Beyond fishermen’s tales: contributions of fishers’ local ecological knowledge to fish ecology and fisheries management

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.     

Impacts of climatic disasters in coastal Bangladesh: why does private adaptive capacity differ?

This paper quantitatively assesses the influences of various demographic and socio-economic factors, past adaptive behavioral factors, access to weather/climate information, and spatial/locational factors on coastal populations’ perceived adaptive capacity against major impacts of hydro-meteorological disasters on their livelihood. A total of 285 respondents from three coastal villages in Bangladesh were randomly interviewed between January and April 2009. Respondents rated their perceived adaptive capacity against 25 anticipated impacts of sea-level rise (SLR)-induced events on their livelihood. By employing the principal component analysis (PCA), perceived adaptive capacity was grouped into five major categories. Then, an adaptive capacity index for each of five major impacts, namely, “infrastructure damage and disrupted mobility,” “food and nutritional insecurity,” “low earning and higher cost of maintenance,” “loss of employment in offshore activities,” and “crisis of potable water and public health risk,” was prepared. How adaptive capacity against each of these major five categories of impacts differs due to the influence of various factors was assessed by employing the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) technique. The MANOVAs show that age, sex, level of education, type of occupation, farmland holdings, past adaptive behavior against rainfall, salinity intrusion, freshwater crises, use of radio for weather information, and the distance of the homestead from the shoreline have varying levels of influence on respondents’ perceived adaptive capacity against each of the five major categories of impacts. Others factors have moderate to limited influences. The policy implication is that specific programs, rather than a generic one-size fits all program, must be initiated for enhancement of adaptive capacity against specific impacts.     

Development paths of drylands: thresholds and sustainability

Drylands (41 and 35% of global land and population, respectively) have the lowest biological productivity of any ecosystem, contain populations with the highest growth rates on earth, and share a significant fraction of global poverty for which desertification is implicated. A global assessment of the available information indicates that the inherent low productivity of drylands, when combined with other adverse factors, can generate poverty. It additionally indicates that while the drylands may exist in a locally stable and sustainable state, this is readily destabilized by non-linear, threshold-crossing transitions to an alternative steady-state leading to desertification, poverty and conflicts. The “desertification paradigm” (human and climatological pressures driving overexploitation of land resources, leading to desertification, poverty and reduced security) is challenged by its “counter-paradigm” (adversity elicits innovation, leading to ingenuous solutions for avoiding desertification). But the latter does not account for the inevitability of continued and increasing pressure on the finite dryland resources, expected to be further exacerbated by a globally increasing need for agricultural land. A companion paper points out that this situation can be avoided by reducing dependence on land productivity, through adoption of “alternative livelihoods.” These livelihoods, while economically advantageous, reduce pressure on land resources.     

Modeling groundwater flow and its associated environmental problem in a lowland coastal plain: a first step towards a sustainable development plan

Groundwater is an important resource in the alluvial coastal lowland plains. In the Shiroishi lowland plain, southwestern Kyushu Island of Japan, land subsidence due to groundwater development has long been recognized as an environmental issue. Land subsidence can have several negative economic and social implications. In this study, an integrated numerical groundwater and land subsidence model, which combines a three-dimensional numerical groundwater flow model and a one-dimensional soil consolidation model, was used to simulate the dynamic groundwater flow and ground subsidence due to pumping. On the other hand, a groundwater optimization model was also formulated to search for an optimal safe yield of groundwater pumping without violating physical, environmental, social-economic constraints. The model results reveal that groundwater levels in the aquifers greatly vary from season to season in response to varying climatic and pumping conditions. Consequently, land subsidence has rapidly occurred throughout the area with the central prone in Shiroishi plain. The study also proposes a countermeasure against subsiding process in the area by means of numerical models. The optimization model result suggests that pumping can be increased in the northern part of the study area without leading to significant land subsidence.     

