Economic analysis of biogas and compost projects in a palm oil mill with clean development mechanism in Malaysia

This article is a case study to compare the economic viabilities of biogas generation and compost projects in a palm oil mill in Malaysia with and without clean development mechanism (CDM). Biogas is captured from anaerobic ponds or digester tanks treating palm oil mill effluent (POME) and converted to green renewable electricity for grid connection, while compost is produced from the shredded empty fruit bunch and raw untreated POME. The both technologies were compared by considering the changes of the materials flow and energy balances. A palm oil mill with a capacity of 54?t fresh fruit bunch per hour has the potential to produce either 6.9?GWh of electricity from biogas or fertilizer equivalent to 488?t of nitrogen, 76?t of phosphorus and 1,065?t of potassium per year. The economic analysis for 10?years project term analysis indicated that CDM gave a significant impact and ensured economic viability for both projects with 25?% of internal rate of return (IRR), RM 12.39 million of net present value (NPV) and 3.5?years of payback period (PBP) for biogas project, whereas 31?% of IRR, RM 10.87 million of NPV and 2.9?years of PBP for compost project, respectively. In addition, sensitivity analysis indicated that the profitability of both projects will vary depending on the economic situation, such as electricity price which is based on the government policy, whereas compost price that depend on fertilizer market price with 43?% NPV change in 20?% range of fertilizer value.     

Sustainability indicators of water sharing compacts

There is an increasing crisis of fresh water availability throughout the world. Sharing the available water resources in a sustainable manner among numerous stakeholders in the backdrop of this crisis is more challenging. Very often water conflicts are triggered out in this challenging scenario. These conflicts are sometimes reconciled with compacts on sharing. Water sharing compacts on both surface and aquifer resources are very common. Whether these compacts are founded on postulates of sustainability is the important question we want to investigate. Conflicts resurface when the sustainability of a compact is at stake. In this paper, we are reviewing three compacts on surface water sharing to understand their sustainability perspectives and how it has helped addressing conflicts. An introduction to various legal instruments promulgated aiming water conflict abatement is given first. Different types of water sharing agreements being signed in the current water management practice are also looked into. Theoretical background of sustainability analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, applicable in the case of water sharing models is then discussed. This is followed by specific case study analysis of three interstate water sharing agreements executed in basins of different agro-climatic regions across the world. It includes the Colorado basin (USA), Murray Darling basin (Australia) and the Parambikulam Aliyar Project (PAP) basins (India). Interstate water sharing agreement of these basins is critically examined and compared to comment on its sustainability perspective. The Murray Darling basin and its compact appear to be better in its overall considerations of sustainability. Compared to Colorado and Murray Darling, PAP requires major revisions in its sustainability context. E flows and stochastic modeling are the thrust areas of PAP that require major revision.     

Sustainability indicators for tourism destinations: bibliometric analysis and proposed research agenda

Environment, Development and Sustainability - This study aims to provide various maps of the evolution, current situation and future lines of sustainability indicators for tourism destinations...     

Sustainability risk identification in product development

Sustainability-related issues present significant financial, strategic, compliance and operational risks to manufacturers. Many of these risks directly or indirectly result from the way a product is designed and managed across its life cycle. Assessing sustainability risk (S _R) at the product design stage is crucial for the development of products that both minimise sustainability risk exposure and are environmentally sustainable. Managing the costs associated with these risks requires risk management intervention at the design stage before these costs are committed throughout the life cycle (production, use, end-of-life). The goal of the sustainability risk assessment (SRA) methodology is to provide an approach to comparing the financial cost of a ‘sustainable product’ vs. an ‘unsustainable product’, by factoring in the effects of S _R on life-cycle cost. The SRA methodology demonstrates that, in some cases, sustainable products cost less than unsustainable products when sustainability risk is considered in the costing analysis. This paper outlines the first step of the SRA methodology, which is a process for identifying S _R inherent in the product life cycle. Once key risks are identified, the subsequent steps of the SRA assess and prioritise these risks for treatment through changes to product design and materials composition.     

Sustainability assessment of coastal ecosystems: DPSIR analysis for beaches at the Northeast Coast of Vietnam

Environment, Development and Sustainability - The Northeastern coastal zone of Vietnam possesses high biodiversity and rich ecosystems like coral reefs, seagrasses, beaches and mangroves. It also...     

