Showing papers on "Sustainability published in 2006"

Sustainable Food Consumption: Exploring the Consumer “Attitude – Behavioral Intention” Gap

Abstract: Although public interest in sustainability increases and consumer attitudes are mainly positive, behavioral patterns are not univocally consistent with attitudes. This study investigates the presumed gap between favorable attitude towards sustainable behavior and behavioral intention to purchase sustainable food products. The impact of involvement, perceived availability, certainty, perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE), values, and social norms on consumers’ attitudes and intentions towards sustainable food products is analyzed. The empirical research builds on a survey with a sample of 456 young consumers, using a questionnaire and an experimental design with manipulation of key constructs through showing advertisements for sustainable dairy. Involvement with sustainability, certainty, and PCE have a significant positive impact on attitude towards buying sustainable dairy products, which in turn correlates strongly with intention to buy. Low perceived availability of sustainable products explains why intentions to buy remain low, although attitudes might be positive. On the reverse side, experiencing social pressure from peers (social norm) explains intentions to buy, despite rather negative personal attitudes. This study shows that more sustainable and ethical food consumption can be stimulated through raising involvement, PCE, certainty, social norms, and perceived availability.

Governance and the Capacity to Manage Resilience in Regional Social-Ecological Systems

Abstract: The sustainability of regional development can be usefully explored through several different lenses. In situations in which uncertainties and change are key features of the ecological landscape and social organization, critical factors for sustainability are resilience, the capacity to cope and adapt, and the conservation of sources of innovation and renewal. However, interventions in social-ecological systems with the aim of altering resilience immediately confront issues of governance. Who decides what should be made resilient to what? For whom is resilience to be managed, and for what purpose? In this paper we draw on the insights from a diverse set of case studies from around the world in which members of the Resilience Alliance have observed or engaged with sustainability problems at regional scales. Our central question is: How do certain attributes of governance function in society to enhance the capacity to manage resilience? Three specific propositions were explored: (1) participation builds trust, and deliberation leads to the shared understanding needed to mobilize and self-organize; (2) polycentric and multilayered institutions improve the fit between knowledge, action, and social-ecological contexts in ways that allow societies to respond more adaptively at appropriate levels; and (3) accountable authorities that also pursue just distributions of benefits and involuntary risks enhance the adaptive capacity of vulnerable groups and society as a whole. Some support was found for parts of all three propositions. In exploring the sustainability of regional social-ecological systems, we are usually faced with a set of ecosystem goods and services that interact with a collection of users with different technologies, interests, and levels of power. In this situation in our roles as analysts, facilitators, change agents, or stakeholders, we not only need to ask: The resilience of what, to what? We must also ask: For whom?

Sustainable Urban Forms Their Typologies, Models, and Concepts

Abstract: This article identifies sustainable urban forms and their design concepts. In addition, it addresses the question of whether certain urban forms contribute more than others to sustainability. A thematic analysis has been used to coop with the vast body of sustainable development and environmental planning literature. The analysis identifies seven design concepts related to sustainable urban forms: compactness, sustainable transport, density, mixed land uses, diversity, passive solar design, and greening. Moreover, it identifies four types of sustainable urban forms: the neotraditional development, the urban containment, the compact city, and the eco-city. Finally, this article proposes a Matrix of Sustainable Urban Form to help planners in assessing the contribution of different urban forms to sustainability.

Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment: Recent Developments

Abstract: Environmental protection is now an integral part of public policies, at local, national and global levels. In all instances, the cost and benefits of policies and projects must be carefully weighed using a common monetary measuring rod. Yet, many different categories of benefits and cost must be evaluated, such as health impacts, property damage, ecosystem losses and other welfare effects. Furthermore, many of these benefits or damages occur over the long term, sometimes over several generations, or are irreversible (e.g. global warming, biodiversity losses). How can we evaluate these elements and give them a monetary value? How should we take into account impacts on future generations and of irreversible losses? How to deal with equity and sustainability issues? This book presents an in-depth assessment of the most recent conceptual and methodological developments in this area. It should provide a valuable reference and tool for environmental economists and policy analysts.

Reflexive governance for sustainable development

Abstract: This book deals with the issue of sustainable development in a novel and innovative way. It examines the governance implications of reflexive modernisation – the condition that societal development is endangered by its own side-effects. With conceptualising reflexive governance the book leads a way out of endless quarrels about the definition of sustainability and into a new mode of collective action.

Measuring the immeasurable: a survey of substainability indices

Abstract: Sustainability indices for countries provide a one-dimensional metric to valuate country-specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social conditions. At the policy level, they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country?s development can be measured and even a cross-country comparison can be performed. This paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice. We show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice.

