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1.
Fabio Orecchini 《Sustainability Science》2007,2(2):245-252
Human society consumes resources that it is not able to reproduce. Human activities are still based on “open cycles,” starting
from a condition of natural environmental balance and reaching an environmental imbalance. The challenging scope of scientific
and technological research towards sustainability appears clear if it is based on this analysis: to find development systems
based on “closed cycles” of resources. The challenging objective of realizing closed cycles leads to a definition of sustainability
that indicates the path to sustainable development, as well as stating the general principle. It also provides a key to the
qualitative measurement of sustainability. This means that the sustainability level of a system can be measured by measuring
its capacity to avoid the consumption of resources. Zero consumption is a necessary condition for sustainability, and brings
about as a side effect the highly desired “zero-waste” result. Materials entering the proposed endless scheme pass through
the process of usefulness without losing their capacity to feed the system again after being used. Thus, the concept of “consumption”
itself is replaced by one of “use” when resources are inserted into closed loops capable of feeding human development. The
application of the closed cycle sustainability criterion particularly displays its feasibility, and a theoretical guiding
role, in the energy sector. Energy vectors such as hydrogen and electricity enable the closure of the energy resources loop
by effectively approaching the objective of “zero consumption” (and the side result of “zero waste”) through already demonstrated
technological solutions. 相似文献
2.
This study has indicated that there is close relationship between development density and environmental quality; therefore,
it is necessary to decide the form of development carefully beforehand. The form of development is shaped either by new development
or urban renewal which is a major tactic nowadays adopted by the Hong Kong Government to improve the living condition of the
citizens and the quality of the built environment. This study is limited to urban renewal and aims to find out the major urban
design considerations for sustaining the environment. Through a questionnaire survey carried out in Hong Kong, the opinions
of architects, planners, property development managers, and local citizens were sought and evaluated, and critical design
factors for enhancing environmental sustainability of urban renewal projects are highlighted. The results derived from factor
analysis indicated that certain design considerations should be incorporated for sustaining the urban environment. “Land Use
Planning”, “Quality of Life”, “Conservation & Preservation”, “Integrated Design”, “Provision of Welfare Facilities”, and “Conservation
of Existing Properties” were believed to be the significant underlying factors for achieving environmental sustainability
of local urban renewal projects.
Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue. 相似文献
3.
Jeanine M. Pfeiffer Sisilia Dun Bonafantura Mulawarman Kevin J. Rice 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2006,8(4):609-625
Traditional crop landraces play dynamic roles in the expression of native biological and cultural diversity via their central position in the genetic resource base, agroecosystems and social heritage of indigenous peoples. Farmer varieties provide farmers with an “agricultural survival kit” for household welfare and for adaptation to changing conditions. These varieties meet local cultural practices and environmental constraints, and play an intrinsic role in cultural survival by constituting a living repository of ancestral customs including cultivar-specific recipes, songs, handicrafts, stories of origin, and unique planting, harvesting, processing, and storage rituals and techniques. The centrality of rice in Southeast Asian agricultural and social systems, contrasted with the significant erosion of rice-based biological and cultural diversity in native communities, calls for increased attention to the links between traditional rice varieties and indigenous rice-based customs. This study represents the research efforts of rice farmers pertaining to the Tado clan, a Kempo Manggarai community on Flores␣Island, in association with USA academicians. Research results demonstrate: (i) a complex suite of upland rice-based ethnobotanical traditions; (ii) significant and␣dynamic regional flux and dissemination of “old” and “new” landraces; (iii)␣community-level maintenance of distinct genotypes across a range of microenvironments; (iv) localized “extinctions” of ancestral landraces within 1–2 generations and a concomitant loss of related traditions; and (v) the contributions of a collaborative (indigenous and academic) approach to ethnographic and agronomic research. 相似文献
4.
