Environmental Development最新文献

New policy solutions are necessary to make cities more liveable in a future that will be hampered by climate change, urbanization, landscape fragmentation and overall overexploitation of limited resources and space. There is an aspiration to continue to integrate Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) into global agendas to cope with climate change and urbanization due to their multiple benefits and co-benefits. Nevertheless, socio-economic and especially negative impacts of NBS are rarely considered and integrated into policy literature. Hence, the objective of this study is to address this gap by simulating three different policy instruments to mitigate green gentrification and enhance the impact of co-designed NBS in Genova. For that purpose, the spatially explicit hedonic pricing simulation model SULD (Sustainable Urbanizing Landscape Development) was used to simulate a linearly decreasing property tax to high-income households, a property tax subsidy provided to low and middle-income households and a zoning buffer policy around the NBS implementation area. Results show that all policy instruments have the ability to curb green gentrification, however the property tax subsidy led to added urban expansion, fostering urban sprawl. Both the zoning buffer and the property tax had better overall socio-economic and land use impacts by curbing green gentrification, posing little impact on low-income households and maintaining urban contraction, even though this contraction was smaller for the property tax instrument. Hence, it can be concluded that a policy mix including information, planning and economic instruments may be most effective to enhance the impact and mitigate green gentrification of NBS.

In this study we investigated the persistent problem of modern slave labor (MSL) in the cattle industry in the state of Pará, Brazil. We identified key characteristics of cattle ranches implicated in MSL and evaluated the efficacy of Zero-Deforestation Agreements in preventing MSL in supply chains. We found properties on the “Dirty List” for MSL tend to be larger, more forested, and faster at deforesting than other ranches. Additionally, we discovered degrading conditions and debt bondage are the predominant MSL types in the cattle sector. Our results show slaughterhouses avoid buying directly from properties with MSL. However, cattle from Dirty List properties continue to enter slaughterhouse supply chains through indirect suppliers, even those committed to Zero-Deforestation Agreements. Overall, our findings reveal the complexity of addressing labor exploitation in opaque cattle supply chains. Expanding monitoring and traceability systems, improving transparency, and providing alternative livelihoods for at-risk workers are urgently needed. Public-private collaborations show promise for strengthening enforcement and improving working conditions in the cattle industry.

This study highlights the significance of comprehending the region's caste system and cultural norms and their influence on implementing compensation and resettlement programs in hydropower projects to gain social sustainability. By leveraging Social Justice Theory, we examine how systemic inequalities affect tribal women, particularly in the context of large-scale hydropower projects. Tribal women's social and cultural identities expose them to vulnerabilities, leading to negative consequences concerning large-scale hydropower projects. The lack of access to justice and limited participation in decision-making poses social justice challenges, undermining their fundamental rights, such as basic needs, healthcare, and education. Consequently, their well-being and quality of life suffer, impeding support for such projects. The extent of these adverse effects may vary depending on whether women belong to local (Indigenous) or non-local tribes (non-Indigenous). Our analysis reveals the critical role of tribal affiliation in moderating the relationship between social justice dimensions—such as distributive, procedural, substantive, and recognition justice—and social sustainability, offering new insights into Social Justice Theory. This study explores the potential of careful planning that prioritises the needs of tribal women regardless of tribal affiliation to mitigate these negative social consequences. The study employs a social justice framework to address these challenges. Through the analysis of 511 questionnaires using PLS-SEM, the study revealed that tribal affiliation moderates the relationship between social justice and sustainability. This contribution enriches Social Justice Theory by providing empirical evidence of the intersectionality of social justice issues in the context of development projects. The study further identified that social sustainability and community satisfaction mediate the relationship between social justice and support for hydropower projects, while tribal affiliation moderates this relationship.

