Systematizing the production of environmental plans: an Australian example

Environmental planning legislation in New South Wales now requires local government authorities to draw up statutory plans that take into account, among other concerns, both the biophysical and the social environmental issues within their jurisdictions. The SIRO-PLAN method of plan production provides a systematic mechanism for fulfilling this requirement. This article describes the application of the method by planning researchers over 18 months to the production of a Local Environmental Plan for a rural local government in New South Wales. The policy formulation, the purposive data collection, and the deliberate adjustment of plans in order to recognize interest group requirements were all found to be valuable features of the method, while the translation of the ultimately chosen land-use plan into the explicit regulatory controls available to the local government authority was found to require further refinement. The capacity of SIRO-PLAN to quantify the resolution of competing environmental concerns in the final plan, although of value to planning researchers, proved too arcane for traditionally trained planners.     

Protecting the National Estate: Issues and practice in Australian Heritage Conservation

Summary The author presents a personal view of the role and functions of both the Australian Heritage Commission and the Australian Register of the National Estate. Operational problems are highlighted, and a critique of the Commission and difficulties encountered in working within both national and federal political confines, are outlined. In a decade, the Commission has achieved much towards the preservation of the Australian environment: important in the Commission's current activity is the task of explaining to the lay public precisely what heritage conservation entails and why it is an essential activity.Professor Bruce Davis has been, in the past, Chairman of the Australian Heritage Commission and the contents of this paper are based upon his delivery of an address at the inaugural conference of the Environment Institute of Australia, in Sydney, during November 1987. The views expressed are the personal opinion of the author and should not be construed as necessarily representing the policy of views of any institution with which the author may be connected.     

Tourist Support for Marine Protection in Nha Trang,Viet Nam

Environmental planners often propose tourism as a means of financing programmes to protect significant environmental areas. Surveys of tourists can provide useful information about the significance of environmental problems, trade-offs among policy objectives, willingness to pay (WTP) for protection programmes and preferences for different payment mechanisms. In Khanh Hoa Province, the provincial People's Committee, the Ministry of Fisheries and the World Conservation Union are working to implement Viet Nam's first marine protected area (MPA) in Nha Trang Bay. This paper reports the results of a survey of local and other Vietnamese and foreign tourists to islands that will be included in the MPA. The majority of respondents thought rubbish on the beaches, water pollution and vendors on beaches were problems and that the MPA was a good idea. Foreign tourists were significantly more likely to perceive environmental problems than were Vietnamese tourists, and persons who agreed there were environmental problems were significantly more likely to support the concept of an MPA, despite the potential for possible economic effects with distributive consequences. WTP for protection was modest and positively correlated with education and income. Although foreign tourists were on average willing to pay more, a larger proportion of Vietnamese tourists were willing to pay some amount to support the MPA. Analyses indicate that changes in income and education expected with economic development will increase both awareness of problems and WTP for protection. The results of this analysis are both encouraging and cautionary. The need for an MPA is clearly recognized by most tourists, and most tourists are willing to pay small fees to support the MPA. Given that education has significant impacts on both perceptions of problems and WTP, educational programmes may be an effective strategy for managing the competing objectives of protection and use.     

Appropriate water supply and sanitation technology for developing countries in tropical monsoon climates

Summary In the past, the water supply and sewage services for the urban regions of developing countries have been provided, in the main, only for the more affluent areas of these cities. This paper, dealing especially with those countries with tropical monsoon climates, advocates the construction of more comprehensive systems.Experience drawn from a wide range of projects and a review of the relevant literature provokes the authors to emphasise the need for suitable manuals of appropriate technology for use in these developing countries. These manuals should provide a full set of environmental guidelines for the design of water supply and sewage/sanitation systems for use in these countries.Dr Harvey F. Ludwig is Chairman and Greg Browder is Environmental Engineer for SEATEC International Consulting Engineers, Bangkok, Thailand.     

Agenda setting and acid precipitation in the United States

The objective of this research was to analyze the retention of acid precipitation as a viable policy issue on the Congressional agenda during the 1980s. Issue maintenance (a term borrowed from Barbara Nelson's discussion of the four stages associated with agenda decision making) was examined in relation to a set of issue characteristics originally developed by Roger Cobb and Charles Elder, i.e., concreteness, social significance, temporal relevance, complexity, and categorical precedence. Each issue attribute was found to be somewhat useful in explaining the longevity of acid rain as an agenda item although the direction of influence for two factors, complexity and temporal relevance, was contrary to expectations. It was suggested that a conceptual merger of this sort could contribute to the comparative analysis of agenda policy decisions by providing a clearer and more restricted set of decision points to be explained.     

