Bottom up and top down: analysis of participatory processes for sustainability indicator identification as a pathway to community empowerment and sustainable environmental management

The modern environmental management literature stresses the need for community involvement to identify indicators to monitor progress towards sustainable development and environmental management goals. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of participatory processes on sustainability indicator identification and environmental management in three disparate case studies. The first is a process of developing partnerships between First Nations communities, environmental groups, and forestry companies to resolve conflicts over forest management in Western Canada. The second describes a situation in Botswana where local pastoral communities worked with development researchers to reduce desertification. The third case study details an on-going government led process of developing sustainability indicators in Guernsey, UK, that was designed to monitor the environmental, social, and economic impacts of changes in the economy. The comparative assessment between case studies allows us to draw three primary conclusions. (1) The identification and collection of sustainability indicators not only provide valuable databases for making management decisions, but the process of engaging people to select indicators also provides an opportunity for community empowerment that conventional development approaches have failed to provide. (2) Multi-stakeholder processes must formally feed into decision-making forums or they risk being viewed as irrelevant by policy-makers and stakeholders. (3) Since ecological boundaries rarely meet up with political jurisdictions, it is necessary to be flexible when choosing the scale at which monitoring and decision-making occurs. This requires an awareness of major environmental pathways that run through landscapes to understand how seemingly remote areas may be connected in ways that are not immediately apparent.     

EFFECTS OF CLEARCUTTING AND SLASHBURNING ON STREAM TEMPERATURE IN SOUTHWESTERN BRITISH COLUMBIA1

A paired watershed study was conducted in western hemlock/western redcedar/Douglas fir forests of southwestern British Columbia to assess the effects of clearcutting and clearcutting plus slash-burning treatments on stream water characteristics. In the case of stream temperatures, both treatments increased summer temperatures as well as summer daily temperature fluctuations. These effects lasted for seven years in the case of the clearcut stream but longer in the case of the clearcut and slashburned stream. Clearcutting increased winter stream temperatures whereas slashburning caused a decrease. These changes lasted less than four years. Clearcutting and slashburning had a greater impact on stream temperatures than did clearcutting alone.     

Estimating the value of foresight: aggregate analysis of natural hazard mitigation benefits and costs

Hazard mitigation planners claim that foresighted present actions and investments produce significant future benefits. However, they have difficulty in supporting their claims, since previously their evidence typically was derived from individual case studies. Constituents and decision makers are often sceptical, believing that individual cases are either inapplicable to their situation or non-randomly selected to support a particular view. Planners need objective evidence based on a large body of experience to support the case for mitigation. Such is the unique contribution of a recent U.S. study that found that each dollar spent in three federal natural hazard mitigation grant programs (the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, Project Impact, and the Flood Mitigation Assistance Program) saves society an average of $4 in future avoided losses. Complementing the aggregate benefit-cost analysis with community-based evaluations, the study yielded insights on how planners can improve long-term community resilience in the face of extreme events. Valuable lessons for mitigation planners and policy makers emerged: the need to consider a wide variety of losses, the importance of mixing qualitative with quantitative analysis, the value of averaging results over a large number of projects, and the need to more explicitly address social issues and data collection in order to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience to cope with twenty-first century hazards.     

Landscape Trends in Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States Ecoregions

Landscape pattern and composition metrics are potential indicators for broad-scale monitoring of change and for relating change to human and ecological processes. We used a probability sample of 20-km × 20-km sampling blocks to characterize landscape composition and pattern in five US ecoregions: the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, Southeastern Plains, Northern Piedmont, Piedmont, and Blue Ridge Mountains. Land use/land cover (LULC) data for five dates between 1972 and 2000 were obtained for each sample block. Analyses focused on quantifying trends in selected landscape pattern metrics by ecoregion and comparing trends in land cover proportions and pattern metrics among ecoregions. Repeated measures analysis of the landscape pattern documented a statistically significant trend in all five ecoregions towards a more fine-grained landscape from the early 1970s through 2000. The ecologically important forest cover class also became more fine-grained with time (i.e., more numerous and smaller forest patches). Trends in LULC, forest edge, and forest percent like adjacencies differed among ecoregions. These results suggest that ecoregions provide a geographically coherent way to regionalize the story of national land use and land cover change in the United States. This study provides new information on LULC change in the southeast United States. Previous studies of the region from the 1930s to the 1980s showed a decrease in landscape fragmentation and an increase in percent forest, while this study showed an increase in forest fragmentation and a loss of forest cover.     

ANNUAL,SEASONAL, AND MONTHLY CHANGES IN RUNOFF IN THE UNITED STATES1

ABSTRACT The runoff from a series of watersheds in the United States is examined to determine if there are distinct trends present. The data are examined for the period 1931-1960 and the results compared with those obtained for the period from the beginning of record to 1960. A larger sample of streams with records of various lengths is also utilized. The data used are annual, seasonal, and monthly values. The streams are grouped geographically to determine if regional patterns exist. The runoff increased on the majority of streams for the period 1931-1960, but for the period from the beginning of record to 1960 most streams exhibited a negative trend. When geographical distribution is considered, the streams located in the interior of the continent show greater similarity of trend than do those on the continental margins.     