Defining climate-change victims 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
This article introduces the concept of “climate-change victims” and classifies categories of threats and groups of people
who would be vulnerable to and victimized by human-induced climate change. (The full, correct wording is “human-induced climate-change
victims”, but we will use just “climate-change victims” in the rest of the article.) It offers a definition with three levels
of climate-change victimization and differentiates “climate-change victims” from “natural-disasters victims” and from “climate-change
migrants”. The article sets an agenda for a new type of victimhood and could lead to further research on possible prevention,
accountability measures, environmental tribunals, and compensation mechanisms to recompense climate-change victims. 相似文献
5.
Yosef Jabareen 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2008,10(2):179-192
A critical review of the multidisciplinary literature on sustainable development reveals a lack of a comprehensive theoretical
framework for understanding sustainable development and its complexities. A critical review shows that the definitions of
sustainable development are vague; there is a lack of operative definitions and disagreement over what should be sustained;
the concept is unclear in terms of emotional commitment; and it “remains a confused topic”, “fraught with contradictions”.
This article aims to theoretically synthesize the interdisciplinary literature on sustainable development, and then identify
the results by broad categories. Therefore, this article uses conceptual analysis, which reviews multidisciplinary literature
on sustainable development, which recognizes patterns and similarities within the literature, then it synthesizes the patterns
to different categories and independent concepts, where each concept has distinctive meanings and represents close ideas on
sustainability. The analytical process elaborates seven concepts that together assemble the theoretical framework of ‘sustainable
development’ and each concept represents distinctive meanings of the theoretical framework. 相似文献
6.
The developing countries i.e., the non-Annex-I countries (parties to the Kyoto Protocol but not responsible to any reduction
target yet) in the Kyoto Protocol whose economies are in transition are also allowed to reduce GHG emissions. Among these,
the countries that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol may be benefited from CDM projects to promote sustainable development.
The developed countries i.e., the Annex-I countries (that have signed the Kyoto Protocol & are responsible to have specific
GHG emission reduction target) or the investing countries, in return, have privilege to purchase CER credits (in units equivalent
to one tonne of CO2 gas emission reduction) to meet the emission target as specified in the Kyoto Protocol. The key step in understanding about
CDM is to grasp the concept of “baseline” and “additionality”. The “Baseline” is the emissions level that would have existed if a CDM project had not happened. The feature of an approved CDM project
is that the planned reductions would not occur without the additional incentive provided by emission reduction credits; this
concept is known as “Additionality”. According to environmental additionality concept, baseline emission minus project emission is equal to emissions reduction.
“Investment Additionality,” ultimately rejected during negotiation of the “Marrakech Accords” and “Financial Additionality,” are the two important concepts. The concept of trading of CER matches to the idea of Pigovian tax (equal to the negative externality and which is considered one of the “traditional” means of bringing a modicum of market
forces) in Economics, making pollution more costly to the polluter, as the polluters have negative cost since they save money
by polluting; hence, there are supposed negative externalities associated with the market activity. Economic theory predicts
that in an economy where the cost of reaching mutual agreement between parties is high and where pollution is diffuse, Pigovian
tax will be an efficient way to promote the public interest and will lead to an improvement of the quality of life measured
by the Genuine Progress Indicator and other human economic indicators, as well as higher gross domestic product growth. We
can seek a level of pollution such that the marginal savings (MS) to one polluting unit from pollution (−MC) is equal to marginal
damage (MD) from pollution over the entire population, since pollution is a public bad i.e., MS (x*) = ∑MDi (x*) where ∑Di (x) is the total damage. Though the responsibility of reduction in emission does not lie on the non-Annex-I countries, still
effort of maintaining global emission balance can be expected equally from developed and developing countries. The responsibilities
of Kyoto Protocol are (a) to reduce global GHG emissions, (b) to bring about sustainable development in the developing countries
lie on above two groups since its effect on February 16, 2005. Different polluters have different costs of pollution control.
The least costly way of controlling pollution from various sources that reflects different costs of pollution control making
the set of environmental regulations to achieve the emission target at the lowest cost makes the regulation cost-effective.