Sustainability indicators in the swine industry of the Brazilian State of Santa Catarina

In recent decades, there has been a growing concern about measuring and evaluating the results of intensive production practices, such as the mode of integration practiced on a large scale by agro-industries. The present study discusses the application and the results of a Sustainability Indicators System in the context of the swine industry in the Brazilian State of Santa Catarina. These indicators, focused on the level of sustainability maturity, can be used as a way to diagnose and compare the efficiency of the industry from a broader perspective. The research findings indicate that most of the pig farms that have been studied can be classified as “in search of sustainability or sustainable.” Nevertheless, there are differences among the dimensions and between the most ranked farms and the others which must be considered for a better design and application of public policies and company strategies toward an effective and balanced social, economic and environmental sustainability.     

Social cost of environmental pollution and application of counter measures through clean development mechanism: in the context of developing countries

The developing countries i.e., the non-Annex-I countries (parties to the Kyoto Protocol but not responsible to any reduction target yet) in the Kyoto Protocol whose economies are in transition are also allowed to reduce GHG emissions. Among these, the countries that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol may be benefited from CDM projects to promote sustainable development. The developed countries i.e., the Annex-I countries (that have signed the Kyoto Protocol & are responsible to have specific GHG emission reduction target) or the investing countries, in return, have privilege to purchase CER credits (in units equivalent to one tonne of CO₂ gas emission reduction) to meet the emission target as specified in the Kyoto Protocol. The key step in understanding about CDM is to grasp the concept of “baseline” and “additionality”. The “Baseline” is the emissions level that would have existed if a CDM project had not happened. The feature of an approved CDM project is that the planned reductions would not occur without the additional incentive provided by emission reduction credits; this concept is known as “Additionality”. According to environmental additionality concept, baseline emission minus project emission is equal to emissions reduction. “Investment Additionality,” ultimately rejected during negotiation of the “Marrakech Accords” and “Financial Additionality,” are the two important concepts. The concept of trading of CER matches to the idea of Pigovian tax (equal to the negative externality and which is considered one of the “traditional” means of bringing a modicum of market forces) in Economics, making pollution more costly to the polluter, as the polluters have negative cost since they save money by polluting; hence, there are supposed negative externalities associated with the market activity. Economic theory predicts that in an economy where the cost of reaching mutual agreement between parties is high and where pollution is diffuse, Pigovian tax will be an efficient way to promote the public interest and will lead to an improvement of the quality of life measured by the Genuine Progress Indicator and other human economic indicators, as well as higher gross domestic product growth. We can seek a level of pollution such that the marginal savings (MS) to one polluting unit from pollution (−MC) is equal to marginal damage (MD) from pollution over the entire population, since pollution is a public bad i.e., MS (x*) = ∑MD_i (x*) where ∑D_i (x) is the total damage. Though the responsibility of reduction in emission does not lie on the non-Annex-I countries, still effort of maintaining global emission balance can be expected equally from developed and developing countries. The responsibilities of Kyoto Protocol are (a) to reduce global GHG emissions, (b) to bring about sustainable development in the developing countries lie on above two groups since its effect on February 16, 2005. Different polluters have different costs of pollution control. The least costly way of controlling pollution from various sources that reflects different costs of pollution control making the set of environmental regulations to achieve the emission target at the lowest cost makes the regulation cost-effective. Though efficiency is not attainable for many regulations, cost-effectiveness is attainable.     

电网发展、清洁电源接入与地区能源效率

鉴于我国已经建成全球规模最大的超高压和特高压电网,彻底弥补了电力跨区配置的电网基础设施短板,并且为清洁电源并入电网和跨区消纳提供了完善的基础设施,不仅克服我国电力负荷中心和能源基地的区域布局不协调,而且有益于缓解日益严峻的能源利用率低下和环境污染问题。本文利用1991—2012年全国29个省市面板数据实证研究了清洁电源并网对地区全要素能源效率的影响。为保证实证结果稳健性分别在线性和非线性实证框架下采用系统广义矩估计(SYS-GMM)和面板平滑转换模型(PSTR)两种方法估计了清洁电源接入高压、超高压和特高压电网的地区全要素能源效率异质性效应。实证结果显示:(1)我国电网基础设施对地区全要素能源效率具有明显的增进效应,特别是超高压电网在促进全要素能源效率提升上表现的最为突出,在特高压骨干网架尚未形成的情况下起到了支柱性作用。(2)高压、超高压、特高压与清洁电源交互项的估计系数始终位于负数区间,反映清洁电源并网的能源效率绩效并不明显,受限于并网规模和机制缺陷,还没有发挥出全要素能源效率提升作用。(3)随着人均GDP的不断提高,各等级电网对地区能源效率的益处越来越明显,并且存在着门槛效应。(4)特高压电网对地区能源效率的积极作用主要表现在东部沿海高收入省份,这些省份作为电力消费负荷中心,大规模接入清洁电源对能源效率改善裨益明显。接下来,需要根据地区的能源禀赋结构选择清洁电源的并网模式,完善的电网基础设施、合理的电源结构还需要配置以高效的清洁电源并网机制才能不断增进地区全要素能源效率。     