美国对石油天然气勘探开发中废物的环境监管

石油天然气勘探开发及生产过程中会产生大量的废物,对这些废物的管理目前受到各国高度的重视。文章介绍了美国石油和天然气勘探开发中废物的监管机构、监管要求和管理实践,以期对我国油气行业勘探开发废物的环境监管有所启示。     

Use of wetlands for water quality improvement under the USEPA Region V Clean Lakes Program

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Region V Clean Lakes Program employs artificial and modified natural wetlands in an effort to improve the water quality of selected lakes. We examined use of wetlands at seven lake sites and evaluated the physical and institutional means by which wetland projects are implemented and managed, relative to USEPA program goals and expert recommendations on the use of wetlands for water quality improvement. Management practices recommended by wetlands experts addressed water level and retention, sheet flow, nutrient removal, chemical treatment, ecological and effectiveness monitoring, and resource enhancement. Institutional characteristics recommended included local monitoring, regulation, and enforcement and shared responsibilities among jurisdictions. Institutional and ecological objectives of the National Clean Lakes Program were met to some degree at every site. Social objectives were achieved to a lesser extent. Wetland protection mechanisms and appropriate institutional decentralization were present at all sites. Optimal management techniques were employed to varying degrees at each site, but most projects lack adequate monitoring to determine adverse ecological impacts and effectiveness of pollutant removal and do not extensively address needs for recreation and wildlife habitat. There is evidence that the wetland projects are contributing to improved lake water quality; however, more emphasis needs to be placed on wetland protection and long-term project evaluation.     

Print Media Framing of the Environmental Movement in a Canadian Forestry Debate

In a recent paper, it was suggested that one of the reasons behind the decline in public regard toward British Columbia's environmental movement was an increasingly negative portrayal of them by the print media. To investigate this suggestion, we undertook a content analysis of print media reporting of forestry and environmental activities in the province's most widely read newspaper, the Vancouver Sun, during 1993 and 1997. We hypothesized that if the print media did contribute to the decline in public regard toward the environmental movement, we would find increasingly negative coverage of the environmental movement over the periods studied. We also hypothesized that this would be accompanied by a decrease in the frequency of articles dealing with issues consistent with the agenda of the environmental movement. We were not able to provide support for our initial hypothesis, nor did we observe a decrease in coverage emphasizing the environmental issues. We did, however, observe an increase in coverage of articles emphasizing typically proindustry issues with many more articles written with a proforestry slant in 1997 than articles written in 1993. This suggests that there had been an agenda shift from environmentally oriented concerns in British Columbia to those associated with the forest industry. As an explanation for the agenda shift, we point to changes in the management and reporting philosophy at the Vancouver Sun, the emergence of an organized, proindustry counterframing strategy by the BC Forest Alliance, and the implementation of several government policies aimed at regulating the activities of the forest industry.     

Mitigating the consequences of extreme events on strategic facilities: evaluation of volcanic and seismic risk affecting the Caspian oil and gas pipelines in the Republic of Georgia

In this work we identify and quantify new seismic and volcanic risks threatening the strategic Caspian oil and gas pipelines through the Republic of Georgia, in the vicinity of the recent Abuli Samsari Volcanic Ridge, and evaluate risk reduction measures, mitigation measures, and monitoring. As regards seismic risk, we identified a major, NW-SE trending strike-slip fault; based on the analysis of fault planes along this major transcurrent structure, an about N-S trend of the maximum, horizontal compressive stress (σ1) was determined, which is in good agreement with data instrumentally derived after the 1986, M 5.6 Paravani earthquake and its aftershock. Particularly notable is the strong alignment of volcanic vents along an about N-S trend that suggests a magma rising controlled by the about N-S-directed σ1. The original pipeline design included mitigation measures for seismic risk and other geohazards, including burial of the pipeline for its entire length, increased wall thickness, block valve spacing near recognized hazards, and monitoring of known landslide hazards. However, the design did not consider volcanic risk or the specific seismic hazards revealed by this study. The result of our analysis is that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, as well as the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum South Caucasian natural gas pipeline (SCP) were designed in such a way that they significantly reduce the risk posed by the newly-identified geohazards in the vicinity of the Abuli-Samsari Ridge. No new measures are recommended for the pipeline itself as a result of this study. However, since the consequences of long-term shut-down would be very damaging to the economies of Western Europe, we conclude that the regionally significant BTC and SCP warrant greater protections, described in the final section of or work. The overall objective of our effort is to present the results in a matrix framework that allows the technical information to be used further in the decision-making process, with the goal of reducing the uncertainty in the final decision. This approach is applicable to the study of risks in other pipeline systems.