Environmental impact of plantations in and around the petroleum refinery: a case study

Plantation or green belt (GB) grown around the factories and industrial premises improves the condition of land, mitigates air pollution (as the plants serve as a sink for pollutants and check the flow of dust, etc.), and reduces the level of noise pollution. The software developed by NEERI for the determination of the optimal width of GB in and around an industry is based on the pollution attenuation coefficient of selected plant species of deciduous trees existing in the region. The assessment of the impact of these plantations/green belts of 500-m width in and around a petroleum refinery in the west coast of India is evaluated for reducing/managing various waste generated, and it is observed that the overall efficiency is more than 60%.     

Determining Vulnerability Importance in Environmental Impact Assessment: The case of Colombia

The concept of vulnerability has been used to describe the susceptibility of physical, biotic, and social systems to harm or hazard. In this sense, it is a tool that reduces the uncertainties of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) since it does not depend exclusively on the value assessments of the evaluator, but rather is based on the environmental state indicators of the site where the projects or activities are being carried out. The concept of vulnerability thus reduces the possibility that evaluators will subjectively interpret results, and be influenced by outside interests and pressures during projects. However, up until now, EIA has been hindered by a lack of effective methods. This research study analyzes the concept of vulnerability, defines Vulnerability Importance and proposes its inclusion in qualitative EIA methodology. The method used to quantify Vulnerability Importance is based on a set of environmental factors and indicators that provide a comprehensive overview of the environmental state. The results obtained in Colombia highlight the usefulness and objectivity of this method since there is a direct relation between this value and the environmental state of the departments analyzed.     

Environmental change monitoring in the arid and semi-arid regions: a case study Al-Basrah Province, Iraq

In recent years, land use/cover dynamic change has become a key subject urgently to be dealt with in the study of global environmental change. This research utilizes the integrated remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) in the southern part of Iraq (Basrah Province was taken as a case) to monitor, map, and quantify the environmental change using a 1:250,000 mapping scale. Remote sensing and GIS software were used to classify Landsat TM in 1990 and Landsat ETM+ in 2003 imagery into five land use and land cover (LULC) classes: vegetation land, sand land, urban area, unused land, and water bodies. Supervised classification and normalized difference buildup index, normalized difference vegetation index, normalized difference bare land index, the normalized differential water index, crust index (CI) algorithms, and change detection techniques were adopted in this research and used, respectively, to retrieve its class boundary. An accuracy assessment was performed on the 2003 LULC map to determine the reliability of the map. Finally, GIS software was used to quantify and illustrate the various LULC conversions that took place over the 13-year span of time. The results showed that the urban area, sand lands, and bare lands had increased by the rate of 1.2%, 0.8%, and 0.4% per year, with area expansion from 3,299.1, 4,119.1 km², and 3,201.9 km² in 1990 to 3,794.9, 4,557.7, and 3,351.7 km² in 2003, respectively. While the vegetation cover and water body classes were about 43.5% in 1990, the percentage decreased to about 39.6% in 2003. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of the remote sensing and GIS technologies in detecting, assessing, mapping, and monitoring the environmental changes.     

Environmental Monitoring and Research Initiative: a Priority Activity for the Committee on Environmental and Natural Resources

The Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR) has recognized a high priority need to integrate and coordinate federal agencies' efforts in order to enable a comprehensive evaluation of our nation's environmental resources and ecological systems. The federal government spends about $640 million per year collecting data about our forests, agricultural and rangelands, lakes, rivers, estuaries, and coastal marine systems. These efforts have significantly aided the progress in preserving and protecting the environment in recent decades but are not sufficiently coordinated to provide us a truly comprehensive status report or full understanding of the causes and effects of environmental change. This paper describes the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources and its functions, provides a status report on the Environmental Monitoring and Research Initiative, and offers some perspectives on the factors that will make the initiative and its contributing programs a success. In particular, the paper discusses the potential relationship with the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP).     

Information system for the registration of pollution sources associated with construction activities

A prospective builder in Czech Republic has to apply for approval by local (regional, state) authorities and is liable, in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process to make an accurate statement of stress factor values produced during the life cycle of the construction work.These data should be kept in the information system, as only a substantial amount of relevant high quality data can be used in the decision-making process.Identifying and quantifying stress factors produced by a given construction activity can present a problem due to inadequate knowledge and opinion in this field. For large construction works, a knowledge-based system proposed in the second part of this paper may be useful; small structures can be covered by the information given as to local factors, which form part of the information system proposed by Vlcek and Moos (1991).     