Though efficiency is not attainable for many regulations, cost-effectiveness is attainable. 相似文献
7.
Filippo Randelli 《Regional Environmental Change》2009,9(3):221-229
Up to now, the “low” price of oil has prevented the development of alternative fuels but with the current high price and increasing
scarcity, biofuels could become an economically attractive alternative. However, the economic assessment of biofuels has to
take into account total production costs, including impact on agriculture, and the energy balance of first generation alternative
fuels (biodiesel and bioethanol). Moreover, plans to produce biofuels from agriculture should not be achieved without considering
the latest developments and reforms of the common agricultural policy, which promotes a change towards sustainable rural development
based on multifunctional agriculture. From the analysis carried out, it emerges that first generation biofuels do not seem
to be the best solution because of high production cost, limited land availability and low net energy balance. Furthermore,
only a small quantity of biofuels can be produced as alternative to fossil oil because an incremental production will lead
to the rising of agri-food prices. Only second generation biofuels could be a possible solution, although they still require
much supplementary research and analysis. 相似文献
8.
Jacqueline Geoghegan Deborah Lawrence Laura C. Schneider Katherine Tully 《Regional Environmental Change》2010,10(3):247-260
To assess the impact of land-use change on carbon stocks, we apply a new methodology, linking ecological and economic modeling,
to southern Yucatan, Mexico. A spatial econometric multinomial logit model of ten land-cover classes is estimated (four primary
forest categories, three secondary growth categories, an invasive species, and two agricultural land-cover categories), using
satellite data on land cover, linked with census socioeconomic data and other biophysical spatial data from 2000. The analysis
is novel in that it is the first attempt to link detailed satellite data on land use, with on-the-ground estimates of carbon
stocks in a spatial econometric model of land use. The estimated multinomial logit model is then used with two scenarios of
future economic growth (“low growth” and “high growth” changes in population, agricultural land use, market access, and education
levels) in the region to predict land-cover changes resulting from the economic growth. The per hectare carbon (C) stocks
in each land-cover class are derived from previously published estimates of biomass from field sampling across the study region.
We consider aboveground-only, aboveground plus soil, transient and non-transient pools of carbon. These estimates are scaled
up to the total area in each class according to the predictions of the model baseline and the two development scenarios. Subsequently,
the changes in carbon stocks resulting from the predicted land-cover changes are calculated. Under the low growth scenario,
carbon stocks declined by 5%; under the high growth scenario, losses were 12%. Including soil C, the proportional losses were
lower, but the absolute amount lost was more than double (to 6 Tg C under the low and almost 15 Tg C under the high-growth
scenario). This methodology could be further developed for applications in global change policy, such as payments for environmental
services (PES) or reduction in emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). 相似文献
9.
Z. J. U. Malley M. Taeb T. Matsumoto 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(1):175-195
Sustainable agricultural development is a necessity for sustainable economic growth and social development in Africa. Sustainable
agriculture largely depends on how effective natural and environmental resources are managed and utilized; it also depends
on the security of continuous access to such resources. This research was aimed to look into trends in agricultural productivity,
examine the persistence of the environmental insecurity, analyze the relationship between the two, and explore their links
to the national development policies. The results are discussed in the context of relevance to national development policies
and their implications on the sustainability of agriculture and rural livelihoods security. Literature survey, records collection
from the stakeholders, village level participatory assessments (PAs), observations and questionnaire survey were tools used
for data collection. The study shows significant (P < 0.01) declines in cereal crop yields, cattle milk yield and cattle calving rate, and increasing cattle mortality rate.
Elements of environmental insecurity were found to account for decline in agricultural productivity; significant (P < 0.01) proportion (68%), of 266 households interviewed, reported land resources deterioration, declining soil fertility,
and increasing drought frequencies as the causes of their low productivity. Declined fertilizer consumption and increasing
variability in rainfall amount significantly (P < 0.01) accounted for 59% and 39%, respectively, of the variations observed in total annual production of rice and maize,
which are major cereals in the study area. This study recommends measures to improve soil productivity such as improved fertilizer
application and use of organic manures along with mineral fertilizers for maintaining soil productivity; education of farmers
on sustainable use and management of land resources; and pro-poor rural policies in agricultural development and environmental
governance.
Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue. 相似文献
10.
Rural settlement expansion and paddy soil loss across an ex-urbanizing watershed in eastern coastal China during market transition 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Shiliang Su Qi Zhang Zhonghao Zhang Junjun Zhi Jiaping Wu 《Regional Environmental Change》2011,11(3):651-662
Historically, paddy soils are the most valuable natural resources that produce about 90% of staple food in eastern coastal
China. Dispersed patterns of rapid rural settlement expansion, or “exurban”, are recognized as key threats to the region’s
food security through paddy soil loss. Analyzing the process of ex-urbanization and its impact has profound implications for
the sustainable development of rural China. Based on official statistics and data derived from satellite images, dynamics
of rural settlement expansion and paddy soil loss were outlined for Tiaoxi watershed during China’s market transition period
(1994–2003). Particularly, rural settlements became more aggregated and total area expanded by 183% at an average rate of
12.3% per year for the whole watershed. Existing cores, open areas away from urban centers and areas near major transportation
lines and river channels, observed the highest specialization in rural residential growth. Being closely associated with rural
settlement in spatial distribution, open large paddy soil patches acted as another kind of center for rural settlement expansion
within the landscape. Variations in rural settlement expansion were detected among different-tier counties, such as speed
of rural settlement expansion, speed of build-ups growth per capita. These variations were closely related to social-economic
development. The rapid rural settlement expansion led to a considerable loss of paddy soil, about 11% of the total amount
for the whole watershed. Linear regression identified a significant relationship between paddy soil loss and rural settlement
expansion. Given the social and ecological problems associated with paddy soil loss, we argue that innovative and effective
planning policies as well as management programs that target at paddy soil protection should be developed and implemented
in rural China. In particular, we suggest using watershed as an appropriate spatial unit for sustainable paddy soil management
in this investigation. 相似文献
11.
Valentine Vishnevsky Ivan Aleksandrov Alexey Polovyan 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2011,13(1):65-78
Management of the old industrial regions’ development is a very actual problem, in particular for the post-Soviet countries.
It is connected with the fact that the purposes of manufacture modernization which provide employment and incomes of the population
of such regions, can contradict requirements of environmental protection. Here the most different scenarios of development
are possible which need to be evaluated. Usual neoclassical criteria for this purpose do not match. Therefore, in our paper,
there was a task to develop such criterion which can be used for regulation of the old industrial regions’ development taking
into account the environmental factor. The paper begins with construction of regional economy model. Our model based on the
J. Forrester's “world model” idea, i.e. it considers the influence of environmental pollution (atmosphere, water, earth) on
the population disease level, and then—on the lifetime and the human capital; the latter ones are considered as one of the
most important factors of the economic growth. On the ground of this model, the consequences for realization of different
scenarios of the regional economy development are estimated. To substantiate the regulation of regional economy, the criterion
of sustainable development, based on the idea of simultaneous improvement of economic and ecological parameters, is offered.
The main feature of the criterion offered is that, first of all, it guarantees simultaneous improvement of each of the chosen
indicators of the region’s development, and, second, allows considering interests of various coalition groups by finding realistic
compromises at a choice of ways of old industrial regions’ development. 相似文献
12.
