Environmental Impact Assessment Review最新文献

Worldwide, policies play a critical role in establishing a sound management system for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). However, under the guidance of existing policies, WEEE in China still faces the problems of an imperfect management system and a low collection rate. Currently, there is a lack of quantitative evaluation of China's WEEE policies. This study firstly presents a novel approach by combining the Policy Modeling Consistency Index (PMC-Index) model and a content analysis model to quantify the consistency of 103 WEEE policies. Among these, 12 sample policies were selected and analyzed from 10 aspects, and a three-dimensional analysis framework was constructed for revealing the policy emphasis on the WEEE industry. The results showed that China's WEEE policies were evaluated favorably on 7 out of 10 variables, have a good external environment and coved a wide range of economic, institutional, and technological areas. However, lack of multiple governmental departments cooperation and target planning are the main problems of existing policies. The collection stage is crucial for the entire WEEE industry, but governmental authority should be strengthened. This study proposes the coordinated release of policies with short-, medium-, and long-term objectives for multiple governmental departments. Establishing one WEEE monitoring, and control platform is also essential. This study is expected to provide scientific evidence and recommendations for China's WEEE policy formulation and optimization.

Urban expansion is considered to be a major driver of ecosystem services (ESs) loss, and variation of ESs in rapidly urbanizing areas are of great concern. Clarifying the relationship between urban expansion and ecosystem services (ESs) and understanding the impact of socio-ecological drivers on ESs are crucial for sustainable urban development and ecological conservation. However, the differential impacts of urban expansion on the variation of ecosystem services across different urban expansion patterns and the dominant drivers of these variation, have not been fully explored, hampering the formulation of sustainable urban development plans. To address these knowledge gaps, we assessed the differential impact of three urban expansion patterns (edge-spreading, interior-filling and leap-frogging) on five representative ESs—carbon sequestration, food production, habitat quality, soil retention and water yield—in the Yangtze River Delta region (YRDR) of China. We applied random forest model to quantify the impact of ten social-ecological drivers on the variation of ESs across three urban expansion patterns. Our findings revealed that edge-spreading is the main pattern of urban expansion and it leads to higher losses of the three key ESs, which is therefore more significant than that caused by interior-filling and leap-frogging. Although the loss of ESs due to urban expansion was primarily driven by changes in natural drivers, social drivers had a variable and sometimes powerful influence on ESs. The differences in the impact of dominant socio-ecological drivers on the variation of ESs across different expansion patterns are mainly reflected in the relative importance. Moreover, the overall explanatory power of socio-ecological drivers on the variation of ESs under leap-frogging expansion was low. We suggest that different ESs protection strategies should be developed and implemented for different urban expansion patterns to achieve a balance between urban development and ecosystem protection. This study can provide an opportunity to formulate refined urban development plans for the sustainable development of human-environment systems in rapidly urbanizing regions.

The study employs the initial outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) of 2875 listed firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares in China from 2006 to 2019 as a quasi-natural experiment to construct a multiplicative difference model, with the objective of investigating the impact of OFDI by Chinese enterprises on the domestic enterprises green technological innovation (GTI) and the underlying mechanisms. The study found that Chinese enterprises' OFDI significantly enhances both the quantity and quality of domestic GTI. The placebo and PSM-DID tests confirm the robustness of this conclusion. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that Chinese enterprises' direct investment in countries that have rigorous environmental regulations and high technological levels can promote both the quantity and quality of domestic GTI. Mechanism analysis indicates that enterprises influenced by high environmental compliance pressure can effectively increase both the quantity and quality of GTI through OFDI; however, enterprises under strong environmental media supervision through OFDI can significantly enrich the quantity of GTI but not the quality. Enterprises' OFDI enhances the quality of domestic GTI by increasing research and development funding and the number of research personnel. Furthermore, this study reveals that Chinese enterprises' OFDI significantly promotes the quantity of green process innovation and the quality of green product innovation. However, the effect on the quality of green process innovation and the quantity of green product innovation is not statistically significant. Moreover, particularly in reducing the quality of green process utility innovation, Chinese enterprises' OFDI significantly improves the quality of green product utility innovation. These findings provide valuable insights for China to advance high levels of OFDI and promote sustainable green development.

