The legacy of large dams in the United States

The sustainability of large dams has been questioned on several grounds. One aspect that has been less explored is that the development of dams and reservoirs often enables agricultural expansion and urban growth, which in turn increase water consumption. As such, dam development influences, while being influenced by, the spatial and temporal distribution of both supply and demand of water resources. In this paper, we explore the interplay between large dams, patterns of population growth and agricultural expansion in the United States over the past two centuries. Based on a large-scale analysis of spatial and temporal trends, we identify three distinct phases, in which different processes dominated the interplay. Then, we focus on agricultural water use in the Southwest region (Arizona, California and Nevada) and explore chicken-and-egg dynamics where water supply partly meets and partly fuels water demand. Lastly, we show that the legacy of dams in the United States consists of a lock-in condition characterized by high levels of water consumption, especially in the Southwest, which leads to severe water crises and groundwater overexploitation when droughts occur.     

A Phenomenological Perspective on Ethical Duty in Environmental Communication

This article examines the framing of environmental risks and natural disasters in factual entertainment television programs of the early 2000s, a hybrid form combining techniques from documentary with techniques such as dramatic reconstructions and computer-generated imagery from entertainment genres. Using qualitative frame analysis, it examines a range of factual entertainment television programs' framing of environmental risk and natural disasters in terms of their attitudes, representation of human participants and visual composition. The article considers the similarities and differences in the framing of natural disasters as factual entertainment compared to the framing of natural disasters in news, documentary and fiction film. It argues that such programs offer representational frames both consonant with and distinct from other media and concludes that they problematically offer a predominantly fatalistic response to environmental risk, constructing natural disasters as voyeuristic spectacles for vicarious entertainment.     

Assessing water ecosystem services for water resource management

Ecosystem service concepts can offer a valuable approach for linking human and nature, and arguments for the conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems. Despite an increasing interest in the topic, the application of these concepts for water resource management has been hampered by the lack of practical definitions and methodologies. In this study we review and analyse the current literature and propose an approach for assessing and valuing ecosystem services in the context of water management. In particular, to study the link between multiple pressures, ecological status and delivery of ecosystem services in aquatic ecosystems under different scenarios of measures or future changes. This is of interest for the development of River Basin Management Plans under the EU Water Framework Directive. We provide a list of proxies/indicators of natural capacity, actual flow and social benefit for the biophysical assessment of the ecosystem services. We advocate the use of indicators of sustainability, combining information on capacity and flow of services. We also suggest methods for economic valuation of aquatic ecosystem for each service and spatial scale of application. We argue that biophysical assessment and economic valuation should be conducted jointly to account for the different values of ecosystem services (ecologic, social and economic) and to strengthen the recognition of human dependency on nature. The proposed approach can be used for assessing the benefits of conservation and restoration of aquatic ecosystems in the implementation of the EU water policy.     

Accumulation of Biophilic Elements in the Needles of Picea Species in Natural and Urbanized Ecosystems of Siberia and Central Asia in Relation to the Assessment of Environmental Quality

Variation in the content of N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Na, Cu, Zn, Mn, and Fe has been analyzed in the needles of 19 spruce species growing in the natural and urbanized ecosystems of Siberia and Central Asia. The results have shown that similarity in the content of biophilic elements in one-year-old needles of different species is conditioned by biochemical processes, which confirms the status of these species as passive bioindicators of environmental quality. The contents of trace elements in perennial needles, except color variations of chlorophyll, deserve further study as prospective indicators of environmental quality.     

Proposal of Indicators to Assess Urban Sustainability in Brazil

The research related here focuses on municipal situations where problems of sustainability may be defined and tackled on the basis of bottom-up management procedures with the participation of organized society. The aim is to build management models that may be implemented with reasonable administrative effort and cost. Implementation pursues the target of approaching a sustainable situation in the municipality. Environmental parameters for an ideal municipality with undefined geographical location are presented. For each parameter, a set of indicators is developed that can measure the prospect of sustainability. The indicators are defined in terms of numbers or literal concepts according to the possibility of measurement. Examples of management models are presented, which are able to approach the situation defined as sustainable by the indicators. The basic management tool is the learning curve of targeted communities, which is experimentally developed and applied. The indicators are grouped according to their range of applicability.     

