Beyond strong sustainability

Since the Brundtland Commission's delineation of the term sustainable development in 1987, virtually every country has incorporated the terms sustainability and sustainable development into their planning vocabulary and criteria for decision-making. However, many issues remain unresolved. Broad and sweeping references to sustainability and sustainable development do not necessarily translate into implementable policies to achieve these goals. In particular, unresolved issues include developing an understanding of how one sector of the economy can contribute to the sustainable development of the economy as a whole and the role of ecological resources in sustainable development. Our paper provides an initial conceptual examination of these questions by folding mining and ecological quality into the sustainability discussion. We use the Brazilian Amazon as an application of our sustainable development model.     

知识经济在重庆可持续发展中的作用

知识经济是城市经济增长和社会可持续发展的重要基础,信息产业和高科技产业已成为推动经济增长的主导产业。结合重庆市的经济、资源环境发展现状,分析重庆发展知识经济的必要性和可行性,通过对重庆直辖以来资源环境可持续能力的评估和高新产业的发展调查,论证了高新产业的发展对资源环境的可持续发展的促进作用,并针对存在的不足提出了政策建议。     

Managing organizations for sustainable development in emerging countries: an introduction

This introduction article is for the special issue ‘Managing organizations for sustainable development in emerging countries: natural resources, biodiversity, and climate change’ in the International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology and presents an introduction to the topics and summarizes accepted contributions in the special issue. The accepted works may contribute with organizational management in the search for more sustainable organizations. The works focus on the challenges of managing organizations in a context of degradation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. Accepted papers discuss these issues, based on the reality of emerging economies (e.g. Brazil, India, and China).     

PICABUE: a methodological framework for the development of indicators of sustainable development

SUMMARY

Significant interest in the concept of sustainable development exists amongst scientists, planners, policy makers and the public, and considerable effort and expenditure is made or envisaged at local, national and international levels to promote a more sustainable society. Until ‘green accounting’ and similar systems are made available and are implemented, the sustainability indicator will be the most effective tool available for monitoring progress towards a more sustainable society. Sustainability indicators are already available but are characterized by a poor or absent theoretical underpinning. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a methodological framework that can be applied to the construction of indicators of sustainable development. In order to be consistent with widely accepted definitions of sustainable development, considerations relating to the measurement of quality of life and ecological integrity are central to the methodology. The methodological framework has relevance to a variety of spatial scales and to geographically diverse areas (urban or rural, developed or developing countries) so that a suite of sustainability indicators can be produced that is tailored to the needs and resources of the indicator user, but which remains rooted firmly in the fundamental principles of sustainable development.     

Sustainable development strategies for China's Du Jiang Yan Water Resources Project

China's Du Jiang Yan Irrigation Project, dating back to 256 BC, is one of the world's earliest water resources projects. Although it has been benefiting the Sichuan Basin area for over 2000 years, it is facing increasing problems due to ecological deterioration, over-exploitation from local industries and agriculture, suboptimal resource allocation arising from supply and demand mismatches, and an aging infrastructure. The traditional water resources development model is no longer appropriate for current and future needs of the area. Therefore, a sustainable development framework is envisioned in which population, economy and environment coexist in harmony. Within this framework, major strategies, such as construction and renovation of infrastructure, promotion of water conserving irrigation through non-engineering measures, pollution control and ecological improvements, restructuring of management entities and exploration of new funding sources, are proposed. An evaluation system is also introduced to assess the degree of sustainability and to monitor progress towards a high level of sustainable development.     

Structural change and sustainable development

In this paper, we show that the commonly observed decline in primary (natural resource using) sector output and employment shares, often termed structural change, can be explained as an endogenous response to the presence of nature's constraint. Structural change takes place even if consumer preferences are homothetic, and technological progress does not discriminate against the primary sector. Under certain conditions, structural change allows an open economy to grow with natural resource sustainability. Sustained and environmentally sustainable economic growth is possible even if the natural resource is exploited under open access. Well-defined property rights are neither necessary, nor sufficient for sustainable growth. We show that there is no unique relationship between natural resource endowment and the rate of economic growth over the long run. Resource-rich economies may grow faster or slower than resource-poor ones.     

