Aquatic biodiversity and the electric utility industry

Results from a 1995 survey of utility company biologists indicate that aquatic biodiversity is an emerging and poorly understood issue. As a result, there is some confusion about what aquatic biodiversity actually is, and how we can best conserve it. Only one fourth (24%) of the respondents said their company has a stated environmental policy that addresses biodiversity. Many respondents indicate that over the years they have not specifically managed for biodiversity, but have been doing that through their efforts to assure balanced indigenous populations. While regulations are still the major driver for biological work, an increasing number of companies are involved in voluntary partnerships in managing water resources. Of these voluntary partnerships, 70% have biodiversity as a goal. Biodiversity is becoming an increasingly common subject of study, and a vast majority (75%) of the respondents suggested it should be a goal for utility resource management. Conservation of aquatic biodiversity is a complex task, and to date most aquatic efforts have been directed toward fish and macroinvertebrates. Ecological research and technological development performed by the utility industry have resulted in a number of successful biopreservation and biorestoration success stories. A common theme to preserving or enhancing aquatic biodiversity is preserving aquatic habitat. Increasingly, ecosystem management is touted as the most likely approach to achieve success in preserving aquatic biodiversity. Several utilities are conducting progressive work in implementing ecosystem management. This paper presents the potential interactions between power plants and biodiversity, an overview of aquatic biodiversity preservation efforts within the electric utility industry, more detail on the results of the survey, and recent initiatives in ecosystem management.     

Aquatic biodiversity and the electric utility industry

/ Results from a 1995 survey of utility company biologists indicate that aquatic biodiversity is an emerging and poorly understood issue. As a result, there is some confusion about what aquatic biodiversity actually is, and how we can best conserve it. Only one fourth (24%) of the respondents said their company has a stated environmental policy that addresses biodiversity. Many respondents indicate that over the years they have not specifically managed for biodiversity, but have been doing that through their efforts to assure balanced indigenous populations. While regulations are still the major driver for biological work, an increasing number of companies are involved in voluntary partnerships in managing water resources. Of these voluntary partnerships, 70% have biodiversity as a goal. Biodiversity is becoming an increasingly common subject of study, and a vast majority (75%) of the respondents suggested it should be a goal for utility resource management. Conservation of aquatic biodiversity is a complex task, and to date most aquatic efforts have been directed toward fish and macroinvertebrates. Ecological research and technological development performed by the utility industry have resulted in a number of successful biopreservation and biorestoration success stories. A common theme to preserving or enhancing aquatic biodiversity is preserving aquatic habitat. Increasingly, ecosystem management is touted as the most likely approach to achieve success in preserving aquatic biodiversity. Several utilities are conducting progressive work in implementing ecosystem management. This paper presents the potential interactions between power plants and biodiversity, an overview of aquatic biodiversity preservation efforts within the electric utility industry, more detail on the results of the survey, and recent initiatives in ecosystem management.KEY WORDS: Biodiversity; Ecosystem management; Watershed management; Utilities; Aquatic; Adaptive management     

The exuberant planet: A global look at the role of utilities in protecting biodiversity

Biodiversity is a critical environmental issue. Biodiverse species as a source of unique genetic information, for example, continues to provide society with lifesaving drugs and important industrial chemicals. Since US utilities are substantial landholders and virtually every aspect of utility operations are in some way tied to environmental/biodiversity issues, it is important and essential that the utility industry step forward as a leader. This paper details the past, present, and future role that utilities have played and need to play in the very important arena of biodiversity.     

Putting action into biodiversity planning: assessing preferences towards funding

Water companies in England and Wales are responsible for the management of large areas of land. This land is under little pressure for development and is often free from the pollutants associated with conventional agriculture and is therefore a potentially valuable resource for biodiversity conservation. The value of this resource will only be realized if sufficient investment is made in the management of the habitats associated with these sites. This paper reports an exploratory case study based on customers of Southern Water which uses a mixture of questionnaire surveys and focus groups to investigate whether or not consumers are willing to pay higher utility bills to fund such management. In particular, it explores the public's willingness to forgo potential bill reductions in order to fund biodiversity conservation and examines how payment instruments could be designed to maximize and maintain the agreement from consumers. Results suggest that customers are willing to forgo a proportion of a potential bill reduction to pay for biodiversity schemes but are not necessarily willing to face a bill increase for the same public good benefits. Participants in the focus groups suggested that schemes could be made more acceptable to customers by ensuring that the outcomes were both visible and local and that their achievements were well publicized. Similarly, administration of the scheme through a trust fund alleviates some of the concerns of consumers while raising several new ones.     

