Participatory Budgeting and Vertical Agriculture: A Thought Experiment in Food System Reform

While researchers have identified numerous problems with food systems, sustainable, just, and workable solutions remain scarce. Recent developments in the food justice literature, however, show which local food movements favor sustainability and justice as problem-solving measures. Yet, some of the ways that these approaches could work in concert are overlooked. Through focusing on how they are compatible, we can understand how such endeavors can improve the conditions for community control and reduce the detrimental effects of agribusiness. In this paper, the author proposes a participatory budgeting project that involves a relatively new process called “vertical agriculture” to alleviate some of the harm that current agricultural practices cause. In turn, we see how such a measure can improve the integrity of municipal governance and reshape the power structures that control food systems.     

Knowledge,experience and the circus: academic perspectives on the processes of communicating the environmental and health impacts of electric vehicles

The translation of research findings into public realms has important implications for alternative technologies, such as electric vehicles (EVs). Much existing science communication research focuses on the agency of different publics in processes of scientific knowledge uptake. This study uses research related to the environmental and health impacts of EVs as a case study to explore how the individual agency of academic researchers can influence communication. Challenges to communication and opportunities to enhance the agency of researchers to engage in public dialogue are identified, with a focus on academics at different stages of their careers. This paper proposes a new way of understanding how these individualised nuances impact the communication of a particular researcher’s findings. These nuances are built through the researcher’s agency; a construct of their past experiences, professional and personal relationships with other actors and previous practices of communicating to publics. Communication models have previously concentrated on the heterogeneity of other actors and publics with the huge assumption that academics work consistently, homogenously, in a neutral way to the benefit of society. EVs were chosen as an appropriate case study as they are a contemporary technology that relies on the communication of knowledge and the public understanding of this knowledge to cater for future needs. The responses elicited from the interviews highlight the individual geographies of knowledge. Hence, a reflexive understanding of their role as an individual can provide valuable insights into how a researcher may distribute knowledges more effectively in their geographies to publics     

For what it's worth: evaluating revealed preferences for green certification

In a case study that examines the outcomes of a flexible information-based policy, we observe how organizations obtain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification. We use a regression discontinuity analysis to identify practices used to upgrade certification tiers. This analysis reveals preferences for green certification strategies and, we argue, intimates the perceived motivations for green certification. We distinguish practices that potentially confer private gains through returns to efficiency and productivity investments, from practices that only provide public benefits. Data show that organizations strategically certify to avoid high-cost resource use, appeal to key stakeholders, and communicate building and organization quality. Builders upgrading to the highest tiers are more likely to deploy practices with private gains. Results suggest a willingness to extend short time horizons associated with energy-efficiency investments in exchange for marketing benefits. Our discussion notes the capacity for certifications to mitigate market barriers associated with the energy-efficiency gap.     

Urban environmental justice through the camera: understanding the politics of space and the right to the city

Using the lens of Lefebvre's spatial trialectics, we assess the utility of photo-elicited interviewing for environmental justice, recognising that a view to social spatial analysis is essential to engaging with the historical processes of exclusion and discrimination that are crucial to explaining why unequal distributions of environmental injustice are systemic and not random. Drawing on insights from our own photo-elicited interviewing-based work in the neighbourhood called Parkdale in Toronto, we make two main recommendations for future environmental justice work using photo-elicited interviewing. First, researchers must be open to a broader epistemology, one that draws on a more spatially nuanced and temporally evolving knowledge of the full range of environmental influences on communities. Second, in order to arrive at a more robust critical analysis of social space, researchers should complement photo-elicited interviewing with historical research about the relevant communities and include participants from other comparative communities.     

新型污染物风险防范国际实践及其对中国的启示

随着重化工业的快速发展和各类化学品的大量使用,一些新型污染物对中国居民和生态环境的危害正逐步显现并日趋严重。如何进一步完善中国新型污染物的风险防范体系,是中国生态环境治理面临的重要问题。发达国家新型污染物的风险防范工作启动较早,对中国完善新型污染物风险防范体系具有重要的借鉴意义。本文从制度建设、体制机制、评估监测、科学研究等方面比较国内外新型污染物风险防范实践的异同,立足我国国情,发现国内实践还需加强之处。在此基础上,提出国际新型污染物风险防范实践对中国的启示。     

Water Resources Research Prioritization and Management-Problems and Perspectives1

ABSTRACT: At a time when productive water resources research is essential to protecting the quality of and wisely using our limited water resources, pervasive trends toward consumerism, fiscal restraint, centralized management, and using research for other social objectives threaten research productivity. The research prioritization and management structure that these trends have created was examined in the microcosm of its application at the Utah Water Research Laboratory. The result indicated that ephemeral prioritization and the failure of research users to target researchers to their own particular needs is diluting productivity. Incremental research prioritization and greater use of advisory councils in facilitating user-researcher interaction are suggested as corrective approaches, but the only firm conclusion at this point in time must be that empirical studies of the performance of alternatives in research management structure are solely needed.     

