Facilitating substance phase‐out through material information systems and improving environmental impacts in the recycling stage of a product

The amount of electrical and electronic products is increasing rapidly, and this inevitably leads to the generation of large quantities of waste from these goods. Some of the generated e‐waste ends up in regions with sub‐standard recycling systems and may be processed under poor conditions. During uncontrolled incineration, halogenated dioxins and furans can be generated from brominated and chlorinated compounds in the products. In order to reduce the health and environmental risks involved in the recycling stage of the life cycle of electronics, an effective design‐for‐environment process must be established during the product development phase. Knowledge of the chemical substances in the product is crucial to being able to make informed decisions. Through full knowledge of the material content of procured components, phase‐outs of unwanted substances, such as halogenated substances, can be performed in an effective manner. Therefore, information is the key to success in phasing‐out substances; facilitating compliance of legal provisions for manufacturers of electrical and electronic devices; and improving the environmental footprint of products as they reach the end of the life cycle. After an introduction to the challenges of electronics waste management, this paper describes supply chain information systems and how they are used to facilitate substance phase‐outs in the electronics industry. Sony Ericsson has been working with phase‐outs of unwanted substances since it was founded in 2001. Through the introduction of a material declaration system that keeps track of all substances in the components used in the company's products, Sony Ericsson has been able to replace unwanted substances to improve environmental impacts at the recycling stage of a product.     

How to Constrain Multi‐Objective Calibrations of the SWAT Model Using Water Balance Components

Accurate discharge simulation is one of the most common objectives of hydrological modeling studies. However, a good simulation of discharge is not necessarily the result of a realistic simulation of hydrological processes within the catchment. We propose an evaluation framework that considers both discharge and water balance components as evaluation criteria for calibration of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). In this study, we integrated average annual values of surface runoff, groundwater flow, and evapotranspiration in the model evaluation procedure to constrain the selection of good model runs for the Little River Experimental Watershed in Georgia, United States. For evaluating water balance and discharge dynamics, the Nash‐Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and percent bias (PBIAS) were used. In addition, the ratio of root mean square error and standard deviation of measured data (RSR) was calculated for individual segments of the flow duration curve to identify the best model runs in terms of discharge magnitude. Our results indicate that good statistics for discharge do not guarantee realistic simulations of individual water balance components. Therefore, we recommend constraining the ranges of water balance components to achieve a more realistic simulation of the entire hydrological system, even if tradeoffs between good statistics for discharge simulations and reasonable amounts of the water balance components are unavoidable. Editor's note : This paper is part of the featured series on SWAT Applications for Emerging Hydrologic and Water Quality Challenges. See the February 2017 issue for the introduction and background to the series.     

Community participatory landscape classification and biodiversity assessment and monitoring of grazing lands in northern Kenya

In this study, we asked the Ariaal herders of northern Kenya to answer "why, what and how" they classified landscape, and assessed and monitored the biodiversity of 10 km(2) of grazing land. To answer the "why question" the herders classified grazing resources into 39 landscape patches grouped into six landscape types and classified soil as 'warm', 'intermediate' or 'cold' for the purpose of land use. For the "what question" the herders used soil conditions and vegetation characteristics to assess biodiversity. Plant species were described as 'increasers', 'decreasers' or 'stable'. The decreaser species were mostly grasses and forbs preferred for cattle and sheep grazing and the increasers were mostly woody species preferred by goats. The herders evaluated biodiversity in terms of key forage species and used absence or presence of the preferred species from individual landscapes for monitoring change in biodiversity. For the "how question" the herders used anthropogenic indicators concerned with livestock management for assessing landscape potential and suitability for grazing. The anthropogenic indicators were related to soils and biodiversity. The herders used plant species grazing preferences to determine the links between livestock production and biodiversity. By addressing these three questions, the study shows the value of incorporating the indigenous knowledge of herders into classification of landscape and assessment and monitoring of biodiversity in the grazing lands. We conclude that herder knowledge of biodiversity is related to the use as opposed to exclusive conservation practices. This type of knowledge is extremely valuable to conservation agencies for establishing a baseline for monitoring changes in biodiversity in the future.     

Toward an epistemology of public participation

This article uses an analysis of the 'knowledge politics' of the Botany Community Participation and Review Committee (CPRC) to argue that the Habermasian ideals framing the CPRC are flawed. Habermasian communicative ethics centre upon the notion that fair, free and open forms of debate and communication ensure that no one form of reasoning and/or knowledge dominates others, and so commonly frame attempts to facilitate public participation in technical decision-making. However, in practice, Habermas' advocacy of 'the power of the better argument' (1984) supports adversarial debate and favours conventionally validated (i.e. scientific) forms of knowledge over others. This article identifies this departure from the vision underpinning communicative ethics with the routine deployment of a flawed conception of knowledge. This view - that knowledge is representational in character (that is, in effect, a 'mirror' onto the world) - marginalises lay contributions by rendering them of secondary status (i.e. that they are 'values'); diminishes them by insisting that they take conventional 'expert like' representational form; and supports 'deficit model' approaches (the belief that public antipathy results from knowledge 'deficits' resolvable by expert mediated enhancements in technical literacy). A non-representational epistemology is used to argue that effective participation must rather account for how knowledge is constructed by and through processes, including those of participation/deliberation, rather than existing autonomously of them. The implications of this emphasis on processes, rather than on the sources of and formal characteristics of knowledge, are examined both for public participation and for the dynamics of late-modernity more generally.     