Private land management for biodiversity conservation

As human influences fragment native communities and ecosystems, remaining land must be better managed to conserve many elements of biodiversity. Much of this land is privately held, yet traditional private land-use management practices often further diminish biodiversity by promoting favored or edge-adapted species. Today, private land stewards are increasingly aware of and concerned about biodiversity, but little guidance exists for them to make land-use decisions incorporating principles and knowledge from conservation biology. Consequently, most management strategies are highly subjective. This article addresses that problem by introducing current conservation wisdom to management and use of private lands. The result is a model program for developing land management plans, with the goal of maintaining viable populations and natural distributions of native species and communities from a landscape perspective. The program establishes a protocol for classifying sites according to the importance of their species, communities, and other elements to global and regional biodiversity. These site classifications are based on the management objectives necessary to maintain important elements. Once managers classify a site, the program provides management standards, general stewardship principles, examples of land management strategies, and basic monitoring and evaluation procedures.     

Creating biodiversity partnerships: The Nature Conservancy's perspective

The Nature Conservancy is an international organization dedicated to the mission of conserving biodiversity throughout the world. By working in a nonconfrontational manner, an approach that has promoted both government and corporate sponsorship of its activities, The Nature Conservancy has developed symbiotic relationships with many electric utility companies. Drawing on the organization's experiences, and the experiences of the author as the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Nature Conservancy, five broad areas of cooperation between conservation organizations and the utility industry are explored: landmanagement agreements, mitigation projects, conflictavoidance programs, program support, and volunteer activities. The paper is concluded with comments on the future trends of biodiversity conservation, challenging the electric utility industry to become involved with conservation efforts by forming cooperative partnerships.     

Protection strategies for drinking groundwater sources in small Quebec municipalities

Awareness of groundwater protection has increased substantially in recent decades. In the Province of Quebec, Canada, the Groundwater Catchment Regulation (GWCR) was promulgated in 2002 to protect water quality in public wells. The goal of the present study was to document groundwater protection in the context of emerging regulations and identify factors explaining the propensity of municipalities applying protection strategies. Two types of information were used in this study: data from a questionnaire-based survey conducted among 665 municipalities in the Province of Quebec and complementary information gathered from various sources. Data from the survey revealed that fewer than half of the municipalities have been able to comply with the GWCR, mainly because of financial limitations. Also, close to half of the municipalities have either identified or are expecting land use conflicts to arise between protection areas required by the GWCR and other land usage, with agriculture being the main conflicting activity. Multivariate logistic regression models served to identify factors explaining the likelihood of municipalities to take groundwater protection measures. Those factors were municipality revenue, history of water contamination in distribution systems, land use near wellheads, location of municipalities within a provincial priority watershed and the importance of groundwater use in a region. Results of the study may prove helpful for government authorities in better understanding the groundwater protection issue and in implementing strategies that improve the ability of municipalities to protect groundwater.     

Company engagement with supply chains to protect biodiversity and rare,threatened, and endangered species

Future global megatrends project a population increase of 2 billion people between 2019 and 2050 and at least 1–2 billion people added to the global middle class between 2016 and 2030. In addition, 68% of the world's population is projected to be living in urban areas by 2050. With these projected large population increases and shifts, demand for food, water, and energy is projected to grow by approximately 35, 40, and 50%, respectively, between 2010 and 2030. In addition, between 1970 and 2014 there was an estimated 60% reduction in the number of wildlife in the world and an estimated net loss of 2.9 billion birds, or 29%, in North America between 1970 and 2018. Loss of species populations and number of species is interconnected with reduced health of biodiversity and ecosystems. Human activity has been the main catalyst for these substantial declines primarily through impacts on habitats. These losses are accelerating. Since a company's supply chain environmental impacts are often as great or greater than its own direct environmental impacts, it may be prudent for companies to engage with their supply chains to protect and enhance habitats and biodiversity and protect rare, threatened, and endangered species. As one example, companies may have opportunities and strategic reasons to include requirements in their supplier codes of conduct and supplier standards for suppliers to protect biodiversity and rare, threatened, and endangered species, as well as additional requirements to expand or enhance habitats and ecosystems to increase biodiversity. This article follows one pathway that companies could pursue further and with greater speed—to engage with their supply chains to strengthen supplier codes of conduct to protect biodiversity and rare, threatened, and endangered species. The importance of forests, private land, and landscape partnerships is discussed as means to protect much more of the planet's biodiversity and rare, threatened, and endangered species. Lastly, the article identifies examples of opportunities for companies to more formally incorporate biodiversity into their business, supply chain, and sustainability strategies.     

