Perceptions of American and Russian environmental scientists of today’s key environmental issues: a comparative analysis

Modern science is global. This is particularly true of environmental science, which has been guided to a considerable extent by international environmental policy. Accordingly, one might expect the standards of scientific research around the globe to have unified over the last 30 years. Yet environmental scientists from different nations and scientific schools have demonstrably dissimilar views on key environmental issues. This is the conclusion we reached after a series of in-depth interviews with prominent American and Russian environmental scientists. The greatest difference was found in the perception of two global issues—stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change.     

Inside and beyond the Petro-State frontiers: geography of environmental conflicts in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

Venezuela is well known for its century-old oil economy, which has significantly shaped its social fabrics, territories, and eco-systems. Since 1999, the Bolivarian Revolution has led to important transformations in the context of the ‘Socialism of the 21st century’ project, but the extractivist model has deepened. This situation has created or intensified several ecological distribution conflicts, which have been further exacerbated by an extraordinary national crisis unleashed in the period 2013–2016. In this paper, a geography of the 20 most emblematic and representative socio-environmental conflicts in the period of the Bolivarian Revolution is presented. From a comparative political ecology perspective, this article aims to understand how power relations are expressed through territorial configurations and spatial dynamics of resistance, and what are the implications for sustainability. It is argued that a remarkable new situation of environmental injustice is occurring in this period. Despite the ‘eco-socialist’ discourse raised, the current Petro-State has updated the traditional regime on eco-systems, territories, and human bodies primarily by resorting to the assimilation of socio-environmental conflicts through a strategic distribution policy of oil rents. However, it has maintained a pattern of ecological degradation and social marginalization as an outcome of its economic development model. The current context of crisis has fostered intense territorial disputes and conditions for the emergence of new social actors, practices, scenarios, and geographies linked to underground economies and criminal bands, which complicate an already concerning scenario of unsustainability. The current extractivist model is reaching a breaking point. New commodity frontiers have become a main area of dispute.     

Dual-channel recycling e-waste pricing decision under the impact of recyclers’ loss aversion and consumers’ bargaining power

Environment, Development and Sustainability - The issue of e-waste recycling is imminent. With the continuous enhancement of Internet technology and people's awareness of sustainable...     

Chinese hydropower companies and environmental norms in countries of the global South: the involvement of Sinohydro in Ghana’s Bui Dam

The paper examines the role of environmental norms in Chinese overseas investment in hydropower dams, exemplified by Sinohydro’s involvement in the Bui Dam in Ghana. While the investment of Western companies in hydropower dams in the global South is decreasing owing to changing notions of sustainability in the West, the investment of Chinese companies in hydro dams in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America is accelerating at great speed. The emergence of Chinese companies in international markets in the context of China’s Going Abroad strategy has sparked a debate on whether China can be considered a norm-changer in international development. The paper considers this question in the context of the status of environmental norms in Sinohydro’s investment in Ghana’s Bui Dam. The paper argues that the role of international norms in Chinese investment is dependent on two factors: the contractual arrangements under which Chinese companies operate abroad and the political institutions of host countries.     

Thailand’s economic growth and structural development projections in the context of environmental control

Projections for 20 years of economic growth and change in the structure of the Thai economy were made for 180 sectors using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to compare the following four scenarios: (1) standard growth with infinite supply of factors, (2) finite land supply, (3) fixed use of agricultural chemicals, and (4) combined finite land supply with fixed use of agricultural chemicals. The computable projections suggest that the economic cost of hypothetical environmental control in agriculture is small and further weakened by urbanization. The computed structural development points to efficiency improvements specific to sectors to return the economy to balanced growth.     

Scenarios for investigating the future of Canada’s oceans and marine fisheries under environmental and socioeconomic change

Regional Environmental Change - There is a critical need to develop effective strategies for the long-term sustainability of Canada’s oceans. However, this is challenged by uncertainty over...     

An integrated approach for the benchmarking of production facilities’ environmental performance: data envelopment analysis and life cycle assessment

Environmental impacts have become an important consideration in the manufacturing industry due to increasing public pressure for environment protection and the requirements of recently launched legislations. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a widely adopted methodological approach for the benchmarking of the relative efficiency of different production units. Changes in production efficiency may affect environmental impacts. DEA can be used for identifying the most efficient production facility and hence, the environmental impacts generated from the different production lines can then be benchmarked. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is carried out to quantify the full environmental impacts of a product from ‘cradle to grave’. The integration of LCA with DEA, efficiency and environmental impact of different production processes for a certain family of products can be evaluated and benchmarked. The proposed two-stage approach can help to reduce the aggregate environmental impacts of the manufacturing phase and is used to benchmark the environmental performance of several production lines in a manufacturing company.     

