Greening flood protection through knowledge processes: lessons from the Markermeer dikes project in the Netherlands

Greening flood protection (GFP) is increasingly recognized as an adaptive and flexible approach to water management that is well suited to addressing uncertain futures associated with climate change. In the last decade, GFP knowledge and policies have developed rapidly, but implementation has been less successful and has run into numerous barriers. In this paper, we address the challenge of realizing green flood protection goals by specifically considering knowledge in the decision-making of a Dutch flood protection project in Lake Markermeer. In this project, an ecological knowledge arrangement and a traditional flood protection knowledge arrangement are compared and their interactions analysed. The analysis provides insight into the specific difficulties of implementing GFP measures and identifies ways to realize GFP goals. The primary challenge is twofold: First, a self-reinforcing cycle of knowledge production and decision-making in the flood protection domain inhibits the introduction of innovative and multifunctional approaches such as GFP; second, the distribution of power is severely unbalanced in terms of ecological enhancement and flood protection, favouring the latter. Implementation of GFP requires structural change and the integration of ecological and flood protection knowledge and policy. Potentially rewarding routes towards this integration are the exploration of shared interests in GFP and the creation of mutual dependency between knowledge arrangements. The case study and the insights it provides show that GFP is far from mainstream practice and that implementation requires serious effort and courage to break with historical practices.     

Interactions between water and land in The Netherlands

The Netherlands are one of the most densely populated coastal countries in the world and there is only limited space for living, working, transport and recreation, while there is also the need to preserve and expand valuable natural habitats. In order to solve many existing and future conflicts of interest, and in order to create ‘added value’, strategies are developed to optimize the use of water-land systems. The principle of ‘building with nature’ is applied in order to integrate land in sea and water in land in such a way that future generations will be able to use coastal resources in a sustainable way, including a minimal effort to maintain the coastline and the promotion of a multiple-use system. The concept of Integrated multifunctional sustainable coastal zone development is introduced. This concept deals with a balanced approach to the lack of space for present and future coastal uses in relation to each other, to the hinterland, and to the sea. Flexible master plans are developed, taking into account many functions of the coastal zone, and facilitating adaptation to future developments—e.g. impacts of climate change and relative sea level rise. In this regard increasing the flexibility of the coastal zone is of vital importance. Large-scale coastal land reclamations in The Netherlands are dealt with, based on two different principles: (1) polder systems (low lying land reclamations surrounded and protected by dikes), (2) systems of ‘building with nature’—land reclamation protected by man-made foreshores, beaches and dunes. In the latter type new flexible dynamic-equilibrium coasts are created for many functions, while coastal vulnerability is reduced and a flexible coast is developed.     

Participatory environmental governance in China: public hearings on urban water tariff setting

In the late 1990s China started to expand its market economic reform to the public sector, such as water services. This reform led to major changes in urban water management, including water tariff management. The reforms in water tariff management relate not only to tariffs, but also to the decision-making on tariffs. Water tariff decision-making seems to move away from China's conventional mode of highly centralized and bureaucratic policy- and decision-making. The legalization, institutionalization and performance of public hearings in water tariff management forms a crucial innovation in this respect. This article analyzes the emergence, development and current functioning of public hearings in water tariff setting, and assesses to what extent public hearings are part of a turning point in China's tradition of centralized bureaucratic decision-making, towards more transparent, decentralized and participative governance.     

Public-Private Partnerships in China’s Urban Water Sector

During the past decades, the traditional state monopoly in urban water management has been debated heavily, resulting in different forms and degrees of private sector involvement across the globe. Since the 1990s, China has also started experiments with new modes of urban water service management and governance in which the private sector is involved. It is premature to conclude whether the various forms of private sector involvement will successfully overcome the major problems (capital shortage, inefficient operation, and service quality) in China’s water sector. But at the same time, private sector involvement in water provisioning and waste water treatments seems to have become mainstream in transitional China.     

Transition to a low-carbon city: lessons learned from Suzhou in China

Climate change has become one of the most serious challenges facing humanity; developing a low-carbon economy provides new opportunities for addressing this issue. Building a low-carbon city has been pursued by people with a high degree of enthusiasm in China. Different from actions at the national level and distinct from practices of developed countries, low-carbon development in Chinese cities should be placed on diverse concerns. Taking Suzhou of Jiangsu Province of China as a case city, this paper adopts a scenario analysis approach to explore strategic focal points in the transition to a low-carbon city. Within this transition, we mainly focus on the different contributions from two factors-economic restructuring and technological upgrading. Scenario analysis results show that 1) in the case of no breakthrough technologies, it is difficult to achieve absolute emission reductions; 2) technologies involved in optimizing energy structure and improving energy efficiency of basic service sectors should be highly emphasized in local planning; 3) in comparison with technological upgrading, economic structural adjustment could be a stronger contributor to mitigation, which is one of the main differences from developed countries. However, the key issue of economic restructuring is to promote the growth of emerging low-carbon industries, which requires not only a strategic choice of new industries but also an introduction of advanced low-carbon technologies. It is also found that establishing a local carbon emissions accounting system is a prerequisite and the first priority for realizing a low-carbon transition and government capacity buildings should be strengthened accordingly.     

