Climate Change and Forest Communities: Prospects for Building Institutional Adaptive Capacity in the Congo Basin Forests

Tropical forests are vulnerable to climate-change representing a risk for indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities. Mechanisms to conserve the forest, such as REDD+, could assist in the mitigation of climate change, reduce vulnerability, and enable people to adapt. Ninety-eight interviews were conducted in three countries containing the Congo Basin forest, Cameroon, CAR, and DRC, to investigate perceptions of decision-makers within, and responses of the institutions of the state, private sector, and civil society to the challenges of climate change. Results indicate that while decision-makers’ awareness of climate change is high, direct institutional action is at an early stage. Adaptive capacity is currently low, but it could be enhanced with further development of institutional linkages and increased coordination of multilevel responses across all institutions and with local people. It is important to build networks with forest-dependent stakeholders at the local level, who can contribute knowledge that will build overall institutional adaptive capacity.     

Planning,Designing, Operating,and Regulating a Geologic Sequestration Repository as an Underground Landfill—A Review

ABSTRACT

Geologic sequestration appears to be a technically feasible method of storing carbon dioxide in underground aquifers in order to lower greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The overall feasibility of geologic sequestration is still in question and as such, has been the focus of intense research over the past decade. Researchers have looked to the oil/gas industry and water well industry for lessons learned and technical knowledge, however, a better industry to emulate may well be the waste industry. Viewing geologic sequestration repositories as underground landfills has a great many benefits. First, there is a plethora of existing research and investigations that are directly analogous to geologic sequestration projects. Second, the regulatory framework is rather mature and can be easily adapted to serve geologic sequestration. This paper conducts an extensive literature search of the environmental, waste, and geologic sequestration literature to ascertain planning, design, and operational methodologies, lessons learned, and concepts that are directly useful for geologic sequestration to improve the technical and regulatory framework. Lastly, the paper uses a hypothetical underground landfill geologic sequestration site (ULGSS) in Florida, USA to discuss some of the findings and implications from the literature. It is concluded that there are a number of literature findings from the waste and environmental arena that should be adapted for geologic sequestration.

IMPLICATIONS Geologic sequestration is a promising solution for greenhouse gas control. This work supports that notion but suggests further improvements to the technical and regulatory framework based upon an extensive review of the waste management and environmental literature. The improvements include suggestions in the areas of permitting, site selection, operations, cost accounting, and special waste handling. Some of these improvements are discussed using a hypothetical project site in Florida, USA.     

Does community resilience mitigate loss and damage from climaterelated disasters? Evidence based on survey data

Policy-makers view community resilience as fundamental to mitigating loss and damage from climate-related disasters. Although energy has been devoted to defining resilience, less effort has been devoted to analysing the effects of resilience on loss and damage, which is critical in places with limited capacity for adaptation. We use survey data to develop a composite index of community resilience in Fiji and then evaluate the extent to which community resilience mitigates loss and damage. We find that community resilience is negatively correlated with damages over which human intervention may be effective, but not with damages over which intervention is less effective, suggesting that community resilience may limit impacts. We further find that this result holds for a cyclone (about which communities had substantial advance warning) but not for river flooding (for which communities had little advanced warning), suggesting that early warning is necessary for community resilience to become responsive.     

Membrane bioreactor treatment of commonly used organophosphate pesticides

Five pesticide formulations registered for use in Canada containing organophosphate-insecticide active ingredients azinphos-methyl, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, malathion and phorate were subjected to treatment by membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology. The target active ingredients were introduced to the MBR at ppm level concentrations. The biodegradation of these compounds was analyzed daily using selected ion monitoring gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS-SIM) following extraction of the analytes using solid-phase extraction (SPE). Amounts measuring 83 % to 98 % of the target analytes were removed with steady-state concentrations being reached within 5 days of their introduction. The dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH, and total heterotrophic bacterial population were monitored daily to ensure optimal conditions for biodegradation. The quality of the effluent from the MBR was assessed daily through spectrophotometric methods. Measurements were conducted for the concentration of ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, total and reactive phosphorus, as well as the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the effluent. This study demonstrated that the MBR technology is feasible and efficient for treatment of organophosphate pesticides without introducing additional chemical additives.     

Our battle with hexachlorobenzene: citizen perspectives on toxic waste in Botany

The perspectives of residents are brought together in this assembly of statements concerning the management of hexachlorobenzene waste in Botany, a southeastern suburb of Sydney. The paper indicates how residents have responded as participants in public participation exercises, and the contribution made by lay experts in the search for a negotiated solution to the problems of legacy wastes. Resident comments on the role of independent scientific experts, on legal liability, and on the State Government sponsored Commission of Inquiry, indicate the deficit of resources faced by the local community. The paper provides insights into the status of citizen knowledge in environmental controversies and the pitfalls of participatory processes.     

Toxic waste in our midst: towards an interdisciplinary analysis

Intractable industrial legacies present new challenges to governance. Amongst the persistent organic pollutants, now managed internationally under the Stockholm Convention, hexachlorobenzene (HCB) stands out in all three classes of chemicals (pesticides, industrial chemicals and unintended by-products). This paper introduces twelve interdisciplinary papers contributing to our understanding of decision-making processes using a case study of HCB and industry-community relations in Sydney's industrial heartland. In this collection, authors align new political theory and emerging management theory, and they analyse the case study from several disciplines. Disputes such as that over HCB destablilise the political/administrative/technoscientific regime that is the modern state. Citizens engage in 'sub-political' processes which require recognition of what Ulrich Beck and others have termed 'individualisation'. This sees decision-forming and decision-making functions push outwards into community-driven structures. There we find new styles of public participation, resolution of asymmetries between knowledge and expertise, and new corporate behaviour.     

