Environmental sustainability practices in South Asian university campuses: an exploratory study on Bangladeshi universities

Environmental sustainability practices in universities can play an important role in helping society form a sustainable future. In this study, the roles that Bangladeshi universities play in terms of sustainability practices on their campuses are scrutinized, as well as the challenges these universities face. The existing research on campus sustainability practices in Asia is reviewed, and a new exploratory study is put forth on environmental sustainability practices in the higher education institutions of a developing country—Bangladesh. The Campus Sustainability Assessment Framework used in Canadian universities was taken as basis for determining potential environmental management indicators. Results show that environmental management practices (i.e., environmental education, research, governance and operations) are present only to a very limited extent in higher education institutions in Bangladesh.     

Educational initiative of Osaka University in sustainability science: mobilizing science and technology towards sustainability

One of the most important and yet difficult challenges that modern societies face is how to mobilize science and technology (S&T) to minimize the impact of human activities on the Earth’s life support systems. As the establishment of inter-disciplinary education programs is necessary to design a unified vision towards understanding the complexity of human nature, the Research Institute for Sustainability Science (RISS) launched a new program on sustainability science in April 2008. The program expects to address the issue of how to use knowledge more effectively to understand the dynamic interactions between nature and human society. This paper first offers an overview of international and Japanese initiatives on sustainability education in which we highlight the uniqueness of the attempt by the Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science (IR3S). The paper then introduces the RISS program for sustainability science, addressing the principles and curriculum design of the program. The paper discusses the main problems and constraints faced when developing the program, such as institutional barriers in building a curriculum and obtaining cooperation from faculty. To challenge these barriers and limitations, the RISS uses the program as a platform to disseminate the idea of sustainability science across the university. This attempt helps us to obtain the continuing cooperation necessary to improve and maintain the program.

Research and education for sustainability in a beekeeping project in sub-Saharan Africa

Support to small farmers is at the heart of the fight against poverty. However, the continuous provision of support poses a major challenge which greatly affects the sustainability of development-related projects. Using a research and education approach, in which beekeeping was introduced into the curriculum of two secondary schools, we tested the potential of knowledge transfer as a means of promoting beekeeping. In this paper, we show that, with an educational program tailored to the audience needs, knowledge transfer and self-start-ups ensure better sustainability than material support. We further discuss the implications of these results in the sustenance of beekeeping as a development-related activity.     

Learning for change: an educational contribution to sustainability science

Transition to sustainability is a search for ways to improve the social capacity to guide interactions between nature and society toward a more sustainable future and, thus, a process of social learning in its broadest sense. Accordingly, it is not only learning that is at issue but education and educational science, of which the latter is about exploring the preconditions of and opportunities for learning and education—whether individual or social, in formal or informal settings. Analyzing how educational science deals with the challenge of sustainability leads to two complementary approaches: the ‘outside-in’ approach sees the idea of sustainability influencing educational practice and the way the relationship of learning and teaching is reviewed, theoretically as well as within the social context. In an ‘inside-out’ approach, an overview is given of how educational science can contribute to the field of sustainability science. An examination of the literature on education and sustainability shows that, while sustainability features prominently in one form or another across all sectors, only little work can be found dealing with the contributions of educational science within sustainability science. However, as sustainability is a concept that not only influences educational practices but also invites disciplinary contributions to foster inter- and transdisciplinary research within the sustainability discourse, the question remains as to how and to what extent educational science in particular can contribute to sustainability science in terms of an ‘inside-out’ approach. In this paper, we reconstruct the emergence of education for sustainable development as a distinctive field of educational science and introduce and discuss three areas of sustainability research and throw into relief the unique contribution that educational science can make to individual action and behavior change, to organizational change and social learning, and, finally, to inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration.     

The Moral Appeal of Environmental Discourses: The Implication of Ethical Rhetorics

Environmental sustainability demands civic action through both changes in individual and community behaviors in addition to national and international agreements and cooperation. In moral appeals to the environment, individuals are often called upon to behave in “good” ways—reduce, reuse, recycle—to “save the planet.” Behavior, and our attitudes about it, is therefore an important component to ongoing sustainability efforts. This pilot study, conducted in Fall 2009, brings together research methods in sociolinguistics and rhetorical studies to examine the discourses that students produce when describing issues and practices concerning sustainability. In interviews with 15 students in an earth sustainability general education core, our study found that students were knowledgeable about environmental issues and expressed intentions to engage in sustainable behaviors. Yet, students produced accommodating discourses when addressing competing demands on their time and resources. The sociolinguistic analysis of interview data shows a disassociation from environmental issues at the symbolic level of language use. The rhetorical analysis shows that this disassociation manifests as guilt, largely because when choosing between various moral appeals in their social context, students are left without tangible direction for engaging in new sustainable behaviors.     