Adoption of sustainable agriculture practices: Evidence from a semi-arid region of Ethiopia

In the wake of the resource constraints for external farm inputs faced by farmers in developing countries, sustainable agriculture practices that rely on renewable local or farm resources present desirable options for enhancing agriculture productivity. In this study, plot-level data from the semi-arid region of Ethiopia, Tigray are used to investigate the factors influencing farmers' decisions to adopt agriculture practices, with a particular focus on conservation tillage, compost and chemical fertilizer. A trivariate probit model is used to analyze the determinants of adoption of these practices. In addition, stochastic dominance analysis is used to compare the productivity impacts of compost with that of chemical fertilizer based on a six-year cross-sectional farm-level dataset. Our results indicate heterogeneity with regard to the factors that influence adoption decisions of the three practices and the importance of both plot and household characteristics on influencing adoption decisions. In particular, we found that household endowments and access to information, among other factors, impact the choice of sustainable farming practices significantly. Furthermore, the use of stochastic dominance analysis supported the contention that sustainable farming practices enhance productivity. They even proved to be superior to the use of chemical fertilizers — justifying the need to investigate factors that influence adoption of these practices and to use this knowledge to formulate policies that encourage adoption.     

On the choice of farm management practices after the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in 2003

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was fundamentally reformed in 2003. From 2005, farmers will receive decoupled income support payments instead of production premiums if basic standards for environment, food safety, animal health and welfare are met. Farmers are likely to adjust production and management practices to the new policy framework. We describe how this reform fits into the EU strategy of making agricultural production more environmentally friendly by concentrating on the financial aspects of the reforms. Using an agricultural sector model for Austria, we show that the reform will further decrease agricultural outputs, reduce farm inputs, lessen nitrogen surpluses and make environmentally friendly management practices more attractive for farmers.     

Does intensity of change matter? Factors affecting adoption of agri-environmental schemes in Spain

Agri-environmental schemes (AES) are the main policy instrument currently available in the EU to promote environmentally-friendly farming practices. However, the rate of adoption of these measures is still relatively low in southern Europe, and understanding how these rates can be increased is still an open issue. The goal of this paper is to increase that understanding by testing whether the factors which determine AES sign-up decisions are influenced by the intensity of change in farming practices that are brought about by adopting the scheme. A micro-economic model reflecting farmer AES sign-up decisions is proposed and applied to two schemes in Spain respectively requiring major or minor intensity of change in practices by surveying farmers eligible for both schemes. The results show that farm structural factors play a role when major practice change is required by the scheme, yet when dealing with minor change, individual farmer characteristics play a more determining role. Social capital and farmer attitude are important factors in both the AES surveyed. Therefore, it may be concluded that improving agronomic design would be an important tool to improve farmer participation in AES where major change is involved, whereas improved targeting and extension would help uptake for AES involving a lesser degree of change.     

Technical and Institutional Innovation in Agroforestry for Protected Areas Management in the Brazilian Amazon: Opportunities and Limitations

Tropical forest countries are struggling with the partially conflicting policy objectives of socioeconomic development, forest conservation, and safeguarding the livelihoods of local forest-dependent people. We worked with communities in the lower Tapajós region of the central Brazilian Amazon for over 10 years to understand their traditional and present land use practices, the constraints, and decision making processes imposed by their biophysical, socioeconomic, and political environment, and to facilitate development trajectories to improve the livelihoods of forest communities while conserving the forest on the farms and in the larger landscape. The work focused on riverine communities initially in the Tapajós National Forest and then in the Tapajós–Arapiuns Extractive Reserve. These communities have a century-old tradition of planting rubber agroforests which despite their abandonment during the 1990s still widely characterize the vegetation of the river banks, especially in the two protected areas where they are safe from the recent expansion of mechanized rice and soybean agriculture. The project evolved from the capacity-building of communities in techniques to increase the productivity of the rubber agroforests without breaking their low-input and low-risk logic, to the establishment of a community enterprise that allowed reserve inhabitants to reforest their own land with tree species of their choice and sell reforestation (not carbon) credits to local timber companies while retaining the ownership of the trees. By making land use practices economically more viable and ecologically more appropriate for protected areas, the project shows ways to strengthen the system of extractive and sustainable development reserves that protects millions of hectares of Amazon forest with the consent of the communities that inhabit them.     

