Economic considerations for wastewater upgrading alternatives: an Israeli test case

Sewage effluent for land application is becoming an increasingly important source of irrigation water in many semi-arid regions of the world. Two main approaches to the use of sanitation to upgrade effluent for reuse in agriculture were analyzed: (i) sanitizing to the level required for each crop; or (ii) upgrading all effluent to the sanitary level mandated for unrestricted irrigation (<10 fecal coli/100mL). The first approach was authorized by the Israeli health authorities, who consider irrigation with secondary effluent to be complementary to the treatment process. The other approach was conceived mainly by the agricultural and environmental establishments, which debited the additional financial burden to the urban sector and/or the 'general public'. We show that upgrading all effluents in Israel to 'unrestricted irrigation quality' would cost $69 million each year for upgrading alone, in addition to the costs of treatment to the sanitary level required for each individual crop and of observing all the necessary additional precautions and boundaries. This difference in cost stems from the fact that most effluent is used for the irrigation of non-edible crops, for which partial pathogen removal is sufficient. Thus, upgrading to the sanitary level required by the most sensitive crops would be rather wasteful.     

Involving indigenous peoples in protected area management: comparative perspectives from Nepal,Thailand, and China

Despite over two decades of efforts towards involving indigenous and traditional peoples in protected area management, there are few successful examples. Several international principles and guidelines on indigenous peoples' involvement in protected areas exist. However, because of the lack of evaluation of whether or not these principles and guidelines have been put into practice, there is hardly any information that indicates the actual involvement of indigenous peoples in protected areas. This paper attempts to compare efforts in partnership between indigenous peoples and protected area authority in three Asian countries: Nepal, Thailand, and China. It shows that the involvement of indigenous peoples is more successful where park planning is participatory and where political and socioeconomic reforms are underway. Indigenous peoples are in conflict with park authorities where park management is centralized and nonparticipatory. Unless concrete efforts are made to address livelihood issues of indigenous peoples living in and around protected areas, park management aimed to protect wildlife will rarely succeed. Participatory park management that involves indigenous peoples and that addresses livelihood issues of indigenous communities will ultimately succeed in its efforts toward wildlife conservation.     

Measuring conservation success beyond the traditional biological criteria: the case of conservation projects in Costa Rica,Mekong Valley,and Cameroon

Traditionally, the criteria used to measure conservation success or failure are based on biological factors. Biological factors include changes in the amount of targeted conserved species, biodiversity, and total area conserved. However, conservation efforts are not simply a matter of biological concern; environmental, political, social, and conflict pressures on different scales (ranging from local to global) also have strong influences on the outcome of conservation. These other factors can either pose threats to or enhance conservation, but are not addressed by current criteria. Using a proposed holistic rubric that includes interdisciplinary fields, this paper examines a set of conservation factors on different scales – ranging from local to global – to determine their importance in conservation. The paper analyses positive factor influences with more successful conservation and negative factor influences with less successful, or failed, conservation attempts. Neutral and non‐applicable factor influences are also identified, defined, and ranked as a standardization mechanism. The determination of success changed when the holistic rubric was applied to conservation projects in Costa Rica, Mekong Valley, and Cameroon. In the Costa Rica case study, conservation success for Guanacaste and Talamanca national parks is rated ‘moderately low’. In the case of Mekong Valley, conservation success is rated ‘low’ for Lower Mekong, ‘moderately low’ for Greater Annamites, and ‘low’ for Phong Nha‐Ke Bang national parks. Cameroon's Congo Basin and Sangha Tri‐National conservation efforts are both rated ‘low’, while Dja Faunal is rated ‘very low’. We conclude that if conservation efforts are to attain a high level of success, the strategy for global conservation must move away from the traditional biological approach, which focuses mainly on biological concerns, and embrace a holistic approach, which in addition to biological concerns, addresses environmental, political, social, and conflict pressures, which have strong influences on the outcomes of conservation.     

US vehicle fuel-efficiency choices: demographic,behavioral, and cultural factors

In the United States, a large proportion of greenhouse gas emissions are from personal vehicle use, and there are large differences in emissions between the most and least efficient vehicles. We use data from 2009 US National Household Travel Survey to characterize consumers who drive the most and least efficient vehicles. We calculate personal fleet efficiency based on all vehicles owned, reflecting the behavioral aspect of vehicle-use choices by owners. Though higher incomes provide the means to purchase more efficient vehicles, we find those with higher incomes more likely to drive low-efficiency vehicles. Higher education levels correlate with greater vehicle efficiency. While some efficiency differences are based on consumer characteristics such as family size, we find large differences that we attribute mostly to cultural preferences as observed by race, region, etc. From a policy perspective, these differences are of particular interest since they may be amenable to change.     