Sustainable development indicators: a case study on the city of Flagstaff and Coconino county

The application of capitalist theory and the perception of an autonomous economy have created a range of environmental and social ramifications not addressed via traditional economic reasoning. In order to effectively and efficiently abate sustainability issues, the sustainable development discourse developed evaluation methods such as sustainable development indicators to gauge progress towards sustainability in communities without using traditional cost–benefit methods of analysis. The indicators created in this work are intended to be applied as a method of project evaluation in local community development departments. Using local growth management policy as a basis, these indicators have been designed to show how a development project contributes to policy goals that relate to all three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic, and socio-economic.     

Working with indicators: description of states of territorial adjustment for protected natural areas

As is the case to date with respect to sustainability indicators, there is an enormous quantity of information available about their basic components (social, economic and environmental), but these are generally dealt with in a sectoral and fragmented manner, and the components have been analysed and approached in a more or less independent fashion. On the other hand, it is difficult to find indicators that encompass all the dimensions of sustainability. The topic chosen for this research is sustainability organised in a systematic fashion, which entails taking the combination of issues that affect each subsystem and investigating the states of territorial adjustment that exist between each of them. In short, it is the possibility of establishing a sustainable territorial development pattern, accepting that the economic and social activities that utilise the natural resources influence sustainability, and that they will do so to a greater or lesser extent depending on the effectiveness of the conservation of the stock of resources. The Territorial Adjustment Indicator System (TAIS) is a good tool that enables the management, assessment and monitoring of development processes in PNAs (protected natural areas), facilitating homogeneity and uniformity to aid comparison between protected areas in the centre-south of Spain, principally those areas designated as natural parks (NPs).     

Managing resources and resolving conflicts: national parks and local people

One of the major management problems in protected areas of developing nations is the ever more intensifying land use disputes with local, often native, people. The customary rights oflocal people over natural resources, if curtailed by the establishment of national parks, and their disregard by decision-makers, have given rise to open conflicts, thus jeopardizing conservation goals. These conflicts have tremendous impact on the management of natural resources, not only within the park ecosystem but also in its surroundings. To attain the interdependent goals of conservation and sustainable development, such disputes must be promptly and consensually settled. This paper briefly discusses the paradigm of national park establishment and its impact on local livelihood. It then highlights major sources of conflict which have occurred in national parks in developing countries. Some theoretical approaches to conflict resolution as relevant to national parks are summarized, and several strategies, as employed in particular situations, are discussed. It is concluded that an in-depth understanding of human ecology beyond the boundaries of parks and the conceptualization of strategies to resolve the innate problems are imperative. The integration of several strategies is deemed essential in order to address issues comprehensively and on a larger scale.     

Towards sustainable land-use in the hills of Central Himalaya,India

SUMMARY

Over-population in relation to poor land productivity and cultivation in less fertile lands is resulting in land degradation and deforestation in UP hills. Growing demand of more food production and increasing need for more cash in hand have forced the hill people to cultivate all kinds of land, resulting in the denudation of land resources and soil erosion. These changes resulted in out migration of the area's human resource. A new management system for the revival of natural resources and the sustainable utilization of the area's human population and livestock has been proposed, involving active local participation in order to change the existing land-use to a system based on the soil fertility scale.     

A characterization of sustainability with indicators

Economists favor the use of criteria to characterize sustainability. In practice, policy-makers use indicators, i.e., measurements based on the current economic state and decisions, representing given sustainability issues. In this paper, I introduce a criterion characterizing sustainability with indicators and thresholds acting as constraints. I interpret the thresholds as minimal rights to be guaranteed to all generations, and define sustainable trajectories as those satisfying all the constraints at all times. The new criterion is a “generalized” maximin criterion. The approach is applied to a simple production-consumption economy with non-renewable resources. To derive some policy recommendations on the use of indicators to deal with sustainability, I discuss the implications of such a criterion in terms of trade-off between sustainability thresholds, efficiency, and time-consistency. In particular, the resulting problem is time-inconsistent, and sustainability thresholds may be revised over time. Following the time-inconsistent policy based on indicators, with dynamic revision of the thresholds, may, however, result in a sustained utility path, and even in utility growth.     