Using unexplained variation in the chemical composition of organisms for identification of xenobiotics in ecological studies

The contents of ten metals in the bone and muscle tissues were studied in three fish species from a water body located in the impact zone of a copper smelter. In the course of principal component analysis with “tissue” and “species” taken as instrumental variables (IVs), a high proportion of unexplained IV variance was revealed for xenobiotic elements, and the procedure of optimal scaling by the CATPCA method allowed their pattern to be estimated. It is proposed to use the unexplained variance of multidimensional data on the chemical composition of organisms for identifying the pattern of xenobiotics in environmental objects.     

A “measurable” definition of sustainable development based on closed cycles of resources and its application to energy systems

Human society consumes resources that it is not able to reproduce. Human activities are still based on “open cycles,” starting from a condition of natural environmental balance and reaching an environmental imbalance. The challenging scope of scientific and technological research towards sustainability appears clear if it is based on this analysis: to find development systems based on “closed cycles” of resources. The challenging objective of realizing closed cycles leads to a definition of sustainability that indicates the path to sustainable development, as well as stating the general principle. It also provides a key to the qualitative measurement of sustainability. This means that the sustainability level of a system can be measured by measuring its capacity to avoid the consumption of resources. Zero consumption is a necessary condition for sustainability, and brings about as a side effect the highly desired “zero-waste” result. Materials entering the proposed endless scheme pass through the process of usefulness without losing their capacity to feed the system again after being used. Thus, the concept of “consumption” itself is replaced by one of “use” when resources are inserted into closed loops capable of feeding human development. The application of the closed cycle sustainability criterion particularly displays its feasibility, and a theoretical guiding role, in the energy sector. Energy vectors such as hydrogen and electricity enable the closure of the energy resources loop by effectively approaching the objective of “zero consumption” (and the side result of “zero waste”) through already demonstrated technological solutions.     

上海城区地面沉降及其对地下水采灌量的响应

上海城区地面沉降主要是由超采地下水、松散沉积地层压实等因素共同作用导致的,并引发多种次生灾害。F4分层标监测数据指示的地面沉降情况,显示上海城区地面沉降表现为总体具有非线性变化的规律,特别是1980年代以来,表现出垂向逐渐增大的特点,在空间上也不断扩展,直至2001年才始有缓和的趋势。在不同时段,随地下水开采量及开采层次的变化,上海城区地面沉降表现出不同的特征。结合1990~2009年20年内第四含水层地下水采灌量数据,得出地面沉降对地下水采灌量的响应关系为:地下水开采量增加,地层沉降量增大;地下水开采量减少,地层沉降量减小,但地面沉降相对于地下水开采具有滞后性;随着逐年的回灌,地层沉降量减小,且地下水回灌效果与回灌层位有直接关系。     

Defining climate-change victims

This article introduces the concept of “climate-change victims” and classifies categories of threats and groups of people who would be vulnerable to and victimized by human-induced climate change. (The full, correct wording is “human-induced climate-change victims”, but we will use just “climate-change victims” in the rest of the article.) It offers a definition with three levels of climate-change victimization and differentiates “climate-change victims” from “natural-disasters victims” and from “climate-change migrants”. The article sets an agenda for a new type of victimhood and could lead to further research on possible prevention, accountability measures, environmental tribunals, and compensation mechanisms to recompense climate-change victims.     

A New Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Development

A critical review of the multidisciplinary literature on sustainable development reveals a lack of a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding sustainable development and its complexities. A critical review shows that the definitions of sustainable development are vague; there is a lack of operative definitions and disagreement over what should be sustained; the concept is unclear in terms of emotional commitment; and it “remains a confused topic”, “fraught with contradictions”. This article aims to theoretically synthesize the interdisciplinary literature on sustainable development, and then identify the results by broad categories. Therefore, this article uses conceptual analysis, which reviews multidisciplinary literature on sustainable development, which recognizes patterns and similarities within the literature, then it synthesizes the patterns to different categories and independent concepts, where each concept has distinctive meanings and represents close ideas on sustainability. The analytical process elaborates seven concepts that together assemble the theoretical framework of ‘sustainable development’ and each concept represents distinctive meanings of the theoretical framework.     