Old ways for new days: Australian Indigenous peoples and climate change

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how Australia's Indigenous peoples understand and respond to climate change impacts on their traditional land and seas. Our results show that: (i) Indigenous peoples are observing modifications to their country due to climate change, and are doing so in both ancient and colonial time scales; (ii) the ways that climate change terminology is discursively understood and used is fundamental to achieving deep engagement and effective adaptive governance; (iii) Indigenous peoples in Australia exhibit a high level of agency via diverse approaches to climate adaptation; and (iv) humour is perceived as an important cultural component of engagement about climate change and adaptation. However, wider governance regimes consistently attempt to “upscale” Indigenous initiatives into their own culturally governed frameworks - or ignore them totally as they “don't fit” within neoliberal policy regimes. We argue that an opportunity exists to acknowledge the ways in which Indigenous peoples are agents of their own change, and to support the strategic localism of Indigenous adaptation approaches through tailored and place-based adaptation for traditional country.     

Trade-Offs Between Biodiversity Conservation and Economic Development in Five Tropical Forest Landscapes

This study explores how conservation and development are interlinked and quantifies their reciprocal trade-offs. It identifies interventions which hold a promise to improve both conservation and development outcomes. The study finds that development trajectories can either be at the cost of conservation or can benefit conservation, but in all cases sustained poverty negatively affects conservation in the long term. Most scenarios with better outcomes for conservation come at a cost for development and the financial benefits of payments for environmental services (PES) are not sufficient to compensate for lost opportunities to earn cash. However, implementation of strategies for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in locations with low population densities come close to overcoming opportunity costs. Environmental services and subsistence income enhance the attractiveness of conservation scenarios to local people and in situations where these benefits are obvious, PES may provide the extra cash incentive to tip the balance in favor of such a scenario. The paper stresses the importance of external factors (such as industrial investments and the development of the national economy) in determining landscape scale outcomes, and suggests a negotiating and visioning role for conservation agencies.     

Forest Management in Northeast China: History,Problems, and Challenges

Studies of the history and current status of forest resources in Northeast China have become important in discussions of sustainable forest management in the region. Prior to 1998, excessive logging and neglected cultivation led to a series of problems that left exploitable forest reserves in the region almost exhausted. A substantial decrease in the area of natural forests was accompanied by severe disruption of stand structure and serious degradation of overall forest quality and function. In 1998, China shifted the primary focus of forest management in the country from wood production to ecological sustainability, adopting ecological restoration and protection as key foci of management. In the process, China launched the Natural Forest Conversion Program and implemented a new system of Classification-based Forest Management. Since then, timber harvesting levels in Northeast China have decreased, and forest area and stocking levels have slowly increased. At present, the large area of low quality secondary forest lands, along with high levels of timber production, present researchers and government agencies in China with major challenges in deciding on management models and strategies that will best protect, restore and manage so large an area of secondary forest lands. This paper synthesizes information from a number of sources on forest area, stand characteristics and stocking levels, and forest policy changes in Northeastern China. Following a brief historical overview of forest harvesting and ecological research in Northeast China, the paper discusses the current state of forest resources and related problems in forest management in the region, concluding with key challenges in need of attention in order to meet the demands for multi-purpose forest sustainability and management in the future.     

Value Orientation and Forest Management: The Forest Health Debate

Among both forest practitioners and the general public, “forest health” has become an issue of contention. Whereas the debate over which treatments will best achieve healthy forests has been framed largely by the popular media and politicians as a struggle between industry and environmentalists, the views of the general public remain unexplored. Survey results from Oregon and Washington residents were used to assess the relationships between respondents’ self-described environmental or economic priorities and the following two variables: (1) acceptability of forest management practices and (2) perceived threats to forest health. Findings indicate that active management was generally accepted by a majority of respondents regardless of their environmental or economic orientation. Disagreement emerged, however, when the appropriateness of specific management practices within specific forest conditions was examined. Additionally, strong evidence was found for a relationship between self-described environmental or economic orientation and perceived threats to forest health. Those with an environmentally oriented viewpoint tended to perceive human-caused factors as the largest threats, whereas those with an economic orientation saw naturally occurring processes as the greatest threats. These findings suggest that the issue of contention is not active management per se. Rather, the major divisions in the forest health debate are defined by specific contexts and circumstances, as well as the management practices used.     

Politics of Co-Optation: Community Forest Management Versus Joint Forest Management in Orissa,India

The article considers the impact of introducing government co-management policy in the form of Joint Forest Management (JFM) in an area with a five-decade-old self-organized community forest management system in Orissa, India. We ask a question that appears not to have been previously examined: What happens when JFM replaces an already existing community forest management arrangement? Our comparison of the JFM arrangement with the self-organized community forest management regime (pre- and post-2002 in a selected village) provides three conclusions: (1) The level of villager participation in forest management has declined, along with the erosion of the bundle of common rights held by them; (2) multiple institutional linkages between the village and outside agencies, and reciprocal relations with neighboring villages have been abandoned in favor of a close relationship with the Forestry Department; and (3) the administration of the forestry resource has become politicized. We conclude that the “one-size-fits-all” approach of the JFM, with its pre-packaged objectives and its narrow scope of forest management, is likely to limit experimentation, learning, and institutional innovation that characterizes community forest management.     