Takeaway packaging waste seriously pollutes the ecological environment. Better identification of stakeholders' willingness to accept reusable tableware is important for addressing the growing takeaway waste packaging challenges. However, prior literature has not specifically addressed the influencing factors that affect different stakeholders' willingness toward reusable tableware. To this end, this study is designed to explore the key influencing factors and differences in residents', takeaway clerks' and enterprises' willingness to accept (WTA) and pay (WTP) for reusable tableware in Macao, Guangzhou and Zhuhai cities, based on a CVM survey. The results show that, for residents, the WTA of respondents in Macao, Guangzhou and Zhuhai were 56.73 %, 70.60 % and 64.42 % respectively, while their WTP were 73.45 %, 91.11 % and 82.86 % respectively, and their unit WTP values were 3.08 MOP ($0.38), 2.03 CNY ($0.28) and 1.89 CNY ($0.26) respectively. In addition, for takeaway clerks and enterprises, more than half (nearly 60 %) of the respondents were willing to accept the promotion of reusable tableware. Hygiene issues, convenience and cost were the key reasons for respondents' rejecting reusable tableware. Overall, personal attitude and demographic information were the important factors for all three stakeholders' WTA and for residents' WTP, showing that improving different stakeholders' willingness toward RT is the key to building a reusable takeaway packaging system.

This study explores the context of establishing local land use plans in Berlin, which, guided by Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), have shown potential to implement climate adaptation solutions in the urban landscape. The case study aims to identify contextual factors that promote knowledge brokering (KB) and facilitate the inclusion of climate issues in decision-making processes. Based on personal interviews with open-ended questions and document analysis, the Narrative Interview method was employed to understand the relevant internal aspects of the frequent practice of local plans, as well as to observe the articulation of KB spaces. In this sense, we identified the main characteristics of this practice, highlighting the conditions necessary for KB, the complexity of the strategies employed and the relevance of the relationship between the use of information and mediation in promoting changes in decision-making. The results also indicate that both the formulation of local land use plans and the promotion of climate issues are highly stimulated by the adoption of mediation strategies. However, the practice in Berlin prefers to operate from less complex strategies, and the relevance of the climate issue is not fully understood by the interviewees. This situation, combined with the lack of clearer regulations, prevents the issue from being explored more widely. Furthermore, it has been revealed that the promotion of climate issues is surrounded by governance practices that operate through both bottom-up and top-down forces, and also depend on contextual factors such as decision-making regimes, involved stakeholders, the quality of planning guidelines, the effectiveness of SEA, and the level of public participation. These factors, in turn, are influenced by the phenomenon of knowledge mediation and promoted and strengthened through learning. Thus, the case reveals that addressing climate issues depends on aligning these factors and understanding their complexity. This study confirms the significant role of SEA and knowledge brokering in facilitating not only the addressing of climate issues, but also in promoting solutions based on more plural approaches that are better prepared to tackle complex challenges.

With the fast growth of the takeaway sector, waste originating from the consumption of single-use plastic food containers (SUPFC) is increasingly generated and exacerbates plastic pollution. Its substitutes (SUPS), a reliable option for mitigating plastic pollution, are attracting attention from both the public and private sectors. To better understand consumer preferences in reducing plastic pollution from SUPFC, we here establish an intricate fabric of the consumers' cognitive impetus toward SUPS and explore the prospects of combining and enhancing the technology acceptance model and theory of planned behavior framework with additional constructs. We simultaneously analyze variations in Beijing consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for SUPS via the contingent valuation method. The intention to use (ITU) was found to be positively influenced by the perceived ease-of-use (PEU), attitude (AT), and subjective norms (SN). Conversely, perceived risk exhibited a negative correlation with AT, PEU, and ITU. The results further showed that ITU was positively correlated with income, age, and education. In addition, 95.86 % of the respondents were willing to pay for SUPS, mostly between 3 and 5 RMB (51.18 %). This study delineates a paradigm for elucidating the preference of using SUPS in the context of environmental sustainability and pro-environmental consumption. Such elucidation holds paramount importance in bolstering forthcoming investigations into SUPS utilization and behavioral patterns.