Assessing Restoration Potential of Semi-natural Grasslands by Landscape Change Trajectories

Species-rich semi-natural grasslands have rapidly declined and become fragmented in Northern Europe due to ceased traditional agricultural practices and animal husbandry. Restoration actions have been introduced in many places to improve the habitat conditions and increase the area to prevent any further losses of their ecological values. However, given the limited resources and long time span needed for successful restoration, it is essential to target activities on sites having a suitable initial state and where the effects of restoration are most beneficial for the habitat network. In this paper we present a conceptual framework for evaluating the restoration potential of partially overgrown and selectively managed semi-natural grasslands in a moderately transformed agricultural environment in south-western Finland. On the basis of the spatio-temporal landscape trajectory analysis, we construct potential restoration scenarios based on expected semi-natural grassland characteristics that are derived from land productivity, detected grassland continuum, and date of overgrowth. These scenarios are evaluated using landscape metrics, their feasibility is discussed and the effects of potential restoration are compared to the present extent of open semi-natural grasslands. Our results show that landscape trajectory analysis and scenario construction can be valuable tools for the restoration planning of semi-natural grasslands with limited resources. The approach should therefore be considered as an essential tool to find the most optimal restoration sites and to pre-evaluate the effects.     

Animals and soil sustainability

Domestic livestock animals and soils must be considered together as part of an agroecosystem which includes plants. Soil sustainability may be simply defined as the maintenance of soil productivity for future generations. There are both positive and negative aspects concerning the role of animals in soil sustainability. In a positive sense, agroecosystems which include ruminant animals often also include hay forage-or pasture-based crops in the humid regions. Such crops stabilize the soil by decreasing erosion, improving soil structure and usually require fewer chemical inputs. Monogastric animal culture is based on an agroecosystem consisting of mainly grain crops. These crops can result in the soil being exposed to water and wind erosion although soil conservation practices that significantly reduce soil losses may be followed. The management of animal manures is not always compatible with soil conservation practices. Careful management of the nutrients in manure is absolutely necessary to avoid nitrate contamination of ground water or phosphorus loading of streams and lakes. In a negative sense, increases in animal livestock populations in association with human population growth are promoting desertification in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world. The key component for a fully compatible and acceptable association between domestic animals and soil productivity is proper management. Careful management of the components of an animal-based agroecosystem is required if soil productivity and environmental quality are to be maintained. Although we have much to learn, technologies are available to move a considerable way towards this ideal state.     

Is there a Relation Between Ecological Practices and Spirituality? The Case of Benedictine Monasteries

For decades there has been a controversial debate over how far religious faith communities are specifically engaged in ecological practices (EP). Therefore we studied four Austrian and two German Benedictine monasteries religious ethics and spirituality as a means of a driving force for initiating EP. We draw upon theories of organizational learning processes and capacity-building of sustainability to interpret our empirical findings. The majority of monasteries are highly engaged in EP, initiated either as an outcome of individual activities or through a specific mostly informally acting group, but rarely an organizationally or systematically integrated goal of the monasteries, or a focus of capacity building. Monasteries follow a technical and economic decision-making process in implementing EP. Spirituality plays a limited role in the initiation of EP. The environment of monasteries–acceptance or critique against ecological practices–influences the monasteries decisions. Institutionalization of ecological practices into the monasteries organizational structure is rare.     

Integrated waste management via the Natural Laws

Summary The basic tools of engineering, energy and material balances and rate expressions, provide a pathway to apply the Natural Laws of Hazardous Waste for proper waste management. Overall, one must focus on nature's limits, which are discussed, using open minded engineering practices for proper waste management. By expansion of balance concepts beyond end-of-pipe and integrating concepts beyond basic life-cycles, as discussed in this paper, the true impact ofwaste management practices may be established. These cradle-to-grave balances are connected to nature's limits via results of recent work by others on risk assessment. The combination of approaches for evaluating concentration limits of chemicals in the environment allows the facility for an engineering solution for proper waste management. The method is presented by making example comparisons of choices of technology for recycling, storage, and site remediation.     

