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1.
Conceptualising climate change in rural Australia: community perceptions, attitudes and (in)actions 总被引:2,自引:0,他引:2
Public engagement and support is essential for ensuring adaptation to climate change. The first step in achieving engagement
is documenting how the general public currently perceive and understand climate change issues, specifically the importance
they place on this global problem and identifying any unique challenges for individual communities. For rural communities,
which rely heavily on local agriculture industries, climate change brings both potential impacts and opportunities. Yet, to
date, our knowledge about how rural residents conceptualise climate change is limited. Thus, this research explores how the
broader rural community—not only farmers—conceptualises climate change and responsive activities, focussing on documenting
the understandings and risk perceptions of local residents from two small Australian rural communities. Twenty-three semi-structured
interviews were conducted in communities in the Eden/Gippsland region on the border of New South Wales and Victoria and the
north-east of Tasmania. There are conflicting views on how climate change is conceptualised, the degree of concern and need
for action, the role of local industry, who will ‘win’ and ‘lose’, and the willingness of rural communities to adapt. In particular,
residents who believed in anthropogenic or human-induced factors described the changing climate as evidence of ‘climate change’,
whereas those who were more sceptical termed it ‘weather variability’, suggesting that there is a divide in rural Australia
that, unless urgently addressed, will hinder local and national policy responses to this global issue. Engaging these communities
in the twenty-first-century climate change debate will require a significant change in terminology and communication strategies. 相似文献
2.
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. 相似文献
3.
Jayanath Ananda George Domazetis John Hill 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(5):1051-1071
A ‘roadmap’ has been devised for a progressive greening of the Australian chemical industry over the next two decades. The
roadmap is based on a set of interactive principles broadly termed ‘economic’, ‘social’, ‘technological’, ‘environmental’
and ‘political’, which collectively form the ‘drivers of change’ in chemical industry strategy/business/policy planning—leading
to greater efficiency and economic sustainability of this industry. The proposed roadmap pre-supposes that real economic,
societal and environmental benefits can be obtained through greater use of existing and emerging green chemical technology.
It can play an important role in developing a sustainable chemical industry in Australia. Primarily, the proposed roadmap
involves a paradigm shift of the business operating plan and a significant mindset change of management. 相似文献
4.
Vinish Kathuria 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2009,11(5):955-970
The failure of formal regulation and market-based approaches to control pollution has highlighted the significance of informal
regulation in the form of ‘public disclosure’ and ‘rating’ for achieving environmental goals in the nineties. In developing
countries where pollution information is often scarce, disclosure can make a firm’s emissions more costly. This is because
it increases penalties from regulators, local communities, consumer organizations and factor markets. Public or information
disclosure combines conventional environmental monitoring, self-regulation and public pressure using environmental ratings
to promote better environmental management. Thus, it forms an effective tool to control pollution in developing countries
like India, China or Kenya and countries-in-transition like Poland, Russia, etc. The different examples given in the paper
indicate that effective public disclosure requires a credible scheme with scrutiny at different checkpoints similar to the
one used for PROPER in Indonesia or GRP in India. 相似文献
5.
A stakeholder dialogue on European vulnerability 总被引:1,自引:1,他引:0
Anne C. de la Vega-Leinert Dagmar Schröter Rik Leemans Uta Fritsch Jacomijn Pluimers 《Regional Environmental Change》2008,8(3):109-124
A stakeholder dialogue was embedded in the ATEAM project to facilitate the development and dissemination of its European-wide
vulnerability assessment of global change impacts. Participating stakeholders were primarily ecosystem managers and policy
advisers interested in potential impacts on ‘Agriculture’, ‘Forestry’, ‘Water’, ‘Carbon storage’, ‘Biodiversity’ and ‘Mountain
environments’ sectors. First, stakeholder dialogue approaches to integrated assessment are introduced. Methodological considerations
on stakeholder selection and dialogue implementation and evaluation follow. The dialogue content and process are evaluated
from the perspectives of stakeholders and scientists. Its usefulness in the research process and the relevance of outcomes
for stakeholders are particularly considered. The challenging compromises required to perform innovative research, which seeks
to achieve both peer scientific credibility and societal relevance, are emphasized. Effective stakeholder dialogues play a
substantial role in raising the visibility and meaningfulness of vulnerability assessments as critical means to improve awareness
on global change and its potential worrying impacts on society. They further provide scientists with critical information
on ecosystem management and sectoral adaptive capacity. These processes of mutual learning and knowledge exchange moreover
foster a better understanding of the potential and limits of global change modelling and vulnerability assessment for policy
and ecosystem management.