Lessons from Integrating Fishers of Arapaima in Small-Scale Fisheries Management at the Mamirauá Reserve,Amazon

Fishers and small-scale fisheries worldwide have been marginalized historically. Now it is clear that integrating fishers in management processes is key to resource conservation, but it is less clear how to do it. Here, based on a literature review and new information, we present and analyze a case in which the participation of fishers in the management process was crucial in recovering an overexploited small-scale fishery for the pirarucu (Arapaima spp.) in the Amazon Basin, Brazil. In 8 years of experimental management, from 1999 to 2006, the population of pirarucu increased 9-fold (from about 2200 to 20,650 individuals), harvest quotas increased 10-fold (from 120 to 1249 individuals), and fishers’ participation in the management process increased and they benefited from increased monetary returns. Additionally, the number of communities conducting the management scheme increased from 4 in 1999 to 108 in 2006, following the demands of fishers and regional government agencies. Based on our analysis, we suggest that the participation of fishers in the management of other small-scale fisheries in the world can be improved by focusing on (1) applying the knowledge and skills of fishers in resource monitoring and management, (2) bridging knowledge systems among all involved stakeholders, (3) collaborating with fishers that are interested in, and capable of conducting, resource conservation schemes, and (4) conducting management under conditions of uncertainty.     

Use and knowledge of fuelwood in three rural caatinga (dryland) communities in NE Brazil

The woody species known, used, and preferred as fuelwood were examined in three rural communities within the county of Soledade, Paraíba State, NE Brazil. Ethnobotanical information was collected using semi-structured interviews with more than 90% of the local households (55 adult residents; 31 women, and 24 males). The interviewees cited 36 plant species as fuelwoods, distributed among 30 genera and 15 families, in addition to two unidentified plants. The plant families represented by the largest numbers of species were Euphorbiaceae, Anacardiaceae, Mimosaceae, Caesalpiniaceae, Sapotaceae, and Fabaceae. The species Caesalpinia pyramidalis Tul. (“catingueira”) was cited with the greatest frequency in all three communities. Within the communities we found significant differences on the number of plants cited and actually used (p < 0.05), indicating that the residents knew more fuelwood species than they effectively harvest. The different distances from the communities to the urban centers were not related to differences on the use or the size of the stocks of fuelwood. Additionally, the study revealed that the communities examined still maintain a significant knowledge of the use of energy-providing plants in spite of the widespread use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

基于知识推理的发电企业设备风险管理应用研究

基于发电企业设备自身的特点及工作人员对风险知识认知的局限性,有必要分析发电企业设备在运行、检修中潜在的风险.分析了设备风险知识与风险管理的关系,并以发电企业各类大型设备中应用最广泛的电动机为例,解决了电动机风险知识的表达及推理问题,为实现基于知识的设备风险管理提供了一种思路,对指导发电企业的设备日常维护、巡检以及状态监测、避免不必要的损失有着积极的意义.     

知识和经验对救援人员实战心理的影响分析

为了解影响救援人员实战心理的关键因素及其作用,采用走访、专家访谈和问卷调查的方法,对我国消防部队的人员组成、心理状况和实战心理进行调查和研究,重点分析消防队员掌握灾害知识和经验积累对实战中出现的恐惧、紧张、急躁等心理的影响。研究结果表明,灾害知识和救援经验的增加对大部分消防队员均能起到消除紧张情绪的作用,知识水平和实战中的紧张与恐惧心理呈现明显的负相关,且影响显著。笔者认为:将救援队伍和人员的灾害知识培训纳入日常工作,对提高救援部队的总体作战能力具有重要作用;对于高级指挥人员,理论知识水平的提高有助于更佳的指挥应对。     

Heterogeneous and unconventional coalitions around global food risks: integrating Brazil into the debates

Current debates about food-borne risks (GMOs and BSE) have not only deepened public concern about how food is produced on farms, processed in factories, and transported, stored and traded. More importantly, these debates have exposed a crisis related to central social issues, such as the role of science, politics and business corporations in the decision-making processes for determining which risks societies should, or are prepared to, assume. In this article, I discuss how cultural and social constructivist studies of environmental and health risks and Ulrich Beck's theory of world risk society can contribute to the analysis of how to deal with these conflicts. The criticism of quantitative methods of risk analysis has resulted in a certain idealization of the lay knowledge of risks as being intuitively more correct than the scientific one. One consequence of this polarization between expert and lay knowledge—idealizing the latter—is a disappointing vagueness when looking for alternatives on how to deal practically with risks that have important consequences. A key obstacle to the implementation of some of the suggestions presented by the critical risk analysis approach is that, for example, in the current global dynamics of food-borne risks we can find heterogeneous alliances for and against GMOs allying lay people and experts, as well as conventional and unconventional social actors, in a complicated manner, at the regional, national and international levels. Since a significant part of the analysis of manufactured risks focuses on the situation of highly industrialized countries, a more complex perspective of these lay and scientific alliances can be obtained from a more extensive study of the reactions surrounding GMOs and BSE in less-industrialized countries, such as Brazil. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

知识管理导向的煤炭城市技术创新路径创造

技术创新是煤炭城市协调发展的重要支撑和根本保证,现有的煤炭城市技术创新存在着历史遗留及因其特性产生的固有障碍因素。知识管理是通过对知识资源的有效管理和利用,创造新价值和增强竞争优势的持续管理创新活动,它是破解煤炭城市技术创新路径闭锁的有力工具。