately following the disaster, only to be exacerbated by the heightened perception of risk and the differential commitment to hazard mitigation displayed by these groups over a 2-year study period. Findings suggest that to enhance wildfire safety, environmental managers should acknowledge the environmental benefits associated with hazardous landscapes, the incentives created by risk management programs, and the specific constraints to action for relevant social groups in changing human-environmental context.     

Failing to Site Hazardous Waste Facilities Voluntarily: Implications for the Production of Sustainable Goods

A current approach to the process of siting hazardous waste facilities is to seek 'willing host' communities that will not oppose but rather voluntarily accept risky facilities. Voluntary siting strategies have been put forward as the solution to hazardous waste location problems, and there have indeed been a small number of siting successes achieved voluntarily. This paper argues that, despite claims about voluntary processes, there are indications that few 'willing host' sites will be found in response to the many that are proposed. Instead, it suggests that the limited success of siting attempts, voluntary or otherwise, signals a new phase in hazardous waste management, a shift in focus from where to site a facility to whether a good is worth producing at all if its wastes are not siteable. A characteristic of this phase is the growing influence that the disposal potential of the generated waste can have on future management decisions to produce a good. In practice, siting failure may be one of the critical turning points on the road to sustainable production. It can accomplish what technology and environmental assessments have generally been unable to do: foresee the sustainability of a good. In this way, siteability can be seen as one indicator of sustainable production. A good can be considered sustainable if the wastes associated with its production are siteable.     

Canadian Innovations in Siting Hazardous Waste Management Facilities

/ Siting hazardous waste facilities is an extremely complex and difficult endeavor. Public aversion to the construction of these facilities in or near their community often results in concerted opposition, referred to as the NIMBY syndrome. For the most part, siting processes do not fail because of inadequate environmental or technical considerations, but because of the adversarial decision-making strategies employed by the proponents. Innovative siting processes used in the provinces of Alberta and Manitoba offer tangible evidence of the successful application of an innovative siting approach based on the principles of decentralization of decision-making authority and full and meaningful public involvement. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate four Canadian siting processes from the perspective of public participation and access to decision-making authority. Examples of siting processes related to hazardous waste management facilities are provided from the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Ontario. Siting has evolved from approaches dominated by top-down decision making to increasing decentralized and pluralistic approaches. Focusing on social and political concerns of potentially affected communities and on the process of decision making itself are fundamental to achieving siting success. In Alberta initially, and later in Manitoba, this new "open approach" to siting has resulted in the construction of the first two comprehensive hazardous waste treatment facilities in Canada.KEY WORDS: Hazardous waste facilities; Siting methodologies; Public participation     

Lead astray: scale,environmental justice and the El Paso smelter

Residents in Paso del Norte (El Paso, Texas; Sunland Park, New Mexico; and Juárez, Mexico) have been concerned about heavy metal contamination in their communities since the 1970s, when high blood lead levels were found in children living in Smeltertown – a company town for the local metals smelter. After the smelter's closure in 1999, and throughout onsite and offsite cleanup efforts, residents have continued to express concerns about these contamination issues. Using a politics of scale framework and analysing ethnographic data and government, media and scientific documents, this paper identifies a set of major disjunctures between the scales of heavy metal contamination and the scales at which that contamination is regulated. These disjunctures exacerbate regional environmental injustice by complicating public participation, neglecting vulnerability and displacing hazards to new communities. Consequently, applying a politics of scale framework to this case study highlights regulatory and policy failures to address environmental justice.     

A Paradigm of International Environmental Law: The Case for Controlling the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes

The production of large quantities of wastes globally has created a commercial activity involving the transfrontier shipments of hazardous wastes, intended to be managed at economically attractive waste-handling facilities located elsewhere. In fact, huge quantities of hazardous wastes apparently travel the world in search of “acceptable” waste management facilities. For instance, within the industrialized countries alone, millions of tonnes of potentially hazardous waste cross national frontiers each year on their way for recycling or to treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) because there is no local disposal capacity for these wastes, or because legal disposal or reuse in a foreign country may be more environmentally sound, or managing the wastes in the foreign country may be less expensive than at home. The cross-boundary traffic in hazardous wastes has lately been under close public scrutiny, however, resulting in the accession of several international agreements and laws to regulate such activities. This paper discusses and analyzes the most significant control measures and major agreements in this new commercial activity involving hazardous wastes. In particular, the discussion recognizes the difficulties with trying to implement the relevant international agreements among countries of vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds. Nonetheless, it is also noted that global environmental agreements will generally be a necessary component of ensuring adequate environmental protection for the world community—and thus a need for the careful implementation of such agreements and regulations.     

How much do people who live near major nuclear facilities worry about those facilities? Analysis of national and site-specific data

Large nuclear waste management, laboratory and electric power generating complexes are a daunting challenge for state, regional and local planners. A survey of 2101 residents who lived near 11 nuclear power plants and US Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear waste management sites and laboratories was conducted to determine how much nearby residents worried about accidents and chronic emissions at the nuclear sites, how much they trusted the sites’ responsible parties, and actions that they wanted responsible parties to take to reduce public concern. Six hundred other people who lived elsewhere in the US were a comparison group. Nuclear site-related issues were a greater concern among the 2101 who lived near the sites than the comparison group. Yet many were more concerned about global warming, traffic congestion, and loss of open space than nuclear technologies. Monitoring the environment and people were the actions deemed most likely to reduce public concern. The results pose a challenge to owner-operators of nuclear facilities, government entities and especially to locally based environmental planners and managers to establish partnerships with each other and diverse communities that will allow them to manage some of these risks for decades and in some cases into perpetuity.