Social cost of environmental pollution and application of counter measures through clean development mechanism: in the context of developing countries

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*) = ∑MD_i (x*) where ∑D_i (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.     

Insularization and polymorphism in marginal island populations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pinus sylvestris</Emphasis> L.

Comparative allozyme analysis of 26 marginal island populations of Pinus sylvestris L. and 20 populations from the center of the species range has confirmed, at the species level, the Wright-Dubinin “island model” of automatic genetic processes and Mayr’s hypothesis about homozygotization of small isolated populations at range boundaries. It has been shown that the polymorphism of isolated populations sharply decreases when their area is reduced below 15–20 km² and increases to the level observed in the center of the range when the population area exceeds 50–100 km². A chorogenetic classification of marginal P. sylvestris populations is proposed.     

Design considerations for environmental sustainability in high density development: a case study of Hong Kong

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.     

Defining climate-change victims

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.     

Mapping the global supply and demand structure of rice

Rice plays a major role in the global supply and demand for sustainable food production. The constraints of maintaining sustainable rice production are closely linked to the relationship between the distribution patterns of human activity on the planet and economic growth. Global patterns of rice production can be mapped by using various criteria linked to domestic income, population patterns, and associated satellite brightness data of rice-producing regions. Prosperous regions have more electric lighting, and there are documented correlations between gross domestic product (GDP) and nighttime light. We chose to examine global rice production patterns on a geographical basis. For the purposes of this study, each country is considered to be made up of regions, and rice production is discussed in terms of regional distribution. A region is delineated by its administrative boundaries; the number of regions where rice is produced is about 13,839. We used gridded spatial population distribution data overlain by nocturnal light imagery derived from satellite imagery. The resultant relationship revealed a correlation between regional income (nominal values of GDP were used) and rice production in the world. The following criteria were used to examine the supply and demand structure of rice. Global rice consumption = “caloric rice consumption per capita per day” multiplied by “regional population values”. Regional rice yields = “country-based production” divided by “harvested area” (multiple harvests are taken into account). Regional rice production = “regional harvested areas” multiplied by “rice yield values”. We compared regional rice consumption and production values according to these methods. Analysis of the data sets generated a map of rice supply and demand. Inter-regional shipping costs were not accounted for. This map can contribute to the understanding of food security issues in rice-producing regions and to estimating potential population values in such regions.     

The idea of sustainable development

In this lecture, I demonstrate how very different macroeconomic history begins to look if Nature is included as a capital asset in production activities. The tentative conclusions I draw from the evidence are: (1) high population growth in the world’s poorest regions (South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa) has been an obstacle to the achievement of sustainable economic development there; relatedly, (2) when population growth is taken into account, the accumulation of manufactured capital, knowledge, and human capital (health and education) has not compensated for the degradation of natural capital in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and, in all probability, even in the UK and the US; (3) China is possibly an exception to (1) and (2). This article is based on the Keynote Lecture delivered at the international symposium on “Sustainability in an Unequal World”, held in Tokyo on November 24, 2006. The exposition relies on my book, Economics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. The author is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge.     

A “measurable” definition of sustainable development based on closed cycles of resources and its application to energy systems

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.     

Soil erosion tolerance and water runoff control: minimum environmental standards

Council Regulations (EC) No 1257/1999 and the EU Soil Thematic Strategy give great importance to soil and land conservation to develop knowledge driven governance for rural development. In the hilly areas of Italy cultivated intensively, and especially in the ones devoted to viticulture, agricultural practices determine high loss of soil with consequent degradation of the soil resource. In addition to it, offsite effects of soil erosion can be unsustainable, due to sediment transfer to the channel network and infrastructures. In order to achieve a sustainable rural development there is a need for tools and instruments to allow European regional administrations, to develop, implement, manage and monitor rural development plans. To counteract the environmental threats intensified by agricultural activity, the environmental functions “soil erosion control” and “water runoff control” were investigated in the Chianti area by using GIS. To determine the EMR (Environmental Minimum Requirements) values for soil erosion the “regeneration” capability of soils was considered, and the value of estimated soil loss was compared with the value of soil reformation. A scenario analysis was also performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the agroenvironmental measure “grass cover” in reducing erosion. The concept of tolerable erosion based on soil productivity and soil reformation rate only is reductive and off-site effects of soil erosion should be also taken into account. For this reason, it was proposed to extend the concept of hydrogeological risk to soil erosion by implementing the notion of soil erosion tolerance (T) with the new concept of environmental risk of soil erosion (ERSE). The new ERSE index takes into account all the in- and off-farm externalities of soil erosion. For this reason, it can be considered an aggregated environmental indicator that enables policy makers to evaluate the impacts of soil erosion by following an holistic approach.     

