Desertification Control and Management of Land Degradation in the Thar Desert of India

India has 2.34 million km² of hot desert called Thar located in the north-western part of Rajasthan between latitudes 23°3 and 30°12 North and longitudes 63°30 and 70°18 East. The Indian desert is spreading annually over 12000 ha of productive land degrading it and slowly advancing towards the national capital New Delhi at the rate of 0.5 km per year. The Indian desert is characterised by huge shifting sand dunes; high wind speed; scarce rainfall; and intense solar radiation. Tremendous efforts have been made since the 1960s to arrest desertification and for ecological restoration of the Thar desert. An Ambitious afforestation programme including stabilisation of shifting sand dunes and creation of micro-climates through tree-screens and shelter-belt plantation was launched by the forest department of Rajasthan. A huge canal, 649 km long was also introduced to the Thar desert for ecological restoration.     

Wastewater reuse in Muslim countries: An Islamic perspective

Recycling wastewater seems to have become a highly useful technique for meeting the shortage of fresh water in all parts of the world. It seems all the more important for Muslim countries because a large number of these countries face acute fresh water shortage. This paper views the problem from an Islamic viewpoint, that is, in the light of the Qur'n, theSunnah, andFiqh works.In Islamic law, water is classified into three categories oftahr,thir, andmutanajjis. The last two categories can be transmuted intotahr water and thus may be used for all mundane as well as religious purposes if they are assimilated into the overall supply oftahr water. This would be lawful from the Islamic viewpoint even without treating the water. To make use of modern technology in order to recycle wastewater effluents after treatment seems quite in keeping with the spirit and letter of the Islamic teachings.     

Attitudes Toward Wilderness Study Areas: A Survey of Six Southeastern Utah Counties

Southeastern Utah is a region of world-renowned red-rock sandstone formations, large tracts of federal public land, rural communities centered on agriculture and extractive industries, and is often at the epicenter of environmental protection efforts in the western United States. Environmental groups have proposed formal Wilderness designations for much of the regions public land—proposals that have been actively fought by rural community leaders who do not want large areas locked-up from traditional livelihood and recreational uses. The debate over wilderness designation in the region has been characterized in the media as one that is particularly contentious and polarizing. A survey of southeastern Utah residents was conducted in order to better understand this conflict. The survey focused on attitudes toward wilderness designation and management. We found that residents of southeastern Utah have negative attitudes towards the designation and management of Wilderness Study Areas. We propose that these attitudes should be carefully considered and engaged in future policy and management decisions. We suggest that negative opinions expressed by residents of southeastern Utah are not directed primarily at the concept of environmental protection but rather at the strong perception that these programs and initiatives have been carried out in a heavy-handed manner and dominated by outside influences that have overwhelmed local voices.     

Risk-taking and environmental perception

This paper investigates the relationship between pupils' environmental perception (in terms of preservation and utilisation of nature) and personality (in terms of risk-taking). 713 secondary school pupils in Switzerland were investigated. Environmental perception was assessed via three factors: Preservation, Utilisation of Nature and Consideration for Conservation. Risk-taking was evaluated via six factors: Positive Risking, Ambivalence, Thrill in Gambling, Ineffective Control, Effective Control, and Anger Reaction. Analysis of the correlation matrix between Risk-taking and Environmental perception revealed three profiles (types): the high scorer on Preservation is the controlled and cautious gambler. The Utiliser (anthropocentric) profile is essentially a mirror image of the first: the Utiliser does not enjoy unpredictable risks, reacts with anger when risks fail and has little control over his/her own risk-taking behaviour. The Consideration for Conservation (ecocentric) profile assumes a position between these two profiles.     

The challenge of sustainable tourism

The paradigm of sustainable tourism is discussed in terms of analysing what it actually means. Certain questions are raised and these include the means of its measurement, the question of intergenerational impacts and how these may be assessed, the determination of what exactly is meant by environment, the aspect of tourism as an industry and, with specific reference to tourism in the developing world, the potential for neocolonialism. It is argued that, although sustainable tourism may be a worthwhile goal, inherent problems in the definition and measurement of its success make it an elusive if not academic target. The challenge of sustainable tourism is to see it in a broader context as but one tool of development and to ensure that it is examined in the context of the local community as well as a global perspective.     

