Sustainable development and environmental protection: A perspective on current trends and future options for universities

Problems of sustainable development and environmental protection pose a challenge to humanity unprecedented in scope and complexity. Whether and how the problems are resolved have significant implications for human and ecological well-being. In this paper, I discuss briefly recent international recommendations to promote sustainable development and environmental protection. I then offer a perspective on the roles and prospects of the university in promoting sustainable development and environmental protection.     

Evaluation model for developing,implementing, and assessing conservation education programs: Examples from Belize and Costa Rica

Evaluation of conservation education programs can: (1) provide accountability in demonstrating a program's worth, (2) offer an opportunity for receiving feedback and improving programs, (3) further our understanding of the process of program development, and (4) promote conservation education by substantiating claims about its benefits. The Planning-Process-Product systems evaluation model provides feedback needed for making decisions about the development, implementation, and outcome of a program. Planning evaluation was useful in assessing the needs, goals, opportunities, and constraints of a number of programs in Costa Rica and Belize, such as a forestry education project and a zoo outreach program. It provided a basis for making planning decisions incorporating specific objectives, such as the reforestation of a region or a change in knowledge and attitudes in program participants. Process evaluation provided a Costa Rican sustainable development program with feedback during its implementation and enabled it to modify and improve its newsletter for local farmers and its ecology classes for school children. Product evaluation assessed project accomplishments, such as the $700,000 raised by the Children's Rainforest group and the 20 miles of riparian land under conservation management as part of the Belize Community Baboon Sanctuary project. Outcomes are compared with the programs original monetary or land management objectives to determine the success of the programs and to provide feedback for improvement.     

Doubling sockeye salmon production in the Fraser River—Is this sustainable development?

We evaluate a proposal to double sockeye salmon production from the Fraser River and conclude that significant changes will be required to current management processes, particularly the way available catch is allocated, if the plan is to be consistent with five major principles embodied in the concept of sustainable development. Doubling sockeye salmon production will not, in itself, increase economic equity either regionally or globally. Developing nations may actually be hindered in their attempts to institute other, nonsalmon fisheries in the North Pacific Ocean as a result of the possible interception of salmon. Further, other users of the Fraser River basin will have to forgo opportunities so that salmon habitat can be conserved. If doubling sockeye salmon production is to meet the goal of doing more with less, it will be necessary to develop more efficient technologies to harvest the fish. If increasing salmon production is to reflect the integration of environmental and economic decision making at the highest level, then a serious attempt must be made to incorporate environmental assets into national economic accounting. Finally, to promote biodiversity and cultural self-sufficiency within the Fraser River basin, it will be important to safeguard the small, less-productive salmon stocks as well as the large ones and to allocate a substantial portion of the increased production to the Native Indian community.     

Applying the principle of sustainability to coastal sand mining: The case of Pakiri-Mangawhai Beach,New Zealand

The purpose of New Zealand's Resource Management Act (1991) is to promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources. Coastal sand mining may be consistent with this purpose where: (1) extractions occur from sediment systems open to inputs of sediment, and the volumes extracted do not limit the natural development, physical characteristics, and ecological diversity of the coastal environments affected; or (2) extractions from palimpsest or relict sedimentary deposits occur at a rate where the rate of extraction is insignificant compared with the volume of the resource. The response of coastal sand mining companies and consent-granting authorities to the requirements of the Resource Management Act (1991) are examined with respect to recent applications to mine sand from a coastal sand body in the Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand. The assessments of environmental effects (AEE) submitted in support of these applications do not establish the sustainability of the sand mining operations. Specifically they do not define the dimensions of the active sediment system, quantify the volume of the related resource, or state the period within which sustainability is achievable. Further, the AEE do not consider the cumulative effects of the extractions, either in terms of the total volume of sand mined or the cumulative effects of different anthropogenic activities. The test of sustainability demands a quality of information and understanding of coastal systems that is well beyond that obtained in the past or accepted at present. There is a clear need for New Zealand's resource management legislation to be supplemented by technical guidelines that help ensure the test of sustainability is rigorously applied.     

Groundwater in the Limpopo Basin: occurrence,use and impact

The Limpopo River Basin is underlain by an alluvial aquifer along the main river stem and fractured water-bearing units in tributary catchments. Notwithstanding that development priorities in parts of the basin in South Africa have historically preferred surface water sources for irrigation and domestic supply, water resources auditing suggests that groundwater presents the only viable alternative source of cost-effective supply to meet future requirements. However, while aquifer yields are favourable in places, averaging 16.7 l/s for main-stem alluvium, groundwater is already extensively used. Between 1995 and 2002, total groundwater use in the area rose by almost 40%, increasing from 98 to 136 million m³ per year. In all catchments, groundwater use grew by varying proportions, reaching a rather high 200% in the Mogalakwena catchment. In the particular case of commercial irrigation, over-exploitation of groundwater has been recorded in a number of places, especially in the northwest where drawdowns of more than 50 m have resulted from decades of intense agricultural water use. Although groundwater use for mining is still low at 4% of total usage in the study area, the region is currently witnessing a surge in mining operations, and a significant growth in water requirements is envisaged for mining development. Further, domestic water supply to the predominantly rural dwellers in the area is relatively low, even in terms of meeting the basic need of 25 l/day per person, underscoring the fact that groundwater will remain a critical source of community drinking water in the foreseeable future. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

