A Paradigm of International Environmental Law: The Case for Controlling the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes

The production of large quantities of wastes globally has created a commercial activity involving the transfrontier shipments of hazardous wastes, intended to be managed at economically attractive waste-handling facilities located elsewhere. In fact, huge quantities of hazardous wastes apparently travel the world in search of “acceptable” waste management facilities. For instance, within the industrialized countries alone, millions of tonnes of potentially hazardous waste cross national frontiers each year on their way for recycling or to treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) because there is no local disposal capacity for these wastes, or because legal disposal or reuse in a foreign country may be more environmentally sound, or managing the wastes in the foreign country may be less expensive than at home. The cross-boundary traffic in hazardous wastes has lately been under close public scrutiny, however, resulting in the accession of several international agreements and laws to regulate such activities. This paper discusses and analyzes the most significant control measures and major agreements in this new commercial activity involving hazardous wastes. In particular, the discussion recognizes the difficulties with trying to implement the relevant international agreements among countries of vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds. Nonetheless, it is also noted that global environmental agreements will generally be a necessary component of ensuring adequate environmental protection for the world community—and thus a need for the careful implementation of such agreements and regulations.     

The Concept of Habitat Diversity Between and Within Ecosystems Applied to River Side-Arm Restoration

Since returning an ecosystem to its pristine state may not be realistic in every situation, the concept of habitat diversity is proposed to help decision-makers in defining realistic restoration objectives. In order to maintain habitat diversity and enhance the long-term success of restoration, process-oriented projects should be preferred to species-oriented ones. Because the hydrogeomorphological processes that influence biodiversity operate at different spatiotemporal scales, three scales are considered: river sectors, floodplain waterbodies, and mesohabitats within each waterbody. Based on a bibliographical review, three major driving forces are proposed for incorporation into the design of restoration projects: (1) flow velocity and flood disturbances, (2) hydrological connectivity, and (3) water supply. On the sector scale, increased habitat diversity between waterbodies can be achieved by combining various intensities of these driving forces. On the waterbody scale, increased habitat diversity within the ecosystem can be achieved by varying water depth, velocity, and substrate. The concept is applied to a Rhône River sector (France) where three terrestrialized side arms will be restored. Two were designed to be flood scoured, one having an additional supply of groundwater, the other being connected to the river at both ends. The third cannot be scoured by floods because of upstream construction and would be supplied by river backflow through a downstream connection. Habitat diversity within the ecosystem is exemplified on one side arm through the design of a sinuous pathway combined with variation of water depth, wetted width, and substrate grain size. Self-colonization of the side arms is expected owing to the restoration of connectivity to upstream sources of potential colonizers.     

Environmental indices in irrigation management

Irrigation management calls for objective criteria capable of representing the economy, reliability, and productivity of irrigation systems. These criteria must be compatible with long-term sustainability and conservation goals. The criteria representing the above goals are the economic effect of management on yield reduction, economic effect, and reliability referring to plant growth and operation of the network. In this study environmental indices are introduced to express the above criteria in quantitative terms. The inclusion of these indices at the farm and network level create a multicriteria framework for decision-making based on composite programming. An experimental study was conducted during the irrigation periods of 1989 and 1990 in Chania, Greece, concerning water delivered to 40 experimental plots, soil moisture content at the rootzone, and irrigation system operational failures. The data collected in real time were used for the calculation of the corresponding environmental indices. The variation in time and space is high and resulted in up to 62% of yield loss and low system performance (up to 7% of system temporal reliability). The study indicated that environmental indices could be incorporated to select alternatives and also to develop policies on water delivery. The final decision involves a trade-off analysis between cost of application and desired system performance. Measures of both primary objectives can be obtained using environmental indices that represent system operation aggregation at its basic levels (on farm and network).     

The Cost of Developing Site-Specific Environmental Regulations: Evidence from EPA's Project XL

The flagship of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory reinvention initiative, Project XL has been touted as a regulatory blueprint for a site-specific, performance-based pollution-control system, but widespread complaints about the costs of the program beg the question of whether the costs of tailoring regulations to individual facilities are manageable. To address this question, this paper presents original survey data on a sample of 11 XL projects. We find that the fixed costs of putting in place XL agreements are substantial, averaging over $450,000 per firm. While stakeholder negotiations are widely cited as the principal source for these costs, we find that they actually arise mainly from interaction between participating facilities and the EPA. Moreover, EPA management problems are perceived by our survey respondents as having inflated project development costs. Finally, we find that the key factors that explains differences in costs across XL projects are the scope and complexity of the project proposal. These findings suggest that Project XL favors large firms that can afford to pay significant project development costs, that EPA management problems must be resolved to reduce costs, and that there may be a significant economic bias against complex and innovative proposals—precisely the type of proposals that Project XL was designed to foster in order to improve the efficiency of the regulatory system.     

