The role of agency in sustainable local community development

Abstract

In this paper we question the importance of social capital as a primary indicator of a community's ability to engage in sustainable development as social capital can have both hindering and facilitating effects. We suggest that actor agency allows an individual or group to increase access to other critical forms of capital to overcome barriers and solve problems. We present ‘bonding’ social capital consisting of strong network ties as a negative in excess quantity as it can lead to the enforcement of social norms that hinder innovative change, and ‘bridging’ social capital consisting of weak network ties as a benefit that allows actors to bring about critical social changes. Communities achieve agency through a dynamic mix of bonding and bridging ties. We close with suggestions for fostering community agency and flag the need for further research in this area.     

Occupational safety conditions of bus drivers in Metro Manila,the Philippines

The study looks into the occupational safety and working conditions among bus drivers in Metro Manila, the Philippines. Quantitative data were collected through survey interviews of 95 bus drivers using the stratified sampling technique. Results showed that bus drivers worked an average of 16?h/day and were engaged in risky driving behaviors such as over-speeding and road racing in order to reach their quota for the day. Fifty-nine percent experienced work-related accidents, with a mean of three accidents. The most common accident was hitting another vehicle followed by side swipe. The accidents were blamed on other drivers, followed by vehicle defect, inattentiveness and tiredness/micro-sleep or sudden involuntary sleep while driving. The most common health symptoms experienced by the bus drivers were fatigue, back pain, and cough and colds. This study underlines the need for an occupational health and safety program for bus drivers in the Philippines.     

Religious harassment in the workplace: An examination of observer intervention

Religious harassment claims in the United States have risen sharply over the past decade. However, victims of religious harassment may not always report harassment, and true rates may be higher. Hence, actions taken by third parties present (observers) are important in combating harassment in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to extend a previous model of observer intervention and related research by testing it empirically in the context of religious harassment and identify factors that influence observers' decision to intervene (intervention), when they intervene (level of immediacy), and how much they intervene (level of involvement). Across two studies, we find evidence that verbal harassment, ambiguity of intent, relationship to target/harasser, recurrence belief, religious commitment, pro‐social orientation, and the interactive effect of shared religion and religious commitment predict intervention. Furthermore, individuals show higher levels of involvement and immediacy in intervention when costs are low and emotional reactions are high. Implications of these findings for engaging observers in combatting harassment are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Thiourea leaching of gold from processed municipal solid waste incineration residues

Incineration is one of the key technologies in disposal of municipal waste, which produces municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) residues with high valuable metal contents. The recycling strategy for the MSWI residues is typically focused on the recovery of scrap metals yielding processed municipal solid waste incineration residues (PIR) as the main byproduct. However, the PIR still contains valuable metals, particularly gold, which cannot be extracted by conventional methods. Here, we evaluated the feasibility of using the 0.5–2.0 mm grain size fraction of PIR containing 28.82 ± 1.62 mg/kg of gold as raw material for a two-stage extraction process. In the first stage the alkalic fine-grained PIR was acidified with a solution of 20% (v/v) of HCl-containing flue gas cleaning liquid that is obtained by the municipal waste incineration plant itself as a waste product. In the second stage we leached the acidified fine-grained PIR by thiourea with Fe³⁺ as an oxidant. Application of the thiourea-Fe³⁺ leaching system resulted in recovery of 16.4 ± 1.56 mg/kg of gold from the fine-grained PIR within 6 h of incubation. Due to high gold market prices, upscaling of the suggested technology can represent a suitable strategy for gold recovery from PIR and other MSWI residues.

     

Can home gardens scale up into movements for social change? The role of home gardens in providing food security and community change in San Jose,California

Urban policymakers and sustainable food activists have identified urban agriculture as an important strategy for confronting a host of urban problems, including food insecurity, health disparities, access to urban green space and community economic revitalisation. Much recent work on urban agriculture has examined community and school gardens, but little research has been undertaken on home gardens as a solution to urban problems. This article examines a home-gardening programme in San Jose, California, La Mesa Verde, asking whether some of the benefits found in community gardens can be found in home gardens. Specifically, we look at financial, health and community benefits, examining the potential of home gardens to become forces for broader social change. We ask whether gardens can become agents of cultural preservation, self-determination, particularly for recent immigrants who use these spaces to build identities and work towards collective action and self-determination.     

Progress in assisted natural remediation of an arsenic contaminated agricultural soil

