Improving the environmental performance of the fishing fleet by use of Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

This article introduces Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a method for improving the environmental performance of the Norwegian fishing fleet. Systems engineering has been introduced as a feasible process for handling sustainability issues in the fisheries, because it contains methods for general system design, operation, and support in a life-cycle perspective. QFD is related to systems engineering as a method for translating stakeholder needs into detailed system requirements at each life-cycle stage. Eco-QFD extends the scope of QFD, and combines QFD, Life-Cycle Cost (LCC), and Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) to evaluate environmental effects and costs in the system development process. The article assesses the usefulness of Eco-QFD in fisheries management decision-making regarding sustainability in the fishing fleet, and for shipyards in their design of fishing vessels. It is concluded that Eco-QFD may be difficult to use for fisheries management in its present form, due to the complexity of sustainability, and the time and efforts demanded to carry out the analyses. Nevertheless, the structuring of the stakeholder needs and requirements may contribute to improved understanding of the decision-situation.     

支撑资源循环可持续性评价的经济决策工具——生命周期成本分析的发展与应用

对接经济系统和环境系统是支撑循环经济决策的关键,而可持续性评价以及在传统生命周期影响评价（LCA）基础上发展起来的生命周期可持续性评价（LCSA）是重要决策支撑工具.近年来对可持续性评价的关注使得生命周期成本分析（LCC）及其在资源循环决策中的应用得以快速发展.大量研究表明LCC是有效的经济决策支撑工具.但是由于"生命周期成本分析"的其他相关称谓与LCC术语上模糊,以及成本效益分析（CBA）等相关成本评估工具在方法用途上的类似,使得在实际研究中LCC的相关概念混淆甚至错误使用的现象时有发生.针对如上研究背景,本文采用文献研究法和案例分析法,旨在厘清LCC及相关术语的概念和内涵,并为LCC以及LCSA在未来的研究提出实用性建议.首先,通过文献研究回顾了LCC的发展脉络,厘清了在人们对社会和环境问题关注下,LCC逐渐从普通的成本评估发展成为LCSA核心部分的发展路径.同时,使用Citespace对国内和国际2000-2017年LCC相关论文发表情况进行图谱分析,发现和国内相比,国际期刊的LCC相关研究已经从概念探索和企业成本控制发展到了特定领域系统的成本优化研究.进一步,引入"可持续性三支柱"的概念来阐释LCSA的经济、环境、社会三个维度以及它与LCC的关系,然后区分了LCC的类似术语的定义和成本范围,并阐述了与传统CBA方法的差别.在此基础上,以欧盟VEEP项目为案例,从定性和定量两个维度阐释了LCC的分析视角和计算过程.最后,对LCC在中国未来的研究方向提出了具体建议,包括：扩大运用领域,标准化,研究方法间的结合,以及数据库和软件工具的开发.     

Eco-labelling of wild-caught seafood products

Several eco-labels for wild-caught seafood have been developed during the last decade. This article describes and analyses the criteria applied by four different eco-labelling schemes for seafood products from capture fisheries, and discusses the criteria in terms of environmental impacts, based on the ISO 14040 standard for life cycle assessment.It is concluded that the most widespread eco-label, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), mainly addresses the fishing stage, in particular the overexploitation of marine resources. LCA studies confirm that the fishing stage represents the most significant environmental burden, but energy consumption and emissions of anti-fouling agents at the fishing or harvesting stage contribute with significant impacts that are not being addressed by international labelling initiatives for wild-caught seafood.LCA studies show that significant environmental impacts are related to the life cycle stages after landing. This includes fish processing, transport, cooling and packaging (especially for highly processed seafood products). Hence, another challenge would be to include criteria related to the post-landing consumption of energy, certain materials and chemicals, waste handling and wastewater emissions. Minimizing product losses throughout the product chain would also be an important area for future criteria in order to avoid fishing at high environmental costs only to produce something that is later wasted.The analysis shows that the Swedish KRAV is the only one that currently addresses a range of issues that include energy and chemicals in the whole life cycle of the products. International initiatives such as MSC cover fish products from many parts of the world emphasizing ‘overexploitation of fish resources’. It is recommended, however, that international initiatives such as MSC develop criteria related to energy use and chemicals – at least at the fishing stage. Over time, other life cycle stages could be addressed as well to the extent that this is manageable.     