Ranking Canadian universities: a quantitative approach for sustainability assessment using uD-SiM

This paper introduces a model that enables a comparison between universities based on sustainability indicators related to environmental, economic, social and educational aspects. The proposed model is based on a driving force-pressure-state-exposure-effect-action (DPSEEA) framework and is called uncertainty-based DPSEEA-Sustainability index Model (uD-SiM). The uD-SiM applies the concept of causality and develops sustainability index (SI), which is an outcome of nonlinear relationships of sustainability indicators in different stages of DPSEEA. In this paper, this fuzzy-based multi-criteria decision-making model is used to evaluate the sustainability of five Canadian universities, namely the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, the McGill University and the Memorial University. The final ranking results are compared with the Green report card ranking for 2010 through SI. The application of various actions and strategies that can be applied to different stages of the framework to improve sustainability in higher education institutions is also discussed.     

Key competencies in sustainability: a reference framework for academic program development

The emerging academic field focused on sustainability has been engaged in a rich and converging debate to define what key competencies are considered critical for graduating students to possess. For more than a decade, sustainability courses have been developed and taught in higher education, yet comprehensive academic programs in sustainability, on the undergraduate and graduate level, have emerged only over the last few years. Considering this recent institutional momentum, the time is seemingly right to synthesize the discussion about key competencies in sustainability in order to support these relatively young academic programs in shaping their profiles and achieving their ambitious missions. This article presents the results of a broad literature review. The review identifies the relevant literature on key competencies in sustainability; synthesizes the substantive contributions in a coherent framework of sustainability research and problem-solving competence; and addresses critical gaps in the conceptualization of key competencies in sustainability. Insights from this study lay the groundwork for institutional advancements in designing and revising academic programs; teaching and learning evaluations; as well as hiring and training faculty and staff.     

Social-ecological resilience and the quest for sustainability as object of science

The term ‘sustainability science’ has been employed to refer to a scientific trend, movement or program aimed at studying problems related to human–nature interactions. However, since it does not have its own set of principles for knowledge building and lack of a definition of a study object, sustainability science is not a science, at least in the usual sense of the word. A study object is the conceptual delimitation of the problems tackled by a science, and therefore, its search in the context of a science of sustainability requires exploring different notions of sustainability. This article presents different perspectives on the concept of sustainability and analyzes the viability to assume them as study object of sustainability science. Such exploration demands concepts based on a processual ontology that directs the researcher toward the dynamic, historic and temporal and social-ecological character of problems of unsustainability. The concept of social-ecological resilience seems to comply with such requirements.     

沼气农业复合生态系统能值分析

以沼气为纽带的农业综合利用系统对农村和偏远地区可持续发展具有重要意义。本文基于能值流图和指标体系,构建了沼气农业复合生态系统的综合评价框架,并以国家沼气农业示范区广西恭城县为案例,分析养殖-沼气-种植"三位一体"典型沼气农业复合系统的能值投入产出量及其结构,利用能值系统结构功能指标对该系统进行经济生态多元分析,评估其投资率、产出率、环境压力以及可持续性等系统综合表现,并与国内外其他农业系统进行比较分析。系统投入结果表明,恭城县沼气农业复合系统总投入中人类经济反馈在系统中所占比例最大,可更新环境资源次之,其中又以肥料、农药和劳工与管理的投入最大;系统产出表明,目前仍以种植业和养殖业为主导,水产业相对薄弱,而新兴的沼气产业因其低耗高产的特点,发展势头良好;而能值系统结构功能指标表明该农业系统整体具有环境负荷低、产出效率高、可持续性强等优势。依照能值分析各项结果,本文对沼气农业系统优化配置和进一步推广应用提出了参考建议。     

