More aid, better institutions, or both?

It has been nearly 20 years since a working definition for “sustainable development” was put forward by the World Commission on Environment and Development. The concept endures in the mission statements and frameworks of action of various societal actors, including those of neighborhood associations, metropolitan development authorities, environmental ministries, and United Nations (UN) specialized organizations, to name a few. Yet many observers doubt that sustainable development is occurring in poor countries. This failure, the critics contend, stems from miserly transfers of foreign aid. The extent to which inadequate aid is to blame for poor environmental/developmental outcomes is an open question. But vocal demands for increasing aid to meet sustainable development goals come from many parts of society and are persistent. Exhortations for more aid to help poor countries are noble, perhaps even justifiable, but there are understandable doubts about the wisdom of transferring large capital and technical resources to countries that are slow to adopt needed institutional reforms. Aid without institutional reform is a recipe for wasted resources and donor fatigue. Worse, it may enhance inequities of wealth and power in recipient countries. There are few illustrations to draw on demonstrating how institutionally impoverished societies are affected when they are compelled to absorb massive aid inputs over a short period––a remedy suggested by some prominent aid experts. As a proxy, it is valuable to examine instances where swift macroeconomic changes, spurred by external investment and export-led growth, has occurred without significant institutional development. The case of Equatorial Guinea and its sudden oil riches is examined to discern whether, in the absence of meaningful institutional reform, rapid and profound increases in foreign direct investment and export income enable poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

Improving the environmental performance of machine-tools: influence of technology and throughput on the electrical energy consumption of a press-brake

Machine-tools have been identified as one of the main energy-using products to be analyzed in an Ecodesign perspective, targeting the reduction of their environmental impact. Following this, machine-tool manufacturers are committed to anticipate eminent regulations and are looking for guidelines to improve their products on an effective and low-cost manner. This paper describes part of the energy consumption study followed in the frame of the Ecodesign of a commercial press-brake. All-hydraulic and all-electric commercially available systems, of different capacities and working in real production scenarios, have been included. From this study, a preliminary version of an LCI dataset for the bending process is proposed, structured in technology, machine capacity and usage mode categories, and using the bending cycle as the reference unit. The energy consumption per category was estimated based on a specific process energy model built as a function of the referred parameters. The contribution of the respective machine-tool structure to the environmental impact of the machining process is to be included, targeting the completion of such machining unit process dataset. The full LCA of an all-hydraulic system revealed the significant contribution of the machine-tool structure to the global life-cycle environmental impact of the machine (about 40%), while electricity during use phase contributes with about 46% to the total impact. This contradicts the general results published for other metal and non-metal forming processes, and is understood to be related with the discrete loading character of such forming processes here discussed.     

Emerging design strategies in sustainable production and consumption of textiles and clothing

This study contributes to current knowledge of sustainability in textile and clothing production and consumption. When the textile and clothing industry aims to promote sustainability, the main change factors have been linked to eco-materials and ethical issues in production. At present, however, business models are mainly linked with a large volume of sales and production. Although industrial development has moved toward smaller environmental impact, production as well as consumption has increased to levels where the benefits of technological development are reduced. A change is thus needed to reach a systemic transformation, not only in production but also in consumption. The aim of this paper is to open up the discussion on opportunities for radical change in this industry. The paper presents ways to rethink and redesign business in the textile and clothing field by offering an overview on several design strategies that exist today in niche markets. Furthermore we evaluate how interested consumers are in these design strategies and discuss the opportunities these design approaches offer to sustainable development through new value creation.     

从生态旅游到低碳旅游——从理念到实践

阐述了生态旅游、低碳旅游的基本概念,分析了生态旅游存在的不足,提出低碳旅游的量化及建立各项标准及其指标评价体系并将之融入低碳旅游全过程以实现低碳旅游的标准化,重点在于实现低碳理念、低碳参与者及低碳实践3个方面的有机结合,以促进旅游业的可持续发展的可操作性建议.     

对拜泉县生态农业建设与可持续发展的思考

结合拜泉县生态农业建设的具体经验,介绍了生态建设的具体做法,总结了生态农业建设取得的成就,对县域生态农业建设具有一定的参考价值.     

基于灰色理论的民航燃油消耗量预测模型及应用

民航运输中燃油消耗量的精确预测对能源需求的科学规划和决策具有重要参考价值,针对民航燃油消耗量历史数据少的特点,通过灰色系统建模、关联度分析以及残差辨识,建立了民航燃油消耗量的灰色预测模型,以均方差比值和小误差概率两项评级指标,将预测结果与精度检验等级的对比分析表明灰色预测民航燃油消耗量的拟合精度高,预测结果较为可靠。     

东北老工业区环境与经济可持续发展的研究

为保证我国东北老工业区的社会、经济、环境全面协调可持续发展,从东北老工业区的概况,社会、经济、环境问题的现状入手,对其社会系统、经济系统和环境系统在地区发展中面临的困境和主要问题进行了分析;立足于系统科学的角度,从社会、经济、环境3个系统方面,为东北老工业区提出了协调可持续发展的宏观建议。     

Towards Sustainable Urban Environmental Management in Jiangyin city,East China

Abstract

Dramatic economic and social changes have taken place in Jiangyin city due to rapid and uneven urbanization and industrialization. The environmental degradation has followed driven by these changes since the 1980's. With the pressures and effects of environmental deterioration, the city has implemented environmental management to hold back the trends of negative environmental changes. From the viewpoint of systems, DPSER is a good model for urban environmental changes to understand the causes, pressure, state, effect, existing responses and future action strategies. We took Jiangyin city, a developed city in South Jiangsu province, East China, as an example, and analyzed the characteristics of environmental changes and urban responses using DPSER model. Some operational strategies have been put forward to direct the city environmental management towards a sustainable road step by step.     

Towards a Closed-Loop Materials Economy

Abstract

This paper introduces the recent appearance of a circular economy in such industrialized countries as Germany and Japan and outlines its concept and principles. The author emphasizes that a circular economy should become the breakthrough point for sustainable development and will enable a shift to a sustainable society of “doing less with less” away from the current high-consumption society of “doing more with more”     

基于综合指数模型的航空装备安全评价

针对航空装备安全评价中存在的主观偏向性和指标难以定量描述等问题,选取飞行事故、地面事故、事故征候万时率及重大危险性故障数作为评价指标,采用层次分析法和熵值法组合的权重计算方法,建立基于综合指数的航空装备安全评价模型,以4个航空单位为例对其航空装备安全进行综合评价,验证了该模型的合理性和可靠性,为航空装备安全决策与控制措施提供了理论依据。