Search results for "natural resource"
showing 10 items of 482 documents
Assessing eco-efficiency with directional distance functions
2012
Abstract Eco-efficiency is a matter of concern at present that is receiving increasing attention in political, academic and business circles. Broadly speaking, this concept refers to the ability to create more goods and services with less impact on the environment and less consumption of natural resources, thus involving both economic and also ecological issues. In this paper we propose the use of directional distance functions and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques to assess eco-efficiency. More specifically, we show how these functions can be used to compute a wide range of indicators representing different objectives regarding economic and ecological performance. This methodological ap…
Probiotics in transition: novel strategies
2015
Regulations regarding health claims made for probiotics demand their proven effectiveness and limit the array of microbial species regarded as safe for live consumption. Novel strategies such as moving to postbiotics and genetically modified probiotics may be necessary to increase the effectiveness of microbial products.
Resource consumption and environmental impacts of the agrofood sector: life cycle assessment of italian citrus-based products
2009
Though many studies concern the agro-food sector in the EU and Italy, and its environmental impacts, literature is quite lacking in works regarding LCA application on citrus products. This paper represents one of the first studies on the environmental impacts of citrus products in order to suggest feasible strategies and actions to improve their environmental performance. In particular, it is part of a research aimed to estimate environmental burdens associated with the production of the following citrus-based products: essential oil, natural juice and concentrated juice from oranges and lemons. The life cycle assessment of these products, published in a previous paper, had highlighted sign…
Production and Foreign Trade of Mineral Products in Latvia and Belarus
2015
Latvia and Belarus are small countries with limited scope of natural resources. However, the available mineral resources play important role in production of mineral products for domestic and foreign consumption. Main goal of the paper is to characterize the role of extraction industry in national economy and mineral products trade in two neighboring countries - Latvia and Belarus. To achieve the goal, the role of mining and quarrying industry in Latvia and Belarus was identified; trade of mineral resources in Latvia was analyzed. The main trends in the development of its own mineral resources of the Republic of Belarus were identified, the role of mineral resources in the commodity structu…
Farmers' costs of environmental regulation: Reducing the consumption of nitrogen in citrus farming
2007
Abstract Environmental externalities in agriculture, and the choice of suitable instruments to integrate environmental concerns into agricultural policies, are a matter of interest for the Common Agricultural Policy. In this paper, we use Data Envelopment Analysis techniques to assess the impact on farms' performance of two environmentally-friendly regulations aimed at abating consumption of inorganic nitrogen in Spanish citrus farming: levies on purchased nitrogen and nitrogen use permits for farms. By comparing farms' short-run maximum profits under both unregulated and regulated scenarios a regulation cost index is computed. Our results show that nitrogen overuse is mostly a matter of ma…
A Holistic Approach to Comprehending the Complexity of the Post-growth Era: The Emerging Profile
2015
The goal of this study is to investigate the problems caused by the rapid growth of the global economy, coupled with high population growth and the excessive exploitation of natural resources. The global economy will not be able to maintain its current speed of growth in the long term, so a paradigm shift in production and consumption is necessary, if the collapse of ecosystems and the concurrent depletion of natural resources are to be avoided. This is the reason why capitalism needs to take a turn towards a sustainable and naturally harmonized development model.
Green and Greenback
2003
The low-cost hypothesis predicts that the strength of effects of environmental concern on environmental behavior diminishes with increasing behavioral costs. Thus, environmental concern influences environmental behavior primarily in situations and under conditions connected with low costs and little inconvenience for individual actors. In a first step, we develop and specify this hypothesis. Referring to two procedures, we then test it on the basis of an environmental survey of a random sample of 2307 respondents from the German population. The empirical evidence is positive. The low-cost hypothesis is not confined to the area of environmental research. It points to general limits of attit…
Consumption and Production Patterns for Agricultural Sustainable Development
2021
Agriculture has always played a key role in feeding the world population and ensuring the development of sustainable food production systems. However, over recent decades, many farmers have over-exploited agricultural ecosystems in order to increase their production and incomes. This has caused a reduction or degradation of environmental sustainability, reducing farmers’ profitability and leading many producers to abandon rural areas. Moreover, currently, over 820 million people in the world are hungry, while a third of the food produced is lost or wasted, with negative implications on economic, social and environmental conditions at a global level, highlighting how different production, ed…
Demand and Supply Model for the Natural Gas Supply Chain in Colombia
2018
Natural gas is considered the transitional fuel for excellence between fossil and renewable sources, considering its low cost, greater efficiency and lesser effects on the environment. This has led to increased demand levels worldwide, requiring the intervention of public and private actors to meet such demand. In this research, we study the natural gas supply chain in Colombia using system dynamics modelling. The results allow to contrast both the behaviour of the production and transport levels and the behaviour of the demand from the consumption sectors, allowing to identify capacity levels to be developed considering implementation times and percentages of coverage in the supply.
Innovation for the Italian agricultural and food industry sector
2020
The food industry is one of the largest energy consumers in the world, with 95 EJ/year. In this context, in Europe the amount of energy needed to cultivate, process, package and bring food to the homes of citizens reached 285 Mtoe in 2015, of which 14 Mtoe due to the Italian agricultural and food system. With the aim of favoring a drastic reduction in energy consumption, the European Commission, and the main international agencies, ie: FAO, OECD, UN over the last decade have aligned on the need to develop policies to support energy efficiency, renewable energies and sustainable technologies in order to minimize the use of fossil fuels and to reduce the final energy consumption, especially i…