Distributed energy generation and sustainable development

Abstract: Conventionally, power plants have been large, centralized units. A new trend is developing toward distributed energy generation, which means that energy conversion units are situated close to energy consumers, and large units are substituted by smaller ones. A distributed energy system is an efficient, reliable and environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional energy system. In this article, we will first discuss the definitions of a distributed energy system. Then we will evaluate political, economic, social, and technological dimensions associated with regional energy systems on the basis of the degree of decentralization. Finally, we will deal with the characteristics of a distributed energy system in the context of sustainability. This article concludes that a distributed energy system is a good option with respect to sustainable development.

Sustainability and resilience: toward a systems approach

Abstract: A comprehensive systems approach is essential for effective decision making with regard to global sustainability, since industrial, social, and ecological systems are closely linked. Despite efforts to reduce unsustainability, global resource consumption continues to grow. There is an urgent need for a better understanding of the dynamic, adaptive behavior of complex systems and their resilience in the face of disruptions, recognizing that steady-state sustainability models are simplistic. However, assessing the broad impacts of policy and technology choices is a formidable challenge, as exemplified in life-cycle analysis of the implications of alternative energy and mobility technologies. A number of research groups are using dynamic modeling techniques, including biocomplexity, system dynamics, and thermodynamic analysis, to investigate the impacts on ecological and human systems of major shifts such as climate change and the associated policy and technology responses. These techniques can yield...

The New Blue and Green Water Paradigm: Breaking New Ground for Water Resources Planning and Management

Abstract: The production of biomass for direct human use—e.g., as food and timber—is by far the largest freshwater-consuming human activity on Earth. However, water policy and development concentrate on a fraction of the water for food challenge, namely, irrigated agriculture, which uses an estimated 25% of the global water used in agriculture, and on the industrial and domestic water supply, which corresponds to less than 10% of direct human water requirements considering only water for food, domestic use, and industry . The reason that biomass production so strongly outclasses other water-dependent processes is that water is one key element involved in plant growth. Simultaneous with the photosynthesis process, when stomata in the foliage open to take in carbon dioxide, large amounts of water are being consumed as transpiration flow and released as vapor from the plant canopy. Furthermore, this productive flow of vapor is accompanied by nonproductive evaporative losses of water from soil, ponded water, and intercepted water from foliage surfaces . Together, vapor fluxes as evaporation and transpiration, here defined as green-water flow, constitute the total consumptive water use in biomass production. Addressing the millennium development goal MDG of halving the proportion of malnourished people in the world by 2015, today amounting to a shocking 800 million people, is thus not only a tremendous agricultural endeavor but is also the world’s largest water-resource challenge. Hunger alleviation will require no less than a new Green revolution during the next 30 years, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. As stated by Conway 1997 , the challenge is to achieve a green-green revolution, which compared with the first green revolution that lifted large parts of Asia out of an imminent hunger crisis in the 1960s and 1970s, will have to be founded on principles of environmental sustainability. As suggested by Falkenmark and Rockstrom 2004 , there is a third green dimension to a new agricultural revolution, since the focus will have to be on upgrading rain-fed agriculture, which entails increasing the use of the portion of rainfall that infiltrates the soil and is accessible by plants to generate vapor flow in support of biomass growth. This triply green revolution will require huge quantities of freshwater as vapor flow from the soil, through plants to the atmosphere. It raises the question of what eradicating hunger will in fact imply for water-resources planning and management.

Sustainability, Accountability and Corporate Governance: Exploring Multinationals' Reporting Practices

Abstract: Recent years have seen a rapid increase in accountability pressures on particularly large global companies. The increased call for transparency comes from two different angles, which show some (potential) convergence in terms of topics and audiences: accountability requirements in the context of corporate governance, which expand to staff-related, ethical aspects; and sustainability reporting that has broadened from environment only to social and financial issues. This article examines to what extent and how current sustainability reporting of Fortune Global 250 companies incorporates corporate governance aspects. Many multinationals, particularly in Europe and Japan, have started to pay attention to board supervision and structuring of sustainability responsibilities, to compliance, ethics and external verification. While detailed disclosures are not yet common, some notable practices can be found. Underlying dilemmas and complexities for managers in dealing with accountability to shareholders and stakeholders, and the role of auditors, are indicated.

Social, environmental and sustainability reporting and organisational value creation?