Study on the efficiency and regional disparity of green technology innovation in China’s industrial companies

This paper first constructed a system to evaluate the innovation efficiency of industrial companies within Mainland China. Then, a principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to these indicators for dimensionality reduction, so as to figure out the technology innovation efficiency in these two phases, respectively. Finally, the overall efficiency of industrial companies in different regions was estimated and factorized via data envelopment analysis (DEA). The results showed that: (1) the efficiency of green technology innovation of industrial companies in China was relatively low as a whole, which mainly resulted from pure technical efficiency (PTE). Further, this huge gap continues to expand in these regions. And both PTE and scale efficiency (SE) in central and western regions leave much to be expected. (2) In the first phase of green technology development, when environmental factors were concerned, the efficiency was much lower than that without environmental considerations. Besides, the central and western regions were facing increasingly severe environmental problems, and there was a wide disparity in technology development efficiency among eastern, central, and western regions. (3) In the second phase of green technology commercialization, there were still more rooms for improvement in raising the efficiency of green technology innovation, and the efficiency in eastern, central, and western regions was ranked from highest to lowest. (4) Liaoning, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Xinjiang, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, and Qinghai should focus on improving their technology; Jilin, Jiangxi, Anhui, and Guangxi should make their efforts to reduce resource redundancy; whereas Ningxia and Gansu should try to solve the above two issues.     

Exploring new ideas for sustainable development of urban agglomerations-based on the coupling of people’s livelihood and environmental governance

Environment, Development and Sustainability - Peoples’ livelihood and environmental governance are interrelated and interact with each other, which is a new starting point for the study of...     

Analysis and Modeling on the Spatial Structure of Urban Land Use: A Case of Jinan, China

Based on the data of urban land use obtained by remote sensing interpretation from aero images in 1986 and 2004, the spatial structure of Jinan is studied in this paper with the method of Geographic Information System (GIS). According to the proportion of land for residence, industry and commerce, the urban district can be distinguished into three rings. Compared with the traditional theory of the ring structure in Western coun- tries, they have many distinctive characteristics. The main func- tions of the inner ring include residence, business and banking, but the proportion of residential land (more than 50%) is considerably higher than that of the cities in Western countries. The land proportion for residence and industry in the intermediate ring is equal on the whole. The main land of the outside ring is for industrial use. From 1986 to 2004, great changes have taken place on the land proportion of different types of use. In the inner ring, the land for residential and industrial use has shrunk much while the land for commercial use has increased. In the intermediate ring, the changes of the three types of land use were not very much and the temporal variation was relatively stable. On the contrary, the structure in the outside ring varies acutely. Though most of it is also for industrial use, the proportion of residential land has in- creased much. The three rings can also be divided into several sectors respectively, according to the function of land use clusters. New trends and mechanisms of the changes of land use impacting the urban structure were proposed in the end of the paper.     

Government drive,economic induction,and construction of food traceability systems:An empirical study based on supermarket samples from ’first-tier’ and ’Olympic’ cities in China

Food traceability systems are capable of overcoming or alleviating problems caused by incomplete and asymmetric information on food markets.This study conducts an empirical analysis using 308 supermarket samples from China’s Beijing,Guangzhou,and Qingdao to determine the factors that influence supermarket behavior when operating traceability systems.The results show that operating profits(generated from food traceability systems),scale of operation,level of economic development(of a city),and government subsidies will positively affect the decision of supermarkets to use traceability systems.At the same time,government policies promoting food traceability systems should have a long-term role.     

The role of farmers’ objectives in current farm practices and adaptation preferences: a case study in Flevoland,the Netherlands

The diversity in farmers’ objectives and responses to external drivers is usually not considered in integrated assessment studies that investigate impacts and adaptation to climate and socio-economic change. Here, we present an approach to assess how farmers’ stated objectives relate to their currently implemented practices and to preferred adaptation options, and we discuss what this implies for assessments of future changes. We based our approach on a combination of multi-criteria decision-making methods. We consistently assessed the importance of farmers’ objectives and adaptation preferences from what farmers say (based on interviews), from what farmers actually do (by analysing current farm performance) and from what farmers want (through a selected alternative farm plan). Our study was performed for six arable farms in Flevoland, a province in the Netherlands. Based on interviews with farmers, we reduced the long list of possible objectives to the most important ones. The objectives we assessed included maximization of economic result and soil organic matter, and minimization of gross margin variance, working hours and nitrogen balance. In our sample, farmers’ stated preferences in objectives were often not fully reflected in realized farming practices. Adaptation preferences of farmers largely resembled their current performance, but generally involved a trend towards stated preferences. Our results suggest that in Flevoland, although farmers do have more objectives, in practical decision-making they focus on economic result maximization, while for strategic decision-making they account for objectives influencing long-term performance and indicators associated with sustainability, in this case soil organic matter.     