Forest Health,Collective Behaviors,and Management

This study compares community-based managed forests under different purposes of management, namely, state-driven conservation or community-designed utilization in two villages located in the Sopsai watershed, Nan Province, northern Thailand. The forest health under different intensity of uses is assessed in association with the collective behaviors and long-term purposes embedded in village social–cultural context. The study found no significant differences in forest succession and proportion in diameter at 1.3 m (dbh) class and height-class distribution of the forest under different use intensity. The forest for utilization also showed higher density and basal area of the local preferred species than the conservation forest. In the utilization forest, we also found a higher number of multipurpose and preferred species than in the conservation forest, which actually responded to the needs of the community in the long term to have more wood products (both firewood and timbers). The community-based forest management (CBFM) for utilization can also lead to natural regeneration and biodiversity similar to conservation forests. Through CBFM, forest resources can be managed to maintain the healthy condition under different intensities and respond to both community needs and external expectation. The findings also emphasize the importance of recognizing community needs and management objectives in watershed restoration and improving the productivity of forests under collective management.     

Environmental Policy in Russia: Economic,Legal, and Organizational Issues

/ Despite the suspension and closing down of many pollutingindustrial facilities and corresponding expectations of positive change inthat field, it is argued that the environmental situation in Russia in thefirst half of the 1990s has not improved. To corroborate this point, thelatest available data are presented and the deep roots and complexities ofthe current socioeconomic and political situation in the country areanalyzed. Using analogies and "component accounting" approaches,the original economic assessments of environmental damage in the recent pastand current period in Russia are offered for comparison with similar datafrom a selection of developed countries. A model of a new environmentalstrategy and policy is developed and its economic, legal, and organizationaldimensions are examined.KEY WORDS: Damage; Environmental costs; Policy; Pollution; Publicparticipation; Risk; Strategy     

Social, cultural and structural influences on household waste recycling: A case study

The household-recycling rate in the Borough of Burnley, England in 2001/2002 was only half the national average of 12%. This research employed both quantitative and qualitative surveys in order to ascertain whether householders’ attitudes to recycling were contributory factors to the generally poor recycling performance and to investigate other social, cultural and structural influences. The Borough has a large Asian–British population concentrated in two deprived wards where recycling rates are particularly low, so special attention was given to ascertaining their attitudes towards recycling.The quantitative survey comprised a postal questionnaire sent to a random sample of 360 households drawn from the electoral register. The qualitative survey consisted of group interviews with the Asian–British population at local community centres and focus groups attended by volunteers from the quantitative study.The findings suggest that householders are very willing to participate in recycling, as shown by the almost 80% claiming to recycle paper, but that local recycling services are too unreliable and inconvenient to allow them to do so comprehensively. Asian–British attitudes to recycling were found to be no different to those of the wider population, with their low participation being linked to the higher priorities imposed upon them by economic deprivation. The findings are broadly in line with those of the literature in that recycling participation tends to be higher among more affluent and older people, but lower among less affluent and younger households, probably due in part to the availability of both storage space and time, with the implication that the Borough's preponderance of terraced housing militates against a high recycling rate. Policy recommendations to local authorities include the provision of bespoke recycling services to suit the variety of residential conditions across the UK, and the provision of regular feedback to householders regarding recycling services and performance.Further research is needed to identify non-recyclers and to explore how householders’ underlying psychological, cultural and social attitudes to recycling impinge upon recycling and participation rates.     

Toward efficient riparian restoration: integrating economic, physical, and biological models

This paper integrates economic, biological, and physical models to explore the efficient combination and spatial allocation of conservation efforts to protect water quality and increase salmonid populations in the Grande Ronde basin, Oregon. We focus on the effects of shade on water temperatures and the subsequent impacts on endangered juvenile salmonid populations. The integrated modeling system consists of a physical model that links riparian conditions and hydrological characteristics to water temperature; a biological model that links water temperature and riparian conditions to salmonid abundance, and an economic model that incorporates both physical and biological models to estimate minimum cost allocations of conservation efforts. Our findings indicate that conservation alternatives such as passive and active riparian restoration, the width of riparian restoration zones, and the types of vegetation used in restoration activities should be selected based on the spatial distribution of riparian characteristics in the basin. The relative effectiveness of passive and active restoration plays an important role in determining the efficient allocations of conservation efforts. The time frame considered in the restoration efforts and the magnitude of desired temperature reductions also affect the efficient combinations of restoration activities. If the objective of conservation efforts is to maximize fish populations, then fishery benefits should be directly targeted. Targeting other criterion such as water temperatures would result in different allocations of conservation efforts, and therefore are not generally efficient.     

Carbon sequestration,biological diversity,and sustainable development: Integrated forest management

Tropical deforestation provides a significant contribution to anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO₂ concentration that may lead to global warming. Forestation and other forest management options to sequester CO₂ in the tropical latitudes may fail unless they address local economic, social, environmental, and political needs of people in the developing world. Forest management is discussed in terms of three objectives: carbon sequestration, sustainable development, and biodiversity conservation. An integrated forest management strategy of land-use planning is proposed to achieve these objectives and is centered around: preservation of primary forest, intensified use of nontimber resources, agroforestry, and selective use of plantation forestry. The information in this document has been wholly funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency. It has been subjected to the agency's peer and administrative review and approved for publication of an EPA document. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.