PROFILE: Integrating Sustainability and Environmental Impact Assessment

/ Environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been identified as an important instrument for facilitating sustainability. However, to do so requires the integration of sustainability into EIA theory and practice. The sustainability concept is a valid and important environmental management perspective. However, many issues and obstacles need to be addressed further if the concept is to be translated into practical strategies. Sustainability can potentially infuse EIA with a clearer sense of direction, an ethical foundation, a mechanism for establishing priorities and assessing choices, and a means of linking EIA to other environmental management instruments. Conceptually, EIA and sustainability can be integrated, but frameworks should be refined, adpated to context, and linked to related initiatives. Sustainability should be explicitly incorporated into EIA legislation, guidelines, and institutional arrangements. An experimental approach to testing, assessing, and sharing experiences is suggested.A framework is first presented that defines and characterizes the sustainability concept. A further framework is then described for integrating sustainability into EIA at the conceptual level. The integration of sustainability and EIA at the regulatory level is next addressed through an overview of sustainability initiatives in EIA requirements in Canada. The Canadian examples include many promising initiatives but these and other experiences will need to be monitored, shared, and integrated into comprehensive environmental management strategies. Finally, means of incorporating sustainability into each activity in the EIA planning process are identified.KEY WORDS: Sustainability; Environmental impact assessment     

“Measuring Sustainability”: A Multi-Criterion Framework

So far, the elementary question of whether one country’s or region’s economy is moving towards sustainability or away from it cannot be answered with unanimous consensus on the ‘measuring rod(s)’ to be employed. The main assumption of this article is that sustainability assessment needs a set of multi-dimensional indicators. From this assumption a question arises: how could such indicators be aggregated? Often, some indicators improve while others deteriorate. For instance, when incomes grow, SO₂ might go down while CO₂ increases. It has to be noted that this is the classical conflictual situation studied in multi-criteria decision theory. The use of a multi-criterion framework for making operational the ‘measuring of sustainability’ is discussed here by means of illustrative examples and more formal arguments.     

The environmental impact of industrialization in East Asia and strategies toward sustainable development

The East Asian economy has been growing fast in recent years, and environmental stresses are building up rapidly. Transboundary air pollution, water shortages, drinking water contamination, freshwater and marine pollution, deforestation, climatic disasters, and other environmental problems are becoming serious threats to the well-being of people in this densely populated region. The ESI (environmental sustainability index) reported by the World Economic Forum in 2005 is a good indicator of the environmental status of the region; most East Asian countries ranked at the bottom. East Asia is not moving toward a sustainable society, and the environment will not sustain the current rate of economic development for long. The traditional culture of East Asia used to be sustainable, so we can learn much from our traditions. Land use should be planned from an ecological point of view so as to best preserve the land’s productivity and stability. There should be definite goals as to where and how much to preserve the three important ecological bases: forests, coastal wetlands and agricultural farms. The forest is the base for the terrestrial ecosystem, including flood control, water resources, and climate; the coastal wetland is the base for the marine ecosystem; farmland is the base for producing food. Within these defined goals, limits should be set on how much land can be utilized for activities like urban development, manufacturing, and recreation. Limits on the pollution load resulting from such activities should be set so as not to irreversibly damage the environment. Economic development should be planned to allow the use of energy and resources only after satisfying these constraints.

Blogging for Sustainability: The Intermediary Role of Personal Green Blogs in Promoting Sustainability

The rise of social media radically broadens the sources and platforms used for environmental communication. Especially personal green blogs are worthy of study as they are spaces of everyday cultural politics through which people make sense of sustainability issues, and because they entail a radical break from conventional media in terms of legitimacy, form, and content of environmental communication processes. This paper studies the representation of sustainability on personal green blogs, and the communication processes through which these representations are constructed. It does so through a qualitative study of Swedish-language blogs. We study three blogs in-depth: a living experiment blog on sustainable food practices; a lifestyle blog centered around green family life; and a blog about consuming green beauty products. The analysis shows that all three blogs translate the complex landscape of sustainability to individual everyday practices. Yet, what these sustainability practices entail differs considerably between the blogs, ranging from a-political and doable lifestyle choices to an onset to radical redefining of consumption. Also, the communication processes on the blogs differ in quality and quantity. The paper uses these insights to reflect on the debates about how environmental communication is shaped by blogging and social media practices.