Even though the UN's Sustainable Development Goals emphasize improving dietary diversity and overall nutritional status globally by promoting sustainable agriculture, inadequately diversified dietary intake remains a public health problem in many low-income countries, including in Sub-Saharan Africa. The main objective of this study was to gather relevant information to gain an improved understanding of household dietary diversity and explore the role that production diversification could play within household diets and nutrition so that appropriate interventions could be implemented with the goal of enhancing nutrition-sensitive agriculture while also considering the varied features across the agroecosystems. Agroecosystem-based cross-sectional study design was employed. Data were collected predominantly through semi-structured questionnaires and analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics, and a multilevel mixed-effect model. Results showed that the usual dietary intake of households has a monotonous pattern dominated by starchy staple foods, and consumption of fruits, vegetables, and animal-sourced foods was very limited. One out of five households had inadequate dietary diversity but varied significantly across agroecosystems. About 26% of the heterogeneity in dietary diversity was attributed due to agroecosystem level factors. In the fixed-effect part of the model, production diversification, wealth status, number of meals per day, market access, and annual mean rainfall were significantly associated with household dietary diversity status. The findings of our research contribute to give insights on the linkage between dietary diversity and production diversification among subsistence rural farmers across contrasting agroecosystem zones. Therefore, understanding agroecosystem variations and local context in the rural subsistence farming setup is a key point in designing nutrition-sensitive agriculture.

Drought is a common feature of all rangelands, which directly affects biotic life including local dwellers by various means. These drought-prone dwellers have adopted various strategies to survive in severe weather conditions. These strategies vary according to locality and depend on multiple socioeconomic factors. It is crucial to record different coping mechanisms at the local level to reduce the risks associated with recurring droughts given the forecasts of increased drought impacts in pastoral regions and other social pressures. The objective of this study is to estimate the severity of drought and look at short-term drought coping mechanisms in the Cholistan rangeland and characterize its characteristics. 320 respondents were selected from different areas of the Cholistan rangeland by using a random sampling technique. The Standardized Precipitation Index was used to estimate the severity of drought through rainfall data from 1987 to 2017, obtained from the Pakistan Council for Research in Water Resources. The results revealed that severe droughts occurred in Cholistan during the years 1999 (−10), 2002 (−11.6), 2014 (−2.69), 2015 (−2.93), and 2017 (−0.53). Migration, livestock sales, herd splitting, and destocking are the four important short-term coping strategies adopted by pastoralists before and during droughts in Cholistan rangeland with 50.4%, 27.4%, 10.3%, and 11.97% respectively. The chi-square result showed that there is a significant difference (p ≤ 0.05) in strategies adopted by pastoralists in different localities, as well as residence and herd size, and also significantly affect (p ≤ 0.05) the strategies adopted by pastoralists from the Cholistan rangelands. Drought in Cholistan is evident through various ecological and socioeconomic effects and pastoralists adopt different measures against drought by mostly relying on existing resources.

Traditional communication channels and new “human-computer interaction” spread channels are intertwined, facilitating the promote of the concept of “green for all”. This paper integrates the influence of virtual channel and physical channel attributes into the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability theory (MOA) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to explore the spread process of public green behaviors. The results show that: (1) In the composite effect, environmental responsibility (ER) and external objective factors (EOF) have no significant impact on the propagation of green behavior among the public. Both virtual channel attributes (VCA) and physical channel attributes (PCA) can accelerate the spread process of public green behavior, with PCA having the greatest impact on the propagation of public green behavior. (2) ER, VCA, PCA, EOF, and external subjective factors (ESF) can all promote the spread of public green behavior through the intermediary chain of spread motivation and spread intention. Among them, channel attributes more directly influence the spread of green behavior, and the chain mediating effect of ER through the chain was the most significant. At the same time, ESF plays a significant moderating role between the intention to spread and propagation behavior (PB), effectively bridging the gap between behavior and intention. (3) Further heterogeneity analysis shows that, compared with males, PCA has a greater promoting effect on the green behavior propagation of females, while VCA has a more significant positive effect on the green behavior propagation of the more educated public. Finally, this article examines the presence of intermediary and regulatory mechanisms among various income groups. Research has found that promoting the creation of conducive conditions for comprehensive green behavior propagation and developing targeted and mass-oriented green behavior propagation strategies by all societal stakeholders are crucial for enhancing public engagement in green practices.

The importance of global climate models (GCMs) is increasingly recognized due to their excellent ability to accurately predict climatic factors. These capabilities prove invaluable to water resources engineers as they facilitate effective planning and strategic decision-making. Finally, evaluating the performance of GCMs is very important because it allows us to simulate and predict different climate scenarios, empowering us to make informed choices. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the degree of discordance between historical simulated data produced by the CMIP6 models and historical observational data over different climate zones of India. The ability of 24 different GCMs to reproduce the geographical and seasonal distribution of Indian precipitation has been tested by analyzing the daily historical precipitation forecasts from these models. These models have been used to estimate the degree of uncertainty associated with the spatiotemporal variability of precipitation forecasts. More than 20% percent bias (PBIAS) is observed to occur predominantly in four climate classifications: polar tundra, temperate, cold, and tropical monsoon. In some regions of India, the CMIP6 models produce overestimated or underestimated results. The locations identified indicate that there have been changes of more than 20% PBIAS near Sivalik Range, Naga Hills, and Western Ghats. The precipitations of those regions that have been underestimated also imply that those locations have different climatic conditions. This study also highlights that CMIP6 GCMs are yet to produce better results near several Indian mountainous regions depending upon climates. The outcomes of this study will be very useful for reconstructing modeled data for that specific regions.