“The Good Life”: Engaging the public with community-based carbon reduction strategies

In recent years the UK has positioned itself to become a global leader in addressing climate change. Along with this positioning, there has been an increasing emphasis on the role of communities to facilitate, increase and sustain carbon reduction practices. Previous research into community-based carbon reduction projects has highlighted the difficulty of engaging the public in community initiatives and sustaining pro-environmental behaviours. The importance placed on addressing climate change necessitates an understanding of how individuals respond to, and engage with, (or even ignore) community-based carbon reduction strategies. The paper presents findings from focus groups in three urban communities and investigates individual engagements with community-based carbon reduction strategies. Focusing on the three dimensions of engagement: cognitive; affective and; behavioural, the paper discusses what people know, feel and do about addressing climate change at the community level. An “information-vacuum” is reported that leads to an “awareness-involvement gap” that inhibits sustained engagement with community projects. Drawing on these findings, the paper advances a new theoretical framework and a “what works” approach for community-based initiatives attempting to meaningfully engage the public with addressing climate change and sustainable living.     

Tracing operational conditions for the Ecologically Sustainable Economic Development: the Pareto optimality and the preservation of the biological crucial levels

The operational designing of Environmentally Sustainable Economic Development (ESED) emerges as an urgent and demanding task. Even though ESED has paved the way for thought-provoking and constructive scientific dialogue, appeal for designing an operational ESED is still lagging behind the needs of contemporary societies, leaving much to be desired. With this in mind, the present paper will aim at delineating principles for the operational application of ESED. First, the preservation of crucial properties of environmental functions and ecosystems, emerges as a prime condition of ESED. The second condition concerns the provision of the economic process with sufficient natural inputs; in this context, the paper intends to trace certain operational tenets governing the use of natural resources. Finally, the appropriate institutional settings for the operational design of ESED are traced. Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue     

Development and valuation of adaptation pathways for storm water management infrastructure

Policymakers today are faced with a difficult task of planning for large scale infrastructure that can cater to the climatic and socio-economic changes that the future will bring. To address the deeply uncertain nature resulting from long-term changes, it is becoming necessary to develop strategies that support flexibility and react more strategically than traditional planning approaches. This paper applies the concept of adaptation tipping points and adaptation pathways to a case study in Singapore for the planning of long-term urban drainage infrastructure. Using conventional grey and sustainable green solutions in isolation and in combination, adaptation pathway maps are developed and compared across outlined climatic and landuse scenarios. To understand and justify if the imparted flexibility is worth its cost, economic assessments are performed. This is a valuable extension of the existing framework, helps to identify the preferred configuration of land use and sub-select adaptation actions that should be implemented at the current time frame. The main finding of this study is that the adaptation pathways map for the sustainable grey landuse scenario economically outperforms those of the other outlined land uses. This provides a valuable insight for policy makers, as it implies that if carefully planned development is undertaken, the requirements of storm water management can be met in a sustainable manner, while simultaneously freeing up land for other purposes. This is especially important in the context of highly dense urban areas such as Singapore, where land is a scare resource.     

A Functional Land Management conceptual framework under soil drainage and land use scenarios

Agricultural soils offer multiple soil functions, which contribute to a range of ecosystem services, and the demand for the primary production function is expected to increase with a growing world population. Other key functions on agricultural land have been identified as water purification, carbon sequestration, habitat biodiversity and nutrient cycling, which all need to be considered for sustainable intensification. All soils perform all functions simultaneously, but the variation in the capacity of soils to supply these functions is reviewed in terms of defined land use types (arable, bio-energy, broadleaf forest, coniferous forest, managed grassland, other grassland and Natura 2000) and extended to include the influence of soil drainage characteristics (well, moderately/imperfect, poor and peat). This latter consideration is particularly important in the European Atlantic pedo-climatic zone; the spatial scale of this review. This review develops a conceptual framework on the multi-functional capacity of soils, termed Functional Land Management, to facilitate the effective design and assessment of agri-environmental policies. A final functional soil matrix is presented as an approach to show the consequential changes to the capacity of the five soil functions associated with land use change on soils with contrasting drainage characteristics. Where policy prioritises the enhancement of particular functions, the matrix indicates the potential trade-offs for individual functions or the overall impact on the multi-functional capacity of soil. The conceptual framework is also applied by land use area in a case study, using the Republic of Ireland as an example, to show how the principle of multi-functional land use planning can be readily implemented.