Traditional Farming Landscapes for Sustainable Living in Scandinavia and Japan: Global Revival Through the Satoyama Initiative

Traditional, pre-industrial farming was adapted to the natural environment—topography, geology, hydrology, climate, and biota. Traditional land use systems are still to be traced in Scandinavia as an “infield/outland landscape”, and in Japan as a “Satoyama landscape.” There are obvious similarities and differences in land use—the main difference being that pasturing of cattle and sheep has been less important in Japan. These land use systems can be traced back to early sedentary settlements 1500–2500 years ago. In both regions, traditional management almost ceased in the mid-twentieth century leading to afforestation and decreased biological diversity. Today, there is in Japan a growing movement for landscape restoration and promotion of a sustainable living countryside based on local agrarian and forestry production, local energy, tourism, etc. With this background, the so-called Satoyama Initiative has been organized and introduced as a global socio-ecological project with ecosystem services for human well-being.     

Inconsistent pathways of household waste

The aim of this study was to provide policy-makers and waste management planners with information about how recycling programs affect the quantities of specific materials recycled and disposed of. Two questions were addressed: which factors influence household waste generation and pathways? and how reliable are official waste data? Household waste flows were studied in 35 Swedish municipalities, and a wide variation in the amount of waste per capita was observed. When evaluating the effect of different waste collection policies, it was found to be important to identify site-specific factors influencing waste generation. Eleven municipal variables were investigated in an attempt to explain the variation. The amount of household waste per resident was higher in populous municipalities and when net commuting was positive. Property-close collection of dry recyclables led to increased delivery of sorted metal, plastic and paper packaging. No difference was seen in the amount of separated recyclables per capita when weight-based billing for the collection of residual waste was applied, but the amount of residual waste was lower. Sixteen sources of error in official waste statistics were identified and the results of the study emphasize the importance of reliable waste generation and composition data to underpin waste management policies.     

Consumptive values and local perception of dry forest decline in Burkina Faso,West Africa

Traditional ecological knowledge and local experience of resource management and the usefulness of plant species can make important contributions to attempts to understand forest ecosystems and to develop effective sustainable management strategies for them. Therefore, the utilization of tree species by local people, their perceptions of changes in the surrounding forests, and suggested solutions for associated problems, were studied in the Sissili province of southern Burkina Faso. Information was collected through a combination of participatory rural appraisals, household interviews, and observational methods. Principal component analysis was used to analyze the consumptive values of woody species and their respective parts. A total of 82 species were identified, 90% of them were used for medicinal purposes, 78% for fodder, 73% for food, 67% for house construction, and 58% for wood carving. This suggests that forests play a key role in sustaining the rural livelihood and contributing to poverty reduction. The various stakeholders perceived that vegetation clearing for cultivation of cash crops (agribusiness) was the main driver of the change in forest cover. Species reported to be declining in the area included Parkia biglobosa, Pterocarpus erinaceus, Afzelia africana, Bombax costatum, Tamarindus indica, and Diospyros mespiliformis. Thus, a concerted effort should be made to manage the remaining natural forests in the country. Appropriate management strategies should be developed jointly by the local communities and external support groups to integrate the valuable local knowledge about forest species with the stakeholders’ suggestions in order to promote sustainable management of the region’s forest ecosystems.     

Environment-specific elasticity and sensitivity analysis of the stochastic growth rate

For matrix population models, analyses of how sensitive the population growth rate is to changes in vital rates (i.e. perturbations) are important for studies of life history evolution as well as for management and conservation of threatened species. There are two types of sensitivity analyses corresponding to absolute (sensitivity) or relative (elasticity) changes in the vital rates and both types can be applied to both deterministic and stochastic matrix population models. To date, most empirical studies of elasticity and sensitivity of the stochastic growth rate have examined the response to perturbations in the vital rates in a complete set of possible environments. However, it is often of interest to examine the response to perturbations occurring in only a subset of the possible environments. This has been done for periodic time-varying models elsewhere, but here we describe a recently published method for calculating the environment-specific sensitivity and elasticity of the stochastic growth rate and apply this method to data. These environment-specific perturbation analyses provide a logical way of dividing the sensitivity and elasticity among the environments. They give important insight into the selection regime in different environments and can provide valuable information for making management decisions and management evaluations in stochastic environments.     