Evaluating Nonpoint Pollution Policy Using a Tightly Coupled Spatial Decision Support System

Policy makers often must rely on the cumulative impact of independent actions taken by local landowners to achieve environmental goals. The connection between policy, regulation, and local action, however, is often not well understood and, thus, the impact of proposed policies may be difficult to predict. In this study we evaluate the effectiveness of alternative policy scenarios for agricultural set aside programs (e.g., the conservation reserve program administered by the United States Department of Agriculture) in reducing nonpoint pollution. Two alternative policy scenarios are developed and analyzed; one based on the erodibility index (detachment), the other sediment yield (transport). An estimate of the cumulative impact of associated land use change on nonpoint pollution is made using the AGNPS distributed parameter watershed model. This work is completed within the Cypress Creek watershed in southern Illinois. An analysis of the resulting data suggests that the most efficacious regulatory strategy for achieving nonpoint water pollution goals depends, in part, on place-specific land use patterns. This conclusion provides a solid argument for place-based regulatory strategies.     

Changing Farmers' Land Management Practices in the Hills of Nepal

This paper sheds light on changing farmers' land management practices in two mountain watersheds, with and without external assistance, in the western hills of Nepal. Information used in the analysis were obtained through a survey of 300 households, group discussion, key informant interviews, and field observation conducted during April–September 1999. Confronted with ever-decreasing landholding size due to a steadily growing population and scarcity of nonfarming employment opportunities, farmers in both watersheds have increasingly adopted assorted types of structural and biological measures to control soil erosion, landslides, gully expansion, and soil nutrient loss to maintain or even enhance land productivity. Adoption of gully control measures, construction of the retention walls, alley cropping, use of vegetative measures for landslide control, mulching, and use of green manure and chemical fertilizers are found significantly high in the project area due to the provision of technical and financial support, whereas composting is found significantly high in the nonproject area. Different from the traditionally held beliefs, population pressure on a finite land resource has brought positive change in land management. However, the experience from both watersheds indicates that there is limit to the extent that resource poor farmers can respond to land degradation without any external assistance. Required is the arrangement for appropriate polices and support services and facilities enabling farmers to adopt locationally suitable and economically attractive land management technologies.     

Quantifying Forest Visibility with Spatial Data

We use spatial data representing transportation networks, elevation, stand height, and recreation use to construct and compare models of recreation use patterns and visibility in a forest. The recreation use pattern model depicts use frequencies along travel corridors. The visibility model quantifies visibility for all forest areas. We find that the models provide different but complementary types of information. Forest managers who are involved in scheduling harvest operations and want to address the visual concerns of forest visitors may benefit most from the visibility model. Managers who wish to know more about travel patterns or to reroute forest visitors affected by operations may benefit from the use pattern model. A combination of the two models has the highest potential for providing planning assistance in multiple-use forests. Both models may be able to enhance visual resource management (VRM) systems already in use by providing spatially explicit recreation use and visibility data.     

Evaluation of a Collaborative Model: A Case Study Analysis of Watershed Planning in theIntermountain West

Collaborative planning processes have become increasingly popular for addressing environmental planning issues, resulting in a number of conceptual models for collaboration. A model proposed by Selin and Chavez suggests that collaboration emerges from a series of antecedents and then proceeds sequentially through problem-setting, direction-setting, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation phases. This paper summarizes an empirical study to evaluate if the Selin and Chavez model encompasses the range of factors important for the establishment and operation of collaboration in watershed planning from the perspective of the planning coordinator. Analysis of three case studies of watershed based planning efforts in the Intermountain West suggests the model realistically describes some of the fundamental collaborative elements in watershed planning. Particularly important factors include the involvement of stakeholders in data collection and analysis and the establishment of measurable objectives. Informal face-to-face dialog and watershed field tours were considered critical for identifying issues and establishing trust among stakeholders. Group organizational structure also seems to play a key role in facilitating collaboration. From this analysis, suggestions for refining the model are proposed.     

Biological and Social Feasibility of Sesbania Fallow Practice in Small Holder Agricultural Farms in Developing Countries: A Zambian Case Study

Many small holder farmers in developing countries face problems of declining soil fertility and crop yields and insufficient money to buy expensive inorganic fertilizers. The Sesbania fallow system, an agroforestry technology, seems to hold a key to these problems. Based on field studies in eastern Zambia, this paper reports that fallow system has the potential to improve and sustain soil productivity in the small holder farms. However, the paper also reports that the ability for subsistence farmers to adopt the Sesbania fallow system is affected by gender differences in resource allocation to productive resources and institutional, cultural, and social structural settings in which farmers exist and make decisions.     

Value to wildlife of urban-agricultural parks: a case study from Rome urban area

Urban-agricultural parks could have some advantages to wildlife because of less intensive agricultural procedures, absence of hunting pressure, and reduced human disturbance. In this study, the breeding and wintering bird communities and the small mammal community in an urban-agricultural park of Rome were compared to those of a close urban park and a close agricultural area just outside the city. The aim was to assess the best destination and management of wildlife in natural areas at the urban–rural interface. Richness and diversity of bird communities were higher in the urban-agricultural park. Due to habitat features and probably human disturbances, but not to urbanization, predation, and competition factors, the urban park drastically reduces the abundance of decreasing open-land bird species. Abundance of these species was not significantly different in the urban-agricultural park and in the agricultural area. In the urban-agricultural and urban park, bird and mammal pest species were more abundant than they were in the agricultural area. Regarding decreasing abundance of small mammal species, no significant difference among the study areas was observed. Urban-agricultural park is a better choice than urban park for wildlife. Thus, a higher number of preserved urban natural areas should be devoted to urban-agricultural parks. However, to increase the abundance of open-land species and in general wildlife, a less intensive management of cultivated and pasture patches is necessary.