共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 31 毫秒
1.
Weisheng Zhou 《Sustainability Science》2006,1(1):115-122
It has been clearly recognized that future global climate change will limit the possibilities for sustainable development in China. To minimize these negative effects, as a practical strategy, we suggest that the Chinese government engage in international cooperation as a key contributor in the prevention of global warming. This suggestion results from numerical estimations of China’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trends accompanied with economic growth up to 2100. The results show that China’s gross domestic product (GDP), measured in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), may overtake the sum of the GDPs of the United States and Canada in 2020. It is predicted that GDP per capita may reach US$20,000 and $80,000 in 2050 and 2100, respectively; meanwhile, CO2 emissions in China will increase from 6.6 billion tons (in carbon equivalent units) in 1990 to 54.6 billion tons in 2100. This means that the global peak concentration of GHG cannot be practically reduced without significant contributions from China. For international cooperation in mitigating global climate change, we introduce a new option, “per-capita emission restricted by assigned amount,” as an accounting rule for GHG reduction. This baseline classifies global CO2 reduction actions into three categories: compulsory reduction, self-imposed reduction, and voluntary reduction. We suggest that China contribute to world CO2 reduction according to the following timetable: voluntary reduction until 2012, self-imposed reduction until 2020, and compulsory reduction from 2020. The simulation results also indicate that China can benefit from this strategy in terms of improvements in its domestic economy and environment, for instance, by reducing fossil fuel consumption and the emission of pollutants.
相似文献
Weisheng ZhouEmail: Phone: +81-75-4663418Fax: +81-75-4663418 |
2.
The Kyoto Protocol relies on incentive-based regulations layered underneath a global cap on net emissions of greenhouse gases.
Within the Kyoto Protocol are opportunities and constraints for signatory nations. Of concern to developing nations are the
constraints the Kyoto Protocol could place on future growth. We examine the constraints and the opportunities offered to developing
countries within the Kyoto Protocol. By identifying the potential costs and benefits the Kyoto Protocol has to offer to developing
countries and by examining the incentives each create, we hope to spark serious investigations into ways to minimize the potential
costs of entering the Kyoto Protocol and take full advantage of the potential benefits.
相似文献
Amin SarkarEmail: |
3.
Himayatullah Khan 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(2):293-305
Using survey-based data approach for modeling the demand for environmental goods/resources, this study estimates income and
price elasticities of demand for improved environmental quality of two National Parks in Northern Pakistan. The study uses
data from two studies. The estimates indicate that improved environmental quality effects can be described as a luxury and
an ordinary and price elastic service. Confidence intervals show however that the classification as a luxury is not statistically
significant. Income elasticities of willingness to pay are estimated for a broad range of environmental services. The study
finds that income and willingness to pay vary directly and significantly. The elasticity estimates, in general, are greater
than zero, but less than unity. The study concludes that environmental improvements are more beneficial to low-income groups
than for high-income groups.
相似文献
Himayatullah KhanEmail: |
4.
William Ascher 《Sustainability Science》2007,2(2):141-149
The policy sciences, in offering the most comprehensive approach to policy analysis and the sociopolitical processes that
shape policy outcomes, is particularly appropriate for guiding the analysis required to promote sustainability. This article
presents the main components of the policy sciences framework and demonstrates its potency in the crucial task of deepening
the problem definitions required to select and enact policies to promote sustainability. As such, it provides background for
the policy sciences articles of this special feature.
相似文献
William AscherEmail: |
5.
Brad Allenby Cynthia Folsom Murphy David Allen Cliff Davidson 《Sustainability Science》2009,4(1):7-15
Sustainable engineering is a conceptual and practical challenge to all engineering disciplines. Although the profession has
experience with environmental dimensions of engineering activities that in some cases are quite deep, extending the existing
body of practice to sustainable engineering by including social and cultural domains is a significant and non-trivial challenge.
Nonetheless, progress is being made, as a recent study undertaken by the Center for Sustainable Engineering in the United
States demonstrates.
相似文献
Brad AllenbyEmail: |
6.
