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Abstract Environmental-impact reduction potential is great early in new product development. To exploit this potential, this study evaluates novel combinations of existent processing technologies. Process engineering is combined with an environmental product assessment along the supply chain. In the dairy sector, drying milk into milk powders is a highly energy-intensive process. This study investigates whether switching from milk powders to new products known as milk concentrates diminishes the overall environmental impact along the supply chains of dairy-containing products. A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted, which considers individual processing steps that can be combined and operated in various ways to generate a multitude of different skim milk concentrates. For relevant environmental indicators such as cumulative energy demand, global warming potential, eutrophication potential, and acidification potential, concentrates were found to have a lower environmental impact than powders, even if the former are trucked up to 1000 km. This break-even distance is a conservative estimate. It depends upon the environmental impact of raw-milk production. The concentrate with the lowest environmental impact is produced by a combined concentration with reverse osmosis and evaporation to a dry-matter content of 35% and preservation via subsequent pasteurization. This holds for all indicators except eutrophication potential, for which this concentrate is the second-best option. This study identifies the frame within which milk concentrates are an advantageous substitution for milk powder and demonstrates the value of applying environmental assessment to product development and processing-technology selection.

False codling moth Thaumatotibia leucotreta (Meyrick) is a pest native to sub-Saharan Africa infesting over 100 plant species including tomato. Its survival and performance are influenced by changes in precipitation and stress-related biochemical changes in the host plant. Water availability for agricultural production continues to decline due to climate change affecting drought-sensitive crops like tomatoes. Little is known on host plant-insect interactions of T. leucotreta and tomato as influenced by moisture stress. Hence, our study tested the impact of different water holding capacities (WHC) (40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, and 90%) of plant growing media on the growth of Anna F1 and Yaye tomato varieties and the infestation rate and development of T. leucotreta on the two varieties. WHC significantly influenced the growth of Anna F1 and Yaye tomato varieties. WHC significantly affected stem girth of Anna F1 variety and leaf length, leaf width, stem girth, and plant height of the Yaye variety. For Yaye variety, T. leucotreta laid a significantly high number of eggs when grown at 70% WHC and had the highest pupation when grown at 60% WHC. The development of T. leucotreta as observed on wing growth was highest at 40% and 50% WHC for both Anna F1 variety and Yaye variety. Our study shows that the infestation of tomato by T. leucotreta is likely to be high when grown in water-scarce media. The results are useful for predicting possible future T. leucotreta trends with increasing water scarcity due to climate change and in designing pest management programmes.

In forest management, scenarios are often used to envision what the future might look like to account for uncertainties associated with, for example, climate change, changing socio-economic conditions, and technological developments. There are, however, many different methodological approaches to scenario building. In order to be able to make better use of the diversity of approaches at hand, a systematic overview of the scenario methodologies, which is currently missing in the forest sector, is needed. This paper analysed and reviewed 129 forest-management-related scenario studies that have been carried out in Europe during the past decade. The studies were classified by means of cluster analysis in four groups: (1) management scenarios, (2) environmental scenarios, (3) optimization scenarios, and (4) participatory scenarios. Despite differences between the four groups, almost all scenario studies can be characterized as rather quantitative, non-participatory, and single factor in nature. The analysis also found a temporal trend reflecting a broadening of the scenario methodology for forest management over time towards scenarios that incorporate longer time horizons, reflecting issues on a larger scale, including land-use considerations. Considering the complexity and urgency of the issues in forest management that need to be addressed and the opportunities offered by the scenario methodologies not yet fully used, we expect to see a further broadening of the scenario methodology with mixed-method, participatory, and complex scenarios.

Abstract Cities globally face significant risks from climate change, and are taking an increasingly active role in formulating and implementing climate change adaptation policy. However, there are few, if any, global assessments of adaptation taking place across cities. This study develops and applies a framework to track urban climate change adaptation policy using municipal adaptation reporting. From 401 local governments globally in urban areas with >1 m people, we find that only 61 cities (15%) report any adaptation initiatives, and 73 cities (18%) report on planning towards adaptation policy. We classified cities based on their adaptation reporting as extensive adaptors, moderate adaptors, early stage adaptors, and non-reporting. With few exceptions, extensive adaptors are large cities located in high-income countries in North America, Europe, and Oceania, and are adapting to a variety of expected impacts. Moderate adaptors usually address general disaster risk reduction rather than specific impacts, and are located in a mix of developed and developing countries. Early stage adaptors exhibit evidence of planning for adaptation, but do not report any initiatives. Our findings suggest that urban adaptation is in the early stages, but there are still substantive examples of governments taking leadership regardless of wealth levels and institutional barriers.