Ethics and the Genetic Engineering of Food Animals

Biotechnology applied to traditional foodanimals raises ethical issues in three distinctcategories. First are a series of issues that arise inthe transformation of pigs, sheep, cattle and otherdomesticated farm animals for purposes that deviatesubstantially from food production, including forxenotransplantation or production of pharmaceuticals.Ethical analysis of these issues must draw upon theresources of medical ethics; categorizing them asagricultural biotechnologies is misleading. The secondseries of issues relate to animal welfare. Althoughone can stipulate a number of different philosophicalfoundations for the ethical assessment of welfare,most either converge on Bernard Rollins principle ofwelfare conservation (Rollin, 1995), or devolve intodebates over the ethical significance of animaltelos or species integrity. The principle of welfareconservation prohibits disfunctional geneticengineering of food animals, but would permit alteringanimals biological functions, especially when (as inmaking animals less susceptable to pain or suffering)do so improves an individual animals well being.Objections to precisely this last form of geneticengineering stress telos or species integrity asconstraints on modification of animals, and thisrepresents the third class of ethical issues. Most whohave formulated such arguments have failed to developcoherent positions, but the notion of species being,derived from the 19th century German tradition,presents a promising way to analyze the basis forresisting the transformation of animal natures.     

The limits of technological optimism

Summary Technological optimism is the doctrine that a growing number of technological improvements in such areas as food production, environmental quality and energy will sustain life as human population soars. It evolved as a response to the Malthusian study The Limits to Growth (The Club of Rome, 1972). Like population biologist Paul Ehrlich, Professor James Krier of the University of Michigan Law School believes that the technological optimists may be wrong. Krier describes how the marginal costs of pollution control increasingly rise. He faults biologist Barry Commoner for neglecting population growth as the cause of pollution and positing the postwar technological transition as its cause. He argues that population growth forced this transition as science searched for substitutes for dwindling resources. Krier criticises as an article of faith the technological optimists' belief that S-curve patterns of technological advance will always arrive in response to the J-curve of exponential population growth. He thinks that the technological optimists may be deluding humanity by predicting the continual emergence of technological breakthroughs at ever-increasing rates. He favours growth policies that would allow humanity to ease into a steady state of resource use and minimise the maximum cost, which would be a global crash after technological innovation fails. Krier laments that modern technolgy can worsen pollution and invites problems of latency, irreversibility, zero-infinity risk and remoteness. He thinks that approapriate technologies which have failed economically may fail politically because the political process has been captured by opposing interests. Krier urges that the population crisis should be adressed insteadAndrew D. Basiago is a graduate of UCLA and Northwestern School of Law's environmental law programme. As writer, lawyer and environmental planner he has written articles about ecology for the Cousteau Society and interviewed such luminaries as R. Buckminster Fuller, Amory B. Lovins and     

Arsenic levels in the marine ecosystem off the Kuwait coast, Arabian Gulf

Arsenic levels in seawater, microplankton (diatoms and dinoflagellates), shrimp (Penaeus semisulcatus), mollusc (Cerithium scabridum) and five types of fish (Maid, Nakroor, Nuwaiby, Suboor and Sheim) in five sampling stations (I–V) off the Kuwait coast were determined during the years 1995 to 1999. The maximum mean concentration of arsenic was observed in the order; the five fish (0.50–0.78 g g^–1)> mollusc (0.26 g g^–1)> shrimp (0.23 g g^–1)> particulate matter (0.03 g g^–1)> water and phytoplankton (0.02 g g^–1) from all the sites of the Kuwait coast. Station II possessed the maximum arsenic levels. In comparison with the arsenic levels in other parts of the globe, low arsenic levels were observed in most of the marine organisms off the Kuwait Coast. However, an increasing trend in arsenic concentrations was anticipated due to rapid local industrialization and on account of recent spills of arsenic compounds.     