Prioritizing renewable energy generation over the conservation of natural habitats and species on a large spatial scale, leads to the paradox of impacting biodiversity to mitigate climate change. In this study, we aim at quantifying the long-term demographic impact of the excess mortality caused by collisions with wind turbines on the populations of two vulture species of conservation concern. Using long-term monitoring data and Integrated Population Models (IPMs), we quantified demographic parameters and projected population trends under various wind power development scenarios. Our findings indicate that even under our most optimistic scenarios, annual collision mortality could reach up to 30 % of the current Cinereous vulture population and 7 % of the Griffon vulture population. Without further wind power expansion, both vulture populations are predicted to remain stable or increase over the next 20 years. However, the addition of 85 wind turbines is likely to drive the Cinereous vulture to local extinction within 18 years and significantly slow the growth of the Griffon vulture population. Scenarios involving larger numbers of turbines could result in the extinction of both species within two to five years for Cinereous vultures and up to 20 years for Griffon vultures, depending on space use intensity. Our results underscore the vulnerability of long-lived species to excess mortality and highlight the need for comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) that incorporate population dynamics analyses. Effective conservation strategies must include rigorous pre- and post-construction monitoring, the availability of monitoring data, and cumulative impact assessments that consider the entire foraging range of these species. Additionally, strategic planning to avoid critical vulture habitats and implementing mitigation measures in buffer zones are essential. This study emphasizes the necessity of integrating biodiversity considerations into renewable energy planning to balance the goals of energy production and wildlife conservation.

Global water scarcity poses a significant threat to economic production, especially within resource-intensive sectors such as construction. It is essential to assess the potential local economic output loss from water scarcity in the construction sector and the distant repercussions from upstream sectors for sustainable construction practices. Our study aims to evaluate the potential local economic output loss in the construction sector due to water scarcity, taking into account spatially heterogeneous environmental flow requirements. Additionally, we quantify the distant impact from upstream sectors using a multi-regional input-output model. This study emphasizes the need to identify countries, sectors, and national sectors severely affected by water scarcity using potential economic loss per unit of output value. The results indicate that the construction sectors in Gabon, the Czech Republic, and the Central African Republic are the most severely affected by water scarcity. The potential distant economic loss in the construction sector primarily stems from the quarrying of stone, sand, and clay sector, as well as the non-metallic mineral products sector. Hotspots at the national-sector level are also identified. The findings of this study can help policymakers in the construction sector identify key countries affected by water scarcity and determine the sources of these risks.

Overcoming the climate crisis and achieving the 1.5 °C target requires the exploration of climate-resilient development pathways (CRDPs), as emphasized in the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) AR6 report. Republic of Korea has aligned itself with the international context by setting nationally determined contributions (NDC) and long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies (LEDS) goals. In addition, the country has announced plans to enhance carbon sink in the forestry sector. This study explored the CRDP in the forestry sector using an advanced Korean forest dynamic growth model (AKO-G-Dynamic model) with refined management algorithms. We utilized this model and applied various options for forest management based on the available detailed data, including climate change scenarios and policies reflecting possible CRDPs in the Republic of Korea. As a result, CO₂ sequestration in the 2050s was predicted to be 23.08 million tCO₂ year⁻¹ if climate change SSP 5–8.5 and the current forest management level are maintained and 28.49 million tCO₂ year⁻¹ if climate change SSP 1–2.6 and resilient level of forest management are applied. Furthermore, from the perspective of the age class of the forest, the proportion of over-matured forests decreased, leading to an improvement in the imbalance of age classes as climate change mitigation and sustainable forest management were implemented. Therefore, this study demonstrated realizable CRDPs and their implementation in decision-making concerning the NDC and LEDS. This comprehensive analysis of climate change and forest management, exploring the CRDP from various perspectives, can contribute to the development of forest management policies for climate adaptation strategies and carbon sink enhancement, thereby influencing the allocation of the carbon budget.

Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG), as one of the guarantee systems for improving the construction of a beautiful China, has an impact on regional environmental management). Clarifying the coupling coordination relationship between the environmental performance of regional administrations and the ESG performance of listed enterprises may help achieve high levels of ecological preservation and economic growth. This study employs three methods to measure the degree of coordinated coupling between the environmental performance of regional administrations and the ESG effectiveness of listed firms. The methods used are the Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition method, the model of coordinated coupling, and the geographic Kernel density estimation method. The findings show that: (i) there is an overall higher trend in the level of coordinated coupling between the environmental performance of regional administrations and the ESG effectiveness of listed firms. This degree of coupling has evolved from near-disorder to intermediate coordination. (ii) There is an uneven spatial distribution in the level of coordinated coupling between the environmental performance of regional administrations and the ESG effectiveness of listed businesses, with inter-regional differences serving as the primary cause of spatial variation. (iii) In most provinces, there is a geographical link between the coordinated coordination of the environmental performance of regional administrations and the ESG effectiveness of listed businesses, provided that spatial elements and temporal span are taken into account. These findings give practical recommendations for regional administrations' environmental stewardship as well as important insights into the attainment of sustainable economic and social growth.