Correction to: Quantifying carbon footprint for ecological river restoration

Environment, Development and Sustainability - The article “Quantifying carbon footprint for ecological river restoration”, written by “Yiwen Chiu, Yi Yang and Cody Morse”,...     

Impacts of climatic disasters in coastal Bangladesh: why does private adaptive capacity differ?

This paper quantitatively assesses the influences of various demographic and socio-economic factors, past adaptive behavioral factors, access to weather/climate information, and spatial/locational factors on coastal populations’ perceived adaptive capacity against major impacts of hydro-meteorological disasters on their livelihood. A total of 285 respondents from three coastal villages in Bangladesh were randomly interviewed between January and April 2009. Respondents rated their perceived adaptive capacity against 25 anticipated impacts of sea-level rise (SLR)-induced events on their livelihood. By employing the principal component analysis (PCA), perceived adaptive capacity was grouped into five major categories. Then, an adaptive capacity index for each of five major impacts, namely, “infrastructure damage and disrupted mobility,” “food and nutritional insecurity,” “low earning and higher cost of maintenance,” “loss of employment in offshore activities,” and “crisis of potable water and public health risk,” was prepared. How adaptive capacity against each of these major five categories of impacts differs due to the influence of various factors was assessed by employing the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) technique. The MANOVAs show that age, sex, level of education, type of occupation, farmland holdings, past adaptive behavior against rainfall, salinity intrusion, freshwater crises, use of radio for weather information, and the distance of the homestead from the shoreline have varying levels of influence on respondents’ perceived adaptive capacity against each of the five major categories of impacts. Others factors have moderate to limited influences. The policy implication is that specific programs, rather than a generic one-size fits all program, must be initiated for enhancement of adaptive capacity against specific impacts.     

Phenotypic variation in Ural and Siberian populations of the heath <Emphasis Type="Italic">Coenonympha amaryllis</Emphasis> (Stoll, 1782)

Phenotypic variation in the widespread Siberian and Mongolian butterfly species Coenonympha amaryllis (Stoll, 1782), an indicator of undisturbed steppe communities, is analyzed. It is shown that its size variation is influenced by a complex of climatic factors, the most important of them being the average starting date of the frost-free period and average annual temperature in the region. Longitude-dependent variation in size is described by a “sawtooth curve” characteristic of species with changing voltinism.     

Sustainable metal management exemplified by copper in the USA

A sustainable management of non-renewable metals calls for scientific-ecological understanding of the regional material household. The copper household in the USA between 1900 and 2100 was chosen to illustrate mathematical modelling of such systems. Relatively limited and inaccurate sets of data already allow a first approximation of the metal management system. The copper fluxes of the 20th century have contributed to the formation of two new ore deposits of the same order of magnitude as the currently still available reservoir (90 million tons), i.e. copper stock in consumption products (approx. 70 million tons) and in landfills (approx. 40 million tons). The “landfill”, therefore, contains copper whose potential use is lost due to dilution. The long-term copper consumption stock is greater than the short-term stock. Scenarios show that the current economically mineable Cu-stocks will be exhausted in 30 to 50 years if a change in the existing management system does not occur. In case of a reorientation, the use of copper as a “new resource” in the consumption stocks appears to be the most promising strategy. The future waste management processes will have to increase their copper recycling rates. Received: 24 February 1999 · Accepted: 8 June 1999     

Commentary: the challenge of quantifying susceptibility to drought-related crisis

This paper is a response to a recent special issue of Regional Environmental Change, “Quantifying vulnerability to drought from different disciplinary perspectives” (vol. 8, number 4, 2008). In this paper, we examine some of the challenges facing efforts to understand vulnerability to drought through quantification as they are manifest in some of the articles in this special issue.

