Industrial ecology: a review

Industrial ecology is both a vision, a research field, and a source of inspiration for practical work. Its proponents aim to contribute to sustainable development by closing materials cycles and realising a fundamental paradigm shift in the thinking concerning industry–ecology relations. Dominant research lines in industrial ecology focus on industrial metabolism and life cycle tools. The underlying assumption is that the flow and transformation of materials can be managed through the correcting of market and regulatory failures which are causes of environmental degradation. This literature review suggests, on the one hand, that the manageability of the flow of materials is currently limited by market and regulatory failures which inhibit the implementation of the principles of industrial ecology and, on the other hand, that the flow and transformation of materials are only partly affected by prices, information and laws. Received: 9 September 1999 · Revised: 22 November 1999 · Accepted: 2 December 1999     

Rhetorical Landscapes as Epistemic: Revisiting Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac

This essay examines the rhetorical impetus toward environmental human agency in Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac (SCA). In identifying a foundation for this agency, Leopold relies on the epistemological function of rhetoric in an effort to bring to light the epistemic potential in reading the landscape. In this fashion, Leopold offers a way of knowing the environment through natural observations. The author identifies the unfolding epistemological revelations found in the three primary sections of SCA. Leopold describes these epistemological revelations gleaned from reading the landscape as “shifts.” The first shift, in Part I of SCA, offers the audience lessons through Leopold's own example in reading the text of the landscape. The second shift, described in Part II, describes his epistemological revelations acquired through his reading of the landscape. The final section of the book situates these epistemological revelations in one of the most influential concepts found in environmental ethics, the land ethic. Through these three iterations, Leopold not only instructs his readers in the rhetorical possibilities found in reading landscapes but also offers scholars of environmental rhetoric a unique understanding of analyzing landscapes as epistemological rhetoric.     

Baudrillard and Our Destiny with the Natural World: Fatal Strategies for Environmental Communication

Drawing on the writings of Jean Baudrillard, the purpose of this essay is to suggest a set of communication practices that promote a different way of thinking about the earth–human relationship. Baudrillard's “fatal strategies” are developed into concepts of intersubjectivity, seduction, and sorcery, which when used in conjunction with more traditional, logical rhetorical appeals, can produce powerful appeals for environmental change. To illustrate, we explore how these strategies are used in two exemplars of environmental discourse: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.     

The ‘New Water Culture’ on the Web: an issue network analysis

In this article, we analyse how the Internet is used to bring visibility to water affairs. We focus on the way different organisations exploit the Web in order to participate in the debates about water policy in Spain and to define the topics concerned. To do this, we have drawn up an issue network articulated around an alternative and sustainable water policy called ‘New Water Culture’. We examine the composition of this web structure, its hyperlinking styles, key nodes and political trajectories. The outcomes indicate that the ‘New Water Culture’ has become a main frame in Spanish environmental policy. Supported both by governmental and non-governmental players, the ‘New Water Culture’ struggles between two opposing trends: its expulsion from the public sphere and efforts to open it up to scrutiny from political outsiders.     

Power and politics of social–ecological regime shifts in the Chilika lagoon,India and Tam Giang lagoon,Vietnam

Analyses of ecological regime shifts primarily focus on abrupt, long-term and significant changes that trigger fundamental reorganisation in ecosystem structure and function. There remains limited empirical work on the relationship between regime shifts and social inequities, power imbalances, and social and environmental injustices. Inadequate attention to this social context restricts our ability to predict and avert impending regime shifts, or to effectively navigate where thresholds have been crossed. In this paper, we offer an initial empirical assessment of politics and power in two coastal lagoons in India and Vietnam experiencing abrupt change. We adopt a realist view of power to: (1) assess the social relations structuring human–environment interactions in both lagoons; (2) characterise the dominant framings and narratives that influence if and how regime shifts are understood; (3) consider who wins and loses if and when regime shifts and other forms of rapid environmental change take place; and (4) reflect on the implications of power and politics for the governance of regime shifts in linked human–ocean settings.     

Culture,Progress and the Media: The Shad as Synecdoche in Environmental News Coverage

This essay examined the use of synecdoche in newspaper coverage of a dispute over water rights between the Mattaponi Indians and the city of Newport News, Virginia. The Mattaponi used the shad as a rhetorical trope to explain the tribe's relationship to the river and their fears about the reservoir's impact. The reservoir proponents, however, treated the shad as a representation of the conflict surrounding the reservoir, and this construction was reflected in articles that appeared in The Daily Press, a local daily newspaper. This essay argued that, ultimately, the treatment of a single species as a synecdoche in environmental disputes undermined the Mattaponi's position. The media which are instrumental in defining environmental issues for the public, misinterpreted a rhetorical trope that was proffered as a representation for a complex set of values and instead focused attention on the species itself rather than the values that it represented.     

