Using Relative Risk to Compare the Effects of Aquatic Stressors at a Regional Scale

The regional-scale importance of an aquatic stressor depends both on its regional extent (i.e., how widespread it is) and on the severity of its effects in ecosystems where it is found. Sample surveys, such as those developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP), are designed to estimate and compare the extents, throughout a large region, of elevated conditions for various aquatic stressors. In this article, we propose relative risk as a complementary measure of the severity of each stressor’s effect on a response variable that characterizes aquatic ecological condition. Specifically, relative risk measures the strength of association between stressor and response variables that can be classified as either “good” (i.e., reference) or “poor” (i.e., different from reference). We present formulae for estimating relative risk and its confidence interval, adapted for the unequal sample inclusion probabilities employed in EMAP surveys. For a recent EMAP survey of streams in five Mid-Atlantic states, we estimated the relative extents of eight stressors as well as their relative risks to aquatic macroinvertebrate assemblages, with assemblage condition measured by an index of biotic integrity (IBI). For example, a measure of excess sedimentation had a relative risk of 1.60 for macroinvertebrate IBI, with the meaning that poor IBI conditions were 1.6 times more likely to be found in streams having poor conditions of sedimentation than in streams having good sedimentation conditions. We show how stressor extent and relative risk estimates, viewed together, offer a compact and comprehensive assessment of the relative importances of multiple stressors.     

Choosing policy instruments for controlling ozone depleting substances in a developing context: the case of Chile

Chile ratified the Montreal Protocol in 1990 which sets out an agenda for the reduction and then elimination of ozone depleting substances (ODS); however, by 1998 the country had not yet defined a strategy to encourage greater compliance, so that in the same year the National Environmental Commission decided to examine the policy options available. This paper examines the process followed to develop this strategy. As a first step it was necessary to look at how far the implicit policy of "business as usual" could be stretched without jeopardizing Chile's compliance obligations. A second step included quantifying compliance costs and their impact on different policy instruments and so policy choice. Finally, the attitudes of decision-makers or participants were identified, by interviews with officials of the different public agents involved, in order to weigh their views about policy. A strategy was proposed, based on this information, which the Chilean regulator has used, although not in its entirety. The methodology developed could well be useful for developing-country Protocol signatories building their own appropriate compliance strategy.     

Dams in the Amazon: Belo Monte and Brazil’s Hydroelectric Development of the Xingu River Basin

Hydroelectric dams represent major investments and major sources of environmental and social impacts. Powerful forces surround the decision-making process on public investments in the various options for the generation and conservation of electricity. Brazil’s proposed Belo Monte Dam (formerly Kararaô) and its upstream counterpart, the Altamira Dam (better known by its former name of Babaquara) are at the center of controversies on the decision-making process for major infrastructure projects in Amazonia. The Belo Monte Dam by itself would have a small reservoir area (440 km²) and large installed capacity (11, 181.3 MW), but the Altamira/Babaquara Dam that would regulate the flow of the Xingu River (thereby increasing power generation at Belo Monte) would flood a vast area (6140 km²). The great impact of dams provides a powerful reason for Brazil to reassess its current policies that allocate large amounts of energy in the country’s national grid to subsidized aluminum smelting for export. The case of Belo Monte and the five additional dams planned upstream (including the Altamira/Babaquara Dam) indicate the need for Brazil to reform its environmental assessment and licensing system to include the impacts of multiple interdependent projects.     

Assessment of Environmental Water Demands (EWD) of Forests for Two Distinct Indian Ecosystems

Sustainable use of water and land resources requires that these scarce resources be appropriately allocated among various competing human activities. Worldwide, there is a realization now that sustainable river basin management should be accorded the highest priority, because it deals not only with technical, but also with ecological and socioeconomic aspects, and thus calls for a multidisciplinary and integrated approach. However, most of the policy and planning documents have either remained silent, or have made only implicit reference to the importance of environmental water demand (EWD) and its quantification. Therefore, in the light of its importance, a methodology has been evolved in this article for quantifying EWD for various forested areas in two distinctly different Indian river basins: Brahmani (humid zone) and Sabarmati (dry zone). The article analyzes and discusses EWD estimates at three different spatial levels: river basins, states, and districts within them, and finally presents a comparative analysis of all these results. Findings of the present study will be immensely useful in understanding various ecological issues connected with water resource projects and proposals in these river basins.     

Assessing the Institutional Effectiveness of State Environmental Agencies in Turkey

Improving the performance of the state environmental agencies (SEAs) necessitates an effective institutionalization of governmental environmental management functions. There are examples of successful and unsuccessful SEAs in several parts of the world. Analysis and assessment of these cases can deliver useful insights for institution builders. The objective of this article is the assessment of the institutional effectiveness of the SEAs in Turkey through the perceptions of the experts using the Delphi Technique. In this regard, a checklist is developed including 16 criteria and 123 subcriteria to measure the institutional effectiveness of the SEAs. Twenty-eight national and international experts have formed a Delphi panel and evaluated the national and local conditions. Results, based on the perceptions of the experts, indicate that the overall effectiveness of the SEAs is far less than satisfactory. Negative consensus has been reached over the effectiveness of 13 of the16 criteria and 95 of the123 subcriteria; however, no consensus has been achieved over the remainder of the parameters. The survey has also proven that the Delphi Technique can be effectively used for that purpose. Utilization of the checklist method is also useful in diagnosing the problematic components of the SEAs. It is recommended that this approach be used in similar cases elsewhere.     