Catalysts for change: the emerging role of participatory research in land management

Land management is a complex process which involves the interaction of biophysical and social variables. New demands are being placed on biophysical researchers working in land management to communicate more effectively with the public and to involve the public in the research process. The catalysts for change in the practice of land management research are clearly outlined with respect to pressures from new government policies, from institutions funding research, from communities in which the research is occurring and from within the academic environment itself. In order to meet these new demands, collaborative efforts – incorporating different academic disciplines and between researchers and communities – must occur. Traditional scientific approaches can benefit from the incorporation of techniques and approaches used within participatory research. The concept of participation and its relevance to biophysical research in land management is discussed, as well as the key characteristics of participatory research. Examples, predominantly from Australia, are provided; however the global scope of the changes is highlighted.It is increasingly recognized that agriculture is a complex social process, not simply a complex, diverse and risky technical activity. This implies new theoretical as well as methodological challenges..(present author's emphasis) (Scoones and Thompson, 1994, p. 5).     

Sewage as a resource: a case study of afforestation using sewage irrigation in Jaipur,Rajasthan, India

Summary Human beings use huge quantities of water every day for drinking, cleaning and various cultural functions and dispose of it as wastewater within sewage. With increase in population, the magnitude of this waste is multiplying enormously and beyond the recycling capacity of local ecosystems to become a major health and environmental hazard. Re-use of wastewater for afforestation purposes in the form of sewage silviculture combines the dual benefit of water conservation with environmental sanitation. Such experiments are being carried out at the World Forest Arboretum in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Biological treatment of the sewage before application, to improve its irrigational quality, to remove harmful chemicals and to prevent the risk of these passing into the human food chain is being undertaken. The aquatic weeds Lemna and Eichhornia are being used to purify the wastewater. The technique is both economically viable and ecologically sustainable.Dr Rajiv K. Sinha is assistant professor in Human Ecology at the University of Rajasthan.     

Labelling ecofriendly products in india — an emerging option for environmental production

Summary The labelling of ecofriendly products has been introduced in a number of developed countries to assist in the protection of the environment. Recently, developing countries like India, have introduced the scheme. This paper examines the steps involved in establishing the Indian Ecomark. For the successful implementation of the scheme the effective coordination of a number of agencies is necessary. Consumers, as well as manufacturers, have to be educated in the longterm benefits of the scheme. Initiatives necessary for the successful implementation of Ecomark have been highlighted.Mr S. S. Arvind is a member of faculty at the Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology, at the Administrative Staff College of India. He is currently on secondment to the Centre for Technology Development, Clark University, 950, Main Street, Worcester MA 01610-1477, USA. Mr E.V. Muley is a scientist working for the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, Paryavaran Bhavan, CGO Complex, Lodi Road, New Delhi 110003, India.     

Automobile pollution in India and its human impact

Summary Automobiles are a necessary evil, while they have made living easy and convenient, they have also made human life more complicated and vulnerable to both toxic emissions and an increased risk of accidents. Urban people are most affected and amongst the worst sufferers are traffic policemen who are particularly close to the fumes of automobile exhaust. Studies made in Jaipur, India, indicate that there is high rate of occurrence of respiratory, digestive, ocular and skin problems amongst the traffic policemen and a significant number of them become victims of lung disorders in the very first few months of their posting to a traffic department. Traffic policement everywhere should wear pollution masks for their own safety and to arouse public awareness of the risk of automobile pollution.Dr Rajiv K. Sinha is Assistant Professor in Human Ecology at the Indira Gandhi Centre of Human Ecology, Environmental and Population Studies at the University of Rajasthan. He was formerly a teaching assistant at University of Windsor,     

Evoking trust in the nutrition counselor: why should we be trusted?

The virtue of trust is often spoken of as central to the work of dietitians working in nutrition counseling, especially in the context of disordered eating/eating disorders nutrition therapy. Indeed, dietitians are purported to be the most trusted source of information on nutrition and food by professional associations such as Dietitians of Canada. Here trust is explored through educational, relational, and virtue theory in order to elucidate trusts meaning and relevance to dietitians work and interactions with each other, including the general public. If dietitians are to continue to be trusted during times of skepticism in expert knowledge, reflexivity, active contestation, and moral testing in the context of our socio-political milieu need be employed so that we as a profession may respond to clients in respectful, authentic, meaningful ways; practices worthy of our trust.     