TEODORO ARDEMANS PIONEER WATER-SUPPLY ENGINEER OF SPAIN1

ABSTRACT: Teodoro Ardemans, first post-Renaissance water expert of Spain, recognized problems of ground-water contamination, influence of minerals on water quality, and mutual interference between closely spaced wells. He is also noted for his achievements in architecture and the writing of the first comprehensive building code for Madrid.     

An evaluation of public participation information for land use decisions: public comment,surveys, and participatory mapping

ABSTRACT

Public participation in the form of public meetings and written submissions has been criticised as a democratic ritual that fails to give citizens a real voice in government decisions. Participatory mapping and community surveys are alternative public participation (PP) methods that can augment legally required processes for land use planning. To date, there has been little evaluation research comparing the information content generated by required PP processes and alternative PP sources with respect to local land use decisions. Using multiple development projects from a case study community, we analysed and compared information generated from three different sources of public participation: (1) formal public comment (written submissions), (2) responses to community survey questions, and (3) land use preferences generated from participatory mapping. We found public comment strongly supported development while results from survey questions and participatory mapping methods revealed community ambivalence. The differences in public opinion are attributed to two key factors: the representativeness of participants in the PP process and the specific methods used for measuring public opinion. Community surveys and participatory mapping generated more accurate and representative community information compared to the formal PP process which was characterised by lower participation and vulnerability to special interest manipulation. For local government decision makers, the political risk of broadening PP information appears high relative to the risk of inaccurately assessing public opinion thus limiting adoption of alternative PP methods such as participatory mapping.     

Diel variation of TCO2 in the upper layer of oceanic waters reflects microbial composition,variation and possibly methane cycling

Six diel TCO₂ cycles determined by infrared (IR) photometry from five drift stations occupied between 24 February and 16 March 1979 in the mixed layer of the northwestern Caribbean Sea are examined. Comparison of TCO₂ variation with coincident salinity and O₂ variation demonstrated that TCO₂ often co-varied with these independently measured variables. During five diel cycles TCO₂ variation was characterized by nocturnal production and diurnal consumption. The inverse, diurnal production of CO₂, occurred downstream from Misteriosa Bank, whose corals apparently contributed to a water mass having a twofold increase of POC and a sixfold larger population of heterotrophic nanoplankters. For the five diel studies carried out in waters with balanced or nearly blanced heterotrophic and phototrophic components of the nanoplankton, CO₂ consumption at constant salinity always occurred between 06.00 and 09.00 hrs. Net uptake often continued through 15.00 hrs, but not always in the absence of significant salinity changes. At constant salinity net O₂ evolution never exceeded 0.5 mol l^-1 h^-1 while net CO₂ uptake consistently averaged 3 mol l^-1 h^-1 for an apparent net production of 36 mg C m^-3 h^-1, which greatly exceeds the O₂ changes and open ocean ¹⁴C estimates from the literature. Diurnal consumption was apparently balanced by nocturnal production of CO₂ so that no significant net daily change in TCO₂ was observed. Departures from theoretical PQ and RQ and the possibility of nocturnal variations in formaldehyde and carbonate alkalinity imply that chemotrophs, both methane producers and methane oxidizers, play a significant role in CO₂ cycling. This could be through the metabolism of the nonconservative gases CH₄, CO, and H₂, and a link between chemotrophy and phototrophy through these gases is hypothesized. These open system measurements were subject to diffusion and documentable patchiness, but temporal TCO₂ changes appear to indicate the net direction of microbiological activity and join a growing body of literature showing dynamic variation in CO₂ and O₂ that exceeds estimates by ¹⁴C bottle assays of carbon fixation.     

Modelling the impacts of strategic tree plantings on salt loads and flows in the Macquarie river catchment,NSW, Australia

In Australia, problems of dryland and stream salinity have recently become the focus of a National Action Plan. In many river catchments, preliminary stream salt load and salinity targets have been set to define maximum permissible export levels in 2015. Afforestation has been proposed as a strategy for meeting these targets, although several studies suggest that widespread commercial tree plantations are likely to deliver net dis-benefits. However, the impacts on stream salt loads of more localised tree plantings in high salt yielding areas have not been quantified. In this paper we use a simple empirical model to predict the effects of various strategic and non-strategic tree planting scenarios on flows and salt loads in the mid-Macquarie catchment, New South Wales. A simple salt routing model is then used to estimate the effect of these changes on salt loads at the end-of-valley monitoring site for the Macquarie catchment. Results suggest that widespread land management interventions will be required to meet the preliminary salt load targets for this catchment. On their own, small-scale, strategic tree planting in high salt export areas of the mid-Macquarie area will not have a significant impact on salt loads at the end-of-valley monitoring site. While widespread tree plantings may reduce salt loads in the longer term, they are likely to cause streamflow losses in the shorter term. Thus, stream salinities are expected to rise initially, due to the different response times of groundwater and surface water systems to land use change.