Public perception of environmental issues across socioeconomic characteristics: A survey study inWujin, China

In developing countries, there is controversy over the correct perception regarding environmental and developmental issues. Few studies have examined the perception of low-income nationals in regards to social and environmental issues. This paper looks at the relationship between socio-demographic factors and the groups’ perceived priority regarding environmental and social issues in Wujin County. The results indicated that most residents, specifically the young, government employed and the urban community consider environmental issues to be serious, especially in relation to air pollution and water pollution. Furthermore, many residents feel it is important to rank environmental problems that are related to other social and economic issues, and that environmental protection must be set as a priority in Wujin County. Compared to social issues, environmental concern was greater among the young, government employed, and the urban community, because of their higher education and affluence. In addition, 66.2% of residents consider environmental protection to be more important than economic development. Thus, environmental protection must be set as a high priority in Wujin County, in order to face the many social and environmental challenges inherent in development.     

The relationship of social capital and fishers’ participation in multi-level governance arrangements

The need for effective multi-level governance arrangements is becoming increasingly urgent because of complex functional interdependencies between biophysical and socioeconomic systems. We argue that social capital plays an important role in such systems. To explore the relationship between social capital and participation in resource governance arenas, we analyzed various small-scale fisheries governance regimes from the Gulf of California, Mexico. The components of social capital that we measured include levels of fishers’ structural ties to relevant groups and levels of trust in different entities (i.e. cognitive component). We collected data using surveys and interviews with residents of small-scale fishing communities adjacent to marine protected areas. We analyzed the data using a logistic regression model and narrative analysis. The results of our quantitative analysis highlight the multidimensional nature of social capital and reveals complex relationships between different types of social capital and fisher participation in monitoring, rulemaking and MPA design. Furthermore our qualitative analysis suggests that participation in fisheries conservation and management is not fully potentialized due to the social and historical context of participatory spaces in Mexico.     

生态规律在环境管理中的作用--略论现代环境管理的发展趋势

自然界是个生命生生不息的与物质循环不已的再生系统,环境是人类和生物生存的空间,在此空间内充满着多种不同结构和运动状态的物质,其中包含有生命的有机体和无生命的无机物,有人类赖以生存的水、气、光和营养物等基本因素,亦有侵害人体健康的生物和非生物,彼此结合或相互排斥.人类在长期进化过程中,一方面产生了适应环境变化的生存机能,同时人类活动亦不断地作用于环境,受人类影响的环境又反转来作用人类.     

中国持续发展的经济法律制度研究

指出经济手段在中国持续发展中占有十分重要的地位,其实质在于实现环境资源的有偿使用,落实“污染者负担”原则;持续发展的经济手段主要有征收环境费制度、环境税收制度、财政刺激制度、排污权交易制度、环境损害责任保险制度等;详细探讨了环境费与环境税的概念、性质、作用、现状、完善或实施以及二者的关系;分析了财政补贴、排污权交易等在中国待续发展中的运用问题;最后强调应完善有关环境立法,从而实现强化经济手段和环境管理的法治化。     

论舰船装备采用CAIV的费用控制与管理

为了降低舰船装备全寿命周期费用,通常通过对费用与功能特性、进度和可靠性、维修性、保障性、测试性、安全性、环境适应性进行权衡来实现,这种权衡实质上是费用与舰船装备系统效能的权衡.费用作为独立变量(CAIV)是一项降低全寿命期费用的关键管理技术.论述了CAIV的权衡方法,提出了CAIV模型应该具备的共性,分析了CAIV的运...     

工业园区环境管理现状及对策研究——以江西省工业园区环境保护为例

以江西省为例,介绍了工业园区的发展现状及其经济发展和污染物排放在全省中的比例,并从环境管理制度建设、机构建设、管理绩效和存在的问题等方面介绍了工业园区环境管理现状。最后提出了加强制度建设、健全机构、分解指标、建立环境统计制度、建设生态工业基础数据库、推进生态工业园区动态核查制度、完善工业园区环境报告书制度等六大措施,落实工业园区管委会环境保护责任,提升管委会环境管理参与度。     

城市污水处理厂综合评价指标体系构建与应用研究

为了科学管理城市污水处理厂的运行,使其发挥更大的环境经济效益,本文将生命周期的思想融入到污水厂的综合评价中。采用“演绎与归纳”相结合的方法,构建包含环境释放、资源消耗、经济效益、人体健康和技术性能5个子系统,22个指标的城市污水处理厂综合评价指标体系,并以哈尔滨某城市污水处理厂为例进行应用研究。生命周期思想的融入使得评价体系不仅强调了污水处理厂的治理效能。还充分体现了其环境影响负荷。该指标体系的建立将为制定污水处理厂的总体环境管理政策提供一定的科学依据。     

Cradle-to-cradle design: creating healthy emissions – a strategy for eco-effective product and system design