An assessment of the risks associated with PCDDs and PCDFs following the application of sewage sludge to agricultural land in the UK

A model has been developed to describe the transfer of PCDDs and PCDFs from sludge-amended soils to the human foodchain. The model is conservative and assumes that all foods consumed by an individual are derived from sludge-amended soils. Predicted concentrations of PCDDs and PCDFs in potatoes, cereals, root vegetables and leafy vegetables were in close agreement with mean concentrations reported in the food survey conducted by MAFF in the UK. Predicted concentrations in milk were well below the Maximum Tolerable Concentration adopted by MAFF. Assuming a half-life of ten years in sludge-amended soils, the maximum estimated incremental daily intake (IDI) predicted by the model following ten applications of sludge to agricultural land was 0.80 pg I-TEQ kg⁻¹ day⁻¹, representing an increase of approximately 45% on current levels of background exposure. For an individual whose diet is solely derived from sludge-amended soils, the total exposure is predicted to be approximately 181 pg I-TEQ day⁻¹ or 2.6 pg I-TEQ kg⁻¹ day⁻¹. This compares with an average background exposure of approximately 2 pg I-TEQ kg⁻¹ day⁻¹, well within the TDI of 10 pg I-TEQ kg⁻¹ day⁻¹ and indicates that the application of sewage sludge to agricultural land under the conditions assumed would not appear to present a significant health risk under the conservative scenarios considered in this assessment.     

Particulate matter emissions associated with marcellus shale drilling waste disposal and transport

ABSTRACT

This study models emissions quantities and neighboring exposure concentrations of six airborne pollutants, including PM₁₀, PM_2.5, crystalline silica, arsenic, uranium, and barium, which resulted from the disposal of Marcellus shale drill cuttings waste during the 2011–2017 period. Using these predicted exposures, this study evaluates current setback distances required in Pennsylvania from waste facilities. For potential residents living at the perimeter of the current setback distance, 274 m (900 ft), a waste disposal rate of 612.4 metric tons per day at landfills (the 99th percentile in record) does not result in exceedances of the exposure limits for any of the six investigated pollutants. However, the current setback distance can result in exceedance with respect to the 24-hr daily concentration standards for PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 established in the National Air Ambient Quality Standards (NAAQS), if daily waste disposal rate surpasses 900 metric tons per day. Dry depositions of barium-containing and uranium-containing particulate matter should not be a danger to public health based on these results. To investigate the air quality impacts of waste transportation and the potential for reductions, this article describes an optimization of landfill locations in Pennsylvania indicating the potential benefits in reduced environmental health hazard level possible by decreasing the distance traveled by waste disposal trucks. This strategy could reduce annual emissions of PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 by a mean of 64% and reduce the expected number of annual fatal accidents by nearly half, and should be considered a potential risk management goal in the long run. Therefore, policy to limit or encourage reduction of distances traveled by waste removal trucks and manage setback distances as a function of delivered waste quantities is merited.     

Managing Manure from China’s Pigs and Poultry: The Influence of Ecological Rationality

We have investigated manure management practices at three farm scales in Chinese pig and poultry production. The concept of ecological rationality was employed to explore empirically how environmental concerns drive adoption of environmental-friendly manure management technologies at different farm scales. The more developed Rudong County in Jiangsu Province and the less developed Zhongjiang County in Sichuan Province were chosen as cases for study of 258 animal breeders. On the contrary to our hypothesis, medium-scale farmers were not always found to be laggards in adoption of manure management technologies. Government ecological rationality played a key role to induce environmental-friendly technology adoption on its own, but also in cooperation with ecologically rational individual or network drivers. Authorities no longer applied their efforts in a conventional command-and-control way, but more in the form of incentives, stimulation, and information to farmers. Individual farmers in general showed low environmental responsibility in relation to manure handling.     

Pesticide use practices among smallholder vegetable farmers in Ethiopian Central Rift Valley

Pesticide use is a common practice to control pests and diseases in vegetable cultivation, but often at the expense of the environment and human health. This article studies pesticide-buying and use practices among smallholder vegetable farmers in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia, using a practice perspective. Through in-depth interviews and observations, data were collected from a sample of farmers, suppliers and key governmental actors. The results reveal that farmers apply pesticides in violation of the recommendations: they use unsafe storage facilities, ignore risks and safety instructions, do not use protective devices when applying pesticides, and dispose containers unsafely. By applying a social practice approach, we show that these pesticide-handling practices are steered by the combination of the system of provision, the farmers’ lifestyle and the everyday context in which pesticides are being bought and used. Bringing in new actors such as environmental authorities, suppliers, NGOs and private actors, as well as social and technological innovations, may contribute to changes in the actual performance of these pesticides buying and using practices. This article argues that a practice approach represents a promising perspective to analyse pesticide handling and use and to systematically identify ways to change these.