The costs of household food waste in South Africa

Food waste is problematic for a number of reasons, including the loss of a potentially valuable food source or resource for use in other processes (e.g. energy generation or composting), wasted resources and emissions in the food supply chain, and problems associated with the disposal of organic waste to landfill. This paper quantifies the household food waste stream in South Africa, in order to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem. In addition, it estimates the economic (monetary) value of the wasted food, as well as the costs associated with disposing putrescible food waste to landfill, in order to highlight the associated costs to society. Costs associated with the loss of a potentially valuable food source are valued using a weighted average market price of the wasted food. Costs associated with the disposal of food waste to landfill are quantified based on estimates of the financial and external costs associated with landfilling. For household food waste alone, the costs to society associated with these two food-waste related problems are estimated at approximately R21.7 billion (approximately US$2.7 billion) per annum, or 0.82% of South Africa’s annual GDP. These costs are therefore significant, particularly considering that household food waste accounts for less than 4% of total food losses across the food supply chain.     

Strategic Niche Management in an unstable regime: Biomass gasification in India

This paper analyses the development and implementation of biomass gasifiers in India. Based on literature reviews and fieldwork, an historical narrative is presented starting with laboratory experiments in the 1980s up to commercial applications after 2000. This narrative is analysed using the Strategic Niche Management framework. We conclude with the benefit of hindsight that technological expectations where generally too high. The biomass gasification technology is not easy to design and operate and needs to be embedded in a stable institutional set up to allow learning, knowledge transfer, regulation and funding. We also conclude that, in contrast with theoretical predictions, up-scaling the niche suffers from regime instability rather than regime stability, as there is a need to give more security to investors and end-users. For instance through setting clear and long-term condition for grid-connected biomass gasification systems and feed-in schemes. Up-scaling through local off-grid applications where enough technical competence is available is the most likely trend in the near future.     

Contextualising risk within enterprise risk management through the application of systems thinking

New and emerging risks create growing uncertainty and unpredictability within enterprise risk management. While ISO 31000:2009 is a progressive risk management framework, it is limited in its guidance on how to contextualise complex risks. The application of systems thinking to risk management provides the opportunity to better understand complexity by viewing risk and the consequence of change as part of overall system behaviour. System modelling tools enable organisations to better contextualise their risk landscape. These tools assist organisations to identify vulnerabilities between social and ecological variables in the system within they exist. Determining drivers of change leading to system vulnerabilities can assist in understanding threshold limits of the system, thus enabling the organisation to build system resilience and organisational sustainability.     

Comparing the Community Composition of European and Eastern Chinese Waterbirds and the Influence of Human Factors on the China Waterbird Community

We compared the European and eastern Chinese waterbird assemblages and checked whether the effects of human disturbance could be detected in the assemblages’ composition. For the different Chinese provinces, we expected to find a negative effect of economic development on the mean bird species mass and on the proportion of bentivorous, piscivorous and insectivorous bird species. We also expected to find relatively fewer large species in the Chinese assemblage. Species rank–abundance curves were relatively similar, but China had significantly more species with smaller body masses. The China assemblage was characterized by relatively higher abundance of heavy-bodied species, contrary to our expectations. Mean bird body mass decreased in China with increasing disturbance and increasing gross domestic product (GDP). For coastal provinces in China the percentage of bentivorous, piscivorous and insectivorous bird species declined with increasing GDP, maybe through the increased use of pesticides or fertilizer.