Definition of Homogeneous Environmental Management Units for the Catalan Coast

Geographical areas constitute the basic implementation locus for integrated coastal zone management strategies and activities. Because the definition of territorial planning objectives may be affected by socioeconomic and environmental characteristics, one of the main steps in the process involves dividing the coast into homogeneous environmental management units (HEMUs). This article presents a general and simple method for regionalizing the landside of a coastal zone into HEMUs and illustrates it through application to the Catalan coast. Socioeconomic and natural (biophysical) subsystems were selected as the most appropriate dimensions of the regionalization process. Dimensions were described using 11 spatial themes, which were managed in a geographic information system environment that proved to be an adequate tool for the purpose. A final coastal zone map of four classes of HEMUs connected to local administrative units was obtained, and because it reflects the current natural and socioeconomic dynamics, it can be considered as an initial step in the planning process for the Catalan coast. Although the proposed method was developed based on the characteristics of the Catalan coast, it is general enough to be adapted and applied to most developed or developing coastal areas.     

Synergistic Techniques for Better Understanding and Classifying the Environmental Structure of Landscapes

The desire to capture natural regions in the landscape has been a goal of geographic and environmental classification and ecological land classification (ELC) for decades. Since the increased adoption of data-centric, multivariate, computational methods, the search for natural regions has become the search for the best classification that optimally trades off classification complexity for class homogeneity. In this study, three techniques are investigated for their ability to find the best classification of the physical environments of the Mt. Lofty Ranges in South Australia: AutoClass-C (a Bayesian classifier), a Kohonen Self-Organising Map neural network, and a k-means classifier with homogeneity analysis. AutoClass-C is specifically designed to find the classification that optimally trades off classification complexity for class homogeneity. However, AutoClass analysis was not found to be assumption-free because it was very sensitive to the user-specified level of relative error of input data. The AutoClass results suggest that there may be no way of finding the best classification without making critical assumptions as to the level of class heterogeneity acceptable in the classification when using continuous environmental data. Therefore, rather than relying on adjusting abstract parameters to arrive at a classification of suitable complexity, it is better to quantify and visualize the data structure and the relationship between classification complexity and class homogeneity. Individually and when integrated, the Self-Organizing Map and k-means classification with homogeneity analysis techniques also used in this study facilitate this and provide information upon which the decision of the scale of classification can be made. It is argued that instead of searching for the elusive classification of natural regions in the landscape, it is much better to understand and visualize the environmental structure of the landscape and to use this knowledge to select the best ELC at the required scale of analysis.     

Policy Windows, Policy Change, and Organizational Learning: Watersheds in the Evolution of Watershed Management

Employing in-depth, elite interviews, this empirical research contributes to understanding the dynamics among policy windows, policy change, and organizational learning. First, although much of the research on agenda setting—how issues attract enough attention that action is taken to address them—has been conducted at the national scale, this work explores the subnational, regional scale. With decentralization, regional-scale environmental decision-making has become increasingly important. Second, this research highlights the role of policy windows and instances of related organizational learning identified by natural resources managers. Having practitioners identify focusing events contrasts with the more typical approach of the researcher identifying a particular focusing event or events to investigate. A focusing event is a sudden, exceptional experience that, because of how it leads to harm or exposes the prospect for great devastation, is perceived as the impetus for policy change.     

Costa Rican Environmental Service Payments: The Use of a Financial Instrument in Participatory Forest Management

The core element of the Costa Rican forestry policy is a financial instrument called the environmental service payment. This instrument rewards forest owners for the environmental services (the mitigation of greenhouse gases, the protection of watersheds and scenic beauty, and the development of biodiversity) their forests provide. In this article, the experiences with this new instrument are analyzed by focusing on the way interests are represented and access is granted, the openness of information exchange, whether social learning occurred, and whether decision-making authority is shared. The analysis is based on a survey conducted in the Huetar Norte Region and on in-depth interviews with the major stakeholders. The Costa Rican case indicates that financial instruments can be used to share responsibilities and that stakeholders can successfully cooperate on forest issues. It also shows that such a participatory approach is only promising if certain cultural, economic, organizational, and political conditions are met.     

Communicative Aspects of Environmental Management by Objectives: Examples from the Swedish Context

Management by objectives (MBO) is a technique for integrating ecological concerns into national political and administrative structures. Politicians determine environmental objectives and interim targets to be implemented and assessed by civil servants in national, regional, and local contexts. Well-developed organizational communication is a prerequisite for MBO. However, communication-related obstacles can arise when using MBO in public environmental management. We examine communicative aspects of environmental MBO, looking specifically at the implementation, administration, and assessment of Swedish environmental quality objectives. Our argument is illustrated by quotations from individual and focus group interviews. We conclude that communicative problems may arise, because different actors interpret messages from different perspectives, depending on their agendas, prior knowledge and experience, and positions in the administrative system. It is crucial to recognize the dialogical aspects of communication, by involving the receiver of a message in a process of response. In addition, the different timeframes underlying different arguments could contribute to misunderstandings between actors involved in handling environmental issues. In assessing the achievement of environmental objectives, indicators are used as communicative tools. It is important to investigate whether and how these indicators contribute to the de- and recontextualization of environmental objectives.