CSSD Associated with United Nations Actions on Sustainable Development

In December, 2004, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) of the Department of Public Information (DPI) of the UnitedNations approved the association to the Chinese Society for Sustainable Development (CSSD) with the Department, effective immediately. Thisassociation constitutes a commitment of CSSD to disseminate information and raise public awareness about the purposes and activities of theUnited Nations and issues of global concern. So we decided to develop a spec…     

Integrating Sustainable Development into Global Institutions： Reforming the United Nations

This article will briefly outline the origins, structure and functions of United Nations Environment Program and the Commission on Sustainable Development in the context of the goals of ecologically sustainable development （ESD）. Economic development, social development and environmental protection form the three interconnected parts of ESD. The achievements of the key UN environmental institutions and programs in opening up the global system to civil society, the private sector and a diversity of actors and interests, promoting the role of poverty alleviation as part of ESD through the Millennium Development Goals, and facilitating important Multilateral Environmental Agreements should be recognized. However, with these notable exceptions, organizations such as United Nations Environment Program and the Commission on Sustainable Development have become weak in scientific and technical leadership, global policy, co-ordination （inside and outside the UN） and has few achievements in the inter- national and national implementation of obligations and standards in Global Environmental Governance - including enforcement, compliance and effectiveness. This article will outline the key reasons for this inadequacy. Attention will also be focused on the way forward through of a new United Nations Environment Organization. This will require a clarification of purpose and function （within the UN system and as part of global governance structures） as well as consideration of whether it depends on system-wide UN reform. It is recommended that medium and long term strategies for reform are necessary.     

‘Environmental and Economic Costs of the Application of Pesticides Primarily in the United States’

An obvious need for an updated and comprehensive study prompted this investigation of the complex of environmental costs resulting from the nation’s dependence on pesticides. Included in this assessment of an estimated $10 billion in environmental and societal damages are analyses of: pesticide impacts on public health; livestock and livestock product losses; increased control expenses resulting from pesticide-related destruction of natural enemies and from the development of pesticide resistance in pests; crop pollination problems and honeybee losses; crop and crop product losses; bird, fish, and other wildlife losses; and governmental expenditures to reduce the environmental and social costs of the recommended application of pesticides.The major economic and environmental losses due to the application of pesticides in the USA were: public health, $1.1 billion year⁻¹; pesticide resistance in pests, $1.5 billion; crop losses caused by pesticides, $1.4 billion; bird losses due to pesticides, $2.2 billion; and groundwater contamination, $2.0 billion.*Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Conceptual Framework of Tourism Carrying Capacity for a Tourism City： Experiences from National Parks in the United States

There is no universally-accepted definition of tourism carrying capacity(TCC).Numerical TCC focuses on use level and is considered as"a magic number"of the saturation point for tourism.There are several reasons why numerical tourism capacity is inadequate.Alternatively,tourism capacity can be defined in terms of limits of acceptable change,which shifts the focus from"how much use is too much"to"how much change is acceptable".This article proposes an improved conceptual framework for evaluating carrying capacity for the tourism city based on approaches used in US national parks,which consider the impact of human use on a city's economic,environmental/resource,and socio-cultural conditions.Based on the basic data of indicator values and relevant standards,the framework monitors the current indicators and predicts future indicator values; it can also be used to assess and predict TCC.     

Using air quality modeling to study source–receptor relationships between nitrogen oxides emissions and ozone exposures over the United States

Human exposure to ambient ozone (O₃) has been linked to a variety of adverse health effects. The ozone level at a location is contributed by local production, regional transport, and background ozone. This study combines detailed emission inventory, air quality modeling, and census data to investigate the source–receptor relationships between nitrogen oxides (NO_x) emissions and population exposure to ambient O₃ in 48 states over the continental United States. By removing NO_x emissions from each state one at a time, we calculate the change in O₃ exposures by examining the difference between the base and the sensitivity simulations. Based on the 49 simulations, we construct state-level and census region-level source–receptor matrices describing the relationships among these states/regions. We find that, for 43 receptor states, cumulative NO_x emissions from upwind states contribute more to O₃ exposures than the state's own emissions. In-state emissions are responsible for less than 15% of O₃ exposures in 90% of U.S. states. A state's NO_x emissions can influence 2 to 40 downwind states by at least a 0.1 ppbv change in population-averaged O₃ exposure. The results suggest that the U.S. generally needs a regional strategy to effectively reduce O₃ exposures. But the current regional emission control program in the U.S. is a cap-and-trade program that assumes the marginal damage of every ton of NO_x is equal. In this study, the average O₃ exposures caused by one ton of NO_x emissions ranges from ? 2.0 to 2.3 ppm-people-hours depending on the state. The actual damage caused by one ton of NO_x emissions varies considerably over space.     

Are sustainable cities “happy” cities? Associations between sustainable development and human well-being in urban areas of the United States

In this paper, we assess the associations between self-reported happiness, measured using the Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index (2012), and four US city sustainability indices: the Green City Index (2011), Our Green Cities (2012), Popular Science US City Rankings (2008) and the SustainLane US Green City Rankings (2007). Based on the examination of nonparametric, rank-based correlations, we found positive associations between sustainable development and happiness on all scales and statistically significant correlations for two of the four SD indices. Results support previous research, emphasize the value of explicit consideration of happiness when measuring urban sustainability and highlight the need for future research that assesses the influence of specific subsystems of urban development on self-reported happiness.