Kuheli Dutt 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(4):705-723
This paper examines the environment-income relationship in the context of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), and explores
the possible role that factors like governance, political institutions, socioeconomic conditions, and education play in influencing
this relationship. The results suggest that the EKC exists for carbon dioxide emissions for cross-country data over the period
1984–2002. However, there is nothing automatic about this relationship; policies designed to protect the environment may be
responsible for this phenomenon. Two other significant findings are: one, countries with better quality of governance, stronger
political institutions, better socioeconomic conditions and greater investment in education have lower emissions; and two,
only around 15% of the countries in the dataset have reached income levels high enough to be associated with an unambiguous
decline in emissions. The implications of these results are discussed within the context of the international environmental
policy arena and the Kyoto Protocol. One of the main objectives of this paper is to bridge the gap between studies conducted
on the EKC and developments in the international environmental policy arena. As a final note this paper emphasizes that one
needs to connect the body of knowledge on the EKC hypothesis to the international environmental policy arena, despite the
apparent difficulty of doing so. One hopes that future studies will further build on this line of thought.
相似文献
Kuheli DuttEmail: |
7.
Wilfred Nyangena 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2008,10(6):745-767
Soil erosion is a major environmental problem and threat to rural development in Kenya. Numerous attempts to address the problem
have apparently had little success. There are however some districts that have been very successful, notably Machakos. In
this study we search for the factors that determine successful development in soil conservation such as social capital, human
capital and market integration. One of our main results is that social capital measures are significant determinants of investment
in soil conservation. A better understanding of the relevant mechanisms is essential for developing policies targeting improvement
in natural resource management.
相似文献
Wilfred NyangenaEmail: |
8.
Carbon neutral Biggar: calculating the community carbon footprint and renewable energy options for footprint reduction 总被引:2,自引:0,他引:2
The objective of this research was to develop a community carbon footprint model that could be used to assess the size and
major components of a community’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The town of Biggar aims to become Scotland’s first carbon neutral town. As expected for this rural community,
car transport accounted for nearly half of the CO2 emissions, with natural gas and electricity consumption resulting in a further 24% and 12% of total emissions, respectively,
and air travel being the last major component at 10% of emissions. An assessment was also made of the wind and solar resources
of the town. One large wind turbine would provide the town’s electricity, while three to four turbines would be needed to
offset all CO2 emissions. In contrast, offsetting by tree planting would require in the region of 2,000 ha of trees.
相似文献
R. J. BarthelmieEmail: |
9.
This paper is a response to a recent special issue of Regional Environmental Change, “Quantifying vulnerability to drought from different disciplinary perspectives” (vol. 8, number 4, 2008). In this paper,
we examine some of the challenges facing efforts to understand vulnerability to drought through quantification as they are
manifest in some of the articles in this special issue.
相似文献
Edward R. CarrEmail: |
10.
Peter J. Marcotullio 《Sustainability Science》2007,2(1):27-54
This article reviews water-related urban environmental conditions in Southeast Asia. It argues that the development of urban
environmental challenges in the region follows a unique pattern compared with those experienced in the now developed world.
The new pattern is defined by the so called time–space telescoping of the development process. The process of time–space telescoping reduces the levels of income at which environmental challenges emerge and forces their appearance in a simultaneous fashion,
as sets of problems. During previous eras, cities experienced sequential environmental transitions. Urban water-related environmental
burdens emerged on local scales and expanded geographically and temporally in impact, with growing levels of affluence. Moreover,
certain environmental challenges appeared later in economic growth because the technologies and practices that induced these
problems emerged at higher levels of income. The article has two main findings. First, except for wealthy urban centers, for
example Singapore, cities in the region are experiencing multi-scaled water burdens simultaneously. Second, low-income and
middle-income cities are experiencing burdens at lower levels of income than did their contemporaries in the north.
相似文献
Peter J. MarcotullioEmail: |
11.
Himayatullah Khan Ehsan Inamullah Khadija Shams 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(2):375-392
This study explores the interlinkages among population, environment and poverty and presents empirical evidence in a developing
country like Pakistan. It gives alternative views on population environment linkages. It explains poverty trap, market based
harmony, and dual effect of poverty on the basis of a link between population growth and natural resource degradation. In
addition, the paper also highlights social and political instability through population-poverty-environment spiral. It also
presents empirical evidence on population-environment-poverty nexus in Pakistan. It also compares environmental sustainability
index and human development index for selected Asian countries. The paper also gives scores for different components of environmental
sustainability index for Pakistan and compares these with India. The paper concludes that the causal relationship between
poverty and environment works in both directions, often through changes in GDP and population. Population stress does not
have any significant direct effect on all aspects of environmental status in Pakistan.
相似文献
Himayatullah KhanEmail: |
12.