The impact of government subsidy and tax policy on the competitive decision-making of remanufacturing supply chains

In this paper, we consider a two-period competition model of a remanufacturing supply chain consisting of three members: a new product manufacturer, a recycler and a remanufacturer. The manufacturer supplies new products in the first period and the remanufacturer participates in the competition in the second period. We consider three scenarios in the second period: (1) there is no government subsidy in the competition; (2) there is only government subsidy in the competition; (3) there are both government subsidy and tax in the competition. First, we give the optimal decision-making of the manufacturer, the remanufacturer and the government in the three scenarios; second, we analyse changes in the decision-making of the manufacturer and remanufacturer in the three scenarios and compare their results. We analyse the effects of government subsidy and tax and their asymmetric use on manufacturers’ and remanufacturers’ decision-making variables and competitive performance. We also take consumer awareness of environmental protection into account and examine its impact on subjects’ decisions. Lastly, we operate a numerical example to show the results.     

Narratives,Rhetorical Genres,and Environmental Conflict: Responses to Schwarze's “Environmental Melodrama”

The appearance of Steven Schwarze's essay, “Environmental Melodrama” (Schwarze, 2006) as the lead article in a recent issue of The Quarterly Journal of Speech marks an important moment of recognition for environmental communication scholarship. Schwarze's essay demonstrates how studies of environmental rhetoric can contribute to rhetorical theory more generally, while addressing practical questions regarding the rhetorical aspects of environmental conflict. The contributors to this forum respond to Schwarze's arguments, drawing in part upon their own case studies of rhetorical action and narrative in environmental conflict.     

Developing an integrated approach to enhance the delivering of environmental goods and services by agro-ecosystems

It is widely acknowledged that the implementation of the majority of agri-environmental measures (AEMs) does not allow for the quantification of expected environmental benefits, thereby undermining the possibilities to assess both their effectiveness and efficiency. The objective of this paper is to show how an approach to develop agri-environmental measures based on the multifunctional character of agro-ecosystem is useful to overcome the difficulties in assessing expected environmental benefits. In the following sections, the main theoretical concepts underlying the actual European model of multifunctional agriculture are introduced. Following a critique of some aspects of the current analysis of the joint production of environmental non-commodities, the rationale to operate a shift of focus from multifunctionality of agriculture to that of agro-ecosystems is proposed. Finally the methodology developed by the AEMBAC project, based on the assessment of impacts exerted by agriculture on the capacity of local agro-ecosystem to perform environmental functions, is presented to explain how this shift of focus facilitates the assessment of the delivering of multiple environmental goods and services.     

Earth-a-lujah!: The Prophetic Environmental Discourse of Reverend Billy

Although rhetorical scholars often examine forms of prophetic discourse, such efforts have primarily focused on the jeremiad or similar rhetorical forms that place emphasis on exhorting the people to return to following the covenant or face negative consequences. However, such messages do not represent the breadth of rhetorical techniques utilized by the biblical prophets. Thus, this study will suggest a new genre of prophetic discourse that activist and performance artist Reverend Billy embodies in his environmental critique of JP Morgan Chase. Implications from this analysis concern both the importance of identifying and understanding this rhetorical form of the “imaginative prophet” and how Reverend Billy uses this approach to advance his view of environmental agenda.     

Closing remarks: novel approaches to complex societal change and sustainability

This paper summarizes some personal impressions of the 7th conference of the International Complex Systems Society, co-organized with “Future Earth”, held in Stockholm on August 24–26, 2017. The main point is that it is urgent and important to consider the sustainability conundrum as long-term, society-driven one, and to place societal dynamics at the core of how we, as a global society, came to this point, how ongoing dynamics are driving us towards a tipping point, and which role the Information and Communication Technology revolution plays in that process. A much wider involvement of the social sciences is essential. This also requires major changes in our thinking about sustainability—we need to develop an approach in which change is the natural state of affairs and societies attempt to impose stability on the dynamics involved. We need to focus on learning from the past, about the present, but above all for the future. And we need to shift from an entity-focused approach to a relational one, which pays more attention to contexts and networks. Other issues raised by such a shift in our thinking are about the role of science, the adoption of complex systems approaches and a few others that the paper points to.     

