Opportunities and challenges for mangrove carbon sequestration in the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam

Increasing value is attributed to mangroves due to their considerable capacity to sequester carbon, known as ‘blue carbon’. Assessments of opportunities and challenges associated with estimating the significance of carbon sequestered by mangroves need to consider a range of disciplinary perspectives, including the bio-physical science mangroves, social and economic issues of land use, local and international law, and the role of public and private finance. We undertook an interdisciplinary review based on available literature and fieldwork focused on parts of the Mekong River Delta (MRD). Preliminary estimates indicate mangrove biomass may be 70–150 t ha^?1, but considerably larger storage of carbon occurs in sediments beneath mangroves. These natural stores of carbon are compromised when mangroves are removed to accommodate anthropogenic activities. Mangroves are an important resource in the MRD that supplies multiple goods and services, and conservation or re-establishment of mangroves provides many benefits. International law and within-country environmental frameworks offer increasing scope to recognize the role that mangrove forests play through carbon sequestration, in order that these might lead to funding opportunities, both in public and private sectors. Such schemes need to have positive rather than negative impacts on the livelihoods of the many people living within and adjacent to these wetlands. Nevertheless, many challenges remain and it will require further targeted and coordinated scientific research, development of economic and social incentives to protect and restore mangroves, supportive law and policy mechanisms at global and national levels, and establishment of long-term financing for such endeavours.     

Framing for resilience through social learning: impacts of environmental stewardship on youth in post-disturbance communities

Civic ecology practices, such as community gardening and citizen-led urban reforestation and wetland restoration, provide opportunities for social learning. Because social learning is an important component of community resilience, we suggest that civic ecology practices can be a strategy for responding to and mitigating environmental disturbances in an era threatened by climate change. Despite the links between civic ecology, social learning and community resilience, empirical research that systematically considers these connections is limited. This study addresses this gap by introducing ‘frames’ as an approach to considering social learning outcomes and process. More specifically, we provide a model for investigating the role civic ecology education programs play in shaping youths’ capacity to understand and respond to environmental disturbance. We used participant observation and cognitive mapping to assess social learning among three youth restoration programs working in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in New York, NY, and after the 2013 floods in Boulder, CO. In all three programs, youth demonstrated social learning and cognitive change by shifting their emphasis from the impacts of disturbance towards a solutions-based framing that focused on community, action, and mitigation. However, the depth of these changes was not uniform across all programs, suggesting that variations in program length, community context, social identity, and opportunities for self-defined action may shape overall impacts of programs and youth capacity for future action.     

Environmental implications of planned obsolescence and product lifetime: a literature review

The aim of this paper was to explore the implications of planned obsolescence (PO) and the associated product lifetime on the environmental impact of products. To achieve this task, a literature review was performed to assess both the historical context and recent situation of planned obsolescence. A search in scholarly journals was performed to evaluate to what extent product lifetime and PO have been discussed in the recent literature. Based on the findings, selected cases of PO are discussed and trends in the practice of limiting product lifetime are identified. Factors considered to have a significant influence on product lifetime have been identified and discussed. The discussion of case studies made it possible to establish the links between product design, manufacturing and associated impacts of lifetime. The role of the actors along the value chain is also considered to propose a business scheme, where the influences of consumer behaviour and design choices are crucial. Finally, strategies to facilitate the definition of different scenarios are given. These strategies may serve to increase the reliability of environmental assessment throughout a product life cycle.     

Coupling fishery dynamics,human health and social learning in a model of fish-borne pollution exposure

Pollution-induced illnesses are caused by toxicants that result from human activity and are often entirely preventable. However, where industrial priorities have undermined responsible governance, exposed populations must reduce their exposure by resorting to voluntary protective measures and demanding emissions abatement. This paper presents a coupled human–environment system model that represents the effects of water pollution on the health and livelihood of a fishing community. The model is motivated by an incident from 1949 to 1968 in Minamata, Japan, where methylmercury effluent from a local factory poisoned fish populations and humans who ate them. We model the critical role of risk perception in driving both social learning and the protective feedbacks against pollution exposure. These feedbacks are undermined in the presence of social misperceptions such as stigmatization of the injured. Through numerical simulation and scenario analysis, we compare our model results with historical datasets from Minamata, and find that the conditions for an ongoing pollution epidemic are highly unlikely without social misperception. We also find trade-offs between human health outcomes, the viability of the polluting industry and the survival of the fishery. We conclude that an understanding of human–environment interactions and misperception effects is highly relevant to the resolution of contemporary pollution problems, and merits further study.     