Sustainability issues for biodiversity business

Biodiversity is acknowledged as one of the most important resources that helps to sustain life’s processes. Additionally, it is also one of the most important sources of livelihood for different kinds of stakeholders at various levels of resource markets—local, domestic, or international. With globalization and increasing sophistication in the methods of commercial trade in biological resources, various issues arise related to the sustenance of resources, of ecological balances, and equity in transactions. All of these are concerns to be addressed to achieve a state of ‘sustainability.’ This paper prescribes to the definition of ‘sustainability’ as the capacity to maintain a certain process or state for “improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting eco-systems” (IUCN/UNEP/WWF, in Caring for the Earth: a strategy for sustainable living. Gland, Switzerland, 1991). This goes beyond ensuring inter- and intragenerational equity in access to resources and includes several other parameters, including equity among stakeholders to returns from biological resources, related knowledge, trade-offs, and ethical business practices related to these resources. Through the prism of an examination of a simplistic supply route(s) and value addition chain of biodiversity resources for commercial use, this paper reviews and highlights issues related to ‘sustainability’ at each stage. Evidence points to shortcomings in the sustainable use of biological resources at each stage of value addition, calling for focused and specific measures to address them.     

Sustainability from a Chinese cultural perspective: the implications of harmonious development in environmental management

Sustainable development has broad consensus in environmental science and policy discourse, but its implications differ in specific cultural contexts. This article articulates sustainable development from a Chinese cultural perspective by tracing ideas from Chinese traditional culture and exploring China’s concept of harmonious development with emphasis on environmental management. Ideas that resemble sustainable development are not new to Chinese culture, but have roots in ancient Chinese thoughts, which in turn influence current governance and policies. Notably, Chinese traditional philosophies such as Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, and Yin–Yang contain philosophies fundamental to sustainable development. As a distinct local discourse, such concepts were well interpreted and understood in the ancient meaning of harmony, giving China unique sustainability perspectives with institutional implications for policies of harmonious development and environmental management. Currently, China is driven to create a new national identity of harmonious development that involves Chinese traditional philosophies and values in its modern administration. The slogans “harmonious society” and “Chinese dream” reflect this new way of responding to the world with the aspiration to achieve cleaner growth, personal prosperity, and social stability. The Chinese and Western roots of sustainable development are conceptually, ideologically, and historically different, and this paper articulates how the convergence of the two underlies contemporary international debates.     

Sustainability of agricultural waste power generation industry in China: criteria relationship identification and policy design mechanism

Environment, Development and Sustainability - The sustainable development of the agricultural waste power generation industry (AWPGI) can reduce environmental pollutants' emissions and...     

Footprints for Sustainability: The Next Steps

The concept of an ecological footprint is based on the understanding that every individual human appropriates a share of the productive and assimilative capacity of the biosphere. An ecological footprint corresponds to this exclusive biologically productive area that a defined population uses for all its resource requirements and wastes, and is expressed in terms of bioproductive space, with world-average productivity. Humanity's footprint or its aggregate ecological demand can only temporarily exceed the productive and assimilative capacity of the biosphere without liquidating and weakening the natural capital on which humanity depends fundamentally. Therefore, accounting tools for quantifying humanity's use of nature are essential for overall assessments of human impact as well as for planning specific steps towards a sustainable future.This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the ecological footprint as an ecological accounting method, points out research needs for improvement of the analysis, and suggests potential new applications. The paper identifies ten new applications of the tool to make it applicable at various geographic scales and for a number of analytical and didactic purposes. Then nine methodological improvements are suggested that could refine the currently applied method, making assessments more sensitive to a larger number of ecological impacts. It concludes that many crucial questions pertinent to building a sustainable society can be addressed by current ecological footprint research. By making the method more complete, this tool could evolve from being largely of pedagogical use to become a strategic tool for policy analysis.     

