Current Research in Environmental Sustainability最新文献

The climate crisis demands the development of innovations that sustainably raise farm-gate profit under increasingly volatile conditions. Here, we review the literature on the Australian irrigated grains sector and show that yield gains have not progressed since 2002. We reveal a concerning trend of increasing demand for irrigation water on the one hand, yet declining availability of irrigation water on the other. We show that yield gains of Australian irrigated crops have not progressed since 2002, although the use of irrigation water has declined since 2013 and water-use efficiency of irrigated crops has marginally increased. These trends suggest that productivity gains realised by the adoption of new technology, skills and practices over time (including new crop genotypes, larger machinery, reduced tillage, automated irrigation sensors etc) have not been enough to overcome background changes in climatic and economic factors that influence yields of irrigated crops at the continental scale. We highlight a cruel irony that despite having the ability to alleviate water stress, farmers with access to irrigation are still very much dependent on rainfall, because low rainfall reduces regional irrigation supply and elevates water prices, making use of irrigation financially unviable. This, together with hastened crop development and higher risk of heat-induced floret sterility, has meant that the climate emergency has detrimentally impacted on yield gains of irrigated crops, although detrimental impacts have been mediated by rising atmospheric CO₂. We conclude that the greatest potential for improving the profitability and water-use efficiency of irrigated crops may be through adoption of integrated combinations of site-specific whole farm packages, including contextualised agronomic, financial and engineering interventions. Appropriate decision support system (DSS) frameworks can help users unpack some of this complexity, enabling land stewards to tactically navigate volatile climatic and market conditions to strategically plan for improved economic resilience and reduced climatic risk.

China not only is the largest generator of electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) in the world but is among the countries affected the most by previous importation and informal recycling. In this paper, we explore how the implementation of policies has impacted a transition toward an established e-waste management system. We combine a brief review of the main advancements of e-waste management legislation in the country with field observations at two e-waste recycling sites. Informed by transition management, we investigate interconnections between the informal and formal sectors, and motivations to focus on certain appliances. Our findings suggest that the strongest drivers of change toward sustainability transitions are external, such as legislation and market. The remaining challenges include policy gaps for specific appliances and the disconnection between policies and the informal sector. This study provides scientific insights into transition possibilities for more established e-waste practices and contributes to advancements toward a circular economy.

We explore two as-yet-unconnected trends: evidence of nature's effects on mental health/wellbeing, and acknowledgment that behavioral research is overwhelmingly informed by globally non-representative societies. We assess geographies, ethnicities, and conceptualizations in 174 peer-reviewed studies of nature's mental-health/wellbeing connection. Findings reveal a Western-World bias: over-representation of White participants; ethnicity overlooked (62% of studies do not report participants' ethnicity); narrow views of mental health/wellbeing; and nature operationalized largely as greenspace and forests. Because planetary health is largely contingent on the Ethnosphere (the planet's rich cultural web), we encourage future studies to test nature's mental health/wellbeing effects pluralistically and beyond unrepresentative subsets of humankind.

Ecotourism is often perceived as a strategy for protected areas' sustainability. In Cameroon, there is a dearth of information on ecotourism governance and its contribution to protected areas' sustainability. This study evaluates ecotourism governance in and around the Campo Ma'an National Park (CMNP). Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data were obtained from household surveys (N = 124) and key informant interviews (N = 16). From the findings, there is the absence of a clear cut national policy for ecotourism development in and around protected areas. Benefit-sharing (34.7%) and participation (30.6%) were ranked as the most crucial ecotourism governance indicator contributing to the sustainable management of resources in and around the CMNP. The results from descriptive statistics and the Chi-Square test (p < 0.01) indicated that the governance indicators affecting ecotourism in the CMNP are either very poor or poor, except participation, which is considered average. This study recommends developing national ecotourism friendly policies that can accelerate sustainable management of natural resources and livelihood enhancement in and around protected areas in Cameroon in general and the CMNP in particular. It also recommends the urgent need for stakeholders to improve on the components of governance by ensuring effective participation, equitable benefit sharing, management of conflict between stakeholders, and overhauling the transparency and accountability process for ecotourism to contribute to biodiversity conservation and livelihood sustainably.

Voluntary certification schemes are a necessary driver for sustainable transition in the building industry. In Denmark, the primary scheme is DGNB with its holistic understanding of sustainability, rewarding environmental, social, and economic sustainability equally. The DGNB scheme, however, does not currently have a manual contextualized for smaller building projects with corresponding economies, such as single-family housing. This research article explores what is needed to create and diffuse a certification scheme for small-scale building projects on the Danish market. It explores how standardized building companies present a unique opportunity for entry as they comprise a substantial market share. It also explores how enrolling a new user-base comes with new challenges, such as marketing sustainable building to ordinary people, balancing the reduction of complexity and need for documentation with retaining impact, and overcoming the knowledge gap on sustainable housing. The ambition of the research paper is to map the field of sustainability certification in the Danish building industry and help make visible some of the challenges to support the process of developing a new sustainable certification scheme for single-family housing or further development of this research field.