Environmental economics reality check: a case study of the Abanico Medicinal Plant and Organic Agriculture Microenterprise Project

This paper presents a case study of the Abanico Medicinal Plant and Organic Agriculture Microenterprise Project in the Arenal Conservation Area, Costa Rica. Microenterprise is the Sustainable Development and the Women in Development model for gender equity and environment of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and large non-government organizations, like the World Wildlife Fund-Canada. The authors of this paper argue that debt-for-nature investment in microenterprise and ecological economic models are not distinct from neoclassical economic and development models that created the environmental, social and cultural crises in the first place. This case study shows that the world market accommodates only one model of development: unsustainable export-oriented production based on flexible labour markets, low wages, indebtedness and low cost production. Working standards in those micro-enterprises are eroded due to many factors,including indebtedness. What happened at a national level in non-industrial countries with the international debt crisis is now mirrored in individual indebtedness through microenterprise. Is current development policy creating a new form of indentured servitude? Medicinal plants, prior to commodification, were a source of women's power and upon commodification in international development projects, are the source of their exploitation.     

Environmental accident and its treatment in a developing country: a case study on China

Along with their rapid progress, developing countries have had to deal with more environmental problems, which have been a cause for concern among policy makers and the public in general. This study cites two accidents that happened in China in 2006 that caused serious environmental problems in nearby communities and discusses the problems these accidents created and the resulting disputes among the concerned people. Pollution-causing accidents not only pose threats to the health of the victims but also give rise to environmental disputes that jeopardise national security and social stability. Conflicts normally ensue following a pollution-causing accident, which are more likely to happen within a development zone or industrial park. Few environmental conflicts in the past decades were resolved through litigation. Nevertheless, there are lapses in the regulatory system, which have to be addressed to ensure that the public's rights and interests are protected. Currently, reports on pollution-causing accidents are difficult to obtain and are often released very late. A majority of industrial firms operate without environmental clearance, thus highlighting the government's inefficiency in environmental management. It is about time that the Chinese government takes seriously the use of the Environmental Impact Assessment.     

环保制度改革下网格化环境监管发展对策建议

以环境监测监察执法垂直管理制度、镇域综合执法改革、排污许可证"一证式"管理为例,简述环保制度改革要求及各项制度可能对网格化监管产生的影响,结合江苏省各地网格化监管调研情况,分析网格化监管与制度改革的关系,提出网格化环境监管与各项制度未来协同发展的对策建议。     

Environmental Issues for the Chinese Strong Aromatic Liquor Industry: an Assessment for the Brewing System

Environmental assessments are often performed for industries due to a lot of issues produced in the processes. However, few studies are reported for environmental assessment of Chinese liquor production. A lot of material consumptions in Chinese liquor industries often bring about serious environmental pollution. Thus, Chinese strong aromatic liquor (CSAL) is taken as a representative for the environmental issues assessment of Chinese liquor industry in view of cleaner production (CP). The assessment is performed for the brewing system of CSAL including three main phases: crude liquor brewing, crude liquor blending, and steam production, which addresses resource and energy consumptions and environmental impacts. The results indicate that, according to the standards of Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, the consumptions of materials and energy are acceptable while the water consumption is higher than the requirement. Moreover, the discharge of chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the brewing phase is above the standard requirement and contributes much to eutrophication. The total environmental impacts in the blending phase are less than those in the brewing and steam production phases. In detail, in the brewing phase, high concentration of volatile organic compounds in the wastewater results in the odor threshold values and photochemical ozone creation. In the blending phase, the main environmental impact is eutrophication owing to the wastewater. In the steam production phase, the most and least significant impacts are global warming and soot emission, respectively, wherein waste gas emission is dominated. Cost analysis reveals that when the water consumption and COD discharge meet the requirements according to the CP option, there are plenty of economic and environmental benefits for the CSAL industry. The results confirm that the reform strategies for the Chinese liquor enterprise should be performed to decrease the water consumption, promote the utilization efficiency of water, improve recycle and reuse of by-products, reduce the pollutant discharge, and enhance waste treatment efficiency.     