Correction to: Quantifying carbon footprint for ecological river restoration

Environment, Development and Sustainability - The article “Quantifying carbon footprint for ecological river restoration”, written by “Yiwen Chiu, Yi Yang and Cody Morse”,...     

Design considerations for environmental sustainability in high density development: a case study of Hong Kong

This study has indicated that there is close relationship between development density and environmental quality; therefore, it is necessary to decide the form of development carefully beforehand. The form of development is shaped either by new development or urban renewal which is a major tactic nowadays adopted by the Hong Kong Government to improve the living condition of the citizens and the quality of the built environment. This study is limited to urban renewal and aims to find out the major urban design considerations for sustaining the environment. Through a questionnaire survey carried out in Hong Kong, the opinions of architects, planners, property development managers, and local citizens were sought and evaluated, and critical design factors for enhancing environmental sustainability of urban renewal projects are highlighted. The results derived from factor analysis indicated that certain design considerations should be incorporated for sustaining the urban environment. “Land Use Planning”, “Quality of Life”, “Conservation & Preservation”, “Integrated Design”, “Provision of Welfare Facilities”, and “Conservation of Existing Properties” were believed to be the significant underlying factors for achieving environmental sustainability of local urban renewal projects. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Social cost of environmental pollution and application of counter measures through clean development mechanism: in the context of developing countries

The developing countries i.e., the non-Annex-I countries (parties to the Kyoto Protocol but not responsible to any reduction target yet) in the Kyoto Protocol whose economies are in transition are also allowed to reduce GHG emissions. Among these, the countries that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol may be benefited from CDM projects to promote sustainable development. The developed countries i.e., the Annex-I countries (that have signed the Kyoto Protocol & are responsible to have specific GHG emission reduction target) or the investing countries, in return, have privilege to purchase CER credits (in units equivalent to one tonne of CO₂ gas emission reduction) to meet the emission target as specified in the Kyoto Protocol. The key step in understanding about CDM is to grasp the concept of “baseline” and “additionality”. The “Baseline” is the emissions level that would have existed if a CDM project had not happened. The feature of an approved CDM project is that the planned reductions would not occur without the additional incentive provided by emission reduction credits; this concept is known as “Additionality”. According to environmental additionality concept, baseline emission minus project emission is equal to emissions reduction. “Investment Additionality,” ultimately rejected during negotiation of the “Marrakech Accords” and “Financial Additionality,” are the two important concepts. The concept of trading of CER matches to the idea of Pigovian tax (equal to the negative externality and which is considered one of the “traditional” means of bringing a modicum of market forces) in Economics, making pollution more costly to the polluter, as the polluters have negative cost since they save money by polluting; hence, there are supposed negative externalities associated with the market activity. Economic theory predicts that in an economy where the cost of reaching mutual agreement between parties is high and where pollution is diffuse, Pigovian tax will be an efficient way to promote the public interest and will lead to an improvement of the quality of life measured by the Genuine Progress Indicator and other human economic indicators, as well as higher gross domestic product growth. We can seek a level of pollution such that the marginal savings (MS) to one polluting unit from pollution (−MC) is equal to marginal damage (MD) from pollution over the entire population, since pollution is a public bad i.e., MS (x*) = ∑MD_i (x*) where ∑D_i (x) is the total damage. Though the responsibility of reduction in emission does not lie on the non-Annex-I countries, still effort of maintaining global emission balance can be expected equally from developed and developing countries. The responsibilities of Kyoto Protocol are (a) to reduce global GHG emissions, (b) to bring about sustainable development in the developing countries lie on above two groups since its effect on February 16, 2005. Different polluters have different costs of pollution control. The least costly way of controlling pollution from various sources that reflects different costs of pollution control making the set of environmental regulations to achieve the emission target at the lowest cost makes the regulation cost-effective. Though efficiency is not attainable for many regulations, cost-effectiveness is attainable.     