Sustainability: new strategic thinking for business

Some researchers insist that sustainability should be represented as a continuous quest, doubting that there is the ‘right’ way to be sustainable. Acknowledging the immensity of sustainability challenges, this article takes a different perspective, arguing that without understanding of concrete barriers and seeking solutions, the challenge of addressing unsustainable practices becomes unsurmountable. This article will summarize research in sustainability literature that indicates that sustainability requires a constant human population, as well as ecologically benign method of production. This article will survey a number of helpful frameworks that address the key obstacles to sustainability, namely population growth, and unsustainable production and consumption. These frameworks are discussed in the context of business-level solutions and production systems. As illustrated by examples of best practices as well as potential pitfalls associated with each system, these systems have the potential to move the quest for sustainability beyond ‘business as usual.’     

Monitoring and guiding development in rural Egypt: local sustainable development indicators and local Human Development Indices

This paper puts forward sustainable development indicators and an index appropriate for monitoring and guiding development planning in the villages of rural Egypt, as an improvement on the current approach which is informed by locally calculated Human Development Indices (HDI). This has two principal weaknesses. Firstly many of the issues of importance to villagers are not covered by the economic and social scope of the HDI. Secondly the HDI, along with international sustainable development indicator sets, fails to identify problems which are of importance in specific national or sub-national contexts. We have therefore worked from a simplified but holistic model of the socio-economic-environmental system of a rural Egyptian village, informed by the outputs of a participatory planning process. An indicator set based on a one-to-one correspondence between system components and indicators was created. This comprehensive set is detailed but consequently rather unwieldy, and a core set is selected and compared with the HDI indicators for a sample of villages to demonstrate the impact of considering environmental and institutional factors on establishing priority areas for government intervention. We conclude that a combination of a locally relevant index and an easily comprehended diagrammatic approach to presenting a small indicator set offers advantages to decision makers in comparison to local application of the HDI.     

Assessing the impacts of sustainable development projects in the Amazon: the DURAMAZ experiment

Since 1992, a boom of “sustainable development projects” has been registered in the Brazilian Amazon, turning it into a kind of open-air laboratory for sustainability. But their real impacts remain unclear, especially because of inadequate evaluation tools. A new device is therefore needed to unveil the inner mechanisms of development aid despite the difficulties linked with the diversity of contexts or the heterogeneity in the relevant parameters. Those are the challenges we met when we engaged in comparing the impacts of sustainable development programs in 13 sites throughout the Brazilian Amazon in order to identify determining factors of sustainability. To achieve our objective, we conceived an indicator system based on the results of intensive fieldwork, including social, economic, environmental, and biographical issues. Our results show that the most prominent problem of sustainability—evaluation of effectiveness—has not been tackled; life conditions and environmental preservation continue to appear antagonistic. At the same time, variability appears among outwardly coherent social groups, showing that a case-to-case approach is definitely indispensable and confirming the need to go “beyond panaceas” to find resolutions. This article successively addresses three points. First, we present the starting point of our research, or how the Amazon region was turned into a laboratory for sustainability and how our research project aimed at analyzing the consequences of this trend. Second, we discuss how available indicator systems fail to respond to the need for a multidimensional evaluation at the local level and, therefore, how we constituted our own analytical tool. Third, we focus on some results that can be derived from our system, especially in terms of identifying key factors needed to achieve sustainability in the Amazon.     

Creating a Place for Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science

Environmental communication scholarship is critical to the success of sustainability science. This essay outlines three pressing areas of intersection between the two fields. First, environmental communication scholarship on public participation processes is essential for sustainability science's efforts to link knowledge with action. Second, sustainability science requires collaborations across diverse institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Environmental communication can play a vital role in reorganizing the production and application of disciplinary knowledge. Third, science communication bridges environmental communication and sustainability science and can move communication processes away from one-way transmission models toward engaged approaches. The essay draws on Maine's Sustainability Solutions Initiative to illustrate key outcomes of a large project that has integrated environmental communication into sustainability science.     

