The need to integrate values into environmental curricula

Many environmental problems are controversial because of conflicting values people hold and because there is not a consensus as to which values should have precedence over others. If environmental managers are to make ethical decisions that reflect environmental values, they must have full understanding of such values and types of ethics and principles of moral reasoning to use in the decision-making process. Unfortunately, integration of values into environmental curricula has often not been explicit or comprehensive. One result is that university-trained environmental managers do not possess the knowledge, skills, and methods necessary for more ethically based decisions. An analysis of attitudes about integrating values and/or ethics into environmental curricula and approaches to do so yields the conclusion that environmental programs should more fully include teaching about values and ethics so that environmental managers can make more ethically sound decisions.     

军用环境试验的发展和趋势

本文回顾了国内外自然环境试验和人工模拟环境试验现状，展望了两种试验技术的发展趋势。指出：自然环境试验与人工模拟加速试验相辅相成，环境试验与可靠性试验互为补充，建成有中国特色的环境试验标准化体系、网站体系、技术体系和服务体系是我国环境试验技术的发展方向。     

The significance of environmental impacts: an exploration of the concept

Since environmental impact assessment (EIA) is concerned primarily withsignificant environmental impacts, the concept of impact significance deserves to be defined and applied rigorously. In this article use of the term over the past 15 years in EIA documentation is reviewed. Some recent attempts at elucidating the concept are summarized. Four perspectives on impact significance that emerged from a series of workshops on the ecological basis for EIA are presented. These perspectives include (a) statistical (related to problems of isolating project-induced changes from natural variation), (b) ecological (related to the importance of project-induced changes from a purely ecological perspective), (c) social (related to the acceptability of project-induced changes in important environmental attributes), and (d) project (related to whether project-induced changes will indeed influence project decision making). The following synthesis is proposed: Any exercise in judging the significance of an environmental impact should thoroughly consider (a) the importance of the environmental attribute in question to project decision makers, (2) the distribution of change in time and space, (c) the magnitude of change, and (d) the reliability with which change has been predicted or measured. The implications of considering these factors are discussed.     

Towards sustainable development? The evolution of environmental policy in Malaysia

Over the last five decades, Malaysia has undergone rapid economic, social and environmental change, a process which is still continuing. The pursuit of socio‐economic progress has been accompanied by an unprecedented rate of change in the natural environment. In parallel to this development, governmental responses have also adapted over time to address emerging environmental situations. This article views the recent history of Malaysia's evolving policy response to development needs and environmental change as consisting of four distinct stages. Despite an impressive array of policy statements and strategies to implement sustainable development, many challenges remain today. A clear articulation of normative principles of sustainable development is of paramount importance, as is the monumental task of policy implementation. The article argues that the trajectory of Malaysia's policy on natural resources and environmental issues bears the characteristics of path‐dependent evolution.     

Evaluation of the california environmental quality act

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has evolved from a mini-NEPA, first enacted in 1970, into a procedural act that affects the approval process of all large developments in California. In 1990, California local governments produced over 1600 environmental impact reports and 30,000 initial studies under CEQA. Because of its widespread use, CEQA has periodically drawn the attention of the state legislature, most recently in 1993, when over 60 CEQA reform bills were introduced. This paper describes the CEQA process and evaluates its success at meeting its explicit and implicit goals. The research includes a statewide survey of CEQA practice, sent to the planning departments of all 513 local governments in California in 1991. Survey respondents agreed that CEQA helps in evaluating environmental impacts, reducing impacts, informing the public, and coordinating public agency review. It is effective in reducing the environmental impacts of individual projects, but is not as effective in improving environmental quality on an areawide scale. This research concludes that CEQA has led to positive outcomes and is not as deeply flawed as many of its critics claim. Still, CEQA as currently designed may not be the optimal vehicle for ensuring environmental quality.     

The environmental attitudes inventory: A valid and reliable measure to assess the structure of environmental attitudes

Environmental attitudes (EA), a crucial construct in environmental psychology, are a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating the natural environment with some degree of favour or disfavour. There are hundreds of EA measures available based on different conceptual and theoretical frameworks, and most researchers prefer to generate new measures rather than organize those already available. The present research provides a cumulative and theoretical approach to the measurement of EA, in which the multidimensional and hierarchical nature of EA is considered. Reported are findings from three studies on the development of a psychometrically sound, multidimensional inventory to assess EA cross-culturally, the Environmental Attitudes Inventory (EAI). The EAI has twelve specific scales that capture the main facets measured by previous research. The twelve factors were established through confirmatory factor analyses, and the EAI scales are shown to be unidimensional scales with high internal consistency, homogeneity and high test-retest reliability, and also to be largely free from social desirability.     