Readiness is critical to adaptation to climate change and includes how organizations adjust their structures, processes, and policies for both mitigation and adaptation. Organizational learning regarding climate change is the process by which organizations and institutions acquire the knowledge, skills, and capabilities necessary to understand, manage, and adapt to the impacts of climate change. This process emphasizes continuous learning, innovation, and collaboration as key strategies for effectively responding to the ongoing climate crisis. The aim of this study was to investigate the current state of organizational learning related to climate change among the General Directorates of Natural Resources and Watershed Management in Golestan and North Khorasan provinces of Iran. The research was conducted using a survey method, through which 80 experts from two organizations were randomly selected to complete a structured questionnaire. The findings revealed that although employees have a strong attitude towards climate change, organizational learning related to climate change is weak. The five dimensions of organizational learning (knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, organizational memory, information application) were assessed. Information interpretation had the most weight, while organizational memory had the least. Positive attitudes toward climate change were associated with increased engagement in climate change-related organizational learning. The study recommends implementing training and awareness initiatives, fostering knowledge sharing and retention, encouraging positive attitudes towards climate change, and promoting collaboration to enhance organizational learning as a prerequisite for organizational readiness to climate change.

For decades, phytoremediation has been hailed as one of the most promising developing techniques for sustainable waste management. Despite certain shortcomings, proper implementation of this technique is the best alternative to the conventional waste management approach. Proper implementation of phytoremediation requires careful planning, following proper guidelines related to site assessment, plant selection, planting, maintenance, monitoring, harvesting and disposal, follow-up execution, and monitoring to ensure its effectiveness. In this study, it has been tried to create a foundation for an in-situ implementation of Phytoremediation in the mining areas of Asansol and Pandabeswar of West Bengal, India. Site conditions have been assessed in terms of pollution load and soil quality. Suitable sites have been identified using Geospatial techniques and following the guidelines found in different pieces of literature. Six variables i.e. pollution loads, soil quality, the proximity of pollution source, land use, and accessibility have been used to produce site suitability map. Active mining sites have been excluded from suitable sites. Site-specific suitable plants have been recommended which are either native or adaptable to current geophysical settings. The study identified certain villages e.g. Sonpur, Madanpur, Rashunpur, Dhasla, Joalbhanga, Bajari, Salanpur. Accessibility, water availability, and demographic parameters of those villages have been assessed. Finally, maintenance, monitoring, and implementation strategies have been discussed.

Greening and its drivers in the Loess Plateau of China have been extensively studied, but attributional explorations regarding vegetation restoration in different climatic zones remain unclear. This study quantitatively evaluated greening on the Loess Plateau based on Fraction Vegetation Cover (FVC) calculated by MOD13Q1 dataset, compared FVC in different climatic zones, and explored the relationship between greening and precipitation, evaporation, soil water content (SWC), surface water bodies, and human activities. The study found that FVC on the Loess Plateau increased significantly at a rate of 0.538% yr⁻¹ from 2000 to 2020, resulting in 94% greening. The greening rate was higher in the middle temperate zones (0.557% yr⁻¹) than in the southern temperate zones (0.532% yr⁻¹), but its average FVC was lower. This suggests that the greening rate (0.551% yr⁻¹) is higher within 5 km of water bodies. Cropland (15.26%), grassland (13.66%) and trees (12.57%) had higher FVC increment than other types, while the six-fold increase in urban area is a significant impediment to greening. Additionally, there is a significant positive correlation with FVC when the urban economy exceeds 100 billion. The interaction of natural factors and human activities made the greatest contribution to greening, as calculated by the GeoDetector. It is hypothesized that there is significant potential for greening in the middle temperate zones. However, large-scale tree planting may not have a catalytic effect and could even be counterproductive. To achieve sustainable greening of the Loess Plateau in the future, shrubs and artificial water storage facilities may be key.