A review of vulnerability indicators for deltaic social–ecological systems

The sustainability of deltas worldwide is under threat due to the consequences of global environmental change (including climate change) and human interventions in deltaic landscapes. Understanding these systems is becoming increasingly important to assess threats to and opportunities for long-term sustainable development. Here, we propose a simplified, yet inclusive social–ecological system (SES)-centered risk and vulnerability framework and a list of indicators proven to be useful in past delta assessments. In total, 236 indicators were identified through a structured review of peer-reviewed literature performed for three globally relevant deltas—the Mekong, the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna and the Amazon. These are meant to serve as a preliminary “library” of potential indicators to be used for future vulnerability assessments. Based on the reviewed studies, we identified disparities in the availability of indicators to populate some of the vulnerability domains of the proposed framework, as comprehensive social–ecological assessments were seldom implemented in the past. Even in assessments explicitly aiming to capture both the social and the ecological system, there were many more indicators for social susceptibility and coping/adaptive capacities as compared to those relevant for characterizing ecosystem susceptibility or robustness. Moreover, there is a lack of multi-hazard approaches accounting for the specific vulnerability profile of sub-delta areas. We advocate for more comprehensive, truly social–ecological assessments which respond to multi-hazard settings and recognize within-delta differences in vulnerability and risk. Such assessments could make use of the proposed framework and list of indicators as a starting point and amend it with new indicators that would allow capturing the complexity as well as the multi-hazard exposure in a typical delta SES.     

Traps in and of our minds: relationships between human logic,dialectical traps and social-ecological traps

Social-ecological traps are theorized to be present when human actions affect feedbacks and drivers in social-ecological systems, which, in turn, lead to regime shifts that may alter ecosystem capacity to generate services on which human wellbeing depends, and this, in turn, triggers societal responses, where actors and institutions interact with ecological dynamics and unwittingly lock development into a vulnerable pathway. The key dynamic in this theorization seems to be that human action often predicates or initiates the series of cascading affects that determine the presence of, and, perhaps, the effectiveness of, social-ecological traps. However, what drives human action in this context? What logic, assumptions, decisions, world views, and other processes are implicated in this configuration? This paper first briefly reviews ecological identity and the problems of anthropocentricism, human exceptionalism, and human exemptionalism and introduces the term ecological disenfranchisement. Building upon this, the author invokes Horn’s logic and dialectical traps as a lens for understanding human roles and the prevalence of issues with ecological identities, within social ecological traps. Drilling further down, the paper illustrates these traps with short vignettes, in each case, attempting to link the human logical traps with larger system dynamics. Finally, the author proposes a chain of reasoning to serve as an example of how the presence of human logic traps (or entrapment) in a number of different spheres has an impact upon the larger system, and, perhaps, even predicts entrapment of the larger system. Future efforts to either understand social-ecological traps or navigate away or out of them must first take stock of the human logical traps that actors within the systems are influenced by, and that influence the large system(s).This paper argues that failing to account for human traps within will render most efforts to avoid or escape social-ecological traps futile.     

Effect of fires on the functioning of phytocenoses of peat bogs in the Middle-Amur lowland

The dynamics and structure of the phytomass and production of an undisturbed mesotrophic dwarf shrub–sphagnum phytocenosis and one burned by fire have been compared. The net primary production (NPP) of both sites of phytocenoses in the postpyrogenic period is estimated by direct field determination of the productivity parameters, and C emission from the fire is assessed. The obtained data on emission (0.7 kg/m²) differ from the results obtained in the peatlands of western Canada (3.2 kg/m²).     

Spatiotemporal dynamics of geographical ranges of red deer (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cervus elaphus</Emphasis>, Cervidae) and Siberian roe deer (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Capreolus pygargus</Emphasis>, Cervidae) in Yakutia

Patterns of expansion of geographical ranges of red deer and Siberian roe deer in Yakutia during the 20th century are considered. The area inhabited by red deer in Yakutia has increased almost fourfold over the past 50 years, with an expansion of over 200000 km² toward the northwest. The geographical range of roe deer in the Lena–Amga interfluve has also changed considerably during the same period. Roe deer sightings in the subarctic zone were reported. The structure of geographical ranges of the species under investigation in different ecological and geographical regions of Yakutia is discussed, and the factors influencing the transformation of geographical range borders are characterized.     

Dynamics of snowmelt water composition in conifer forests exposed to airborne industrial pollution

An analysis is made of the spatial variability of snowmelt water composition (within and between biogeocenoses), with regard to its long-term dynamics, in pine and spruce forests exposed to airborne industrial pollution from the Europe’s largest Severonikel Copper–Nickel Smelter Complex. Snowmelt waters from under the tree canopy, compared to those from intercrown areas, contain higher concentrations of chemical elements due to their washing and leaching from tree crowns. This is especially true of spruce forests, since the crowns of spruce trees have a high sorption capacity. Distinct trends in the long-term dynamics of snowmelt water composition, related to reduction of industrial emissions, are observed in background forest areas and defoliating forests but not in the vicinity of pollution sources. It is shown that the main factors determining these dynamics in forests of the Kola Peninsula are edificator tree species, airborne industrial pollution, and, possibly, an increase in the number of days with above-zero temperatures in the period of snow accumulation, which facilitates washing and leaching of chemical compounds from tree crowns.