Technology transfer insights for new climate regime

The purpose of technology transfer under the UNFCCC Article 4.5 is to “…promote, facilitate, and finance as appropriate the transfer of, or access to, environmentally sound technologies and know how to other Parties particularly Developing Country parties to enable them to implement the provisions of the Convention.” The key challenge in this respect is that low-carbon sustainable technologies need to be adopted both by developed as well as developing countries. However, this paper focuses on the process of technology transfer to developing countries to allow them to move quickly to environmentally sound and sustainable practices, institutions and technologies. In the above framework, this paper reviews key aspects of technology transfer from a range of perspectives in the literature and discusses insights from this literature for the transfer and innovation process needed to reduce global vulnerability to climate change in the context of current international activities based on the research undertaken by the EU sponsored ENTTRANS project.     

Soil erosion tolerance and water runoff control: minimum environmental standards

Council Regulations (EC) No 1257/1999 and the EU Soil Thematic Strategy give great importance to soil and land conservation to develop knowledge driven governance for rural development. In the hilly areas of Italy cultivated intensively, and especially in the ones devoted to viticulture, agricultural practices determine high loss of soil with consequent degradation of the soil resource. In addition to it, offsite effects of soil erosion can be unsustainable, due to sediment transfer to the channel network and infrastructures. In order to achieve a sustainable rural development there is a need for tools and instruments to allow European regional administrations, to develop, implement, manage and monitor rural development plans. To counteract the environmental threats intensified by agricultural activity, the environmental functions “soil erosion control” and “water runoff control” were investigated in the Chianti area by using GIS. To determine the EMR (Environmental Minimum Requirements) values for soil erosion the “regeneration” capability of soils was considered, and the value of estimated soil loss was compared with the value of soil reformation. A scenario analysis was also performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the agroenvironmental measure “grass cover” in reducing erosion. The concept of tolerable erosion based on soil productivity and soil reformation rate only is reductive and off-site effects of soil erosion should be also taken into account. For this reason, it was proposed to extend the concept of hydrogeological risk to soil erosion by implementing the notion of soil erosion tolerance (T) with the new concept of environmental risk of soil erosion (ERSE). The new ERSE index takes into account all the in- and off-farm externalities of soil erosion. For this reason, it can be considered an aggregated environmental indicator that enables policy makers to evaluate the impacts of soil erosion by following an holistic approach.     

Accounting for carbon stocks in models of land-use change: an application to Southern Yucatan

To assess the impact of land-use change on carbon stocks, we apply a new methodology, linking ecological and economic modeling, to southern Yucatan, Mexico. A spatial econometric multinomial logit model of ten land-cover classes is estimated (four primary forest categories, three secondary growth categories, an invasive species, and two agricultural land-cover categories), using satellite data on land cover, linked with census socioeconomic data and other biophysical spatial data from 2000. The analysis is novel in that it is the first attempt to link detailed satellite data on land use, with on-the-ground estimates of carbon stocks in a spatial econometric model of land use. The estimated multinomial logit model is then used with two scenarios of future economic growth (“low growth” and “high growth” changes in population, agricultural land use, market access, and education levels) in the region to predict land-cover changes resulting from the economic growth. The per hectare carbon (C) stocks in each land-cover class are derived from previously published estimates of biomass from field sampling across the study region. We consider aboveground-only, aboveground plus soil, transient and non-transient pools of carbon. These estimates are scaled up to the total area in each class according to the predictions of the model baseline and the two development scenarios. Subsequently, the changes in carbon stocks resulting from the predicted land-cover changes are calculated. Under the low growth scenario, carbon stocks declined by 5%; under the high growth scenario, losses were 12%. Including soil C, the proportional losses were lower, but the absolute amount lost was more than double (to 6 Tg C under the low and almost 15 Tg C under the high-growth scenario). This methodology could be further developed for applications in global change policy, such as payments for environmental services (PES) or reduction in emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).     