Comparative aspects of mountain land resources management and sustainability: Case studies from India and Canada

India and Canada share a common heritage in natural resources management. Both have a colonial background, settlers and indigenous peoples; there is a history of management agencies with utilitarian attitudes, and a history of treating public lands as commodities for commerce rather than as resources for local livelihoods. This historical context guided the overall goal of this study, which was policy development for the sustainable use of mountain environments. Interviews, workshops and seminars were held with local people and resource management professionals in a comparative case study in two regions; the Kullu area in Himachal Pradesh, India and the Arrow Lakes area in British Columbia, Canada. The paper is organized around two main objectives of the work relating to the successes and failures of mountain environment resource management policies and the development of criteria for assessing and monitoring sustainability in mountain environments, in particular, criteria for examining relevant crosscultural dimensions of sustainable development in these environments. By way of conclusion the paper considers further ways in which traditional resource policy development and implementation is being challenged by changing values and priorities; ecosystems management with people; and co-management and public participation.     

Exergetic assessment for ecological economic system: Chinese agriculture

Based on the thermodynamic concept of exergy as a unified measure for environmental resources and economic products, a framework for systems assessment is presented for ecological economies. With a typical systems diagram devised for a general ecological economy with four arm fluxes for free local natural resources, purchased economic investment, environmental impact and economic yield, system indices of the renewability index, exergy yield ratio, exergy investment ratio, environmental resource to yield ratio, system transformity and environmental stress index are defined for a congregated systems ecological assessment with essential implications to sustainability. As a detailed case study to the Chinese agriculture from 1980 to 2000 with cropping, forestry, stockbreeding and fishery sectors, extensive exergy account and systems assessment are carried out with emphasis on annual and structural variations against social political transitions. For the overall agriculture as a congregated ecological stage, the value of the system transformity is found around 10, the typical value for the general ecological hierarchy as well devised by Odum associated with Lindeman's Tenth Law.     

贵州省雷公山自然保护区发展现状及其对策

雷公山自然保护区以秃杉等珍稀濒危物种和中亚热带山地森林生态系统为主要保护对象。１０多年来，保护区在认真做好自然保护工作的同时，引导地方群众发展生产、脱贫致富，探索了许多适度开发当地资源的实用技术和有效的经济发展模式，促进了地方经济发展，改善了当地群众生活，增强了保护区经济活力。在分析保护区发展现状的基础上，针对目前存在问题，提出保护区今后发展的对策措施。     

Sustainability of Nations

SUMMARY

A method is presented to interrelate the development of economy, environment and social quality in communities. Economy and environment, in initial development stages, oppose each other. Social welfare and economy generally develop simultaneously. To assess overall progress in sustainable development, an integrated and quantifiable framework is presented which defines five levels of sustainability. Increasing sustainability is characterized by growing responsibility for the impacts of man's actions in space and time. Through increased eco-efficiency and changed awareness, nations and companies arrive at a synergistic relationship between environment and economy. It is indicated that social security benefits expenditure increases by a factor 3.5 and carbon dioxide emissions per capita decreases by a factor 3 at each higher level of sustainability. Quantified differences in sustainability levels of 24 nations are shown. Priorities for improving and safeguarding sustainability are indicated.     

Is the economic dimension inducing the other sustainability dimensions,or is it the reverse? Perceptions from the Portuguese metal industry

ABSTRACT

In organizational sustainability, the economic dimension is recognized as having a very important role. However, the discussion regarding whether it is exclusively the economic dimension that has the power to induce the other sustainability dimensions is far from agreement. The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the perceptions regarding the existence of mutual influences between the economic dimension of sustainability and the other sustainability dimensions – environmental, social and cultural – in a relevant Portuguese economic sector: the metal industry. The analysis and statistical tests performed with the 211 collected answers led to the conclusion that the influence exerted by the economic dimension on the other sustainability dimensions is perceived as dominant, both in present and future perspectives. The results also show the perception that the economic dimension is equally influenced by the environmental and social dimensions, and in a less extent, by the cultural dimension, and that all these mutual influences are perceived to increase in the future. The existence of organizational management systems has a positive effect on the perceptions regarding the existence of mutual influences between sustainability dimensions, but only for those companies with more than one certified management system. These results confirm that organizational management systems are connected to higher degrees of awareness regarding sustainability issues. Given that the great majority of the sampled industries are SMEs, the results obtained in this research demonstrate that the existence of mutual influences between sustainability dimensions is recognized even in small-sized industries.     