相似文献
Anne C. de la Vega-LeinertEmail: |
6.
The need for environmental and urban planning reached a critical point in the year 2007, when one-half of the world's population
could be defined as living in cities. Urbanisation in India is also increasing at a fast rate. Urban chaos in India, emanating
from the continuous ignorance of fragile ecosystems, calls for the reshaping of existing cities as ‘eco-cities’. The ‘eco-city’—a
well-known concept in the western world—is new to the Indian context. While western connotations of eco-cities should not
be discarded outright in the context of India, core concerns vary significantly for obvious reasons. Recognising two facts—firstly,
eco-city development is altogether a fresh approach to human settlement development in India, and, secondly, the manifold
increase in the vulnerability of cities—this paper discusses documented good practice, reinforcing evolution towards the eco-city
vision. Lessons drawn from the examples cited are further deconstructed in the light of their contribution to urban risk reduction,
which provides direction to appreciating the ‘disaster-resilient eco-community’ concept in Puri, a coastal city in India.
Further, this paper attempts to unravel existing community-based practices in Puri, which are boon to the local environment
and invariably reduce disaster risk. These seemingly modest neighbourhood initiatives symbolise immense societal wealth, which
can be calibrated appropriately for reducing urban environmental risk as well. This paper also illustrates how a ‘disaster
resilient eco-community’ approach is inevitable in the present and future contexts not only to preserve sustainable development
gains but also to secure human well-being. 相似文献
7.
Mark Purdon 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2010,12(6):1025-1050
Negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol reached what has been called a moral position on biocarbon sinks which saw important limitations
on their use in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Protocol’s main carbon offset system. After outlining this moral
position, this article examines the consequences of these limitations on the viability of community forest participation in
the CDM through a case study of three community forests in West Africa. Results suggest that there is significant carbon mitigation
potential from forest conservation, reforestation as well as from improved fuelwood cookstoves at the community level. Yet
under the current rules of the CDM, little of this overall carbon mitigation potential is able to be realized. Using qualitative
research methodologies, it was learned that community respondents showed a pragmatic, yet cautious interest in the CDM while
also emphasizing a need for land-use flexibility. The paper closes with a political discussion of the “‘moral position” on
biocarbon sinks in the carbon market and concludes with policy recommendations for biocarbon sinks, in both the CDM and REDD,
in the post-Kyoto climate change regime. 相似文献
8.
Religion in its most ideal form is seen as a powerful force to create ecological transformations to succeeding generations
that share similar religious beliefs. This provides an interesting argument for enhancing their role in sustainability transitions.
Malaysia is a relevant geographical context in this regard since almost all of its citizens formally embrace some kind of
religious belief. However, such ideas are discussed mostly at the theoretical level with little systematic empirical investigation.
This paper aims to fill this gap by presenting theoretically informed empirical insights on how a number of religious communities
are currently creating successful experiments in recycling within the context of an urban community in Malaysia. The paper
argues that such evidence may demonstrate the ‘potential’ role of religious communities to provide localised resources for
recycling experiments that can be advantageous for the transition towards a more sustainable municipal solid waste management
in Malaysia. The empirical basis of this paper is based on an exploratory multiple case study of successful recycling programmes
conducted by selected religious communities from four key religions in Malaysia—Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam.
The theoretical framework for this research is based on the sustainability transitions literature, particularly the ‘transition
experiment’ framework. 相似文献
9.
Renato A. M. Silvano John Valbo-Jørgensen 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2008,10(5):657-675
Studies investigating the local ecological knowledge (LEK) held by fishermen about the fishing resources have indicated that
fishermen’s LEK may have the potential to improve fishery management, by providing new information about the ecology, behavior
and abundance trends of fish and other aquatic animals. Our major aim is to undertake a brief review of published ethnoichthyological
studies with a focus on coastal Brazilian fisheries and freshwater fisheries in both Brazil and Southeast Asia. Based on such
review, we provide 29 hypotheses on fish ecology based on fishermen’s LEK and compare them with what is already known from
the biological literature, using an arbitrary ‘likelihood’ measure: “Low likelihood” corresponded to unexpected hypotheses,
which contradict existing biological data. “Medium likelihood” corresponded to hypotheses that could not be compared to available
scientific knowledge. Hypotheses that agree with scientific data were considered as “High likelihood”. We therefore discuss
these three categories of hypotheses about several distinct topics, such as migration, reproduction, feeding habits, abundance
patterns, ecological relationships between fish and their predators, and fishing pressure. Our results may contribute to the
fisheries management and research in the studied regions and other similar places, besides raising the interest of biologists
to properly include fishermen’s LEK when planning and conducting fisheries surveys.
Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue. 相似文献
10.
This article focuses on the problems of water governance at a river basin level, and on the role of institutional coordination,
participation and partnerships between multiple stakeholders towards sustainable water management. Its approach presupposes
that institutional capacity building, strengthening coordination between government institutions (vertical and horizontal),
on the one hand, and broadening participation and consolidating partnerships between public, private and civil society actors,
on the other hand, is among effective tools in integrated water resource management in river basins. It explores environmental
challenges, problems, emerging trends and recent institutional innovations in the Volga basin in Russia—the largest river
basin in Europe. Transfer and adaptation of good practices in good water governance between the EU and Russia are discussed.
This article presents some research findings and lessons learned from practice by the EC international project ‘CABRI—Cooperation
along a big river: Institutional coordination among stakeholders for environmental risk management in the Volga basin’, which
is assessed as one of the selected success stories of the European research.’ 相似文献
11.
As the societal benefits associated with transitioning to more sustainable, less fossil fuel-reliant energy systems are increasingly recognized by communities throughout the world, the potential of creating ‘green jobs’ within a ‘green economy’ is attracting much attention. Green energy clusters are increasingly promoted throughout the world as a strategy to simultaneously promote economic vitality and stimulate a sustainable energy transition. In spite of their emerging role in regional-scale sustainability planning efforts, such initiatives have not been considered within the sustainability transitions literature. This paper explores the development of one such regional sustainable energy cluster initiative in Central Massachusetts in Northeastern USA to consider the potential for such cluster initiatives to contribute to socio-technical transition in the energy system. Since 2008, a diverse set of stakeholders in Central Massachusetts, including politicians, universities, businesses, local citizens, and activists, have been working toward facilitating the emergence of an integrated cluster of activity focused on sustainable energy. Through interviews with key actors, participant observation, and document review, this research assesses the potential of this cluster initiative to contribute to a regional socio-technical transition. The empirical details of this case demonstrate that sustainable energy cluster initiatives can potentially accelerate change in entrenched energy regimes by promoting institutional thickness, generating regional ‘buzz’ around sustainable energy activities, and building trust between multiple and diverse stakeholders in the region. This research also contributes to emerging efforts to better ground socio-technical transitions in geographic space. 相似文献
12.
Management of catchments for the protection of water resources: drawing on the New York City watershed experience 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Primary purposes for catchment management are to establish a cost-effective allocation and use of its water resources and
to most effectively apply measures to protect the quantity and quality of the water produced by the catchment. For the latter
purpose, diffuse sources of contamination are the greatest difficulty. Diffuse (or non-point source) water pollution poses
challenges for public policy and requires innovative management approaches. Solutions ultimately require behavioural change
and a broad societal response, and must be flexible and adaptive to stochastic catchment conditions and to long-term trends.
Internationally, new models of governance for difficult land and water resource management problems are developing. This paper
reviews the characteristics of ‘wicked’ environmental management problems and the specific policy challenges posed by diffuse
water pollution. A framework for action is derived and compared to the activities and outcomes of water protection in the
New York City watershed. Successes to date in this case indicate that because land management and diffuse sources of pollution
have a local basis, protection of water at source necessitates the fostering of local instruments for an adaptive and twin-track
strategy of applied research and stakeholder deliberation, supported by multi-level partnerships and an enabling regulatory
environment. Although long running, evidence from this case alone is insufficient to establish whether potential trade-offs
between water protection and the economic vitality of catchment communities can be fully resolved. 相似文献
13.
Frank Eierdanz Joseph Alcamo Lilibeth Acosta-Michlik Dörthe Krömker Dennis Tänzler 《Regional Environmental Change》2008,8(4):197-205
This paper presents the technical aspects of a new methodology for assessing the susceptibility of society to drought. The
methodology consists of a combination of inference modelling and fuzzy logic applications. Four steps are followed: (1) model
input variables are selected—these variables reflect the main factors influencing susceptibility in a social group, population
or region, (2) fuzzification—the uncertainties of the input variables are made explicit by representing them as ‘fuzzy membership
functions’, (3) inference modelling—the input variables are used to construct a model made up of linguistic rules, and (4)
defuzzification—results from the model in linguistic form are translated into numerical form, also through the use of fuzzy
membership functions. The disadvantages and advantages of this methodology became apparent when it was applied to the assessment
of susceptibility from three disciplinary perspectives: Disadvantages include the difficulty in validating results and the
subjectivity involved with specifying fuzzy membership functions and the rules of the inference model. Advantages of the methodology
are its transparency, because all model assumptions have to be made explicit in the form of inference rules; its flexibility,
in that informal and expert knowledge can be incorporated through ‘fuzzy membership functions’ and through the rules in the
inference model; and its versatility, since numerical data can be converted to linguistic statements and vice versa through
the procedures of ‘fuzzification’ and ‘defuzzification’. 相似文献
14.
