Search results for "Environmental resource management"
showing 10 items of 459 documents
The consequences of demographic change in Rhineland-Palatinate: scenarios of landscape consumption for settlement and transportation areas
2007
Assessment of ecosystem integrity and service gradients across Europe using the LTER Europe network
2015
Better integration of knowledge from ecological, social and economic science is necessary to advance the understanding and modelling of socio-ecological systems. To model ecosystem integrity (EI) and ecosystem services (ES) at the landscape scale, assessment matrices are commonly used. These matrices assign capacities to provide different services to different land cover types. We revised such an existing matrix and examined the regional heterogeneity in EI and ES provision in Europe and searched for spatial gradients in their provision to elucidate their suitability for large-scale EI and ES mapping in Europe. Overall, 28 sites belonging to the Long-Term Ecological Research network in Euro…
Monitoring resource consumption and anthropogenic substances in the EU and Latvia
2011
PurposeThe aim of this paper is to assess how the indicator sets presently used to monitor sustainable development in the European Union (EU) and Latvia reflect resource consumption and the production and use of anthropogenic substances.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted by analyzing different sources as well as statistical information on development character in Latvia and human impact at first in respect to use of chemicals.FindingsMany of the analyzed sustainable development indicators related to resource consumption interpret a reduction in consumption as a negative phenomena and thus contradictory to sustainability. The only relevant EU and Latvian indicator related to …
The social benefits of restoring water quality in the context of the Water Framework Directive: A comparison of willingness to pay and willingness to…
2009
The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is by far the most important piece of water legislation in Europe for the coming decades. Its main aim is to achieve "good ecological status" for all water resources by 2015. The economic valuation of the non-market benefits derived from improving water quality is an important input in assisting the design and implementation of efficient and effective water management policies. In this study, the contingent valuation method has been applied with a double purpose. On the one hand, we have estimated the value of a hypothetical improvement in water quality of a river asking individuals about their willingness to pay, and on the other hand, the issue of exemp…
Estimating the non-market benefits of an urban park: Does proximity matter?
2007
Abstract There is increasing and widespread public support for public park provision in urban areas given that they provide an array of different recreational activities enhancing the citizen's quality of life. A contingent valuation survey of 900 randomly chosen inhabitants was undertaken in Valencia (Spain) to estimate the non-market benefits derived from the provision of a new urban park where there is currently an old train station. In conducting our study we distinguished between the districts of the city more and less affected by the project according to the proximity to the future park. Our main finding is that the mean willingness to pay (WTP) is considerably higher for people who l…
An Environmental Analysis of the Effect of Energy Saving, Production and Recovery Measures on Water Supply Systems under Scarcity Conditions
2015
Water is one of the primary resources provided for maintaining quality of life and social status in urban areas. As potable water is considered to be a primary need, water service has usually been managed without examining the economic and environmental sustainability of supply processes. Currently, due to increases in energy costs and the growth of environment preservation policies, reducing water leakage, energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) production have become primary objectives in reducing the environmental footprint of water service. The present paper suggests the implementation of some performance indicators that show the interdependence of water loss, energy consumption and…
Insights into food system exposure, coping capacity and adaptive capacity
2017
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider the concepts of exposure, coping capacity and adaptive capacity as a multiple structure of vulnerability in order to distinguish and interpret short-term coping responses and long-term strategic responses to food system vulnerability. Design/methodology/approach This paper applies an abductive approach for qualitative analysis of data, which were collected through 18 semi-structured interviews among Finnish food system actors. Findings The findings suggest that coping capacity and adaptive capacity are indeed two different concepts, which both need to be addressed in the examination of food system vulnerability. Public and private food syste…
Managing Trust and Risk in New Biotechnologies: The Case of Population Genome Project and Organ Transplantation in Latvia
2011
The paper analyses the application of the two biotechnologies – organ transplantation and population genome project in Latvian society. The case is based on 16 interviews with doctors, scientists, patients and donors and media texts discourse analysis. The notions of trust and risk emerge as a counterpart of coping with the challenges the technologies pose to the “traditional” relations between actors and concepts involved – organs, genes, illness, patients, doctors, hospital units and science. New biotechnologies erode previously stable categories and relationships between the notions and experiences of illness/ health, individual/collective, science/society, nature/culture, gift/market an…
Towards an integrated approach to emergency management: interdisciplinary challenges for research and practice
2015
This article presents an interdisciplinary vision for large-scale integrated emergency management that has been inspired by the transition from platform centric to integrated operations in the oil and gas fields, which uses remote emergency control centres collaborating virtually with local responders. The article discusses some of the most salient research challenges for integrated emergency management, including the role of mobile technology, human-centred sensing, citizen participation and social media, and the socio-cultural determinants of disaster management. The purpose of this article is to frame an integrated emergency management approach that adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, …
The European Union’s Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR): improving multilevel governance in Baltic Sea cooperation?
2017
ABSTRACTMacro-regional strategies – such as the ones for the Baltic Sea, the Danube, the Ionian-Adriatic, and the Alpine regions – constitute new elements of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy and territorial cooperation. In a nutshell, these strategies aim at building functional and transnational ‘macro-regions’ involving the EU, its member states, as well as partner countries within the EU’s system of multilevel governance (MLG). As the oldest macro-regional strategy, the EU Strategy of the Baltic Sea Region has been in operation since 2009. Drawing on the theory of MLG, this contribution assesses the effects on the political mobilization and interplay between international, intergovernm…