Public Versus Private: Does It Matter for Water Conservation? Insights from California

This article asks three connected questions: First, does the public view private and public utilities differently, and if so, does this affect attitudes to conservation? Second, do public and private utilities differ in their approaches to conservation? Finally, do differences in the approaches of the utilities, if any, relate to differences in public attitudes? We survey public attitudes in California toward (hypothetical but plausible) voluntary and mandated water conservation, as well as to price increases, during a recent period of shortage. We do this by interviewing households in three pairs of adjacent public and private utilities. We also survey managers of public and private urban water utilities to see if they differ in their approaches to conservation and to their customers. On the user side we do not find pronounced differences, though a minority of customers in all private companies would be more willing to conserve or pay higher prices under a public operator. No respondent in public utility said the reverse. Negative attitudes toward private operators were most pronounced in the pair marked by a controversial recent privatization and a price hike. Nonetheless, we find that California’s history of recurrent droughts and the visible role of the state in water supply and drought management undermine the distinction between public and private. Private utilities themselves work to underplay the distinction by stressing the collective ownership of the water source and the collective value of conservation. Overall, California’s public utilities appear more proactive and target-oriented in asking their customers to conserve than their private counterparts and the state continues to be important in legitimating and guiding conservation behavior, whether the utility is in public hands or private.     

Does performance evaluation help public managers? A Balanced Scorecard approach in urban waste services

The urban waste market has evolved significantly in the past decades, which among other changes, has led to the creation of new utilities and new business models. However, very few things have changed for the users. Urban waste collection remains mainly under the responsibility of local authorities and the charges paid by the users in most countries are very low compared to the provision costs. This situation forces the injection of public money into the system, encouraging the ‘quiet-life’ within the utilities and, therefore, inefficiency. The present study intends to analyze the potential for the application of the Balanced Scorecard (BSc) methodology into the waste utilities. After a comprehensive revision of the urban waste sector in Portugal, the methodology of BSc and its application in local public services is described and discussed. Focusing on implementation rather than on strategy, a set of performance indicators is proposed to be utilized in the different management models of waste utilities in Portugal: the municipalities, semi-autonomous utilities, municipal companies and mixed companies. This implementation is then exemplified through four case studies, one for each type of utility. This paper provides a flexible framework proposal to be applied to waste utilities operating both in Portugal and abroad.     

An Assessment of Road Impacts on Wildlife Populations in U.S. National Parks

Current United States National Park Service (NPS) management is challenged to balance visitor use with the environmental and social consequences of automobile use. Wildlife populations in national parks are increasingly vulnerable to road impacts. Other than isolated reports on the incidence of road-related mortality, there is little knowledge of how roads might affect wildlife populations throughout the national park system. Researchers at the Western Transportation Institute synthesized information obtained from a system-wide survey of resource managers to assess the magnitude of their concerns on the impacts of roads on park wildlife. The results characterize current conditions and help identify wildlife-transportation conflicts. A total of 196 national park management units (NPS units) were contacted and 106 responded to our questionnaire. Park resource managers responded that over half of the NPS units’ existing transportation systems were at or above capacity, with traffic volumes currently high or very high in one quarter of them and traffic expected to increase in the majority of units. Data is not generally collected systematically on road-related mortality to wildlife, yet nearly half of the respondents believed road-caused mortality significantly affected wildlife populations. Over one-half believed habitat fragmentation was affecting wildlife populations. Despite these expressed concerns, only 36% of the NPS units used some form of mitigation method to reduce road impacts on wildlife. Nearly half of the respondents expect that these impacts would only worsen in the next five years. Our results underscore the importance for a more systematic approach to address wildlife-roadway conflicts for a situation that is expected to increase in the next five to ten years.     

