The Impact of Local versus National Framing on Willingness to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions: a case study from central Pennsylvania

This paper explores the impact of the frame in which people interpret global warming. In 1999, 637 respondents completed a mail survey in five counties in central Pennsylvania. Half of the sample received questionnaires that framed global warming in terms of the local impacts of mitigation policies, whereas the other half received questionnaires that framed global warming in terms of the national impacts of mitigation policies. The results show a statistically significant but small difference between the local and national frames in the respondents' willingness to support government policies, as well as to take voluntary actions to mitigate climate change.     

Sectoral sustainability and sustainability assessment methodologies: A review of methodology in light of collaboration with the UK oil and gas sector

This paper discusses methodologies that have been employed to give insights into business performance in relation to sustainable development, both at a sectoral and corporate level. From consideration of different sectoral sustainable development methodologies, some key issues and good practice related to their derivation are elaborated. These issues are then further illustrated by a detailed comparison between three sustainable development methodologies that have been used in the UK offshore oil and gas industry. The methodologies chiefly differ in terms of how they address the problem of comparing different impacts across potentially non-commensurable dimensions, one proceeding through explicit monetary valuation, another through implicit valuation of different options and another through presentation of an unaggregated framework of indicators. The paper concludes by identifying the different situations in which use of these different methodologies is appropriate.     

Low back pain among residential carpenters: ergonomic evaluation using OWAS and 2D compression estimation.

Occupational low back pain (LBP) remains a leading safety and health challenge. This cross-sectional investigation measured the prevalence of LBP in residential carpenters and investigated ergonomic risk factors. Ninety-four carpenters were investigated for LBP presence and associated risk factors. Ten representative job-tasks were evaluated using the Ovako Working Posture Analysis System (OWAS) and ErgoMaster 2D software to measure elements of posture, stress, and risk. Job-tasks were found to differ significantly for total lumbar compression and shear at peak loading (p < .001), ranging from 2 956 to 8 606 N and 802 to 1 974 N respectively. OWAS indicated that slight risk for injury was found in 10 job-tasks while distinct risk was found in 7 of the 10 job-tasks. Seven of the 10 job-tasks exceeded the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) action limit of 3 400 N for low back loading. The point prevalence for LBP was 14% while the annual prevalence was 38%.     

Book reviews

French Land Use Planning in the Fifth Republic: Real or imagined decentralisation?

Irene B. Wilson, Nijmeegse Planologische Cahiers No. 27, Geografisch en Planologisch Instituut, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands, 1988. 228pp. ISBN 90–70219–23–9.

Environmental and Resource Economics: an Introduction

Common, M. (1988). Longman i‐xiv 1–319.

The Greening of Aid: Sustainable Livelihoods in Practice.

C. Conroy & M. Litvinoff (Eds.) Earthscan Publications Ltd, London, 1989, pp.293, £8.95 (pb).

Private Supply of Public Services: Evaluation of Real Estate Exactions, Linkage, and Alternative Land Policies.

Rachelle Alterman (Ed), New York University Press, 1988. 273pp, ISBN 0–8147–0589–8.

City Politics

Hegemonic Projects and Discourse, by Maarten A. Hajer, published by Avebury Press, the Gower Publishing Company Ltd 1989, 140 pp.

The Genius Of The Place

The English Landscape Garden 1620–1820

John Dixon Hunt and Petér Willis. Price £12.50 (Paperback) & £26.95 (Cloth). M.I.T. Press.

Vacationscape

Designing Tourist Regions — 1988 2nd Ed.

Clare A. Gunn, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, $34.95 (cloth)

Loft Living — Culture and Capital in Urban Change

Sharon Zukin. Published, British Edition ‘Radius (Century Hudson) London, 1988 Price £8.95.

First Pub. U.S. John Hopkins University Press, 1982. Note: The British Edition has an added Chapter ’More Market Forces’.

William Kent Landscape Garden Designer

John Dixon Hunt. A. Zwemmer Ltd London. 1987, 176pp.

The Pattern of Landscape

Sylvia Crowe and Mary Mitchell (1988). Packard Publishing Ltd, Chichester. 127pp, 161 photographs. Price £30. ISBN 185341 020.

International Environmental Diplomacy

Edited by J. E. Carroll     

Near-miss events,risk messages,and decision making

Decades of research have sought to understand how disaster preparedness decisions are made. We believe one understudied factor is the impact of near-miss events. A near-miss occurs when an event (such as a hurricane or terrorist attack) has some non-trivial probability of ending in disaster (loss of life, property damage), but the negative outcome is avoided largely by chance (e.g., at the last minute, the storm dissipates or the bomb fails to detonate). In the first of two experiments, we study reactions to a hurricane threat when participants are told about prior near-miss events. We find that people with information about a prior near-miss event that has no negative consequences are less likely to take protective measures than those with either no information or information about a prior near-miss event that has salient negative information. Similar results have been shown in prior research, but we seek to understand people’s reasoning for the different reactions. We examine the role of an individual’s risk propensity and general level of optimism as possible explanatory variables for the “near-miss” effect. We find risk propensity to be stable across conditions, whereas general optimism is influenced by the type of prior near-miss information, so that optimism mediates how near-miss information impacts protective decisions. People who experience a potentially hazardous near-miss but escape without obvious cues of damage will feel more optimistic and take less protective action. In the second study, we test messages about the hazard’s risk and examine the impact of these messages to offset the influence of near-misses. We end by discussing the implications of near-misses for risk communication.     