Terrascope is a freshman learning community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in which teams of students
work to find solutions to large ‘unsolvable’ problems and to communicate about those problems with a wide variety of audiences
in multiple formats. The program strongly promotes students’ autonomy in focusing and structuring their work, and student
projects culminate in public presentations, both to general audiences and to panels of technical specialists. Students who
have completed the program tend to show strong engagement with environmental and sustainability issues, as well as the skills
and experience to work intensively on such issues within multidisciplinary teams. Here, we present the program as a case study,
with some discussion of the factors that are key to its operation.
相似文献
Ari W. EpsteinEmail: |
13.
Bhaskar Nath 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2008,10(4):471-486
Most environmental professionals and decision-makers, and certainly the public at large, hold the view that the integrity
of earth’s natural environment will be conserved for posterity and sustainable development achieved if all the nations rigorously
enforced their environmental and emission standards. It is argued in this paper that this view, sincerely held by many as
an “axiomatic truth,” is mistaken and misplaced. This is because as a biogeochemical entity the Earth has limited self-regenerative
capacity (SRC) to cope with anthropogenic pollution, and all kinds of environmental problems ensue when that limit is exceeded.
Indeed, mounting environmental problems now occurring on all fronts amply testify to the fact that the limit has already been
exceeded. They also provide necessary and sufficient proof that environmental and emission standards have been woefully inadequate
for protecting earth’s natural environment and life-support systems. It is argued that true global environmental sustainability
will be achieved, paving the way to true global sustainable development, if and only if global environmental and emission
standards are set so that global anthropogenic pollution does not exceed the limit of earth’s natural SRC to cope with such
pollution. These and related issues are discussed in this paper. A simple mathematical model using basic mathematics is also
presented to explain how the phenomenon of “positive feedback” works in some of the environmental problems to exacerbate environmental
degradation and progressively to erode nature’s SRC.
相似文献
Bhaskar NathEmail: |
14.
Working toward sustainable community is a complex task for communities especially given the ambiguous nature of implementing
the concept of sustainable development. However, by working to understand the nature of community capital, administrators
can begin to move beyond bottom line thinking toward a more comprehensive and collective view of community. This paper presents
a theoretical framework that helps municipal decision makers begin collecting information they need to help them build sustainable
and resilient communities.
相似文献
Edith G. CallaghanEmail: |
15.
Joseph Alcamo Lilibeth Acosta-Michlik Alexander Carius Frank Eierdanz Richard Klein Dörthe Krömker Dennis Tänzler 《Regional Environmental Change》2008,8(4):137-149
In this study we develop an “inference modeling” approach to compare and analyze how different disciplines (economics, political
science, and behavioral science/environmental psychology) estimate vulnerability to drought. It is thought that a better understanding
of these differences can lead to a synthesis of insights from the different disciplines and eventually to more comprehensive
assessments of vulnerability. The new methodology consists of (1) developing inference models whose variables and assertions
incorporate qualitative knowledge about vulnerability, (2) converting qualitative model variables into quantitative indicators
by using fuzzy set theory, (3) collecting data on the values of the indicators from case study regions, (4) inputting the
regional data to the models and computing quantitative values for susceptibility. The methodology was applied to three case
study regions (in India, Portugal and Russia) having a range of socio-economic and water stress conditions. In some cases
the estimates of susceptibility were surprisingly similar, in others not, depending on the factors included in the disciplinary
models and their relative weights. A new approach was also taken to testing vulnerability parameters by comparing estimated
water stress against a data set of drought occurrences based on media analysis. The new methodologies developed in this paper
provide a consistent basis for comparing differences between disciplinary perspectives, and for identifying the importance
of the differences.
相似文献
Joseph AlcamoEmail: |
16.
Gregory Ponthiere 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(4):677-694
This paper aims at assessing the extent to which the ecological footprint indicator (EF) can be regarded as an exhibit allowing
an intergenerational trial about the use of natural resources. For that purpose, we examine various criticisms questioning
the relevancy of EF measures for the study of environmental justice between generations. We explore the difficulties raised
by the physical—and highly aggregated—nature of EF measures, as well as problems related to the number, the possible non-existence,
and the tastes of future generations. The extent to which postulates on nature’s regeneration and technological progress affect
the significance of EF studies is also discussed. It is concluded that those criticisms, by identifying various weaknesses
of EF measures for the study of intergenerational justice, point to several crucial refinements of existing EF-based analyses.
