Post‐tsunami relocation of fisher settlements in South Asia: evidence from the Coromandel Coast,India

The tsunami that struck the coasts of India on 26 December 2004 resulted in the large‐scale destruction of fisher habitations. The post‐tsunami rehabilitation effort in Tamil Nadu was directed towards relocating fisher settlements in the interior. This paper discusses the outcomes of a study on the social effects of relocation in a sample of nine communities along the Coromandel Coast. It concludes that, although the participation of fishing communities in house design and in allocation procedures has been limited, many fisher households are satisfied with the quality of the facilities. The distance of the new settlements to the shore, however, is regarded as an impediment to engaging in the fishing profession, and many fishers are actually moving back to their old locations. This raises questions as to the direction of coastal zone policy in India, as well as to the weight accorded to safety (and other coastal development interests) vis‐à‐vis the livelihood needs of fishers.     

Could wastewater analysis be a useful tool for China? — A review

Analysingwastewater samples is an innovative approach that overcomesmany limitations of traditional surveys to identify and measure a range of chemicals that were consumed by or exposed to people living in a sewer catchment area. First conceptualised in 2001, much progress has been made to make wastewater analysis (WWA) a reliable and robust tool for measuring chemical consumption and/or exposure. At the moment, the most popular application of WWA, sometimes referred as sewage epidemiology, is to monitor the consumption of illicit drugs in communities around the globe, including China. The approach has been largely adopted by lawenforcement agencies as a device tomonitor the temporal and geographical patterns of drug consumption. In the future, themethodology can be extended to other chemicals including biomarkers of population health (e.g. environmental or oxidative stress biomarkers, lifestyle indicators or medications that are taken by different demographic groups) and pollutants that people are exposed to (e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, perfluorinated chemicals, and toxic pesticides). The extension of WWA to a huge range of chemicals may give rise to a field called sewage chemical-information mining (SCIM) with unexplored potentials. China has many densely populated cities with thousands of sewage treatment plants which are favourable for applying WWA/SCIM in order to help relevant authorities gather information about illicit drug consumption and population health status. However, there are some prerequisites and uncertainties of the methodology that should be addressed for SCIM to reach its full potential in China.     

On the relationship between set-out rates and participation ratios as a tool for enhancement of kerbside household waste recycling

Although the use of kerbside recycling facilities by householders is often key to the reduction of materials disposed of to landfill, the quantitative assessment of householders' recycling behaviour is problematic. This study introduces a method to diagnose recycling behaviour by assessing kerbside scheme use in terms of the set-out of recyclate containers compared to the proportion of households participating in recycling (participation ratio). Application of numerical behaviour models demonstrated that kerbside recycling in sampled regions of the UK tends to be consistent with householders using kerbside schemes more frequently than would be observed with random patterns of use that are uniform amongst all householders. When aggregated to collection rounds, householders' modal recycling behaviour tended towards either non-participation or frequent participation. We propose that initiatives to enhance kerbside recycling should employ such quantitative assessments of recycling behavioural modes to inform and guide promotional and educational strategies. A conceptual model for prioritizing campaigns to promote recycling at the kerbside on the basis of identifiable and quantifiable patterns of householder recycling behaviour is presented.     

Reducing the healthcare costs of urban air pollution: the South African experience

Air pollutants often have adverse effects on human health. This paper investigates and ranks a set of policy and technological interventions intended to reduce such health costs in the high population density areas of South Africa. It initially uses a simple benefit-cost rule, later extended to capture sectoral employment impacts. Although the focus of state air quality legislation is on industrial pollutants, the most efficient interventions were found to be at household level. These included such low-cost interventions as training householders to place kindling above rather than below the coal in a fireplace and insulating roofs. The first non-household policies to emerge involved vehicle fuels and technologies. Most proposed industrial interventions failed a simple cost-benefit test. The paper's policy messages are that interventions should begin with households and that further industry controls are not yet justifiable in their present forms as these relate to the health care costs of such interventions.