Managing Water to Protect Fish: A Review of California’s Environmental Water Account, 2001–2005

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the landward reach of the San Francisco Estuary, provides habitat for threatened delta smelt, endangered winter-run Chinook salmon, and other species of concern. It is also the location of huge freshwater diversion facilities that entrain large numbers of fish. Reducing the entrainment of listed fishes into these facilities has required curtailment of pumping, reducing the reliability of water deliveries. We reviewed the first 5 years (2001–2005) of the Environmental Water Account (EWA), a program instituted to resolve conflicts between protecting listed fishes and providing a reliable water supply. The EWA provided fishery agencies with control over 0.2–0.4 km³ of water to be used for fish protection at no cost to users of exported water, and fish agencies guaranteed no disruption of water supply for fish protection. The EWA was successful in reducing uncertainty in water supply; however, its contribution to the recovery of listed fishes was unclear. We estimated the effectiveness of the EWA to be modest, increasing the survival of winter-run Chinook salmon by 0–6% (dependent on prescreen mortality), adult delta smelt by 0–1%, and juvenile delta smelt by 2–4%. Allocating EWA water for a single life stage of one species could provide larger gains in survival. An optimally allocated EWA of equal size to the median of the first 5 years could increase abundance of juvenile delta smelt up to 7% in the springs of dry years. If the EWA is to become a long-term program, estimates of efficacy should be refined. If the program is to be held accountable for quantitative increases in fish populations, it will be necessary to integrate scientific, possibly experimental, approaches.     

Claiming a corner at work: Measuring employee territoriality in their workspaces

Territoriality is an emerging concept of importance in organizations. Unfortunately, there does not exist currently a valid measure of territoriality with which to conduct research on territoriality in organizations. I developed a theoretically driven four-factor measure of territoriality. Six hundred and sixty-three people working in office settings completed an online survey about their territorial behaviors. Using confirmatory factor analysis I found that the four-factor structure had acceptable fit. I also found preliminary evidence of construct validity. Collectively, the results support the validity of the measure, thus providing an instrument for studying territoriality in organizations. I then discuss specific implications of this measure for both research and practise.     

Changes in pesticide adsorption with time at high soil to solution ratios

Adsorption of six pesticides (2,4-D, dicamba, fluroxypyr, fluazifop-P, metsulfuron-methyl and flupyrsulfuron-methyl) in nine contrasting soils was measured using two techniques: (i) a classical batch method and (ii) a centrifugation method that allowed the measurement of adsorption at a realistic soil to solution ratio after one and seven days. Although the batch method gived significantly higher values of Kd than the centrifugation method for the more strongly sorbed molecules in the more sorptive soils, it tended to give lower adsorption coefficients compared to the centrifugation method when adsorption was lower. Discrepancies between the two methods were probably mainly due to the vigorous shaking applied in the batch technique that artificially enhances the availability of adsorption sites. This implies that shortly after application, more pesticide may be present in the soil solution and thus be available for degradation, plant uptake or leaching than will be predicted from adsorption coefficient determined using the batch method. Adsorption significantly increased between one and seven days and the extractability of total residues decreased with time. The increase in adsorption was not directly related to the level of adsorption although it was more important in soils containing more organic carbon (p=0.022). These results confirm the importance of time-dependent processes and the necessity to include them in risk assessment procedures. The centrifugation technique is a useful method to measure adsorption of pesticides at realistic soil moisture contents and seems to be an adequate technique to characterise the fraction of pesticide that is available for leaching at a given time after application.     

Evaluation of vacuum filter sock surface sample collection method for Bacillus spores from porous and non-porous surfaces

Vacuum filter socks were evaluated for recovery efficiency of powdered Bacillus atrophaeus spores from two non-porous surfaces, stainless steel and painted wallboard and two porous surfaces, carpet and bare concrete. Two surface coupons were positioned side-by-side and seeded with aerosolized Bacillus atrophaeus spores. One of the surfaces, a stainless steel reference coupon, was sized to fit into a sample vial for direct spore removal, while the other surface, a sample surface coupon, was sized for a vacuum collection application. Deposited spore material was directly removed from the reference coupon surface and cultured for enumeration of colony forming units (CFU), while deposited spore material was collected from the sample coupon using the vacuum filter sock method, extracted by sonication and cultured for enumeration. Recovery efficiency, which is a measure of overall transfer effectiveness from the surface to culture, was calculated as the number of CFU enumerated from the filter sock sample per unit area relative to the number of CFU enumerated from the co-located reference coupon per unit area. The observed mean filter sock recovery efficiency from stainless steel was 0.29 (SD = 0.14, n = 36), from painted wallboard was 0.25 (SD = 0.15, n = 36), from carpet was 0.28 (SD = 0.13, n = 40) and from bare concrete was 0.19 (SD = 0.14, n = 44). Vacuum filter sock recovery quantitative limits of detection were estimated at 105 CFU m(-2) from stainless steel and carpet, 120 CFU m(-2) from painted wallboard and 160 CFU m(-2) from bare concrete. The method recovery efficiency and limits of detection established in this work provide useful guidance for the planning of incident response environmental sampling for biological agents such as Bacillus anthracis.