定氢仪在环境试验中的应用

本文叙述了定氢仪的测氢原理、结构、特点及定氢仪在环境试验中的用途。     

New view of environmental health: Toward an environmental research policy for international strategies

We are witnessing a growing concern with the global dimension of many environmental issues, reflected in the increase in the number and significance of international environmental organizations. Yet there is no internationally applicable strategy for environmental research which is management oriented. A new type of research policy, which integrates ideas derived from environmental and human ecology, is required in order to deal with cultural and ecological diversity and their interactions as reflected in the ecology of landscapes. The newly defined concept of environmental health is proposed to fill this gap. This concept integrates the latest developments in landscape evolutionary ecology and environmental health, bringing out a conflict between making the environment conducive to human health and increasing the available options for supporting the essential biological and ecological processes of the environment. Lessons derived from the evolution of human environments are used in order to illustrate how health may become un umbrella for developing an environmental research policy, which could also serve as a catalyst for international environmental projects.     

New directions in Mexican environmental policy

Since taking office 1 December 1988, Mexico's incumbent president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has introduced important innovations in environmental policy that distinguish his administration from those of his predecessors. Greater administrative continuity, improved regulatory capacity achieved through statutory change, focused priorities centering on pollution abatement in Mexico City, and an aggressive search for external financing for pollution control are hallmarks of Salinas' approach. The success of these environmental reforms depends heavily on economic recovery, however, and environmental policy still suffers from underfunding, bureaucratic fragmentation, and heavy reliance on voluntarist enforcement mechanisms. Recently, U.S. congressional debate on a proposed free trade agreement with Mexico has been a factor in spurring the Salinas government to take new antipollution and conservation measures. Mexico's growing environmental movement is also an important force behind the government's new responsiveness in environmental matters. The Salinas administration recognizes the issue's political salience and has sought to defuse environmental criticism using a large arsenal of resources at its disposal. Salinas' environmental policy strategy may thus be characterized as both proactive and reactive in nature. While the reforms are evidence that Mexico is beginning to take environmental matters more seriously, economic recovery and sustained environmental activism remain vital to further progress.     

Detection and decision-making in environmental effects monitoring

The majority of environmental effects monitoring (EEM) frameworks that have been proposed compare selected indicator variables as a means of assessing whether significant changes in stressed ecosystems have occurred. Most are deterministic in nature and do not appropriately account for the natural variability and dynamics within the systems being comapred. This suggests that the comparative procedures should be statistically based and immediately raises the issue of whether the selected comparative procedures are to be used as decision-making tools or conclusive procedures. Conclusive procedures require a significant body of evidence before rejecting the postulated null hypothesis. The costs and time involved in environmental data collection accordingly bias action toward the maintenance of a status quo approach to environmental management. if, however, EEM is treated as a decision-making procedure, risk functions that include consideration of type I and II statistical error may be developed and combined with costs to select a minimum expected loss strategy for environemental management. Examples of the interpretative difficulties and conclusion reversal phenomena caused when EEM is used as a conclusive procedure are presented. In addition, risk functions appropriate for environmental management within an EEM context are constructed and applied. Only when such tools are fully developed and applied can EEM expect to have significant impacts on minimizing environmental degradation.     

Government policy and environmental protection in the developing world: The example of Nigeria

Environmental protection is a topical and controversial issue of contemporary Third World development. As a result of the growing crisis of environment and development as well as issues of global environmental balance, divergent views and proposals have been put forward by external governments, international agencies, and environmental groups in resolving the environmental degradation problems of the developing world. However, very little appraisal has been made of the efforts by indigenous Third World governments in facing up to their environmental conservation issues. This article examines the role of past and recent government environmental control policies and programs in Nigeria. The article analyzes three aspects of environmental protection: (1) the theoretical economic bases of environmental protection and the Nigerian approach to environmental protection, including traditional values and modern institutional control measures, the latter embracing nature conservation efforts; (2) environmental considerations in national development plans; and (3) the evolution of a federal environmental protection agency and a national policy on environment. Finally, the article discusses the future challenges and directions for environmental policy.     

Dialogic writing as a tool for thinking and learning about the environment

Competence in understanding and resolving environmental problems requires a curriculum that integrates traditional disciplines with applied problem-solving skills and/or methods. Building upon the work of scholars who are calling for curriculum reform so that students may understand better the ethical dimensions of environmental problems, we analyze the theory of using dialogic writing to think and learn about the environment, and we provide examples of application of this technique.     