Crisis,argument, and agriculture

Scholarly critics such as Wendell Berry, as well as the popular media, frequently refer to problems associated with agriculture as the agricultural crisis or the farm crisis. Despite the identification of a problem or problems as symptomatic of this crisis, scant attention is paid to why the situation is a social crisis as opposed to a problem, tragedy, trend, or simple change in the structure of agriculture. This paper analyzes the use of social crisis as applied to the state of modern agriculture and, by extension, other crises such as those in legitimation and morality. It concludes that, although important social values associated with farming as a way of life may be in danger of being lost, the crisis we may be facing with respect to agriculture is more properly understood as a sociopolitical crisis that has broader implications than simply the loss of farms or traditional farming values. Indeed, what is in danger of being lost is our ability to affect a secure and sustainable political-economic system.     

A course in Environmental Planning and Management

Summary This paper describes a 13-weeks, third-year course in Environmental Planning and Management developed and taught by the authors. Initiated in 1969, the course consists of a mix of lectures, seminars, workshop/laboratory sessions and field-based projects. The objectives of the course are for students: to become aware of the need for, and the complexities of, environmental management; to be able to criticise constructively work done by environmental agencies and consultants, managers and decision makers; and to learn and apply some of the methods and techniques used in environmental management.Topics covered by the current syllabus are: concepts of resource and environment; constitutional aspects; international law and the environment; Australian and Canadian environmental legislation and agencies; human manipulation of ecosystems; energy subsidies; modification of biogeochemical cycles; population dynamics and cropping; fisheries; national parks and reserves—policies in different countries; international heritage areas; environmental assessment (including impact assessment, land evaluation, land capability and land suitability assessment); and regional, integrated land-use and environmental planning and management. Techniques taught include: field surveys and interviewing; laboratory analysis of selected water quality, sediment and soil parameters including nutrient concentrations, heavy metal and pesticide residues; and for some students, applications of geographic information systems (GIS) technology following preceding GIS courses.A major problem is selecting the most appropriate mix between the social and natural sciences—appropriate, first in terms of students' heterogeneous skills and backgrounds, and second, in terms of understanding the causes of environmental problems and issues, and devising practicable solutions.     

The search for the sustainable city in 20th century urban planning

Summary A new city has emerged in the 1990s, designed to achieve urban sustainability. The notion of sustainable urban form has its roots in the Garden City movement at the turn of the century. The garden cities of the 1900s and the ecological cities of the 1970s were proposed as alternatives to the pathology of modern urban form. Just as cities provide a place for humans to live, so they destroy ecosystems and become unfit habitats for the human spirit. The city must be made more vital, humane, efficient, beautiful, self-sufficient, and natural through a return to a more compact form, its impact on the environment must be decreased. These themes have re-emerged in the sustainable cities of the 1990s, advanced on behalf of future generations and planetary ecology. The sustainable city is a compact city. Calthorpe's Transit-Oriented Developments (1989) are hailed as sustainable because their walkable streets free residents from reliance on automobiles and their high density preserves surrounding wildlife habitat. The European Commission (EC) rests a sustainable future for Europe (1990) on the twin pillars of urban compactness and urban regeneration. Nash (1991) believes that sustainable global urbanization would consist of 1.5 billion humans living in 500 compact cities. He calls his vision Island Civilisation. The sustainable city is also a city of regenerative processes. Girardet (1990; 1992) thinks it has a circular metabolism, as distinguished from the linear metabolism of contemporary cities. McDonough (adviser to President Clinton on sustainable development) theorizes inThe Hannover Principles (1992) that in order to make civilization sustainable, urban form will have to be based on the principles of nature, which makes no waste, maximizes biodiversity and is sustained by the sun. The urban form designed by McDonald (1993), conceptualized with ideas from chaos theory, contemplates a sustainable city within a sustainable watershed and a form holistic, diverse, fractal and evolutionary. Lyle (1994) believes that the sustainable cities of the next century will be based on the green infrastructure of regenerative systems. The commonality linking these landmarks of sustainable urbanization is the ideal of bringing the city into a vital symbiosis with nature. The sustainable city is a green or living city. The search for the sustainable city in the 20th century has not been Utopian buttopian, a quest to create a form of city suited to optimal development of the Earth island.Andrew D. Basiago, an American lawyer and city planner, was a scholar in land economy at Cambridge. He is currently writing a book on solar cities.     