风景名胜区生物多样性保护的理论与实践——以黄山风景区为例

生物多样性是风景区重要的旅游资源以及环境资源，本文应用景观生态学原理及生物多样性保护的最新理论，探讨了生物多样性保护的方法，包括保护区面积的科学划分以及在面积不足时需要采取的生态学设计，并以黄山风景区为例，对这一理论及方法进行了论证。     

Entangling the Complexity of Protected Area Management: The Case of Wolong Biosphere Reserve,Southwestern China

Protected Area (PA) management is a complex issue that requires the consideration of many factors and relationships. A conceptual framework for the analysis of biodiversity change, local human communities, and PA management was put forward, accordingly. Under the framework, we investigated the economic status, livelihood activities, biodiversity use and perceptions of local communities, and the land use history in Wolong Biosphere Reserve, southwestern China through household survey and document review in order to gain a better understanding of the complexity of PA management. According to the land use history, the preservation of agro-biodiversity, and the raising of productivity, ecological rehabilitation and the regulation of the human pressures are indispensable in the management of the reserve. Livelihood activities and the perceptions of local communities were largely determined by the socioeconomic background, which has important implications in solving the conflicts or incompatibilities in the reserve. In Wolong Biosphere Reserve, it is beneficial to support local farmers in solving their socioeconomic problems such as the overabundance of labor force and the lack of livelihood alternatives. Without this, there will be scarcely any effective biodiversity conservation and successful reserve management in the long term.     

Perceptions and attitudes of land managers in multi-tenure reserve networks and the implications for conservation

Multi-tenure reserve networks aim to connect areas managed for biodiversity conservation across public and private land and address the impacts of fragmentation on both biotic and social systems. The operation and function of Australian multi-tenure reserve networks as perceived by their land managers was investigated. Overall, the conservation of natural assets was the most frequently reported primary reason for involvement in a network. The perceived aims of the respective networks largely reflected the response identified for involvement and management. Over 88% of managers considered their involvement in multi-tenure reserve networks to be a positive or very positive experience. A lack of resources and time for management were considered major limitations of these networks. The majority (80%) of private land managers within networks were willing to be included in a national reserve system of conservation lands. As the Australian National Reserve System currently incorporates mostly public land, these findings have important and potentially positive implications for a greater role for protected private land.     

Maintaining land use agreements in Papua New Guinea Mining: ‘Business as usual’?

Most large scale resource extraction projects in Papua New Guinea (PNG) require companies to negotiate with customary landowners for access to development sites. In the discussion of process and challenges of development and operation of projects, particularly mines, the paper, basing as a case study of land use arrangements in PNG mining, has several objectives to address. First, it discusses land use arrangements in the mining industry and how they have evolved over the last few decades. Today, most of these arrangements involve pluralistic framework agreements which have been shaped by land tenure debates, civil uprisings, government initiatives and increasingly politically savvy customary landowners. This pluralistic process encourages key stakeholder involvement, particularly customary landowner participation which has been an innovative piece of sustainable mineral policy development in PNG. Second, the paper argues that ‘it is not business as usual’ for mining companies as it would generally be the case in developed and many developing countries because they are increasingly forced to be proactive in addressing landowner and community interests while managing mining projects. A brief overview of land use debates in PNG is summarised at the outset to provide background to mining and development in the country. Third, the significance of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) paradigm and its impact on business, particularly the mining industry is acknowledged intermittently in the discussion to shed light on how it is influencing development of local communities. Finally, the paper argues that the post-Bougainville period has led to a change of the old enclave model of mining development to a broad based community driven form of development around mining. However, it is difficult to predict as to how this model of mining led development in rural PNG will span out in the long run. In the meantime, genuine landowner partnerships with developers and government in the management and operation of mining projects in the country are proving to be a positive outcome for everyone despite some major challenges.     

Catalyzing Collaboration: Wisconsin’s Agency-Initiated Basin Partnerships

Experience with collaborative approaches to natural resource and environmental management has grown substantially over the past 20 years, and multi-interest, shared-resources initiatives have become prevalent in the United States and internationally. Although often viewed as “grass-roots” and locally initiated, governmental participants are crucial to the success of collaborative efforts, and important questions remain regarding their appropriate roles, including roles in partnership initiation. In the midst of growing governmental support for collaborative approaches in the mid-1990s, the primary natural resource and environmental management agency in Wisconsin (USA) attempted to generate a statewide system of self-sustaining, collaborative partnerships, organized around the state’s river basin boundaries. The agency expected the partnerships to enhance participation by stakeholders, leverage additional resources, and help move the agency toward more integrated and ecosystem-based resource management initiatives. Most of the basin partnerships did form and function, but ten years after this initiative, the agency has moved away from these partnerships and half have disbanded. Those that remain active have changed, but continue to work closely with agency staff. Those no longer functioning lacked clear focus, were dependent upon agency leadership, or could not overcome issues of scale. This article outlines the context for state support of collaborative initiatives and explores Wisconsin’s experience with basin partnerships by discussing their formation and reviewing governmental roles in partnerships’ emergence and change. Wisconsin’s experience suggests benefits from agency support and agency responsiveness to partnership opportunities, but cautions about expectations for initiating general-purpose partnerships.     