Natural environmental impact assessment: A rational approach

A method is presented which combines environmental indices and estimates of inputs from various land uses to aid in environmental impact assessments. Unweighted pair/group cluster analyses are used to obtain relationships between easily observable environmental indices, such as vegetation types, soils, and geology, based on their mutual recurrence. These relationships are shown by using an ordination technique which shows the nature of complex impacts on a natural system. Results are used to develop anenvironmental effects sequence diagram based on known scientific and engineering principles and observed natural relationships. The diagram may be used in conjunction with land use data to estimate the possible magnitude of impacts on the pre-existing system which may result from such land use. Several examples are developed which quantify inputs from various land uses and which compare them with environmental inputs including point source and non-point source liquid and atmospheric emmissions, land modifications, and resource consumption. Known average values are used and a separate comparison is made in describing the vast differences between the project phases of construction versus longterm operation. A hypothetical environmental impact assessment is given for a small residential development in Chambers County, Texas, U.S. of A.     

Better environmental future in Europe through environmental auditing?

environmental auditing must be rejected if the aim is to make companies introduce a specific management concept. Rather, it is preferable to leave the search for effective environmental protection strategies to the competitive system, especially since the criteria for environment-oriented management in the European Community audit proposal are without substance. Environmental auditing can, however, assume a complementary function in the framework of an overall environmental policy if it is designed as an information tool with which companies provide information on the development of environmental problems deriving from their manufacturing processes and products. However, the model required to establish a framework of quantity and evaluation criteria is not available. Further, auditing does not cover products. Similarly, there are no proposals defining the evaluation procedure for ecological resource scarcity. Thus, the attempt of the Commission of the European Communities to create the elementary prerequisites for consistent and verifiable environmental auditing in the corporate sector has failed.     

The environmental audit. I. Concepts

Extensive criticism of water quality monitoring programs has developed as costs are compared with the benefits produced by monitoring efforts. Collecting water quality data while developing understanding of the functional character of the environment will improve water quality monitoring data utility in environmental management. The environmental audit characterizes the attributes of the natural environment (that is, attribute type, intensity, and variability), providing a theoretical as well as practical foundation for data interpretation. In the view proposed here, traditional monitoring means the very narrow activity of collecting samples and perhaps analyzing them and storing the analyses. In the environmental audit, these activities are a mechanism to systematically improve environmental monitoring and assessment by improving the design and implementation of environmental programs. Major reasons why existing programs fail to meet the needs of legislators, regulators, and conservationists are identified.     

An approach to integrate impact scoping with environmental impact assessment

Impact scoping is the process of identifying important issues of a proposal and focusing the environmental impact assessment (EIA) on the high-priority issues. Although impact scoping in one form or another has been inherent to EIA for some time, documentation of its development and discussion of refinements to impact scoping processes have not been forthcoming. This article traces the development of impact scoping through time and highlights the need for such processes in EIA. A focused environmental assessment (FEA) approach to impact scoping that is suitable for implementation in an EIA is presented here and advantages of its use are delineated. FEA is a three-staged process that encourages impact scoping through progressive steps including impact identification, assessment and management planning. FEA combines a suite of EIA methods including: issues matrices, impact hypotheses, valued ecosystem components, and stakeholder participation sessions to effectively integrate impact scoping with EIA.     

环境伦理学刍议

本文研究了环境伦理学产生的背景，环境伦理学所具有的特点，环境伦理学研究的内容以及对环境伦理学应用等问题。     

Measuring knowledge of indoor environmental hazards

People spend most of their time indoors, where air pollution levels rival and often exceed those outdoors for a number of important pollutants. Yet, little is known about people’s knowledge of indoor environmental hazards. The purpose of the current study was to construct a measure of indoor environmental knowledge. A set of 78 true/false items were developed with input from a panel of experts. The set of items was truncated with traditional item analyses, resulting in a reliable set of 21 items (α = .79). Concurrent validity was established by a significant correlation between the indoor environmental knowledge (IEK) scale and an established measure of science literacy (r = 0.44, p < .001). Schema theory guided the assumption that the two measures should be related. Convergent validity was established by the significant regression of science literacy, formal education in science and math, and status as an engineering student on IEK scale score, accounting for 25% of the variance in the IEK scale score. Future research avenues are proposed and limitations are discussed.     

Enforcement of mitigation measures resulting from environmental impact assessment

Until recently, relatively little attention has been paid to the problem of enforcing mitigation measures identified in environmental impact assessment. Present or proposed enforcement systems in the USA, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia are described and discussed. Although the best enforcement system would depend on the local social, political, and legal systems, five universally desirable features are identified. First, a comprehensive coordinated monitoring and reassessment system is needed. Second, the agencies concerned must have adequate resources to do the work and incentives to carry it out well. Third, there must be the necessary legal powers. Fourth, provision must be made for changing the conditions based on experience. And fifth, the system should be equally effective against private companies and public authorities.