Drylands (41 and 35% of global land and population, respectively) have the lowest biological productivity of any ecosystem,
contain populations with the highest growth rates on earth, and share a significant fraction of global poverty for which desertification
is implicated. A global assessment of the available information indicates that the inherent low productivity of drylands,
when combined with other adverse factors, can generate poverty. It additionally indicates that while the drylands may exist
in a locally stable and sustainable state, this is readily destabilized by non-linear, threshold-crossing transitions to an
alternative steady-state leading to desertification, poverty and conflicts. The “desertification paradigm” (human and climatological
pressures driving overexploitation of land resources, leading to desertification, poverty and reduced security) is challenged
by its “counter-paradigm” (adversity elicits innovation, leading to ingenuous solutions for avoiding desertification). But
the latter does not account for the inevitability of continued and increasing pressure on the finite dryland resources, expected
to be further exacerbated by a globally increasing need for agricultural land. A companion paper points out that this situation
can be avoided by reducing dependence on land productivity, through adoption of “alternative livelihoods.” These livelihoods,
while economically advantageous, reduce pressure on land resources. 相似文献
13.
Laura K. Schmitt 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(1):19-42
Soil erosion in many parts of the developing world poses a threat to rural livelihoods, to the sustainbility of the agricultural
sector, and to the environment. Most erosion prediction models are mechanistic and unsuited to quantify the severity of soil
erosion in a data-limited developing world context. The model developed in this paper for Negros Island, in the central Philippines,
is based on the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation, but contains important innovations such as the movement of eroded soil
over the landscape, simulating deposition on lower slopes and in waterways. It also includes a term describing farmer strategies
to reduce soil erosion, which are typically ignored in erosion prediction models. A two-sample t-test found that model-predicted sediment loading values were not significantly different from field-measured sediment loading
values when corrected for watershed size (P = 0.857). The model predicts an annual loss of 2.7 million cubic meters of sediment to waterways such that by 2050 more than
416,000 ha of agricultural land will be rendered unproductive due to erosion. Farmer behavior conserves soil, but on the steepest
slopes soil conservation practices are not adequate to prevent erosion. Of two proposed strategies to control soil erosion
in the rural Philippines, the model suggests that a complete switch to tree crops would conserve more soil than universal
terrace adoption. However, even under these conservation scenarios, erosion threatens the areal extent of upland agriculture
on Negros, and hence the sustainability of the island’s food supply.
相似文献
Laura K. SchmittEmail: |
14.
Industrial ecology: engineered representation of sustainability 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Industrial ecology is a relatively new field of research and academic study and is well established in North America and in
several Asian countries. However, it has not yet received the attention it deserves in some other important parts of the industrialized
world, including Germany. This paper may contribute to a better appreciation of industrial ecology as a tool in the process
of sustainable development of economies, social systems, and of aquatic and terrestrial biotopes under the pressure of rapidly
changing conditions triggered by global warming and urban growth. For this reason, methods are needed to quantify the successful
application of industrial ecology measures. The “Integrated Sustainability Triangle” is introduced as a promising new possibility
of quantification and monitoring. It enables justification of the contributions industrial ecology can make to sustainable
development. The aggregation of individual economic contributions is assumed to create an overall impetus to the entire industrial
sector including the sector of environmental engineering. Thus, the potential of industrial ecology is discussed from the
macro-economic and the engineering perspective using the concept of sustainable development as a guiding principle. But the
authors come to the conclusion that finding solutions to the pressing problems of our time requires more than collaboration
of economy and engineering. It requires joint efforts of the whole spectrum of scientific disciplines in close collaboration
with industrial and political stakeholders. 相似文献
15.
The risk of erroneous regulation in multilevel normative environmental chains, at the federal, regional, and lower levels,
down to the corporate one, has been studied. This risk has been demonstrated to increase unacceptably rapidly in the framework
of the existing system of “unconditional acceptance” of normative standards. To mend the situation, it is necessary to use
the “conditional acceptance” model by regarding post hoc decisions made at higher levels as a priori ones at the next (lower)
levels. A strategy of environmentally and economically balanced corporate regulation of nature management through minimization
of the losses resulting from both excessive caution and breaching the existing regulations has been proposed. This system,
combined with the European approach to nature conservation, requires that the “riskless” regulation should be abandoned and
is expected to improve the parameters of nature management quality by three to four orders of magnitude. 相似文献
16.