Abstract: Purpose – The objective of this essay is to examine the extent to which social, environmental and sustainability accounting and reporting (SEA) can or should contribute to shareholder value and, correspondingly, to consider the challenge that SEA can offer to the conventional views of “value” that underpin traditional financial accounting. The essay is then used as a vehicle to introduce some relatively new data about sustainable development that has implications for our consideration of “value”.Design/methodology/approach – Although drawing from a wide range of secondary contextual data, the paper is primarily argumentative and seeks to challenge a number of implicit assumptions within both conventional and more “critical” accounting.Findings – Substantive social and environmental reporting and, especially, high quality reporting on (un)sustainability will demonstrate that modern international financial capitalism and the principle organs which support it are essentially designed to maximise environmenta...

Resource-Conserving Agriculture Increases Yields in Developing Countries

Abstract: Despite great recent progress, hunger and poverty remain widespread and agriculturally driven environmental damage is widely prevalent. The idea of agricultural sustainability centers on the need to develop technologies and practices that do not have adverse effects on environmental goods and services, and that lead to improvements in food productivity. Here we show the extent to which 286 recent interventions in 57 poor countries covering 37 M ha (3% of the cultivated area in developing countries) have increased productivity on 12.6 M farms while improving the supply of critical environmental services. The average crop yield increase was 79% (geometric mean 64%). All crops showed water use efficiency gains, with the highest improvement in rainfed crops. Potential carbon sequestered amounted to an average of 0.35 t C ha(-1) y(-1). If a quarter of the total area under these farming systems adopted sustainability enhancing practices, we estimate global sequestration could be 0.1 Gt C y(-1). Of projects with pesticide data, 77% resulted in a decline in pesticide use by 71% while yields grew by 42%. Although it is uncertain whether these approaches can meet future food needs, there are grounds for cautious optimism, particularly as poor farm households benefit more from their adoption.

Local and Regional Development

Abstract: Actors and institutions in localities and regions across the world are seeking prosperity and well-being amidst tumultuous and disruptive shifts and transitions generated by: an increasingly globalised, knowledge-intensive capitalism; global financial instability, volatility and crisis; concerns about economic, social and ecological sustainability, climate change and resource shortages; new multi-actor and multi-level systems of government and governance and a re-ordering of the international political economy; state austerity and retrenchment; and, new and reformed approaches to intervention, policy and institutions for local and regional development. Local and Regional Development provides an accessible, critical and integrated examination of local and regional development theory, institutions and policy in this changing context. Amidst its rising importance, the book addresses the fundamental issues of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, its purposes, principles and values, frameworks of understanding, approaches and interventions, and integrated approaches to local and regional development throughout the world. The approach provides a theoretically informed, critical analysis of contemporary local and regional development in an international and multi-disciplinary context, grounded in concrete empirical analysis from experiences in the global North and South. It concludes by identifying what might constitute holistic, inclusive, progressive and sustainable local and regional development, and reflecting upon its limits and political renewal.

Sustainable development – historical roots of the concept

Abstract: This article gives an overview of the origin of the concept of sustainable development by going far back in history to trace its roots. It shows how the idea of sustainability evolved through the centuries as a counter to notions of progress. The historical context in the latter half of the 20th century is outlined, in which a paradigm shift in thinking about development caused sustainable development to occupy the centre stage in development discourses.

Linking Knowledge and Action for Sustainable Development

Abstract: ▪ Abstract It is now commonplace to assert that actions toward sustainable development require a mix of scientific, economic, social and political knowledge, and judgments. The role of research-based knowledge in this complex setting is ambiguous and diverse, and it is undergoing rapid change both in theory and in practice. We review conventional views of the linkages between research-based knowledge and action, and the early response to concerns that these links could and should be improved, through efforts at translation and transfer. We then examine the range of critiques that challenge those conventional views by highlighting different aspects of the relationships between science and society, focusing on the implications for action toward sustainable development. We then review the theories and strategies that have emerged in the attempt to improve the linkages between research-based knowledge and action in the context of sustainability across four broad categories: participation, integration, learnin...

Issues in sustainable transportation

Abstract: There is growing interest in sustainability, sustainable development, and sustainable transportation. This paper identifies issues related to the definition, evaluation and implementation of sustainable transportation. Significant issues include the range of definitions of sustainability, the range of issues considered under sustainability, the range of perspectives, criticism of sustainability analysis, evaluating sustainability, transportation impacts on sustainability, goals vs. objectives, sustainable transport decision making, approaches to sustainable transport, automobile dependency, equity, land use, community liveability, and sustainable transportation solutions. Sustainable development originally focused on a few resource consumption issues, but it is increasingly defined more broadly to include economic and social welfare, equity, human health and ecological integrity. A narrow definition of sustainable transport tends to favour individual technological solutions, while a broader definition tends to favour more integrated solutions, including improved travel choices, economic incentives, institutional reforms, land use changes as well as technological innovation. Sustainability planning may require changing the way people think about and solve transportation problems.