通过可持续认证推动农林牧渔领域自然资源保护

1992年里约环境发展大会后可持续发展成为各国和各界的共识,但经历了二十年的发展,自然资源保护与可持续发展之间的矛盾仍然存在,特别是农林牧渔等领域自然资源的合理开发利用仍待进一步发展。我国作为国际农林牧渔产品的重要消费国和贸易国,在积极推动国内资源的可持续利用同时,也可以通过国际贸易在全球自然资源可持续利用中发挥积极作用。可持续认证作为应对资源保护与经济发展这一矛盾的较为有效的市场手段,经过近二十年的发展已经涵盖了农林牧渔领域的多个产品,在国际上的发展势头强劲,对于自然资源的保护和可持续利用发挥了对政府政策的补充作用。但可持续性认证在我国国内的企业和消费者中还没有得到广泛认识,其通过市场机制引导企业实践可持续经营、落实企业社会责任的作用在国内还没有得到有效的发挥。因此,本研究的目的是通过对可持续认证的分析,为在我国农林牧渔领域更好地发挥其市场推动力提出政策建议。本研究首先综述了可持续认证在国际上的发展历程、产生的影响,详细论述了森林、棕榈油、野生海产品等可持续认证已经在全球贸易中占有一席之地,并在欧美等较发达国家和地区获得了消费者的支持;其次,本研究对可持续认证在农林牧渔领域的进一步发展所面临的挑战进行了剖析,肯定了可持续认证在调动企业和消费者的积极性、推动农林牧渔领域资源保护方面的正面作用,也指出认证对资源保护的预期效果没有完全达到、同一产业内认证体系可靠性参差不齐,着重强调了可持续认证在发展中国家的发展面临的困难,使其对自然资源保护的应有效果受到影响。在此基础上,本研究分析了我国农林牧渔领域在资源利用方面面临的国际和国内压力,尤其是我国在国际贸易中举足轻重的地位和进口大宗产品产地的生态脆弱性使中国在全球资源的可持续利用和保护中可以发挥重要作用,论证了可持续认证在我国的推广有利于提升中国企业的国际形象、促进贸易杠杆发挥资源保护的撬动作用、保障企业在海外开发中的长期效益,同时也有利于我国国内自然资源的可持续利用,明确得出在我国农林牧渔领域推动可持续认证的必要性。本研究建议我国政府部门应关注农林牧渔领域可持续认证在国际和国内的发展,收集相关的信息和案例可用于相关的国际谈判和对企业的指导。同时政府应鼓励国内外认证体系在中国开展认证工作,并为同一产业中的不同体系创造公平的竞争环境。另外,政府应积极支持国内农林牧渔产业的企业、专家、协会等参与到国际认证体系的建立过程中,将中国可持续发展的良好操作范例或规范国际化。政府自身的消费行为对全社会有明确的引导作用,所以在政府采购中应优选可持续认证产品,引导企业加入可持续经营的实践。     

Regional Research Capacity -Building inSustainability Science:Facts, Gaps, and Futures in Northeast Asia

Evidence shows that some conceptual ideas relevant to both local and global sustainability have been adopted in some official documents in northeast Asian nations, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan. This seems to be a very positive signal for the future development of sustainability science in this region. However,studyes show that there are still some major gaps there. One is the problem of how to build up the regional research capacity of sustainability science among northeast Asian research institutes across different disciplines as well as different political systems. Another is how to shift the conceptual frameworks of sustainability science into the operational policy frameworks. There are four major obstacles to the enhancement of regional research capacity-building in sustainability science. In order to build up the regional research capacity in sustainability science and to realize both local and global goals of the sustainable development in northeast Asia, this paper proposes some ba     

Regional Research Capacity-Building in Sustainability Science: Facts,Gaps, and Futures in Northeast Asia

Abstract

Evidence shows that some conceptual ideas relevant to both local and global sustainability have been adopted in some official documents in northeast Asian nations, particularly China, South Korea, and Japan. This seems to be a very positive signal for the future development of sustainability science in this region. However, studyes show that there are still some major gaps there. One is the problem of how to build up the regional research capacity of sustainability science among northeast Asian research institutes across different disciplines as well as different political systems. Another is how to shift the conceptual frameworks of sustainability science into the operational policy frameworks. There are four major obstacles to the enhancement of regional research capacity-building in sustainability science. In order to build up the regional research capacity in sustainability science and to realize both local and global goals of the sustainable development in northeast Asia, this paper proposes some basic frameworks, including regional institutional innovations, establishment of a regional sustainability information network, initiatives of the regional assessment programme, and focus on the regional education and training of sustainability knowledge.     

Development of an educational model for sustainability science: challenges in the Mind–Skills–Knowledge education at Ibaraki University

Modern society confronts multiple sustainability challenges, including population growth, resources limitations, and a deteriorating environment. As a response, sustainability science education plays a major role in developing human capacity to manage these issues. This paper proposes the concept of “sustainability science education across Mind–Skills–Knowledge” as well as the competencies to be acquired and its pedagogy. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of such an educational system and its method of implementation using the example of the Graduate Program on Sustainability Science (GPSS), which was started at Ibaraki University in 2009.     