Conflict and collective action in Tonle Sap fisheries: adapting governance to support community livelihoods

This paper presents the results of action research conducted from 2009 to 2015 on the dynamics of resource conflict concerning fisheries and livelihoods in the Tonle Sap Lake, as well as the institutional context and strategies for institutional adaptation to address such conflicts equitably. Over the past 15 years, Cambodia has made significant advances in building the policy framework, regulations and institutions to support community‐based fisheries management and increase the sector's contribution to the rural economy. However, fundamental challenges of increased resource conflict and loss of livelihoods by the most vulnerable remain. Key sources of conflict include destructive and illegal fishing practices, clearing of flooded forests, competing uses of land and water, and overlapping resource claims. Addressing these challenges requires collective action by all key actors: local fishers, the private sector, civil society, development partners, and government from the local to the national level. We identify and elaborate upon four governance priorities: (1) clarify roles and responsibilities in fisheries management; (2) link civil society and government efforts in law enforcement; (3) strengthen partnerships for livelihoods development; and (4) integrate fisheries management into decentralised development planning.     

Integrated urban water resources management

The paper focuses on the organizational and institutional issues of water resources management strategies. It considers both as cross-sectoral issues, and in terms of the communication and coordination of activities among all levels of sector agencies. It concentrates heavily on the economic aspects of planning for urban and other water use. Over the past few decades tremendous progress has been made in providing basic water supply and sanitation to the people of the world. Nevertheless, much remains to be accomplished. The only way of resolving this problem appears to be to make the current utilities more effective economically. The single most important policy improvement would be to ensure that each utility covers its operating costs as well as its capital costs by the economic pricing of water use.     

Economic and environmental optimization of a multi-site utility network for an industrial complex

Most chemical companies consume a lot of steam, water and electrical resources in the production process. Given recent record fuel costs, utility networks must be optimized to reduce the overall cost of production. Environmental concerns must also be considered when preparing modifications to satisfy the requirements for industrial utilities, since wastes discharged from the utility networks are restricted by environmental regulations. Construction of Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) has drawn attention as a promising approach for retrofitting existing industrial parks to improve energy efficiency. The optimization of the utility network within an industrial complex is one of the most important undertakings to minimize energy consumption and waste loads in the EIP.In this work, a systematic approach to optimize the utility network of an industrial complex is presented. An important issue in the optimization of a utility network is the desire of the companies to achieve high profits while complying with the environmental regulations. Therefore, the proposed optimization was performed with consideration of both economic and environmental factors.The proposed approach consists of unit modeling using thermodynamic principles, mass and energy balances, development of a multi-period Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model for the integration of utility systems in an industrial complex, and an economic/environmental analysis of the results. This approach is applied to the Yeosu Industrial Complex, considering seasonal utility demands. The results show that both the total utility cost and waste load are reduced by optimizing the utility network of an industrial complex.     

A comprehensive set of resource use indicators from the micro to the macro level

Many of today's most urgent environmental problems arise from increasing volumes of worldwide production and consumption and the associated use of natural resources, including renewable and non-renewable raw materials, energy, water and land. Solid indicators to measure different dimensions of anthropogenic resource use are essential for designing appropriate policy measures for a sustainable management of these resources. Based on a brief review of the current state of the art of resource use indicators, this paper suggests a new set of complementary resource use indicators, combining existing measures for resource use. The suggested indicator set covers the core resource input categories of materials, water and land area and includes the output category of greenhouse gas emissions. This set can be applied consistently from the micro level of products and companies up to the macro level of countries and world regions. All suggested indicators take a life-cycle wide perspective on production and consumption activities. This set of indicators deals with the issue of the overall scale of the human production and consumption system. It can be regarded as the general indicator framework, based on which more specific indicators, for example, on different environmental impacts related to natural resource use, can be calculated.