Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences最新文献

The dynamic relationship between economic activity (economic growth) and environmental impact (carbon dioxide emissions) is the most debated topic in the present world. The global world is intended to curb environmental impact up to a threshold level of the 1990s while maintaining the same pace of economic growth. This study analyzes the decoupling of economic activity from environmental impact and its main driving forces from 1980 to 2018 for Pakistan. The decoupling status is examined using Tapio decoupling elasticity analysis. The cointegration and Impulse Response Function (IRF) are employed to explore the role of main decoupling drivers. The Tapio decoupling results exhibit that Pakistan experienced Expensive Negative Decoupling (END) for multiple years. Similarly, the Johanson Juselius (JJ) Cointegration assures the presence of a long-term relationship between the selected variables. The long-term regression estimates show that carbon intensity and urbanization are the main decoupling drivers. The industrialization and economic growth also weaken the decoupling progress in Pakistan. The value addition of the paper is that it exposes industrialization and urbanization as the two prominent factors of both economic growth and carbon emissions. Further, the industrial sector of Pakistan operates on polluted industrial stock, which needs to be replaced with energy-efficient technological stock. The study also added that renewable energy needs to be indulged in the industrial and urban sectors.

The Union Territory of Ladakh, located in the northwestern Himalayan region, is highly vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic hazards like earthquakes, landslides, snow avalanches, flash floods, cloud bursts, and border conflicts. Occurrences of these disasters have significantly influenced the development and vulnerability scenario of Trans-Himalayan Ladakh. Findings reveal that despite suffering losses from natural and human-induced disasters, the region has benefited by grabbing the attention of policymakers at the national level. Consequently, long-term developments were positively impacted, reflecting infrastructural upgradation, improved transportation and communication, profoundly improving the socio-economic well-being of the people. Furthermore, post-disaster developments have managed to showcase the unique physiography and adventurous terrains of Ladakh, promoting tourism as the main economic driver in the region. The exponential growth of tourism and associated sectors have influenced the vulnerability scenario, which was quantified using the multi-criterion-based analytical hierarchical processes (AHP) method, indicating an increase in climate change-related vulnerability, followed by socio-cultural, environmental, and physical vulnerabilities. Specifically, the vulnerabilities with respect to flash floods, landslides, erratic rainfall, haphazard constructions, cultural dilution, water crisis, and changes in land use patterns have been exacerbated across the study area. The study highlights the need for effective management of these emerging vulnerabilities through proper planning to ensure long-term sustainable development goals in this environmentally fragile region.

Capturing the social dynamic processes among household members that work to shape consumption patterns presents a complex problem for household resource conservation studies. To bridge the gap between the individual and household, we propose and test a series of quantitative measures that explore the underlying structure of household social dynamic processes through the lens of social practice theory. Based on previous qualitative research, we develop measures to test five distinct social dynamic processes that either encourage or deter pro-environmental action: enhancing, norming, preferring, constraining, and allocating. In a sample of households (n = 120) from suburban Midwestern USA, we find that positively framed social dynamic processes (enhancing and positive norming) positively predict variance in frequency of food-, energy-, and water-conserving pro-environmental actions. Pro-environmental orientation of the individual respondent, in turn, is positively associated with perception of positively framed dynamics. These findings suggest that social dynamic processes influence individual decision-making about household consumption, supporting previous research that illustrates consumption as embedded within the relationships that form residential life. We suggest ways forward for quantitative social science researchers to explore consumption through a practice-based approach that considers the influence of social institutions on emission-intensive lifestyles.