Tropical Timber Rush in Peruvian Amazonia: Spatial Allocation of Forest Concessions in an Uninventoried Frontier

Land-use allocation has important implications for the conservation and management of tropical forests. Peru’s forestry regime has recently been reformed and more than 7 million ha has been assigned as forest concessions. This potentially has a drastic impact on the land-use practices and species composition of the assigned areas. Nevertheless, the environmental variation found within the concessions and the process applied to delimit them are poorly studied and documented. Thus, it is difficult to estimate the biological impacts of forestry activities in concessions or plan them sustainably. This paper reveals the characteristics of the current concession allocation in Loreto, Peruvian Amazonia, using environmental and access-related variables and compares the concessions to other major land-use assignments. The work draws on a number of data sets describing land-use, ecosystem diversity, and fluvial network in the region. According to our data, certain environment types such as relatively fertile Pebas soils are overrepresented in the concessions, while others, like floodplain forests, are underrepresented in comparison to other land-use assignments. Concessions also have less anthropogenic disturbance than other areas. Furthermore, concessions are located on average further from the river network than the other land-use assignments studied. We claim that forest classification based on productivity, soil fertility, accessibility, and biodiversity patterns is an achievable long-term goal for forest authorities in Peru, and in many other tropical countries. We present a rough design of a geographic information system incorporating environmental, logging, and access-related data that could be applied to approach this goal in Peru.     

开展清洁生产是协调新疆工业经济发展与环境保护的必由之路

随着新疆工业化进程的加快，工业发展与环境保护之间的矛盾将日益突出。根据新疆工业现状、发展趋势及区域环境特点，全面分析阐述了二者之间的矛盾特征，提出以开展清洁生产为切入点，协调新疆工业经济发展与环境保护关系的对策、措施。并对新疆如何推行清洁生产提出了一些建议。     

Cost-benefit and systems analysis of passively ventilated solar greenhouses for food production in arid and semi-arid regions

In this paper, economic feasibility of two vegetable crops (i.e., cucumber and tomato) cultivated in a naturally ventilated greenhouse, and the net present worth, cost-benefit ratio, payback period, and internal rate of return for these crops on year-round cultivation are presented. The cost-benefit ratio demonstrated that growing cucumbers and tomatoes can be economically viable in this climatic region. The present experimental study was conducted in the composite climatic condition of Udaipur (24°35′N, 73°42′E), India. The study area is defined as arid and semi-arid region of Indian climatic conditions. Droughts are a recurring phenomenon in arid and semi-arid regions creating a situation that affects not only agricultural productivity but also people’s health. In particular, the western part of the state is a desert, and its socioeconomic status influences nutrient purchasing power. A poor diet can lead to a vitamin and mineral deficiency. The state of Rajasthan has good agricultural potential; interventions using protected cultivation practices can increase the production and productivity of vegetable crops. However, the current adoption rate of such practices in the state remains very slow, even after a promotional scheme offered by the state government. The government and policymakers should consider offering demonstrations of practices at a larger level. Farmers of the state are marginal and economically poor, requiring more financial assistance. Low cost technologies would be suitable for these farmers.     

Neighbourhood - Open Space Relationships in Metropolitan Planning: a look across four scales of concern

New Urbanism and other metropolitan planning strategies may discount the importance of neighbourhood - open space relationships when dealing with some types of open spaces, particularly in city centre and urban fringe areas. In this paper I review a series of studies I have carried out over the past decade looking at people's perceptions and uses of urban open space. This research examined neighbourhood - open space relationships in the metropolitan area of Chicago, Illinois, USA at four scales of concern: quasi-public space within an immediate neighbourhood; a public park that spans different neighbourhoods; regional greenways; and a metropolitan bioreserve. In all of this work, my findings show how adjacent neighbourhoods are critical to the success of these open spaces, regardless of their scale. Lessons are drawn from each scale for how neighbourhood - open space relationships might be improved.     

Greener growing: assessing the influence of gardening practices on the ecological viability of community gardens in South East Queensland,Australia

While claims about the environmental benefits of community gardens abound, few researchers have systematically assessed the ecological integrity of gardening practices. This study investigated gardening practices in 50 community gardens in Brisbane and Gold Coast cities, Australia. The study aimed to better understand how gardening practices might affect the ecological viability of community gardens. Factors investigated included: garden bio-physical characteristics, operators’ motivations, gardeners’ socio-demographic backgrounds, garden facilities and types of plants grown. Two broad types of gardens were identified: permaculture (21 gardens) and non-permaculture (29 gardens). Permaculture gardens used lower-impact gardening practices. Findings have policy implications for environmental planning and management.