Eco-effectiveness and cradle-to-cradle design present an alternative design and production concept to the strategies of zero emission and eco-efficiency. Where eco-efficiency and zero emission seek to reduce the unintended negative consequences of processes of production and consumption, eco-effectiveness is a positive agenda for the conception and production of goods and services that incorporate social, economic, and environmental benefit, enabling triple top line growth.Eco-effectiveness moves beyond zero emission approaches by focusing on the development of products and industrial systems that maintain or enhance the quality and productivity of materials through subsequent life cycles. The concept of eco-effectiveness also addresses the major shortcomings of eco-efficiency approaches: their inability to address the necessity for fundamental redesign of material flows, their inherent antagonism towards long-term economic growth and innovation, and their insufficiency in addressing toxicity issues.A central component of the eco-effectiveness concept, cradle-to-cradle design provides a practical design framework for creating products and industrial systems in a positive relationship with ecological health and abundance, and long-term economic growth. Against this background, the transition to eco-effective industrial systems is a five-step process beginning with an elimination of undesirable substances and ultimately calling for a reinvention of products by reconsidering how they may optimally fulfill the need or needs for which they are actually intended while simultaneously being supportive of ecological and social systems.This process necessitates the creation of an eco-effective system of “nutrient” management to coordinate the material flows amongst actors in the product system. The concept of intelligent materials pooling illustrates how such a system might take shape, in reality.     

工业污染产生的经济社会原因分析及治理对策研究

面对经济高速发展带来的工业污染形势,从工业污染问题的结构性问题突出、环境风险隐患大、污染物排放总量大等三大现状入手,对工业污染问题产生的经济和社会原因进行了分析,经济原因主要是追求利益最大化,环保资金投入不足和工业生产的外部不经济性,社会原因主要是环境社会责任感不足和监督体制机制不完善,提出了积极发展循环经济,充分借助市场经济之手和完善行政管控制度的对策,得出了迫切需要加快工业污染治理的结论。     

Unruly pathogens: eliciting values for environmental risk in the context of heterogeneous expert knowledge

This paper examines some of the theoretical and methodological issues arising from the process of conceptualising and eliciting values for environmental risk in the context of heterogeneous expert knowledge. Drawing on the experience of a recent research project examining the relationship between livestock farming systems and microbial watercourse pollution the paper reflects critically upon efforts to develop an interdisciplinary assessment of the factors that may affect the loss of potential pathogens from agricultural land to water courses as the basis for targeting high risk fields and farms. The paper describes the procedures for designing the natural and cultural parameters that surround microbial risks and the issues that are raised for making whole system assessments workable based on contrasting and unstable systems of disciplinary insight. Situated within claims about the need for generating reliable and widely applicable assessments of environmental risk the paper suggests that interdisciplinary working raises important issues about the role of ‘uncertain’ knowledge in the management of ‘known’ risks.     

Pollinator diversity increases fruit production in Mexican coffee plantations: The importance of rustic management systems

Pollination is an ecological process that provides important services to humans. Pollination service in agroecosystems depends on several factors, including the land management systems used by farmers. Here we focused on the effects of insect pollinator diversity on coffee fruit production along a gradient of management systems in central Veracruz, Mexico. The gradient ranged from low environmental impact management systems (the native forest is not completely removed) to high environmental impact management systems (the native forest is completely removed). We hypothesized that pollinator diversity should be higher in low-impact systems. Then, if fruit production is positively related to pollinator diversity, plantations with low-impact management systems should display higher fruit production than plantations with high-impact management systems. We used observational and experimental data to test this hypothesis. Our results indicated that low-impact management systems have higher species richness and relative diversity (measured with the Shannon-Wiener diversity index) of pollinators than high-impact management systems. In all cases, fruit production was positively related with species richness and diversity of pollinators. Moreover, fruit production was higher in low-impact than in high-impact management systems. These results suggest that the diversity of insect pollinators can be influenced by the management system applied by farmers, and that such effects may have strong consequences on coffee fruit production.     