相似文献
Gregory PonthiereEmail: |
17.
J. R. Park M. J. Stabler P. J. Jones S. R. Mortimer J. R. Tiffin R. B. Tranter 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(4):735-750
The issue of the sustainable development of rural economies in England has recently received considerable attention. This
is because many of the poorest areas in the country are rural, often of high environmental quality, but suffering from high
unemployment and a lack of services and facilities. The rapid decline in agricultural incomes and in-migration of affluent
urban workers since 1990 has exacerbated economic inequality in such areas. A number of factors have the potential to drive
rural development and this paper applies, and considers, the feasibility of a method from the USA for combining economic and
environmental variables in a regional growth model to examine the hypothesis that environmental quality is an important determinant
of sustainable rural development in England. The model output suggests that, although environmental quality does play a role
in sustainable rural development in England there are other, more important, factors driving development. These include business
and communications infra-structure, the degree and opportunities for commuting and underlying employment prospects. The robustness
and limitations of the method for combining economic and environmental variables is discussed in relation to the spatial interrelatedness
of Local Authority Districts in England, and conclusions are drawn about areas for refinement and improvement of the method.
相似文献
J. R. ParkEmail: |
18.
Athanasios Ragkos Asimakis Psychoudakis Argiro Christofi Alexandros Theodoridis 《Regional Environmental Change》2006,6(4):193-200
This study proposes the valuation of wetland functions as an alternative to the conventional approach to wetland valuation, in order to derive indicators for decision-making in wetland management. It is illustrated that these functions can be valuated in terms of the goods and services they provide to society. Using a functional approach, the functions are identified and the goods and services they provide are explicitly allocated among them; then, the latter are valuated with the Contingent Valuation method. Statistical analysis of the data provides welfare measures that reflect the value of these functions. It is argued that the values of separate functions are more useful in policy-making than their aggregated value.
相似文献
Athanasios RagkosEmail: Phone: +30-2310-998826Fax: +30-2310-998828 |
19.
William Ascher 《Sustainability Science》2006,1(1):15-22
Given progress in policies for pursuing sustainable development, promoting commitment to thinking and acting more far-sightedly has become the primary strategic challenge. In the face of impatience, selfishness, uncertainty, analytical limitations, and vulnerability, strategies for promoting far-sightedness can be identified by assessing how these obstacles can be overcome. Strategies for creating or rescheduling tangible and deference rewards, realigning performance evaluations, implementing cognitive exercises, framing communications, altering decision-making processes, using self-restraint devices both to resist temptation and to enhance credibility, altering institutions to empower the patient, and stabilizing living conditions are the major categories for identifying and assessing the many strategies which arise out of both ordinary and constitutive policy initiatives.
相似文献
William AscherEmail: Phone: +1-909-6073071Fax: +1-909-6218419 |
20.
Application of fuzzy models to assess susceptibility to droughts from a socio-economic perspective 总被引:1,自引:1,他引:0
Lilibeth A. Acosta-Michlik K. S. Kavi Kumar Richard J. T. Klein Sabine Campe 《Regional Environmental Change》2008,8(4):151-160
By combining the concepts of environmental stress, state susceptibility and environmental crisis, “Security Diagram” (SD)
provides a quantitative approach to assessing environmental change and human security. The SD is a tool that clearly presents
in a diagram the security situation of a population or region affected by a particular environmental crisis. Its underlying
concept emphasises that the higher the level of environmental stress and socio-economic susceptibility, the higher the probability
of the occurrence of crisis. Focusing on drought, this study analyses the susceptibility of case study regions in India, Portugal,
and Russia from a socio-economic perspective. A conceptual framework of socio-economic susceptibility is developed based on
the economic development theories of modernisation and dependency. Fuzzy set theory is used to generate susceptibility indices
from a range of national and sub-national indicators, including financial resources, agricultural dependency and infrastructure
development (for economic susceptibility), and health condition, educational attainment and gender inequality (for social
susceptibility). Results indicate that socio-economic susceptibility over the period 1980–1995 was highest in India, followed
by Russia and (since 1989) lowest in Portugal. Globalisation is likely to contribute to changes in the level of socio-economic
susceptibility over time. Moreover, specific social and economic structures unique in each country (e.g., the role of women
in society in India, the socialist legacy in Russia) may explain differences in susceptibility between the case study regions.
相似文献
Sabine CampeEmail: |