The poverty of forestry policy: double standards on an uneven playing field

Can policies designed to maximize exploitation by elites benefit the people who live in forests? Forestry policy throughout the developing world originates from European “scientific” forestry traditions exported during the colonial period. These policies were implemented by foreign and local elite whose interest was to maximize and extract profit. In spite of reforms since the end of the colonial period, policies on the environment usually remain biased against rural communities. Even when more recent policies are fair, the rural poor face severe biases in implementation. In addition, they must compete on an uneven playing field of ethnic and other social inequities and economic hurdles. This article examines how forestry policy and implementation maintain double standards on this uneven playing field in a manner that permanently excludes the rural poor from the natural wealth around them—producing poverty in the process. Change that would support poverty alleviation for forest-based communities requires a radical rethinking of forest policy so as to counterbalance widespread regressive policies and structural asymmetries.     

Evaluation of fire as a management tool for controllingSchinus terebinthifolius as secondary successional growth on abandoned agricultural land

Schinus terebinthifolius, native to South America, has become an aggressive woody weed in southern Florida, displacing native vegetation as well as rapidly invading disturbed sites. Studies to evaluate the effectiveness of fire as a management option for controllingSchinus on abandoned farmland in Everglades National Park, known as the “Hole-in-the-Donut,” began in 1979. Study plots were established to monitor any change(s) in herbaceous cover and in numbers and size ofSchinus stems. Except in the control plot (which was not burned), each site was burned as often as fuel conditions permitted (usually once every one or two years), through 1985. Results indicated that both the number and density ofSchinus stems increased over the course of the study. While plots that burned showed a reduction in the rate ofSchinus invasion, invasion still progressed rapidly with or without the occurrence of fire. The increase inSchinus stem density from 1980 to 1985 was highly significant in all transects except one. Herbaceous cover showed no clear trends relative to burning.     

Spatial patterns of macroalgal abundance in relation to eutrophication

Based on a large monitoring data set from Danish coastal waters we tested the hypotheses: (1) The vertical pattern of algal abundance is regulated by exposure in shallow water and by light limitation towards deeper water, resulting in a bell-shaped abundance curve, with peak abundance located deeper at more exposed sites, (2) in deeper water, total algal abundance and abundance of perennial algae decrease along a eutrophication gradient while (3) abundance and relative abundance of opportunists increase. The vertical pattern of algal abundance showed a peak at intermediate water depths which was located deeper in more exposed areas and thus confirmed our first hypothesis. For algae growing from depths of peak abundance and deeper, the study demonstrated that total algal abundance and abundance of perennials and opportunists at given depths decreased significantly along a eutrophication gradient and the relationships had high explanatory power (R ² = 0.53–0.73). These results confirmed our second hypothesis. By contrast, the relative abundance of opportunists responded solely to salinity and was largest in the most brackish areas, in contradiction to hypothesis three. The lack of coupling between eutrophication and relative abundance of opportunists arises because both opportunists and the entire algal community were light limited and their ratio therefore relatively insensitive to changing water clarity. The analyses indicated that algal abundance initially responded slowly to increasing eutrophication but showed a more marked response at TN concentrations of 35–40 μM. However, the existence of possible threshold nutrient levels demands further analyses.     

Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of new environmental technologies

The purpose of this article is to present a framework for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of innovative technologies for environmental characterization, remediation, monitoring, and waste management. The authors describe the steps involved in actually using the methodology to perform a cost-effectiveness analysis. They provide basic techniques for designing a fair comparison, developing scenarios, choosing a baseline technology, assessing relative performance, evaluating life-cycle costs, and calculating cost savings. Examples are used to illustrate these concepts and a case study is presented involving a new remediation technology called in-situ air stripping.     

Assessing the costs and environmental benefits of IMO regulations of ship-originated SOx and NOx emissions in the Baltic Sea

To assess the value of the environmental benefits of the Sulphur Emission regulation (SECA) that came into force in 2015, changes in depositions of SOx and NOx from ship exhaust gas emissions were modelled and monetized for the Baltic Sea region for the years 2014 and 2016. During this period, the total deposition of SOx in the study area decreased by 7.3%. The decrease in ship-originated SOx deposition from 38 kt to 3.4 kt (by over 88%) was translated into a monetary value for the ecosystem impacts of nearly 130 million USD, according to the EcoValue08 model. This is less than the modelled health benefits, but it is not insignificant. For NOx, there was no decreasing trend. The exceedance of the critical loads of SOx and NOx was also estimated. The effect of Baltic shipping on the exceedance of critical loads of acidification after SECA is very small, but Baltic shipping still has a considerable effect on the exceedance of critical loads for eutrophication.