Migration and environmental change are deeply interconnected processes, intimately linked to development pathways. The gender dimension of these complex interactions is often overlooked. Yet there are profound linkages and implications. This paper focuses on the gender division of labour to investigate how migration and environmental change relate to gender equality and sustainability. The study draws on research conducted in the Mahanadi delta, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. In the Mahanadi delta labour migration is largely male dominated. Women remain behind in vulnerable environments facing social and economic challenges having impacts on their empowerment and wellbeing. The findings show shifts in work burden, as women often engage in new activities alongside the traditional domestic and social reproductive work but highlight differences across age and household headship. Firstly, this paper identifies the connections between gender, sustainability and care –conceptually and empirically. Secondly, it explores the gender division of labour in the study area by discussing its structural causes. Thirdly, it provides insights into migration dynamics and examines how they feed back into gender equality and sustainability. Finally, it argues for the need of integrated analytical approaches that reflect ecological and social-equity challenges.

Climate change has negative consequences for the biophysical environment and an observable impact on flows of ecosystem services. Considering the high relevance of ecosystem services, it is imperative to analyze the present status of ecosystem services flows, for effective planning to cope with natural and anthropogenic catastrophes. It is equally important to identify drivers of natural resource deterioration. In a study conducted among 545 randomly selected households in 91 villages along an altitudinal gradient (<1200 m asl (zone A), 1200–1800 m asl (zone B), >1801 m asl (zone C)) in Pauri District, Uttarakhand, India, a multi-disciplinary bottom-up, indicator-based approach was applied for identification and normalization of indicators pertaining to ecosystem services. The greatest reduction in ecosystem services was recorded in zone A (0.56), followed by zone B (0.46) and C (0.35). The greatest estimated deterioration was seen in supportive (0.48) and regulatory (0.47) services. The perspective provided can facilitate adaptive management of ecosystems along an altitudinal gradient in the Himalayas, e.g., the district-level quantification of ecosystem services can guide policy-makers and planners towards more efficient adaptation planning and help minimize the gap between local requirements and policy/program formulation.

The U.S. Gulf of Mexico Coastal Region encompasses a diverse suite of ecological and cultural characteristics unique to North America. There are unprecedented opportunities for land conservation in the region, but challenges associated with non-complimentary ecological and socioeconomic priorities and access to scientific data can complicate acquisition and stewardship decisions. Thus, land conservation decisions have often been made based on willing sellers and cost of acquisition, rather than scientifically informed and stakeholder-driven conservation priorities. The Strategic Conservation Assessment of Gulf Coast Landscapes (SCA) project co-produced three land conservation decision support tools with over 650 conservation stakeholders in the region to help inform strategic, science-based land conservation decisions. Stakeholders were included in the design and development of all three tools from project initiation through execution. Transparent and frequent communication, full-time coordination staff, and sequential stakeholder design charrettes were vital in building trust and facilitating bidirectional information flow among stakeholders and the SCA Team. The co-production process, stakeholders involved, outputs, and final outcomes are described herein. The result was a suite of decision support tools that inform strategic land conservation decisions.

This paper examines how local institutions and family farming labor relations shift and reconfigure in response to The Roundtable on Sustainable Oil Palm (RSPO) certification in Brazil where demanding state regulations exist in a context of uneven enforcement. We use the concept of politics and practice of grounding to explore the Contract Farming (CF) model of Agropalma, the first palm oil export company in Brazil certified with RSPO. Our analysis reveals how the grounding of RSPO's requirement of compliance with applicable domestic laws emerged as a particular point of tension, especially as a result of the CF mechanism. First, despite Agropalma's initial active role in title facilitation, certification made it more difficult for producers to join the CF scheme due to the lack of property titles and their inability to comply with the nominally strict Brazilian environmental regulations. Second, compliance with Brazilian labor protection broke traditional patterns of involving all family members in crop management, and clashes between the company and its outgrowers emerged because of stricter changes in hiring requirements. Our analysis underscores the complex process of reconciling environmental and labor-standard aspirations of Global North certification schemes with the existing legal and enforcement frameworks in the Global South.

Transdisciplinary research (TD) integrates knowledge from different scientific disciplines, as well as from research and practice. Research and practice therefore describe TD as well-suited for addressing complex sustainability challenges. However, the effects of TD on sustainable development are difficult to assess, as such projects produce manifold, interconnected effects through nonlinear processes, contingent on different contexts. In this article, we use a systematic literature review of 101 TD projects to assess the different effects of TD projects and their interconnections. We distinguish between North-South TD projects and TD projects within the global North. Due to differences in terms of historical development and context, we expect to observe differences in the effects they achieve. We find that North-South projects scored higher for societal effects and uptake of knowledge, while projects in the global North produced more tangible outputs, such as academic publications. In terms of interconnections of effects, N-S projects emphasize inclusion more strongly than global North projects, due to an increased awareness of differences between different project participants. However, effects related to uptake of knowledge, learning, and societal effects are often interconnected in both types of projects. This article improves our understanding of the prominence of different effects of TD projects, the interconnections between effects they produce, and the differences between N-S and North projects. Acknowledging this diversity of effects is important, not least for evaluating the efficacy of TD projects.