Tanzi Smith 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2011,13(1):1-17
Throughout the development sector, there is increasing recognition of links between the environment and aspects of development
such as poverty alleviation, health, income generation, and agriculture. While furnished with a diverse range of perspectives
and approaches, development practice is in need of ways to better conceptualize the interactions between the social, environmental,
and economic dimensions of sustainability so that opportunities for simultaneous improvement in human and ecological well-being
can be identified more readily. Critical systems thinking is proposed as a way for development practitioners to conceptualize
and act toward the integration of these economic, social, and environmental dimensions and, in so doing, support communities
to nurture both human and ecosystem well-being. Four desirable attributes of a critical systems thinking approach to development
are identified based on development literature, critical systems literature, and the author’s research into sustainability
in semi-rural communities in Vietnam. The four attributes are ‘a systems thinking approach;’ ‘an ethical base to action and
choices;’ ‘critical reflection permeates processes;’ and ‘appreciation of diverse views and application of diverse approaches.’
These attributes are described and then offered as the basis for further discussion of the ways in which simultaneous improvement
of human well-being and ecosystem health can become an integral part of development practice. 相似文献
15.
Ian Calder Ashvin Gosain M. S. Rama Mohan Rao Charles Batchelor James Garratt Emma Bishop 《Environment, Development and Sustainability》2008,10(4):427-440
This paper recognises the need for a revision of watershed development policy in India in relation to the planning of development
interventions involving agricultural intensification and rainwater harvesting and the need for new approaches to assist the
planning process. Building on, and using as an example, the results of biophysical and societal impact studies carried out
on two watershed development projects in Karnataka three new management/dissemination tools, are suggested. These are (1)
the web-based geographical information systems exploratory, climate land assessment and impact management tool dissemination
tool for disseminating to policymakers and non-specialist stakeholders the downstream impacts of watershed interventions,
(2) the ‘quadrant’ approach for ensuring that sustainability criteria are met and (3) Bayesian networks to investigate the
biophysical and societal impacts of interventions.
Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue 相似文献
16.
M. S. Suneetha 《Sustainability Science》2010,5(1):79-87
Biodiversity is acknowledged as one of the most important resources that helps to sustain life’s processes. Additionally,
it is also one of the most important sources of livelihood for different kinds of stakeholders at various levels of resource
markets—local, domestic, or international. With globalization and increasing sophistication in the methods of commercial trade
in biological resources, various issues arise related to the sustenance of resources, of ecological balances, and equity in
transactions. All of these are concerns to be addressed to achieve a state of ‘sustainability.’ This paper prescribes to the
definition of ‘sustainability’ as the capacity to maintain a certain process or state for “improving the quality of human
life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting eco-systems” (IUCN/UNEP/WWF, in Caring for the Earth: a strategy
for sustainable living. Gland, Switzerland, 1991). This goes beyond ensuring inter- and intragenerational equity in access
to resources and includes several other parameters, including equity among stakeholders to returns from biological resources,
related knowledge, trade-offs, and ethical business practices related to these resources. Through the prism of an examination
of a simplistic supply route(s) and value addition chain of biodiversity resources for commercial use, this paper reviews
and highlights issues related to ‘sustainability’ at each stage. Evidence points to shortcomings in the sustainable use of
biological resources at each stage of value addition, calling for focused and specific measures to address them. 相似文献
17.
Using diatoms to assess the impacts of prehistoric, pre-industrial and modern land-use on Danish lakes 总被引:2,自引:1,他引:1
Emily G. Bradshaw Anne Birgitte Nielsen N. John Anderson 《Regional Environmental Change》2006,6(1-2):17-24
The impact of contemporary agriculture on Danish lakes is acknowledged to be extreme. In particular, high loading of nutrients
from agricultural soils contributes to the eutrophic conditions found in many of Denmark’s lakes. Palaeolimnological studies
have shown that human disturbance of the Danish landscape since the introduction of agriculture around 6,000 years ago has
had a major impact on lake ecosystems. The European Union’s Water Framework Directive requires an evaluation of reference
conditions for lakes, the conditions expected with only minimal human impact. Monitoring data and palaeolimnological studies
of Danish lakes demonstrate that many of the most detrimental effects of eutrophication have been experienced in recent decades.