LCA of comprehensive pig manure management incorporating integrated technology systems

Increased and intensified pig production has raised the needs for proper management systems of pig manure in order to reduce negative environmental impacts. The objectives of this study were to identify the most significant environmental impacts from pig manure management considering a wide range of impact categories and to determine which integrated technology system at which handling stage can achieve the highest impact reduction. Twelve scenarios applying various treatment, storage and land application systems were developed and compared. Life cycle assessment (LCA) with the aim of capturing the actual consequences of the considered scenarios was selected as the tool for impact quantification. The most important impact categories in this investigation are global warming (GWP), aquatic eutrophication (AEP), respiratory inorganics (RIP), and terrestrial eutrophication (TEP). The two latter impacts, caused by ammonia emissions, have not been widely considered in most of previous LCA studies on pig manure management. The main keys for the effective impact reduction are the integration of treatment technology systems aiming at energy recovery with high nutrient recovery and control of greenhouse gas, ammonia, and nitrate emissions at every handling stage. For GWP and AEP, the anaerobic digestion-based scenario with natural crust storage achieves the highest impact reduction because of high efficiencies in energy and nutrient recovery with restricted emissions of GHG and nitrate. For RIP and TEP, the incineration and thermal gasification based scenarios and the scenario without a treatment system applying the deep injection method yield the highest impact minimisation due to the lowest ammonia emissions. This study further indicates the need to consider all significant impacts to decide the best management options taking into consideration local conditions.     

Sustainability through system transformation: lessons from Finnish efforts

This special issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production addresses system transformation by examining progress, stumbling blocks and opportunities for sustainable consumption and production in a specific country, Finland, set within a global context. The articles present and analyse top-down policy efforts, bottom-up efforts by municipalities, activities by companies and actions by consumers. They provide material for discussions on the shift from sustainability planning to enhancing system transformation, on the implications of globalisation for system boundaries, on the transformation of complex systems, on learning processes and on methods of assessing transitions. Without providing a singular solution, the articles show that issues of sustainability should be explored in different ways within different contexts, and experimented with. There is a continuous need for transformations and reflexive learning, since conditions are likely to become very different, not least due to climate change. The notion of change and transformation will be high on the agenda of the Rio+20 conference, as will similar efforts to promote large-scale transformations of consumption and production.     

Land Use and Food Intake of Future Inhabitants: Outlining a Representative Individual of the Most Exposed Group for Dose Assessment

The radiation doses to humans resulting from a potential release of radionuclides from a geological repository for long-lived waste are assessed over tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. Ingestion is expected to be the major exposure pathway, and the group with the highest exposures will be those that consume the most contaminated food. In this paper, we characterize the group of individuals with the highest exposures by considering the physical and biological characteristics of the contaminated area and human requirements for energy and nutrients. We then calculate intake rates based on land-use scenarios drawn from self-sustained communities spanning prehistoric times to an industrial-age agrarian culture. The approach is illustrated by simulating groundwater release of four radionuclides to an expected discharge area. We argue that the derived intake rates may serve as credible bounding cases when projected doses are evaluated for compliance with regulatory criteria.     

Influence of air flow rate on emission of DEHP from vinyl flooring in the emission cell FLEC: Measurements and CFD simulation

The emission of di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) from one type of vinyl flooring with ～15% (w/w) DEHP as plasticizer was measured at 22 °C in five FLECs + one blank FLEC (Field and Laboratory Emission Cell). Initially, the flow through all FLECs was 450 ml min^?1. After 689 days the flows were changed to 1000 ml min^?1, 1600 ml min^?1, 2300 ml min^?1, and 3000 ml min^?1, respectively, in four FLECs, and kept at 450 ml min^?1 in one FLEC. Air samples were collected from the effluent air at regular intervals. After 1190 days the experiments were terminated and the interior surfaces of all six FLECs were rinsed with methanol to estimate the internal surface concentrations of DEHP. The DEHP air concentration and specific emission rate (SER) at steady state was estimated for the five different flow rates. The steady-state concentrations decreased slightly with increasing air flow with only the two highest flow rates resulting in significantly lower concentrations. In contrast, the SERs increased significantly. Despite large variation, the internal surface concentrations appeared to decrease slightly with increasing FLEC flow. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations suggest that the interior gas and surface concentrations were roughly uniform for the low flow case (450 ml min^?1), under which, the partitioning between the FLEC internal surface and chamber air was examined. Although paired t-tests showed no difference between CFD and experimental results for DEHP air concentrations and SERs at steady-state conditions, CFD indicated that the experimental DEHP surface concentrations in the FLECs were underestimated. In conclusion, the experiments showed that the emission of DEHP from vinyl flooring is subject to “external” control and that the SER is strongly and positively dependent on the air exchange rate. However, the increased SER almost compensates for the decrease in gas-phase concentration caused by the increased air exchange.     

Multifaceted Value Profiles of Forest Owner Categories in South Sweden: The River Helge å Catchment as a Case Study

Forest landscapes provide benefits from a wide range of goods, function and intangible values. But what are different forest owner categories’ profiles of economic use and non-use values? This study focuses on the complex forest ownership pattern of the River Helge å catchment including the Kristianstad Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve in southern Sweden. We made 89 telephone interviews with informants representing the four main forest owner categories. Our mapping included consumptive and non-consumptive direct use values, indirect use values, and non-use values such as natural and cultural heritage. While the value profiles of non-industrial forest land owners and municipalities included all value categories, the forest companies focused on wood production, and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency on nature protection. We discuss the challenges of communicating different forest owners’ economic value profiles among stakeholders, the need for a broader suite of forest management systems, and fora for collaborative planning.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-012-0374-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.