Pilot project on sustainability management accounting with the Styrian automobile cluster

The paper is based on a project with the Styrian automobile cluster in Austria and selected member companies. In six companies, the environmental management costs, as well as further costs for health and safety, risk management and other social issues were assessed. Less tangible items and external effects are addressed. Starting with the efforts to assess the financial effects of the sustainability performance indicators provided by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for sustainability reporting, the UN DSD (United Nations Division for Sustainable Development) method for environmental management accounting (EMA) was enlarged by several other cost categories. This paper describes these and the experiences from the pilot projects.The two major cost drivers are the purchase costs of non-product output and the costs related to lost working days because of sick leave and accidents and the overtime pay to make up for these lost working days. The work of the Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) department helps to reduce these costs. The cost assessment scheme allows one to better understand the relationships between costs for treatment of undesired effects due to unimplemented protection measures and lost material purchase value in comparison to the prevention costs, which mainly consist of the internal management departments and related external consultants.The assessment of sustainability management costs is of interest for organisations, which already publish a sustainability report and want to more accurately assess the financial effects of such aspects addressed via EMA. It is also useful for small and medium sized companies, which use the assessment as a starting point to shape their (EHS) system. The main benefits are more accurate data and better arguments for investment appraisal or performance indicators as well as improved consistency of information and management systems that should help them to improve their environmental, social and economic performance.     

环境损害评估：构建中国制度框架

环境污染导致健康损害、公私财产损失和生态环境破坏已经成为当前政府、公众和全社会关注的焦点.发达国家的实践经验表明,环境损害评估制度必须依据各国面临的环境形势和主要环境问题,逐步构建符合国情的环境损害评估法律、技术和资金保障体系.我国在海洋生态环境、渔业资源损害评估、林业资源破坏损失估价、污染场地修复管理等方面已有一些基础,但整体上环境损害评估管理职能散落在不同政府部门,存在环境公益损害赔偿几乎尚未涉及,环境私益损害认定和赔偿严重不足等缺陷.通过资料收集整理、发放调查问卷、走访环保法庭和政府部门、考察现有相关评估机构和人员座谈、开展实际案例评估、参与环境公益诉讼等方式,分析我国当前环境污染损害形势,整理相关法律法规和环境管理机制,梳理现有相关环境损害评估机构,探索环境损害评估资金来源.针对我国环境损害管理面临的主要问题,基于当前已有的管理与技术体系,建立规范统一的环境损害评估制度,对于推进中国环境污染损害鉴定评估与赔偿恢复的实践工作,探索切实可行的环境损害定量管理具有重要意义.     

Agricultural application of life cycle iNdeX (LInX) for effective decision making

Mechanisms for evaluating system sustainability should allow for the consideration of three main parameters: social, economic and environmental. While, there are methods for comparing processes, projects or systems on the basis of environmental impact or cost, few incorporate all three parameters into the decision process. Life cycle index (LInX) is an indexing system that is meant to simplify the decision making process by incorporating a life cycle based approach with components of sustainability and safety. Although LInX was designed for large industrial systems, this paper presents the application on a small anaerobic digestion (AD) unit on a dairy farm in Clymer, New York. An AD unit can be used to generate electricity from the combustion of biogas produced from organic waste. From the analysis, the AD unit performed well on environmental and cost parameters, but not as well on risk and social parameters. However, the AD unit performed similar to natural gas and biomass-based production. One recommendation for the method is that consideration be given to modifying parameters and weightings to suit agriculture and location specific needs.     

基于空间数据挖掘的区域危险废物决策支持设计研究

区域危险废物环境管理与风险控制是涉及到危险废物特性、环境、经济和社会等多因素的复杂过程,对资源环境的可持续发展和人体健康都至关重要。空间数据挖掘技术在传统数据挖掘的基础上增加空间维尺度,能够实现从空间数据库和非空间数据库中提取危险废物产生、转移、处置和管理过程中隐含的空间模式与特征。文章在传统的危险废物环境管理和风险控制方法的基础上,构建了区域危险废物空间数据挖掘的指标体系,并设计了一种基于空间数据挖掘技术的区域危险废物决策支持系统框架。该框架由数据层、数据挖掘层和显示层组成,为区域危险废物管理和决策提供了直观的、科学的和高效的支持,提供了一种新颖可行的思路和方法提高危险废物的环境管理和风险控制水平,具有一定的理论和现实意义。     

Institutional and environmental issues in land reclamation systems maintenance

The research reported here addresses the issues of institutional, social and land-use change with reference to land reclamation system maintenance in the Odra River Valley, SW Poland. Land reclamation systems are a network of different types of water control infrastructure and they require the collective maintenance effort of all users in order to fulfill drainage and irrigation functions properly. The example of decline in these systems in Polish rural areas brings together environmental and economic issues, as well as social dimensions of change from socialist top-down to democratic bottom-up decision-making and management. After 1989 the financing and management of land reclamation services by the State greatly decreased and a duty of LRS maintenance was actually transferred from government to individual land users. Farmers were not ready to take this responsibility and the whole system declined. The analysis presented in this article is a contribution to a better understanding of non-functioning land reclamation systems. Some recommendations for the future improvement of these systems are also provided.