Measuring natural resource scarcity: Theory and practice

Concern over the implications of natural resource availability for economic well-being has been among the most long-lived policy issues involving economists. Scarcity and Growth by Barnett and Morse has remained the most influential evaluation of these issues. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the Barnett-Morse methodology. Using the results from comparative static and dynamic models three scarcity indexes are evaluated for their consistency in signaling changes in the availability of natural resources. In addition, the paper reports a reconsideration of the movements in the relative prices of extractive outputs to 1973. This analysis indicates that the empirical evidence alone is not sufficient to arrive at a conclusion as to whether there is increasing scarcity of natural resources.     

软约束机制下的生态预算理论的问题及对策

在分权体制框架下,约束机制软化导致地方政府放大其自利性偏好,在一定程度上成为可持续发展的减项。表现为：在当前政府绩效考核的经济指标压力下扩大自然资源的投入;与资源消耗主体博弈的经济人行为导致不规范的环境资源分配,使环境目标和环境管理目标的实现呈现高成本特征;与中央政府相较的信息优势导致全局性的非理性资源的浪费等。生态预算是ICLEI参照财政预算的程序创建的促进环境资源有效配置和可持续管理的政府工具,其以强可持续发展为目标,采用实物指标度量环境资源在社会经济活动中的实际流量,强调约束支出控制,以保持环境资源全部价值在代内和代际间的平衡。我国在引进生态预算监督制约机制的路径选择及模式设计上,可能会出现因现实文化的惯性、双重代理机制、体制内监督等问题导致的生态预算约束软化,改进方向在于重视环境-经济-社会一体化考核的作用、确定合理的激励方式、由社会审计评价和监督生态预算执行,从而逐步走向制度完善的进程。     

Industrial ecology flows of agriculture and food industry in Finland: utilizing by-products and wastes

Although half of the administrative units in China are said to have implemented their local Agenda 21, the promotion of sustainable communities is not pervasive. In this paper, we adopted a relatively untried mode of analysis and a socio-economic context to illustrate the potentials and failures of China's grassroots local government bodies in achieving sustainable waste management. Our study shows that, among the three main functions of sustainable waste management (ensuring environmental hygiene, provision of recycling logistics and changing the consumption pattern of the local community) for local governments, grassroots local government bodies in mainland China are only able to do the minimum, i.e. ensuring environmental hygiene and handling complaints. One of the reasons for the failure is that, despite the emphasis on capacity building in China's Agenda 21, the reality is that no action is taken to empower grassroots local government. Despite the high profile accorded by the Chinese central government to motivating local governments to formulate their own Agenda 21, local sustainability and waste management performance have little relevance to the appraisal systems of these government agents.     

Methodological integration for sustainable natural resource management beyond field/farm level: lessons from the ecoregional initiative for the humid and sub-humid tropics of Asia

SUMMARY

Integrated natural resources management (INRM) has to address both the livelihood goals of farmers and the ecological sustainability of agroecosystems and natural resources. Under the Ecoregional Initiative for the Humid and Sub-Humid Tropics of Asia — Ecor(1)Asia — one major set of activities has been the development of approaches, methodologies, and tools to meet the challenges of INRM research for sustainable agricultural development. Examples provided illustrate the role of these methodologies in the three main phases of knowledge development for improving INRM impact: knowledge generation, knowledge capitalization, and knowledge mobilization. The methodologies are designed for better integration across disciplines, spatial scales, and hierarchical levels of social organization. Attempts are made to quantify trade-offs between biophysical sustainability and socio-economic considerations. The case is made for using these methodologies in a more complementary manner to help bridge the topdown and bottom-up approaches in INRM. Inherent in the developing and implementing of these methodologies is the forging of partnerships and fostering linkages with multiple stakeholders, as well as using the knowledge base and integrative tools as communication platforms.