A. B. Savinov 《Russian Journal of Ecology》2011,42(3):179-185
According to the basic concept of the theory dealt with in this study, autocenosis, i.e., a self-regulatory host-symbiont system, rather than an individual, is the individual-level unit. Then, democenosis, which is a system of autocenoses, corresponds to the population level. Therefore, natural selection of autocenoses rather
than individuals occurs in a democenosis, and auto- and democenoses, rather than “individuals” and “populations,” are components
of food chains and webs. However, the symbiotic approach does not exclude the population paradigm and will be developed in
parallel with it. 相似文献
17.
From 1935 to 2000, the net open water area of Inle Lake in Central Shan State, Myanmar decreased from 69.10 to 46.69 km2, a loss of 32.4% during this 65-year period. Local beliefs are that losses in lake area have been even greater within the
last 100–200 years. Various activities, including timber removal, shifting agriculture in the uplands by various ethnic groups,
and unsustainable cultivation practices on the low- and mid-level hillslopes around the lake, have been blamed for both historical
and ongoing sedimentation. We take issue with attributing loss of lake area to these activities, and propose instead that
ongoing “in-lake” and “near-lake” agricultural practices are the main sources of contemporary sediment and loss of open water
area. About 93% (i.e., 20.84 km2) of the recent loss in open water area of the lake is due to the development of floating garden agriculture, largely along
the west side of the lake. Direct environmental impacts associated with this practice and with other agriculture activities
within the wetlands and margins of the lake include sedimentation, eutrophication, and pollution. Whilst the sustainability
of hillslope agriculture and past forestry practices can indeed be questioned, a more urgent need is to address these "in-lake"
and "near-lake" practices. 相似文献
18.
Storm surges: perspectives and options 总被引:4,自引:1,他引:3
This review paper attempts to summarize the scattered and fragmented knowledge about past and possible future changing storm-surge
statistics using the particularly well-studied case of the North Sea as an example. For this region, a complete and robust
analysis methodology has been developed in recent years. This methodology is based on dynamical and statistical models. Using
the concept of dynamical downscaling, development during recent decades, when sufficiently good and homogeneous weather data
exist, has been “reconstructed,” and scenarios of possible future change are described. “Localization” allows estimation of
changes at specific sites, e.g., harbors. As local water-level statistics depend not only on climate variations but also on
local modifications of the local bathymetry, new options for adaptation emerge. For the case of Hamburg, an option for such
future adaptations is discussed. 相似文献
19.
The paper addresses the topic of wealth accumulation in Russia. This phenomenon plays an important role for the understanding
and forecasting the future economic and social development of the country. The “westernized” paradigm calls for hard honest
work during the life and approves getting a reward in a form of wealth in the end. When brought to Russia, this paradigm faces
the orthodox traditions and rules together with the post-soviet mental patterns. In this paper, we consider how the pattern
“first accumulate wealth, then consume it” competes with its opposition, the pattern “first consume wealth, then accumulate
it” in Russia. We base our discussion on the consumers’ simple optimization problem, which exhibits a bifurcation between
those two patterns depending on the relation between the consumption “impatience” and the wealth growth rate. We also suggest
a framework to model the phenomenon of unfair wealth through impulse type of wealth development. 相似文献
20.
Soil erosion is considered as a serious threat to agricultural development in developing countries. Soil and water conservation
measures, such as terraces, are often promoted to combat soil erosion and to increase agricultural production. In this paper,
the short-term impact of bench terraces, 2–4 years after their establishment, on soil properties and maize yield in the Peruvian
Andes is analysed and discussed. The results show that bench terraces did not result in any short term change in soil properties,
such as fertility or infiltration capacity. Nevertheless, the bench terraces resulted in 20% higher yields, due to a higher
planting density, compared with adjacent sloping fields. However, this increase in yield was nullified by the loss of area
occupied by the bench terraces. Bench terraces should therefore be accompanied with other measures to intensify agriculture,
such as irrigation or cash crops, to improve the profitability and uptake of bench terraces in the Andes. 相似文献