A new study has suggested that the reference status for Danish lakes may be set to the status in ad 1850–1900, probably providing attainable, realistic restoration targets for many sites. The aims of this study were to explore
the impacts of past and contemporary land-use on Danish lakes, and to consider how appropriate the use of 1850 as a date to
define reference status is for these sites. Catchment land-cover data for ad 1800, taken from historical maps, and sedimentary diatom assemblages of the same age, from dated sediment cores, were used
to assess the impact of pre-industrial land-use on 20 Danish lakes. Analysis of contemporary land-cover data and surface-sediment
diatom assemblages for the 20 sites was also made. In-lake total phosphorus (TP) concentrations were estimated using the sedimentary
diatom assemblages and an existing calibration dataset for Danish lakes. The percentage of the lake catchment that was agricultural
land in ad 1800 explained 8.8% of the total variation in the diatom data. The land-cover variables ‘built-up areas’ and ‘plantations’,
together explained 16.9% of the variation in the diatom data for the modern samples. Diatom-inferred TP concentrations were
high for both ad 1800 (mean 112 μg TP L−1) and the present (mean 122 μg TP L−1), the latter estimates reflecting efforts in recent decades to reduce nutrient loading to Danish lakes following very high
levels of nutrient enrichment post-1950. The data presented highlight the impact that human activities 200 years ago, particularly
agriculture, had on Danish lake systems. The long cultural history and major anthropogenic disturbance of the Danish landscape
mean that true reference conditions for lakes (or ‘baseline’ conditions, those found prior to human impacts) can be found
only by considering century to millennial timescales. 相似文献
18.
Certification of where, when and how fish are caught is emerging as an important fisheries management tool. The history of
eco-labelling in the fisheries sector is relatively short and actual experiences of eco-labelling are limited, although an
emerging trend is shaping in European and US markets. Eco-labelling in fisheries gained increased impetus with the development
of the non-government Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) in 1996. This paper reviews the emerging importance of certification
and eco-labelling in the fisheries sector, the development and operation of the MSC, identifying particularly the role of
‘third party certification’ as promoted by the MSC, and notes the opportunities and challenges for the MSC and eco-labelling
in general. 相似文献
19.
Sustainable development (SD) is generally recognised as having three dimensions, ecological, economic and social. Yet, its
implementation is burdened with resistance and conflict rooted in the short-term ‘business as usual’ development model, opposed
to the long-term sustainable benefit of local communities. Hence, the development of strategies to implement SD projects may
require further differentiation of these dimensions in relation to the contextual situation in which the project resides.
In two studies of SD projects on the Croatian islands, we identify five interlocking spheres of importance, Spiritual, Political,
Economic, Educational and Health, in addition to Ecological. Each of these spheres is accessible through gate-keepers, individuals
or a group of people who have the authority over the sector and as such, significantly influence public opinion. We suggest
that in this particular island context the sustainability of these projects may lie with those gate-keepers. Hence, initiating
and maintaining SD projects in these contexts requires a structured and targeted lobbying of these gate-keepers. 相似文献
20.
A. J. Plater J. F. Boyle C. Mayers S. D. Turner R. W. Stroud 《Regional Environmental Change》2006,6(1-2):71-85
The limnological record of human impact on catchment land cover and on lake sedimentation during the historical period has
been established for Pinto Lake in Central Coastal California. In addition, the sedimentary record of the ‘pre-impact’ condition
preserves evidence of a climatic control on the nature of lake sedimentation. Chronological marker horizons have been determined
using pollen data in combination with the documented land-use history and introductions of exotic species. Further chronological
data have been determined using 14C and 137Cs. The impact of Mexican and Euro-American immigrants and their ‘imported’ land-use practices is clearly reflected in an
order of magnitude increase in the rate of lake sedimentation to c. 9 kg m−2 year−1 (c. 2 cm year−1) between 1770 and 1850. Here, the occurrence of exotic plant species indicates disturbance as early as c. 1769–1797, whilst
redwood deforestation between 1844 and 1860 represents the most significant human impact. Changes in the nature of sedimentation
prior to this reveal a high degree of sensitivity to changes in precipitation where subtle decreases in lake level and the
supply of runoff-derived mineral matter have resulted in two periods of organic lake sedimentation c. 650–900 and 1275–1750. Set against this background condition of high sensitivity, the dramatic impacts of Euro-American settlement
are unsurprising.
An erratum to this article can be found at 相似文献