Application of fuzzy QFD for enabling sustainability

Contemporary manufacturing organisations recognise sustainability as an important concept for survival. Environmental awareness and recycling regulations have been compelling manufacturers and consumers to evolve sustainable strategies. The modern customers' voices need to be translated with care into technical requirements. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a technique extensively used for this purpose. In order to cope with the vagueness associated with relationships and correlations in QFD, fuzzy numbers have been integrated within a QFD framework and fuzzy QFD has been used in this study. The study is concerned with the application of fuzzy QFD for enabling sustainability in an Indian modular switches manufacturing organisation. The approach is effective in the identification of sustainable competitive bases, sustainable decision domains, sustainable attributes and sustainable enablers for the organisation. The improvement in sustainability has been measured from three perspectives. The results gained as a result of the study indicated that fuzzy QFD could be used as an enabler of sustainability.     

Irish fish, Irish people: roles and responsibilities for an emptying ocean

Human decisions shape patterns of seafood resource use. Consequently, it is also these decisions made by actors within seafood industries which ultimately determine the environmental impact of fisheries resource extraction from marine environments. In this study, we investigated the roles and influences of various actors within the Irish seafood industry. Our objectives were to learn more about the working dynamics of the industry and identify possibilities for improvements towards industry sustainability. We employed qualitative research methods including semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participant observation to access information from Irish consumers, retailers, wholesalers, scientists and key industry informants. The diversity of seafood products available within the Irish market is generally low. However, consumers who experiment with trying new varieties of seafood are influenced by dining experiences at restaurants or while travelling abroad as well as through cooking shows or cookbooks. Potential for influence on factors including consumer choice, stocking and sourcing decisions, business management and fisheries policy was found within all levels of the seafood industry, though a sense of responsibility in the context of seafood sustainability was less common. In addition, the absence of shortages within the Irish market due to imports, aquaculture and mislabelling appears to be preventing widespread acceptance about claims of overfishing. It is clear that ultimately, responsible policy decisions and effective enforcement will be needed to improve the overall sustainability of the industry. However, pressure for positive change can come from all actors that prioritise sustainability as the most important objective for future industry operation.     

Physical and Economic Sustainability of Water: New Approach Using the Case of the Big Lost River,Idaho

A new approach for evaluating water sustainability is introduced by comparing physical and economic sustainability. To achieve physical sustainability, water should be available in sufficient quantity and of good quality and used efficiently. The economic sustainability can be achieved by balancing between costs and values of water. The objectives of this study were to estimate the physical and economic sustainability of surface water in the Big Lost River, south–central Idaho. The study used a Bayesian network by building a graphical diagram of nodes representing all significant variables related with the sustainability, such as water demand, water quality, and the different costs and values of water. The study showed that the likelihood of the physical sustainability is less than that of the economic sustainability, which is attributed to the scarcity of water in the Big Lost River. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

A detailed look at the three disciplines,environmental ethics,law and education to determine which plays the most critical role in environmental enhancement and protection

Campaigns to mitigate environmental degradation problems have failed in recent years due to not only the inability to identify the actual causes of the problems but also the approach followed in addressing these problems. This study gives a detailed consideration to the roles played by environmental education, ethics and law in environmental enhancement and protection with the aim of identifying the one that has made the most progress toward reducing the impact of environmental problems. Knowledge of this is necessary as it will help determine the starting point of any environmental sustainability campaign and direct efforts toward this. The findings of this study show that the importance of the three disciplines in environmental enhancement and protection cannot be over-looked, and it identifies environmental ethics as both an interconnector of the other two disciplines and the force that propels them into action.     

A Graph Theory approach to measure the performance of sustainability enablers in a manufacturing organization

In a manufacturing organization, the term sustainability deals with the impact of production process and products on the environment and society, laying emphasis on preservation of scarce resources. In this article, the study concentrates on developing a Graph Theory model to measure the performance and inter-relationship between the sustainability enablers in an organization, thereby to quantitatively measure the extent to which ‘sustainable manufacturing’ practices are being followed in the organization. The objective of this study was to identify a set of sustainability enablers and attributes that impact a manufacturing organization. Digraphs were developed for the whole system and sub-systems depicting the inter-relationships and dependencies between various enablers and attributes to interpret the performance of the sustainability enablers in the case organization. Using the best case and worst case values, the level of sustainable manufacturing practices of the organization was found by Comprehensive Assessment Index. Based on the best case values, the relative significance of individual sustainability enablers are found and compared with worst case situations. The impacts of individual enablers on the overall sustainability level of the organization were also studied.     

Relations between innovation management and organisational sustainability: a case study in a Brazilian higher education institution

Environment, Development and Sustainability - The objective of this work was to analyse the relations between innovation management and organisational sustainability in a Brazilian higher education...