Search results for "natural resource"
showing 10 items of 482 documents
Current state of water management in Japan
2014
Financial sustainability of water utilities is essential to guarantee the provision of high quality services. The aims of this paper are to review the current state of water management in Japan and to identify the main difficulties which confront Japanese water utilities. As the facilities built when the country expanded water utilities rapidly are drawing near the renewal period concurrently, water operators must quickly accelerate facility renewal work. The statistical data from the Japan Water Works Association illustrate that one of the most significant challenges facing Japanese water utilities is to finance investments to renew facilities and to prepare them for earthquakes. Difficult…
Neoanthropocene Raising and Protection of Natural and Cultural Heritage: A Case Study in Southern Italy
2020
Analyzing the human history on the planet, a conflictual relation was raised when humankind had started destroying the natural ecosystem and biota, and consequently, a capacity to induce environmental change has increased throughout human history in the so-called Anthropocene age. A 'noosphere'-centered civilization could produce a non-disruptive new kind of anthropocentrism. This is becoming a new context to define Neoanthropocene based on a renewed homeostatic relationship between Earth and mankind. The potential application of this theoretical approach has been tested in drafting steps of Plan of Lucania Apennines, Valdagri, and Lagonegrese National Park, in southern Italy. Drafting the …
Investigating the role of environmental taxes and regulations for renewable energy consumption: evidence from developed economies
2021
The current study aims to explore the role of environmental taxes and regulations for the renewable energy consumption, focusing on reporting policy suggestions to overcome climate change issues and achieve environmental sustainability. The main objective of this paper is to examine the relation between renewable energy, environmental taxes, environmental technologies, and environmental regulations in 29 OECD countries during 1996–2018. More precisely, we inspect the impact of the environmental regulations and environmental technologies on the renewable energy consumption. The authors employ CIPS and CADF unit root tests, panel Westerlund co-integration test, FMOLS, and Quantile regression …
Lymnaea schirazensis, an Overlooked Snail Distorting Fascioliasis Data: Genotype, Phenotype, Ecology, Worldwide Spread, Susceptibility, Applicability
2011
BackgroundLymnaeid snails transmit medical and veterinary important trematodiases, mainly fascioliasis. Vector specificity of fasciolid parasites defines disease distribution and characteristics. Different lymnaeid species appear linked to different transmission and epidemiological patterns. Pronounced susceptibility differences to absolute resistance have been described among lymnaeid populations. When assessing disease characteristics in different endemic areas, unexpected results were obtained in studies on lymnaeid susceptibility to Fasciola. We undertook studies to understand this disease transmission heterogeneity.Methodology/principal findingsA ten-year study in Iran, Egypt, Spain, t…
Assessing the Finance and Economics of Resource Recovery and Reuse Solutions Across Scales
2015
The recovery and reuse of wastewater can contribute to reducing poverty, improving food security, improving nutrition and health, and managing natural resources more sustainability to protect ecosystems and build climate resilient communities. Reusing wastewater generates both private and public benefits, yet care must be taken to minimize environmental harm and risks to human health. Assessing the costs and benefits of wastewater use is challenging for decision making. Financial analysis of wastewater and other reuse options can underpin decision making from a business standpoint, and economic analysis provides the information needed to support public policy decisions. In this chapter, we …
Spain: a decentralised health system in constant flux
2009
The Spanish healthcare system is one of Europe’s most efficient, but urgent reform is needed if it is to cope with changing demands and rising costs, argue Jose M Martin-Moreno and colleagues
The Use and Abuse of Sea Resources
2017
As a maritime country, the Philippines is a place of high fish consumption. Many coastal villages are populated by fishermen, who are amongst the poorest of working Filipinos. International comparisons show that the Philippine fisheries sector is mostly characterized by small inefficient fishing vessels, while some of the fishing methods are extremely destructive to the resource. Today, fishing moratoriums must be imposed in some areas to allow the reproduction of the fish. Poaching and illegal fisheries, including by foreign vessels, especially from China, plague the most important fisheries areas. Aquaculture has developed to counterbalance the decline of the natural resource, but it has …
Rural futures in developed economies: The case of Finland
2015
Abstract This study presents four possible images of rural futures in Finland: decentralized bio-economy, colonial countryside, museum countryside and rural business islets. They are distilled through literature reviews, futures workshops and futures tables. Alternative specifications of structures, contents and agencies result in highly divergent states of key dimensions and, consequently, divergent rural futures. This diversity challenges the conventional public wisdom or intellectual monoculture that considers decay as the only future for rural areas. Key challenges in crafting plausible but divergent futures images are finding an appropriate level of abstraction or “flight altitude”, es…
Perspectives on aerosol deposition to natural surfaces: interactions between aerosol residence times, removal processes, the biosphere and global env…
1990
Abstract This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art and the research needs in the areas of aerosol residence-time assessments, deposition modelling, and understanding of aerosols in biogeochemistry. Research needs are emphasized from a systems perspective of global environmental change. Although fundamental quantitative knowledge is lacking, some qualitative linkages between source strengths, residence times, removal processes and the biosphere can be identified. It turns out that not only are the respective areas as such challenged by new problems, superimposed on the fairly well established conventional ones, but these areas also face mutually operating sets of feedbacks between residence…
Special Issue: Enhancing Sustainable Performance in Organizational and Inter-Institutional Systems
2013
Sustainability is not just for Christmas… it’s for life. Sustainable solutions, whether sought in terms of business strategies, social policies, or the exploitation of natural resources have to serve organizations and communities in the long term, sometimes very long term, as well as the short term. Static analysis is unlikely to be able to evaluate candidate solutions fully, and is more likely to focus on the short-term future to the detriment of the longer-term. Sustainable solutions are more likely to be developed from studies based on deep analysis using systems approaches, and from system dynamics (SD) approaches in particular.