Structuring international development decisions: confronting trade-offs between land use and community development in Costa Rica

For more than half a century, research and practice in international development has focused on improving the quality of life of people living in developing regions of the world. Recently, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers have recognized the need to blend insights from experts and community stakeholders in development decisions. Research in the decision sciences tells us that these kinds of multiparty and multiattribute decisions are extremely challenging. However, recent experience using structured decision-making (SDM) approaches suggests that the quality of both expert and stakeholder input, and resulting decisions, can be improved by ensuring that people address a series of basic principles relating to identifying objectives and their associated attributes, estimating the consequences of proposed actions, and directly confronting trade-offs that arise during the evaluation of management alternatives. In this paper, we provide an overview of SDM and then discuss a research initiative aimed at applying the approach to a pressing international development problem in rural Costa Rica: management of the lucrative but also environmentally destructive pineapple industry. The objectives of this research were twofold: First, we sought to help inform policy decisions by eliciting land management preferences regarding the pineapple industry from people living in communities surrounding plantations. Second, we evaluated the effectiveness of the SDM approach in a developing community context.     

Frequency data and modification factors used in QRA studies

The source data for QRA’s is important to assure meaningful risk assessment results, particularly when the result is to be compared against quantitative risk acceptance criteria. The author’s company is one of the largest global QRA providers and we have concluded that the UK HSE Hydrocarbon Release Database (HCRD) provides the basis for the best leak frequency data as it offers complete leak data collection in a systematic manner, against a known population of equipment and facilities in the UK sector of the North Sea for which there is an accurate parts count estimate. The LEAK program is described. It screens HCRD to remove leak events not associated with full operations inventories and flows (e.g. when isolated for maintenance) and further uses a distribution function that permits frequencies for any arbitrary hole size range to be determined (e.g. 25 mm leaks, 50 mm leaks, full-bore ruptures). An important factor is that leak frequency data is not stationary, offshore operators have improved their control of leak events and the HCRD shows a declining leak rate over time.DNV often uses frequency modification techniques, termed MOR - Modification of Risk. This paper reviews 4 methods developed by the company internationally. These are the Manager Method, the API 581 method, a barrier based method, and a proprietary management system based method. These all permit localization of UK North Sea data to apply to other facilities (onshore or offshore) and with different management systems and mechanical integrity programs.Overall, localized data using MOR is considered more accurate than direct use of UK North Sea data, however validation is an issue. There are no direct comparisons that compare leak statistics over a sufficiently long period with static management systems and integrity programs. Thus MOR techniques remain judgment based approaches, but transparent in methodology and assumptions. The barrier based modification technique is the most directly verifiable of the four MOR methods presented.     

Calculating Ne and Ne/N in age-structured populations: a hybrid Felsenstein-Hill approach

The concept of effective population size (Ne) was developed under a discrete-generation model, but most species have overlapping generations. In the early 1970s, J. Felsenstein and W. G. Hill independently developed methods for calculating Ne in age-structured populations; the two approaches produce the same answer under certain conditions and have contrasting advantages and disadvantages. Here, we describe a hybrid approach that combines useful features of both. Like Felsenstein's model, the new method is based on age-specific survival and fertility rates and therefore can be directly applied to any species for which life table data are available. Like Hill, we relax the restrictive assumption in Felsenstein's model regarding random variance in reproductive success, which allows more general application. The basic principle underlying the new method is that age structure stratifies a population into winners and losers in the game of life: individuals that live longer have more opportunities to reproduce and therefore have a higher mean lifetime reproductive success. This creates different classes of individuals within the population, and grouping individuals by age at death provides a simple means of calculating lifetime variance in reproductive success of a newborn cohort. The new method has the following features: (1) it can accommodate unequal sex ratio and sex-specific vital rates and overdispersed variance in reproductive success; (2) it can calculate effective size in species that change sex during their lifetime; (3) it can calculate Ne and the ratio Ne/N based on various ways of defining N; (4) it allows one to explore the relationship between Ne and the effective number of breeders per year (Nb), which is a quantity that genetic estimators of contemporary Ne commonly provide information about; and (5) it is implemented in freely available software (AgeNe).     

Multivariate identification of plant functional response and effect traits in an agricultural landscape

Plant functional traits have been proposed as a linkage between the environmental control of vegetation and ecosystem function. Identification of traits that mediate the response of plant species to the environment is well established, but the identification of effect traits and the linkage between the two sets is less developed. This was attempted for a study of eight contrasting land uses in a marginal agricultural landscape where data on vegetation, management controls of the disturbance regime, and soil characteristics, including nitrogen release, were measured simultaneously with measures of ecosystem function such as litter decomposition rates and primary productivity on 30 sites. Trait data were assembled from databases, and an iterative multivariate approach using the three table (species, trait, environment) method RLQ was employed to identify a parsimonious set of traits that predict plant species responses to the environment and a parsimonious set of traits that link vegetation to ecosystem function. The lists of response and effect traits were similar, and where differences were observed, traits were usually highly correlated with at least one trait in the other list. This approach identified a small number of traits (canopy height, leaf dry matter content, leaf size, and specific leaf area) that provide a means of linking vegetation responses to environmental change with changes in ecosystem function. Other response traits included vegetative spread strategy, start of flowering, and seed terminal velocity, but within the system studied these traits were all significantly correlated to the traits shared between the response and effect lists.