Population dynamics,delta vulnerability and environmental change: comparison of the Mekong,Ganges–Brahmaputra and Amazon delta regions

Tropical delta regions are at risk of multiple threats including relative sea level rise and human alterations, making them more and more vulnerable to extreme floods, storms, surges, salinity intrusion, and other hazards which could also increase in magnitude and frequency with a changing climate. Given the environmental vulnerability of tropical deltas, understanding the interlinkages between population dynamics and environmental change in these regions is crucial for ensuring efficient policy planning and progress toward social and ecological sustainability. Here, we provide an overview of population trends and dynamics in the Ganges–Brahmaputra, Mekong and Amazon deltas. Using multiple data sources, including census data and Demographic and Health Surveys, a discussion regarding the components of population change is undertaken in the context of environmental factors affecting the demographic landscape of the three delta regions. We find that the demographic trends in all cases are broadly reflective of national trends, although important differences exist within and across the study areas. Moreover, all three delta regions have been experiencing shifts in population structures resulting in aging populations, the latter being most rapid in the Mekong delta. The environmental impacts on the different components of population change are important, and more extensive research is required to effectively quantify the underlying relationships. The paper concludes by discussing selected policy implications in the context of sustainable development of delta regions and beyond.     

The contribution of the sciences,technology and innovation to sustainable development: the application of sustainability science from the perspective of UNESCO’s experience

The contribution of scientific knowledge and innovation to sustainability is demonstrated. Theory, discoveries, programmes and activities in both the natural as well as social sciences fields have greatly helped with the environmental, economic and social challenges of the past and current centuries, especially in the past 50 years or so. Nowadays, we increasingly realize the intimate link between science and society, and the need not only for science to inform policy but also to address requests by governments and the multiple stakeholders confronted with the challenge to achieve sustainable development. Current barriers to how science is conceived and related education is delivered hamper true interdisciplinarity, and the emerging field of sustainability science attempts inter alia to clarify how ‘a new generation of science’ can be designed so as to promote more integrated thinking to tackle complex societal issues. At the international level, and more specifically in the context of the United Nations, the practice of science has always entailed the need to solve problems such as climate change, ozone depletion, disaster risk, lack of food security, biodiversity loss, social instability and ineffective governance—to cite a few. In this regard, science in an intergovernmental context is by definition science that has to assist with the struggle for sustainability. Yet, a higher level of integration and cross-fertilization among disciplines as well as of participation among concerned stakeholders in the design and implementation of science-based programmes and activities carried out by the United Nations (and, in this article, the specific case of its Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—UNESCO—is presented) seems to be needed. The debate on sustainability science carried out in the academic circle and the experience of UNESCO in this area can be mutually supportive in further elucidating how, practically, the approach of sustainability science can enhance the achievement of sustainable development at multiple scales.     

Beyond the environmental Kuznets curve: Do combined impacts of air transport and rail transport matter for environmental sustainability amidst energy use in E7 economies?

Environment, Development and Sustainability - This study is motivated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDG-7,8,11,12 and 13) on the need for clean and responsible energy...     

The quest for environmental justice in China: citizen participation and the rural–urban network against Panguanying’s waste incinerator

Environmental distribution conflicts (EDCs) related to the construction and operation of waste incinerators have become commonplace in China. This article presents a detailed case study of citizen opposition to an incinerator in the village of Panguanying, Hebei Province. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork, we show how this case was notable, because it transcended the local arena to raise bigger questions about environmental justice, particularly in relation to public participation in siting decisions, after villagers exposed fraudulent public consultation in the environmental impact assessment. An informal network between villagers and urban environmental activists formed, enabling the Panguanying case to exert influence far beyond the village locality. This network was critical in creating wider public debate about uneven power and substandard public participation in siting disputes, a central feature in many Chinese EDCs. By transcending local specificities and exposing broader, systemic inadequacies, this case became instrumental in supporting “strong sustainability”.