Development paths of drylands: thresholds and sustainability

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.     

A normative model of balanced nature management

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.     

Understanding deforestation in the southern Yucatán: insights from a sub-regional, multi-temporal analysis

The southern Yucatán has been identified as a deforestation hot spot. Land-change studies document the extent of forest loss at a regional scale, and case studies provide insights into the drivers of deforestation at the household level. Those studies have paid minimal attention to sub-regional analysis, especially to discrete land-management units above the household level. This analysis of upland forest change addresses the range of variation in deforestation among 96 ejidos (communal lands) and the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, the two dominant land-tenure and land-management units in the region. Satellite imagery, census, and land-tenure data are used to establish the extent and location of deforestation patterns, and multivariate techniques are employed to identify biophysical and socioeconomic variables that explain such patterns. Results show that, for the 1984–1993 period, deforestation in the southern Yucatán was not as prevalent as implied by its hot spot designation. Three clusters of deforestation are identified. A logistic regression analysis establishes that size of forest holdings, population growth, and location in the precipitation gradient correlate with ejidos that experienced higher deforestation rates than the rest of the land-tenure units. For the 1993–2000 period, conservation programs and changes in the economic context of this “hollow frontier” contributed to reduce deforestation rates and extent. This analysis illustrates the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of much tropical forest change and caution that it should bring to simple formulations of modeling this change and prescribing policies to control it.     

Mating systems in the steppe lemming (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Lagurus lagurus)</Emphasis> and narrow-skulled vole (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Microtus gregalis</Emphasis>) from the Northern Kulunda Steppe

A comparative analysis of reproductive behavior has been performed in the steppe lemming (Lagurus lagurus) and narrow-skulled vole (Microtus gregalis). The results show that the species are similar in certain behavioral features indicative of the stability of mating pairs. However, in the narrow-skulled vole, unlike in the steppe lemming, mature males in olfactory tests show preference for receptive sibling females versus non-kin females. Probably, it is the absence of the incest taboo that allows the involvement of young of the year in reproduction within growing family groups and accounts for “coloniality” of the species.     

Formation of the resource concept in Japan: pre-war and post-war efforts in knowledge integration

The objective of this paper is to trace the evolution of the resource concept in modern Japan by highlighting key individuals who played major roles in communicating this idea to a wider audience during its formation and development between the 1910s and 1950s. Special attention will be paid to the effect of different historical contexts on interpretations of the term “resource”. The paper reveals how the integration of knowledge indispensable for achieving sustainability occurs. The orientation of resource policy was drastically different before and after World War II. In the pre-war period, the military government used the resource concept to create a comprehensive inventory of the nation’s military forces, and “resource” was thus a convenient term to neutralize the aggressive connotations of top-down military mobilization. After the turn to democratic principles in 1945, “resource” suddenly acquired a symbolic meaning as a means to serve the people. Despite these contrasts, however, pre and post-war resource concepts share a commonality in that the government acted as the centralizing force, providing a platform to integrate disparate knowledge under the resource concept. At a time when society itself is more prone to fragmentation, the resource concept, which played a significant role in unification in the past, should be re-examined. The history of the concept in Japan, particularly during the pre and post-war period up until the 1950s, contains a wealth of insights as to how this can be achieved.

A toxicity assessment of soils sampled from the Balapan site of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site

Toxicity of soils sampled from the area of the “Chagan” explosion (the Balapan site of the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, Kazakhstan) were assayed with the use of biological tests and physicochemical analysis. Soils from the most part (2.56 km² out of 4 km²) of the area studied were found to be toxic. Soil aqueous extracts toxicity substantially resulted from ¹³⁷Cs and ⁹⁰Sr effects. The soil toxicity assessment with the use of biological test—an increase Chlorella vulgaris Beijer. biomass production after 24 exposure of soil aqueous extracts in 63% cases are in agree with conclusions on the degree of radioactive contamination based on Basic Sanitary Rules of Radiation Safety (BSRRS-99). The IAEA safety norms were found to be quite stricter than the results of the biological test.     

Contemporary changes in open water surface area of Lake Inle, Myanmar

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.