Environmental monitoring for protected areas: Review and prospect

Monitoring activities in protected areas have a long history. Internal planning and management needs early led to ecological inventories. More recently the increasing number and awareness of external threats to parks has led to a variety of monitoring programs. Efforts to use protected areas, and especially biosphere reserves, as ecological baselines, have reinforced this trend. And as protected areas are increasingly recognized to be islands with complex internal and regional interactions, holistic, systems approaches to inventory, monitoring, and assessment of their state are being developed. This paper begins by reviewing threats to parks and the origins and importance of inventory and monitoring activities. A review of resource survey methods follows. Ecosystem science and environmental monitoring are introduced as a foundation for consideration of several newer approaches to monitoring and assessing the state of natural environments. These newer approaches are stress/response frameworks, landscape ecology, ecosystem integrity, and state of the environment reporting. A final section presents some principles for monitoring the state of protected areas. Examples are drawn from experience with Canadian national parks.     

Keeping the Books for Environmental Systems: An Emergy Analysis of West Virginia

Emergy provides a general accounting mechanism that allows us to view the economy and the environment on the same income statement and balance sheet. This allows an auditor to verify the economic picture by checking it against a more complete representation of the flows and storages of real wealth as measured by emergy. In this study, we constructed emergy accounts for the state of West Virginia in 1997. The income statement showed annual production, consumption, and flows of emergy and dollars into and out of the state. The balance sheet evaluated the storage of emergy in some of the state's assets. Emergy indices were used to answer questions posed by managers and gain insight into the state's economic and environmental strengths and weaknesses. West Virginia has great wealth in nonrenewable resources (9E14 sej m-2 or 17 times the U.S. average). The investment ratio of emergy purchased outside to indigenous renewable and nonrenewable emergy was 2.2:1, which indicates a high potential for future development. However, the environmental loading ratio (14:1) was already 1.5 times higher than that found at an average location in the U.S. Twice as much emergy was exported as received and standard of living indicators showed that people have largely failed to benefit from their state's wealth. We propose that, just as in business, where decisions made using financial accounts ensure solvency; decisions governing the environment should be made based on an emergy accounting of activities, assets, and liabilities for the combined system of humanity and nature.     

Environmental monitoring of heavy metals and arsenic from Ag-Pb-Zn mining: a case study over two millennia

2000 years of mining activity at Wiesloch, Germanyleft behind a legacy of mining wastes, some of which haveextremely high contents of toxic elements like As, Cd, Tl,Sb, Pb and Zn. To evaluate their long-term impact ondifferent environmental compartments, the detailedenvironmental monitoring presented here focused on themineralogical and chemical characterization of thedifferent waste materials, consisting of dumpings with orefragments, flotation tailings and medieval metallurgicalslags. Leaching experiments with these materials, usingeluents of different compositions and pHs were carried outto assess the conditions governing the mobilization and re-fixation of these species. It was shown, that the carbonatehost rock of the mineralization, the loess blanket coveringthe area and the organically rich municipal sewage sludgesdeposited on top of the tailings, represent potentialbarriers to the dispersion of toxic elements over a muchlarger area. Moreover, particulate emissions from thesteep, unvegetated escarpments of the tailing heapsrepresent a continuous thread to the environment.     

Use of Satellite Imagery as Environmental Impact Assessment Tool: A case Study from the Nw Egyptian Red Sea Coastal Zone

Knowledge and detecting impacts of human activities on the coastal ecosystem is an essential management requirement and also very important for future and proper planning of coastal areas. Moreover, documentation of these impacts can help in increasing public awareness about side effects of unsustainable practices. Analysis of multidate remote sensing data can be used as an effective tool in environmental impact assessment (EIA). Being synoptic and frequent in coverage, multidate data from Landsat and other satellites provide a reference record and bird’s eye viewing to the environmental situation of the coastal ecosystem and the associated habitats. Furthermore, integration of satellite data with field observations and background information can help in decision if a certain activity has caused deterioration to a specific habitat or not. The present paper is an attempt to utilize remote sensing data for assessment impacts of some human activities on the major sensitive habitats of the NW Egyptian Red Sea coastal zone, definitely between Ras Gemsha and Safaga. Through multidate change analysis of Landsat data (TM & ETM+ sensors), it was possible to depict some of the human infringements in the area and to provide, in some cases, exclusive evidences for the damaging effect of some developmental activities.