A contaminated soil was collected in a field adjacent to a derelict As((III)) smelter in Reppel (Bocholt, Belgium). A single soil treatment (% by soil weight) based on either iron grit (SS, 1%), beringite (B, 5%), or iron grit (1%) + beringite (5%) (BSS) was applied. Untreated and treated Reppel soils and a control soil were placed in lysimeters inside a greenhouse and cropped annually. The efficiency of soil treatments in decreasing As and metals in exposure sources and restoring soil functions was assessed 6 years after the treatments commenced. Decreases in extractable Cd, Mn, Zn and As occurred in the BSS soil. Only BSS treatment reduced both As and metal concentrations in leachates. BSS treatment produced best growth of lettuce and cabbage, the highest shoot and pod yields for dwarf bean, the lowest As, Cd and Zn concentrations in plant tissues, and partly restored Rhizobium nodulation on bean roots. The epigeic earthworm (Dendrobaena octaedra) could only survive in the BSS soil. Depurated living worms from the BSS soil had Cd concentration similar to those in control worms, but higher As, Ca, Fe, and Zn concentrations. Based on physiologically based extraction test (PBET), As bioaccessibility was reduced from 12% (untreated soil) to 7.4% (BSS) and 3% (SS), but only the SS treatment decreased the bioaccessibility of Cd (-30%) and Pb (-35%). The range of chemical and biological indicators suggested that BSS amendment was the most effective treatment for restoration of normal soil functions 6 years after initial treatment of the Reppel soil.     

Factors affecting the severity of injuries among young motorcyclists--a Swedish nationwide cohort study

OBJECTIVES: To determine factors affecting the severity of motorcycle injuries, considering variables related to the individual, the environment, the vehicle, and the crash. METHODS: This is a register-based retrospective cohort study. All individuals born in 1970-1972 (n = 334,070) were extracted from the Swedish Population and Housing Census of 1985 and followed up from 1988 to 2000, when aged 16-30. All subjects whose records indicated an injury as a motorcycle driver in the Swedish National Road Administration Accident Database were selected, and constituted the study population (n = 1,748). Factors related to the individual, the environment, the vehicle, and the crash were considered as exposure measures, whereas the outcome measure was the level of injury severity, based on assessments made on-site by police officers, in two categories: fatal/severe and minor. Associations between individual, environmental, vehicle and crash factors and injury severity were measured, using Chi-square, and through univariate and multivariate stepwise logistic regression. RESULTS: Factors such as alcohol consumption, traffic environment, speed limit, and type of crash were significantly associated (p < 0.0001) with injury severity. More specifically, a positive suspicion of alcohol consumption, driving in a rural area, and a posted speed limit over 50 km/hour were all factors positively associated (OR > 1.0) with the likelihood of being severely injured. On modeling all the variables together through stepwise logistic regression, positive suspicion of alcohol emerged as the strongest determinant (adjusted OR = 2.7) of a severe outcome. CONCLUSIONS. Motorcycle crashes still place a heavy burden on young drivers. Increased efforts are needed to prevent alcohol-related crashes-through law enforcement and a multiplicity of policies at local and national levels.     

An analytical model for the interpretation of pulse injection experiments performed for testing the spatial variability of clay formations

This paper presents an analytical model to describe pulse injection experiments. This model solves the advection-diffusion equation while taking into account back diffusion from the clay core to the inlet and from the outlet to the clay core. In most analytical models, back diffusion is neglected. For sufficiently high Péclet numbers, this is a good approximation. However, in experiments where the Péclet number is low, back diffusion is important and must be taken into account. An additional advantage of the present model is that both concentration and flux are conserved at the inlet and at the outlet of the clay core. This model is used to fit pulse injection experiments with iodide and tritiated water (HTO) in clay cores. The (new) model is required for fitting the experimental results since in clay layers advection is very slow leading to a low Péclet number. The experiments are performed on clay cores taken from different depths from the Boom Clay and the Ypres Clay layer under the site of the nuclear power plant of Doel (Belgium). The quality of all fits is excellent and the obtained parameter values are coherent. For HTO, the fitted value for the diffusion accessible porosity is consistent with measurements of the water content in Ypres Clay cores. In both types of clays, the apparent diffusion coefficient at zero flow is between 10(-10) and 2 x 10(-10) m(2)/s for iodide and between 2 x 10(-10) and 3 x 10(-10) m(2)/s for HTO. The dispersion length is in the order of 10(-3) m. The average value for the diffusion accessible porosity is between 0.35 and 0.4 for HTO and between 0.2 and 0.25 for iodide.     

Nitrate and nitrite injection during municipal solid waste anaerobic biodegradation

Nitrified leachate recirculation has been proposed as a promising strategy for sustainable landfill management. In four test reactors, nitrate or nitrite was added (250 mg N-NO(x)(-)L(-1)) during municipal solid waste biodegradation. Nitrogen-oxides reduction reactions were monitored. Denitrification was the main nitrogen reducing reaction observed. On one hand, during the acidogenic waste degradation phase, as high amounts of volatile fatty acids (VFA) were present, nitrogen-oxides reductions were interpreted as heterotrophic denitrifications. On the other hand, denitrification reactions occurring during the late methanogenic phase were accompanied by sulphate productions and, as VFA were not detected, it was probably an autotrophic reaction. Denitrification inhibition was observed once. Ammonium concentration increased suggesting the occurrence of a dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA). Statistical treatment of analytical data revealed that only H(2)S concentration had a significant negative effect on N(2) production in our system. NO production was observed once when nitrite was injected during the acidogenic phase resulting in a total waste degradation inhibition. These results indicate that the consequences of nitrified leachate recirculation in full-scale landfills need to be carefully examined especially during the acidogenic phase or in the presence of waste containing high quantities of sulphur.