Framing for resilience through social learning: impacts of environmental stewardship on youth in post-disturbance communities

Civic ecology practices, such as community gardening and citizen-led urban reforestation and wetland restoration, provide opportunities for social learning. Because social learning is an important component of community resilience, we suggest that civic ecology practices can be a strategy for responding to and mitigating environmental disturbances in an era threatened by climate change. Despite the links between civic ecology, social learning and community resilience, empirical research that systematically considers these connections is limited. This study addresses this gap by introducing ‘frames’ as an approach to considering social learning outcomes and process. More specifically, we provide a model for investigating the role civic ecology education programs play in shaping youths’ capacity to understand and respond to environmental disturbance. We used participant observation and cognitive mapping to assess social learning among three youth restoration programs working in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in New York, NY, and after the 2013 floods in Boulder, CO. In all three programs, youth demonstrated social learning and cognitive change by shifting their emphasis from the impacts of disturbance towards a solutions-based framing that focused on community, action, and mitigation. However, the depth of these changes was not uniform across all programs, suggesting that variations in program length, community context, social identity, and opportunities for self-defined action may shape overall impacts of programs and youth capacity for future action.     

International Legal Instruments and Regional Environmental Protection

Efficient environmental protection requires global, as well as regional ecological strategies. During the last decade numerous attempts at regional and global environmental protection have been made. But industrial environmental protection is still, above all, a national matter. National emission limit values and international technological standards still neglect to a large extent the regional aspects of pollution prevention. Recent normative texts (international standards, European directives) can be seen as the first step to filling this gap. They represent different evolutionary stages on the way from merely technocentric to regionally integrated environmental protection. We investigate the potential of some of these normative texts to operationalise regional environmental strategies. For this purpose we will provide a framework for evaluation centred on the following questions: ? Is the installation/project/organisation perceived as part of its specific environment? ? Can local immission standards be developed on the basis of a functional classification of ecosystems? ? Are methods of integrated ecological evaluation supported? The framework will be applied to examine the European directives on Environmental Impact Assessment and Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control and two ISO (International Standardisation Organisation) standards on Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001 and 14004) with regard to basic requirements for operationalising integrated regional environmental protection.     

Shifting role of ecology in solving global environmental problems: selected practical tools

As environmental issues changed its focus from pollution and endangered species to fulfilling basic human needs, such as health, education, shelter, sanitation, hygiene, on the one hand and social justice on the other hand, it widened in its scope. People questioned about adequacy of ecological knowledge in solving daily questions in their life, and also contribution of their values, objective life situations and idea of quality of life for ecological well-being. Two core and complimentary values strongly emerged from the concept of sustainable development; namely environmental protection and justice. Unfortunately, there is lack of awareness on dimensions of human life and its linkages with the wider environment. To combine the values, dimensions of human life and its linkages with external environment, fundamental changes in human behaviour for human development is required. Present article reflects on dimensions of life, essential skills and practical tools for environmental protection and human development.     

Scapegoat Ecology: Blame,Exoneration, and an Emergent Genre in Environmentalist Discourse

This essay identifies and examines scapegoat ecology, an emergent genre in online environmental discourse. In scapegoat ecology, a public of environmentally minded individuals focuses attention and vitriol on a single person for being particularly harmful to the environment. This essay argues that such discourse deflects attention from more complex and systemic environmental factors and implicitly exonerates the broader community, assuring it of its own environmental commitments while excusing it from further ecological action. The essay describes the form and appeal of scapegoat ecology, then provides a series of illustrative case examples before highlighting the implications of such discourse for both environmental communication and broader social/political conversations.     

Multiobjective optimisation method for life-cycle design of mechanical products

Manufacturing that minimises the exhaustion of natural resources, energy used and deleterious environmental impact is increasingly demanded by societies that seek to protect global environments as much as possible. To achieve this, life-cycle design (LCD) is an essential component of product design scenarios; however, LCD approaches have not been well integrated in optimal design methods that support quantitative decision-making. This study presents a method that yields quantitative solutions through optimisation analysis of a basic product design incorporating life-cycle considerations. We consider two types of optimisation approaches that have different aims, namely, (1) to reduce the use of raw materials and energy consumption and (2) to facilitate the reuse of the product or its parts when it reaches the end of its useful life. We also focus on how the optimisation results differ according to the approach used, from the viewpoint of the 3R concept (Reduce, Reuse and Recycling). Our method obtains optimum solutions by evaluating objectives fitted to each of these two optimisation approaches with respect to the product's life-cycle stages, which are manufacturing, use, maintenance, disposal, reuse and recycling. As an applied example, a simple linear robot model is presented, and Pareto optimum solutions are obtained for the multiobjective optimisation problem whose evaluated objectives are the operating accuracy of the robot and the different life-cycle costs for the two approaches. The characteristics of the evaluated objectives and design variables, as well as the effects of using material characteristics as design parameters, are also examined.     