Experience in mapping the ecological state of the plant cover

Objectives and methods of mapping the ecological state of the plant cover at different spatial levels—federal, regional, and local—are analyzed. The maps used as examples are as follows: at the federal level, “Ecological State of Rangelands in Russia” (1:10 000 000); at the regional level, “Vegetation of Moscow Oblast” (1:200 000); and at the local level, “Vegetation of Narofominskii Raion” and “Current State of the Plant Cover in Narofominskii Raion” (1:50 000).     

Remarks on fair wealth accumulation in Russia

The paper addresses the topic of wealth accumulation in Russia. This phenomenon plays an important role for the understanding and forecasting the future economic and social development of the country. The “westernized” paradigm calls for hard honest work during the life and approves getting a reward in a form of wealth in the end. When brought to Russia, this paradigm faces the orthodox traditions and rules together with the post-soviet mental patterns. In this paper, we consider how the pattern “first accumulate wealth, then consume it” competes with its opposition, the pattern “first consume wealth, then accumulate it” in Russia. We base our discussion on the consumers’ simple optimization problem, which exhibits a bifurcation between those two patterns depending on the relation between the consumption “impatience” and the wealth growth rate. We also suggest a framework to model the phenomenon of unfair wealth through impulse type of wealth development.     

Changes in the structure of ichthyofauna in water bodies of Kaluga oblast over the past few decades

The structure of the ichthyofauna in water bodies of Kaluga oblast has undergone significant rearrangements over the past 20 years. The abundance of some species has increased, while that of other species has decreased; spontaneous dispersal of some fishes is underway. Synchronous fluctuations of fish abundance (“waves of life”) take place simultaneously in the Western Dvina, Dnieper, and Volga basins. These processes differ in intensity depending on fish species and are conditioned by a number of factors, including changes in hydrological regimes of rivers, improvement of the ecological state of small rivers, and increased poaching pressure. The results of monitoring the ichthyofauna fauna of small rivers are used as an example to trace the routes of fish dispersal and discuss changes in the composition of fish communities.     

Mapping the global supply and demand structure of rice

Rice plays a major role in the global supply and demand for sustainable food production. The constraints of maintaining sustainable rice production are closely linked to the relationship between the distribution patterns of human activity on the planet and economic growth. Global patterns of rice production can be mapped by using various criteria linked to domestic income, population patterns, and associated satellite brightness data of rice-producing regions. Prosperous regions have more electric lighting, and there are documented correlations between gross domestic product (GDP) and nighttime light. We chose to examine global rice production patterns on a geographical basis. For the purposes of this study, each country is considered to be made up of regions, and rice production is discussed in terms of regional distribution. A region is delineated by its administrative boundaries; the number of regions where rice is produced is about 13,839. We used gridded spatial population distribution data overlain by nocturnal light imagery derived from satellite imagery. The resultant relationship revealed a correlation between regional income (nominal values of GDP were used) and rice production in the world. The following criteria were used to examine the supply and demand structure of rice. Global rice consumption = “caloric rice consumption per capita per day” multiplied by “regional population values”. Regional rice yields = “country-based production” divided by “harvested area” (multiple harvests are taken into account). Regional rice production = “regional harvested areas” multiplied by “rice yield values”. We compared regional rice consumption and production values according to these methods. Analysis of the data sets generated a map of rice supply and demand. Inter-regional shipping costs were not accounted for. This map can contribute to the understanding of food security issues in rice-producing regions and to estimating potential population values in such regions.     

Macroethical systems and sustainability science

The Industrial Revolution and associated economic, demographic, technological and cultural changes have resulted in what many scientists are beginning to refer to as “the Anthropocene” – roughly translated, the Age of Humans. One response to this development is the nascent field of “sustainability science,” a multidisciplinary and systemic attempt to perceive and understand this new era. In doing so, however, methodologies and intellectual frameworks must be developed which extend beyond existing, dominantly reductionist, approaches, and are intended to address emergent characteristics of complex systems that integrate cultural and social systems, the engineered and built environment and natural systems. In the area of ethics, this requires developing a capability for “macroethics,” or ethical systems and processes capable of addressing issues arising from the emergent behavior of the complicated systems that characterize the Anthropocene.