A role-playing game as a tool to facilitate social learning and collective action towards Climate Smart Agriculture: Lessons learned from Apuí, Brazil

Addressing the global challenges of climate change (CC), food security and poverty alleviation requires enhancing the adaptive capacity and mitigation potential of land use systems. To this end, Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) aims to identify land use practices that sustainably increase productivity, enhance climate change (CC) adaptation and contribute to CC mitigation. A transition towards CSA requires technical, but also socio-institutional changes, for improved smallholder agricultural systems. Such changes may be triggered by stakeholder participation processes that stimulate social learning and collective action. This article evaluates whether a role-playing game (RPG) is an effective participatory tool to encourage social learning and collective action among local stakeholders towards adoption of CSA strategies. We designed and implemented an RPG with three groups of farmers in Apuí (Southern Amazonas), evaluating the game’s impact on social learning by interviewing each farmer before and after the RPG. Our findings show that the RPG induced not only technical learning, but also socio-institutional learning and engagement for collective action, though outcomes varied between different RPG sessions and among farmer participants.     

Regional optimization model for locating supplemental recycling depots

In Taiwan, vendors and businesses that sell products belonging to six classes of recyclable materials are required to provide recycling containers at their local retail stores. The integration of these private sector facilities with the recycling depots established by local authorities has the potential to significantly improve residential access to the recycling process. An optimization model is accordingly developed in this work to assist local authorities with the identification of regions that require additional recycling depots for better access and integration with private facilities. Spatial accessibility, population loading and integration efficiency indicators are applied to evaluate whether or not a geographic region is in need of new recycling depots. The program developed here uses a novel algorithm to obtain the optimal solution by a complete enumeration of all cells making up the study area. A case study of a region in Central Taiwan is presented to demonstrate the use of the proposed model and the three indicators. The case study identifies regions without recycling points, prioritizes them based on population density, and considers the option of establishing recycling centers that are able to collect multiple classes of recycling materials. The model is able to generate information suitable for the consideration of decision-makers charged with prioritizing the installation of new recycling facilities.     

An implementation assessment of China’s Environmental Information Disclosure Decree

China’s 2007 Open Government Information Regulations is widely considered as a milestone in the country’s information policy history and is praised as a “sunshine program”. The Environmental Information Disclosure Decree was the first to operationalize these general regulations into a sectoral information disclosure system on environment. This study assessed the implementation of the environmental information disclosure system about six months after the Decree took e ect on May 1, 2008. Through reviewing the websites of all 31 provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, conducting an experiment with actual information disclosure request, and through interviews with all provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus, this article concluded that the implementation of the environmental information disclosure system still falls short. Future improvements should focus on further publicity of the regulations and decree to enhance public participation, the establishment of an independent evaluation and supervision system for information disclosure, the exchange of experiences and best practices among provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus, and on strengthening the legal status of environmental information disclosure.     

A comprehensive waste collection cost model applied to post-consumer plastic packaging waste

Post-consumer plastic packaging waste (PPW) can be collected for recycling via source separation or post-separation. In source separation, households separate plastics from other waste before collection, whereas in post-separation waste is separated at a treatment centre after collection. There are also two collection schemes, either curb side or via drop-off locations. These different schemes have impact on total costs of collection at the municipal level. It can also influence the facility choices and network design. Therefore, a method which can compare costs of various collection schemes is needed.A comprehensive cost model was developed to compare costs of municipal collection schemes of PPW. The ‘municipal waste collection cost model’ is based on variables including fixed and variable costs per vehicle, personnel cost, container or bag costs as well as on emission costs (using imaginary carbon taxes). The model can be used for decision support when strategic changes to the collection scheme of municipalities are considered. The model takes into account the characteristics of municipalities, including urbanization degree and taxation schemes for household waste management.The model was applied to the Dutch case of post-consumer plastic packaging waste. Results showed that that in general post-separation collection has the lowest costs and curb side collection in urban municipalities without residual waste collection taxing schemes the highest. These results were supported by the conducted sensitivity analysis, which showed that higher source separation responses are negatively related to curb side collection costs. Greenhouse gas emission costs are a significant part of the total costs when collecting post-consumer plastic packaging waste due to the low density to weight ratio of the materials collect. These costs can amount to 15% of the total collection costs.