Conceptual Framework of Tourism Carrying Capacity for a Tourism City： Experiences from National Parks in the United States

There is no universally-accepted definition of tourism carrying capacity(TCC).Numerical TCC focuses on use level and is considered as"a magic number"of the saturation point for tourism.There are several reasons why numerical tourism capacity is inadequate.Alternatively,tourism capacity can be defined in terms of limits of acceptable change,which shifts the focus from"how much use is too much"to"how much change is acceptable".This article proposes an improved conceptual framework for evaluating carrying capacity for the tourism city based on approaches used in US national parks,which consider the impact of human use on a city's economic,environmental/resource,and socio-cultural conditions.Based on the basic data of indicator values and relevant standards,the framework monitors the current indicators and predicts future indicator values; it can also be used to assess and predict TCC.     

Transforming systems of consumption and production for achieving the sustainable development goals: moving beyond efficiency

The United Nations formulated the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2015 as a comprehensive global policy framework for addressing the most pressing social and environmental challenges currently facing humanity. In this paper, we analyse SDG 12, which aims to “ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” Despite long-standing political recognition of this objective, and ample scientific evidence both on its importance and on the efficacy of various ways of promoting it, the SDGs do not provide clear goals or effective guidance on how to accomplish this urgently needed transformation. Drawing from the growing body of research on sustainable consumption and production (SCP), the paper identifies two dominant vantage points—one focused on promoting more efficient production methods and products (mainly through technological improvement and informed consumer choice) and the other stressing the need to consider also overall volumes of consumption, distributional issues, and related social and institutional changes. We label these two approaches efficiency and systemic. Research shows that while the efficiency approach contains essential elements of a transition to sustainability, it is by itself highly unlikely to bring about sustainable outcomes. Concomitantly, research also finds that volumes of consumption and production are closely associated with environmental impacts, indicating a need to curtail these volumes in ways that safeguard social sustainability, which is unlikely to be possible without a restructuring of existing socioeconomic arrangements. Analysing how these two perspectives are reflected in the SDGs framework, we find that in its current conception, it mainly relies on the efficiency approach. On the basis of this assessment, we conclude that the SDGs represent a partial and inadequate conceptualisation of SCP which will hamper implementation. Based on this determination, this paper provides some suggestions on how governments and other actors involved in SDGs operationalisation could more effectively pursue SCP from a systemic standpoint and use the transformation of systems of consumption and production as a lever for achieving multiple sustainability objectives.     

Prolepsis and the Environmental Rhetoric of Congressional Politics: Defeating the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003

As a device of argumentative anticipation, prolepsis use generally is considered a positive rhetorical strategy. Turning to the Climate Stewardship Act (CSA) of 2003, this article contributes to our understanding of environmental communication, political argumentation, and rhetorical theory by examining how proleptic miscalculation can actually produce devastating consequences against one's cause when used as a source of invention. Proponents of the CSA relied on creating proleptic arguments grounded in a scientific understanding of climate change to such an extent that they mistakenly downplayed the economic arguments against the Act. This orchestrated miscalculation was encouraged and strengthened by key US senators. This article concludes by discussing contributions to scholarly understanding of prolepsis use in public policymaking and offers practical suggestions for improving communication in future considerations of environmental legislation.     

立足生态看西藏的产业发展之路

“今天的环境．明天的经济”,环境与经济既矛盾又统一,如何协调好两者的关系,是当前经济决策时无法逾越的问题。本文立足生态看经济,将“生态”与“经济”作为分析产业问题的两个支点,在兼顾二者平衡的基础上,指出了西藏产业结构存在的问题,提出了与内地“错位”发展的战略,建议优先发展生态旅游业、藏药产业、农牧产品加工业、民族手工业、环保五大产业。并给出了五大产业的发展对策,传统产业的优化思路,以及政策保障体系。