• Energy Research
• Restricted close
• Open Source close
• Embargo close
• 1. No poverty close
• DK close
• PK close

SUMMARY.The policy of joint implementation is emerging as a new strategy for implementing global environmental aims, especially with regard to regulating the climate change process, where emission source and sink countries agree to develop a joint program upon a mixed argument of partnership and cost-effectiveness. Pros and cons have emerged during the development of this system.Costa Rica is the first country, together with Norway, to launch such a program jointly, and Costa Rica is also the first country developing Carbon Tradable Offset bonds to be sold on the world market as a new commodity. It is hoped that this initiative will help the country and its inhabitants to create better living conditions and economic growth; however, this new institutional transformation and international acceptance of this new instrument are only just beginning to develop.This, therefore, provides a very interesting field for research from a distinct perspective. We chose to start searching for positive or negative impact...

Many studies have examined the impact of climatic variability on agricultural productivity, although an understanding of these effects on farmland values and their relationship to farmers’ decisions to adapt and modify their land-use practices remains nascent in developing nations. We estimated the impacts of the deviation in our study year's (2012) temperature and precipitation patterns from medium-term (1980–2011) climatic patterns on farmland values in Pakistan. This was accomplished by employing a modified form of a Ricardian regression model. We also examined farmers’ perceptions of climate change during this period, as well as their perceptions of climate change impacts on farm productivity, in addition to past and anticipated farm adaptation strategies. Our results indicate that positive temperature deviation from the medium-term mean – indicative of climatic change – affects farmland values in Pakistan. Deviation in annual cumulative precipitation conversely appears to have no significant impact. Estimates of the marginal impact of temperature deviation suggested a slight but negative linear relationship with farmland values. The location of farms in areas where farmers can avail financial or extension services conversely had a positive impact on farmland values, as did the availability of irrigation facilities. Our analysis of farmers’ perceptions of climate change and their consequent adaptation behavior indicated a relatively high degree of awareness of climatic variability that influenced a number of proactive and future anticipated farm adaptation strategies. Examples included increased use of irrigation and farm enterprise diversification, as well as land-use change, including shifting from agriculture into alternative land uses. National policy in Pakistan underscores the importance of maintaining a productive rural agricultural sector. Our findings consequently highlight the importance of appropriate adaptation strategies to maintain both farm productivity and farmland values in much of Pakistan. The implications of increased extension and financial services to enhance farmers’ potential for climate change adaptation are discussed.

Significant reductions in household food waste have been regarded as a key step towards achieving global sustainable development. Household food waste is a complex phenomenon determined by consumer behavior along the steps of the "food journey" that goes from purchasing to final disposal. Although avoiding food waste is socially desirable and raises positive attitudes, consumers do not frequently engage in avoidance behaviors. The objectives of the present work were: i) to explore the views of Uruguayan citizens on household food waste, and ii) to identify drivers of food waste among Uruguayan households. A total of 20 in-depth interviews based on a semi-structured guide were conducted by telephone. Participants were asked to recall and describe the last time they discarded food, as well as to describe the most common food waste situations in their household, the most commonly used strategies to avoid food waste and how they could reduce it. The transcripts were analyzed using content analysis based on a deductive-inductive approach. Interviews revealed that most of the participants perceived food waste in their homes as null or low, whereas food waste in the country was regarded as high. When participants described food waste incidents, they perceived it as 'unavoidable', suggesting that they tended to find a rational explanation outside of their will to justify their behavior. Participants' discourses enabled the identification of drivers related to behavioral factors, personal factors, product factors, and contextual factors. Results stress that most promising entry points for communication campaigns and intervention programs to reduce household food waste should focus on behavioral factors, planning throughout all the household stages of the food journey and the provision of knowledge and skills on food storage, handling, and preparation.

The phenomena of global warming have increased the frequency of natural disasters. These disasters generate thousands of tons of waste and cause loss of human lives, environmental damages, and economic losses every year. Currently, disaster response policies are reactive in nature to bring the community back to normal routine. However, increased resilience against future disasters can be achieved by working on long-term planning and setting goals for ecological, economic, and social sustainability in disaster response policies. Keeping in view the importance of the considered issue, this study proposes a large-scale disaster waste management supply chain model, considering economic aspect via total waste processing, environmental aspect by greenhouse gas emissions from disaster waste processing, and social aspect by job opportunities generated during waste processing. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed supply chain model, numerical experiments are performed on a large-scale case problem. Results show that there is a strong trade-off among the dimensions of sustainability. If decision makers want to achieve higher satisfaction levels against environmental and social objectives, the operational cost of waste management will increase accordingly. Numerical studies obtain the results in accordance with the values of the confidence level of decision makers and coefficient of compensation decided by the managers which also provides the flexibility for the decision makers of developing countries to obtain preferred compromised solution in accordance with their own preferences for the dimensions of sustainability during disaster waste management operation.