Culture,ethics, and the environment — Towards the New Synthesis

Summary This largely philosophical article argues that we need to examine the roots of our cultural worldview if we are to understand the causes of our global crises and current obstacles to desirable change. Calls for a new ethic are likely to be ineffectual in the absence of a challenge to the damaging dichotomy between fact and value that characterises our culture. However, the dominant worldview is under increasingly strong challege from organic systems thinking which has far-reaching implications, and which suggests that Western culture's dominant assumptions are not in accord with reality. If our culture, and individuals in it, are able to become more balanced, decisive desirable change could take place in society. This balance will involve the proper reintegration of ethical dimensions into thinking, based upon the recognition of the importance of the integrity of human communities and natural systems. This constitutes an emergent worldview and coherent philsophical framework to which many groups are already giving expression. It is imperative that this cultural change is understood and supported as it represents genuine hope for the future.After a teaching career in England and Canada, Stephen Sterling joined, as Assistant Director, the United Kingdom Council for Environmental Education (CEE). He was involved in writing the Education Report forThe Conservation and Development Programme for the UK, and has acted in an advisory capacity on a number of national and international documents on environmental education and environmental ethics. He has edited the CEE's journalReview of Environmental Education Developments for six years. The views expressed in this article are his own.     

An elegant application of appropriate technology: the Sheep Creek Hatchery

Alaska's program for rebuilding salmon stock is calledfishery enhancement. Hatchery technology can produce dramatic increases in numbers of fish homing to selected streams. The Sheep Creek Hatchery is unusually efficient— it increases a fish run by a factor of 3000 and produces salmon at 9–11c/kg by minimizing mechanical energy inputs and human labor. The design harnesses the force of gravity and capitalizes on instinctual behavior of the fish. Since migratory fish collect protein from ocean pasturage, the technology increases the share of this resource collected and concentrated for harvest in a specific country or region. While small seaside hatcheries can solve biological problems of depleted fish stocks, economic and political considerations may preclude efficient utilization of the protein produced. Further, the potential for one state or country to concentrate fish near its shores poses new dilemmas for international regulation of harvests.     

Environmental perceptions of Irish and Bavarian pupils: an empirical study

The present study deals with the evaluation of environmental/ecological perceptions of secondary school pupils. It has two major objectives. Firstly, to administer a measurement instrument to explore ecological/environmental perceptions for a sample of approximately 900 Irish secondary school pupils aged between 12 and 16 years. The operation and use of three subscales, environmental behaviour, utilization of nature and consideration for conservation, was based on a previous study undertaken in Bavaria, but its structure, dimensionality and reliability was further assessed using psychometric procedures. Secondly, the study monitored the differences in these dimensions between Irish and Bavarian pupils. Common items within the subscale structure were selected from both samples to form a truncated item selection and to function subsequently as the basis for the final factor analysis applied to the combined Irish–Bavarian sample. Comparisons on this basis indicated substantial differences in attitudes and environmental behaviour between pupils from both regions: the Irish sample favoured less conservational values, but more patronage for the utilization of nature and it revealed less willingness to take and plan action in individual environmental behaviour. In addition, the Irish sample disclosed a significantly greater gender difference in the two subscales.     

Environmental functions as a unifying concept for ecology and economics

Summary In spite of the increased awareness about many environmental problems, degradation and pollution of the natural environment by human actions still continue on a large scale. Some of the main reasons for man's continued abuse of the natural environment are the short-term nature of the economic planning process, which largely ignores the negative long-term effects of economic production on the environment (e.g. pollution), and the fact that the pricing system mainly concentrates on man-made goods and services while considering most natural resources to be free goods.This paper argues that environmental functions (i.e. natural goods are services) are at least as important to human welfare as man-made goods and services and should, therefore, be included in economic accounting procedures. To this end, it is suggested to replace the term natural resources by the concept of environmental functions and, efforts should be undertaken to increase our understanding of the ecological and socio-economic benefits of environmental functions to human society. Only when ecological principles become an integral part of economic planning and political decision-making is there a chance of achieving a happy global village based on harmony between man and nature.Rudolf S. de Groot is an environmental consultant and a Ph.D candidate in environmental planning and management in the Nature Conservation Department of the Agricultural University Wageningen. As a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Planning he is involved in the activities of the European Committee for National Conservation Strategies, to implement, monitor and update National and European Conservation Strategies.