Influencing factors on sustainable development: a case study in Quang Tri province,Vietnam

Background Sustainable development (SD) is a common concept. Knowledge and attitudes are essential in the SD process. This study assesses the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of local people about SD. Aim To study the factors that influence the understanding of the concept, contents, and indicators of different aspects affecting the health and environmental issues. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out from June to July 2007 among 546 households in the Quang Tri province. Data were gathered on basis of socio-demographic variables, namely age, gender, education, occupation, income, and region. Chi square tests and multivariate analysis were performed on the obtained data. The data were cleaned and analysed using SPSS 15.0 for windows. Results Occupation is related to knowledge, attitude, or practice. Income is related to knowledge or practice. Gender related to only attitude. Lastly, region is related to attitude or practice. The proportion of wrong understanding about SD is 2.0 times (95% CI: 1.3; 3.1, p < 0.001) higher than that of the people who have good understanding about it. The rate of willingness to do any related SD programmes of the people who understanding is 2.1 times (95% CI: 1.4; 3.2, p < 0.001) higher than that of the people who have bad one. Conclusions This study shows that knowledge on sustainability of the local communities is low. Occupation and income influence understanding of SD more than region, age, gender, and education. Most of the local people who do not understand SD in general, do not want to participate or act in SD programmes.     

Sri Lanka: a political ecology of socio-environmental conflicts and development projects

By analyzing 26 cases in the EJ Atlas for Sri Lanka, their causes, the impacts, the social actors involved, the forms of mobilization, and the main outcomes of the conflicts, this article examines in what ways activities aiming at economic growth produce socio-environmental conflicts. Such activities increase the social metabolism causing changes that translate into environmental, social, and health impacts which due to inequality of power are unequally distributed. As a result, those who are negatively impacted sometimes mobilize claiming environmental justice. The mining of construction materials to support the boom in the building sector and the expansion of intensive plantations into ‘extraction frontiers’ in new territories, cause deforestation, biodiversity loss, and hurt the local communities. Tourism and industries and new infrastructures are causing displacement, pollution, land degradation, and water shortage, affecting communities of farmers and fishermen that mobilize against the adverse impacts. Those with power to appropriate the natural resources are mostly the state together with international finance institutions and international actors who are able to implement the construction of infrastructures, plantations, and mass tourism. Mobilizations are mostly geared to the protection of livelihoods threatened by loss of access to land, pollution, deforestation, diseases, water scarcity, and new uncertain risks. The protection of the environment demanded by the mobilized groups in Sri Lanka does not aim just to protect nature itself but belongs to a wider movement of an “environmentalism of the poor”.     

Sustainability of silicon feedstock for a low-carbon society

We need to ensure the sustainable management of advanced materials, such as purified silicon, that contribute to a low-carbon society. Because a drastic increase in the demand for photovoltaic (PV) systems is tightening the supply of silicon for PV cells, the sustainability of silicon feedstock needs to be explored. For this purpose, a material flow analysis of silicon in Japan from 1996 to 2006 is presented in this paper. Our analysis finds that rapid growth in demand for polycrystalline silicon (pc-silicon) and single crystalline silicon (sc-silicon) has changed the structure of the purified silicon supply. The strong demand for purified silicon for solar cells is responsible for this change. While off-grade silicon obtained as a by-product of electronic-grade silicon (EG-Si) covered the demand for solar sells before 2000, pc-silicon is currently produced independently for solar cells via an energy-intensive process. Analysis of the resource effective-use index (REI), which indicates how effectively purified silicon is used, shows progress in the effective use of pc- and sc-silicon. REI analysis indicates that the effective use of pc-silicon is reaching a maximum, while the effective use of sc-silicon is advancing, with a corresponding increase in price. To ensure a sustainable supply of silicon feedstock, this paper proposes four solutions: (1) production of solar-grade pc-silicon by a less costly and less energy-consuming method; (2) reduction in the amount of crystalline silicon per watt in solar cells; (3) acceleration of the development and deployment of other solar cell types; and (4) reuse and recycling of solar cells in the future.     

Pedagogy for Sustainability Science: Case-Based Approaches for Interdisciplinary Instruction

Sustainability science represents a fundamental shift in the nature of research on environmental problems, calling for specialists to expand beyond their disciplinary perspectives in order to cooperate together to understand and address systemic problems. This shift demands a corresponding shift in education in order to equip students with the skills, theories, and methods they need to address contemporary challenges. We argue that case studies are a productive pedagogical approach to teaching about sustainability and teaching for sustainability. Case-based approaches equip students to encounter complexity, manage uncertainty, and generate innovative strategies. In laying out of the pedagogical challenges inherent in sustainability education, we highlight opportunities and demands for environmental communication scholars to contribute to the emerging discipline of sustainability science.