Urban and neighbourhood renewal in Denmark first became of publicinterest and the subject of legislation in the early twentieth century.Concern was based on health, fire and sanitation issues with the focuson the condition of individual dwellings. It was not until the early1940s that the first urban quarter in Copenhagen was renewed throughdemolition and rebuilding. Based on legislation from 1939, withrevisions in 1959 and 1969, the slum clearance approach was stronglycriticised for disrupting local life and destroying cultural assets. It wasnot until 1983 that more sensitive policies were adopted, when newlegislation opened the way for urban and housing renewal programmeswhich established the rights of residents and provided subsidies forimprovement work. At the same time, large non-profit social housingestates, built in the 1960s and 1970s, came under scrutiny. Initially,these modernist-style estates were labelled ‘neighbourhoods withconstruction problems’ which needed attention to their flat roofsand crumbling concrete but it was not long before the housingmanagement and life opportunities of residents were also beingquestioned. A neighbourhood renewal approach was then developedwhich combined a focus on the social integration of immigrants andtheir children with local involvement, resident participation and thephysical improvement of housing and its environment.During the first decade of the twenty-first century, local and areabasedinitiatives became the established approach to creating ‘inclusiveneighbourhoods’ and changing the social mix. The open stigmatisationof deprived neighbourhoods as ‘ghettos’ by the government andpolitical leaders worked against the combined efforts of municipalities,residents and housing organisations to create positive solutions. At the same time, housing renewal programmes began to include ruralas well as urban areas and now almost the entire housing and buildingstock in Denmark is considered a potential target for refurbishmentand energy efficiency measures.The challenge for housing renewal is to achieve a balance betweenthe preservation of the built heritage, sustainability, innovation, jobcreation and demolition. Since 2007, the financial and economiccrisis and the accompanying reduction in private investment haveimpeded progress. Population loss and the economic recessionprevalent in western and southern Denmark have reduced regionalhousing demand. These situations have become major concerns for themunicipalities affected, and proposals for demolishing empty housesin villages and rural areas are under active consideration. Both largerand smaller social housing estates in areas losing population are difficultto let, and the housing organisations that own them would like to beable to demolish housing or change its use without having to bear thecost of outstanding loans.This chapter considers how a market consisting of regulated privaterented housing, non-profit social housing with regulated cost rents,a free market owner-occupied housing sector, and private rentedhousing built since 1991 can be renewed. A case study of Bispehavenin the western part of the city of Aarhus illustrates the challenges facedin renewing large scale social housing estates over the past 30 years.

We produce and consume disasters whether we intend to or not. But it’s generally not the same groups of people that causing disasters and those sacrificing. Disasters, in all their grief, have a capacity to reveal inequalities and injustices of the world (e.g. Katrina did in the US and the earthquake in Haiti). While we wait for the little Ebola virus to give in under the pressure from the international community let us see if this disaster has unearthed hidden disparities in health, ugly faces of the international community or new lessons for global health that we need to address

Abstract The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement signifies the commitment of the international community to limit global temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels and further to 1.5°C. To prepare for increasing temperatures, climate adaptation actors are prioritizing climate resilience- and transformation-based activities. There is, however, limited understanding of actors’ knowledge of and attitudes and practices towards these global temperature targets and concepts. Using the case of Caribbean small island developing states, we qualitatively analyze in-depth interviews with 35 climate change donors and project implementers. We find that most actors are aware of the 2°C and 1.5°C targets but that all are pessimistic about their achievement. Project implementers do not have a clear way to incorporate these targets into their adaptation projects. We also find that there is no uniform understanding of ‘resilience’ and ‘transformation’, though actors commonly define ‘resilience’ as the ability to ‘bounce back’ from extreme events and note ‘transformation’ as requiring the disruption of current socio-economic and political systems. Actors are further pessimistic about achieving resilience goals within short programming and funding cycles. Our study highlights the need for the global temperature targets to be urgently translated into the design and implementation of adaptation projects. We also highlight that the concepts of resilience and transformation are top-down and donor-driven, and that there is a need for donors to facilitate the creation of a shared vision of these concepts across all stakeholders.

AbstractThroughout much of the African continent, healthcare systems are already strained in their efforts to meet the needs of a growing population using limited resources. Climate change threatens to undermine many of the public health gains that have been made in this region in the last several decades via multiple mechanisms, including malnutrition secondary to drought‐induced food insecurity, mass human displacement from newly uninhabitable areas, exacerbation of environmentally sensitive chronic diseases, and enhanced viability of pathogenic microbes and their vectors. We reviewed the literature describing the various direct and indirect effects of climate change on diseases with cutaneous manifestations in Africa. We included non‐communicable diseases such as malignancies (non‐melanoma skin cancers), inflammatory dermatoses (i.e. photosensitive dermatoses, atopic dermatitis), and trauma (skin injury), as well as communicable diseases and neglected tropical diseases. Physicians should be aware of the ways in which climate change threatens human health in low‐ and middle‐income countries in general, and particularly in countries throughout Africa, the world's lowest‐income and second most populous continent.