Abstract Rapidly changing hydrological conditions under climate change, upstream developments, and local water infrastructures require transformative changes in water management strategies for the agriculture sector in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). For more than three decades, the agricultural policies in Vietnam have emphasized the intensification of rice production. In recent years, however, the Vietnamese government has started to pay more attention to longer-term sustainability considerations. Recent regional plans and high-level policies, including the Mekong Delta Plan and the Resolution 120 emphasize the development of high-value, sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture and food production. This shift has its challenges. One of them relates to changes in the government-mandated flood-control strategy. The increased awareness of the agricultural and environmental benefits of seasonal floods including soil fertility maintenance and pest management has resulted in new government regulations that require farmers to adopt a so-called 3–3–2 cropping cycle which means that every three years, farmers protected by high dikes should allow their rice fields to get flooded during the third rice season. Some of the farmers, however, have been reluctant to shift their farming cycle away from the triple-rice cropping system because of livelihood security-related concerns. Our study examines rice farmers’ livelihood sustainability in the upper delta by applying a sustainable livelihood framework to systematically identify prospects and challenges for more sustainable flood-based livelihoods. We interviewed 160 rice farmers and conducted two focus group discussions in two communes in An Giang province. Our results show that appreciation of the benefits of the 3–3–2 cycle has increased while the results of the livelihood capital index calculations show relatively good status of livelihood sustainability of farming households, indicated by the overall 5–capital scores of over 0.4. The study also identifies other constraints to sustainable farm-based livelihoods including unstable rice markets and shortage of labor. A key finding, however, is that unless more supportive policies and enhanced viability of flood-based crops are developed, farmers will not be sufficiently motivated to change their farming practices.

Revealing the trends and main drivers of rural energy transition has important implications for building up a clean, efficient and sustainable energy system. Based on physical energy consumption, we measure the effective energy consumption and constructed a provincial panel dataset of rural China from 1990 to 2017. The results show that the energy transition is not only reflected in the growth of fuel consumption and the change of fuel structure, especially the growth of high-quality energy, the diversification of service functions and the convenience of use. The term of effective energy can more accurately measure the level of energy consumption per capita than physical energy. The income per capita, urbanization level and annual average temperature are three main factors impacting energy consumption. Every 1,000 yuan growth in per capita income can increase the consumption of 6 kgce physical energy and 4 kgce effective energy, respectively. Every 1% rise in the urbanization rate of the population can bring a growth of 4.86 kgce physical energy and 1.83 kgce effective energy. 1℃ of rise in average temperature may decrease by 22.3 kgce physical energy and 2.8 kgce effective energy. There are roughly-three levels of transition, the slow transition in the northeast, the forefront transition in the eastern coastal areas and the intermediate level transition in vast central and western regions. According to regional differences, focus should be on increasing the share of renewable energy, improving energy infrastructure and energy efficiency in the future.

In food-processing industries, agricultural raw materials are processed into consumer products or food ingredients. Within this context, efficiency and sustainability are mainly impacted by losses of valuable food products that already caused significant monetary and environmental impacts, as well as by the inefficient use of utilities such as energy, water, and cleaning agents. In turn, these factors are mostly driven by product changeovers and cleaning of production and storage equipment. Efforts to improve the efficiency and sustainability of food processing, therefore, emphasize managerial and technological solutions to decrease the number and impact of changeovers. This chapter first distinguishes technological and managerial perspectives on product losses and utility consumption. Elaborating on the managerial perspective, we subsequently provide an overview of cyclic production planning and scheduling approaches that can be used to improve efficiency and sustainability. The intuitive nature of cyclic planning frameworks also provides a lean perspective on planning that facilitates implementation processes.

Climate change is an issue that cuts across several policy domains, from the environment to transport, industry, agriculture, and health, among others. It follows that responses to climate change need to cut across the various policy fields also. The phenomenon of incorporating or mainstreaming climate policy into other policy fields is often termed “climate policy integration”, and it is a policy requirement that has not yet been extensively explored, especially at EU level. With the agreement on the EU’s integrated climate and energy package in December 2008, it is clear that climate policy integration is considered important for the Union’s strategy to combat climate change. Can it be said that climate policy integration is already in place in the EU? How can we identify climate policy integration? How can we ensure that climate policy integration is effective? The aim of this paper is to examine the extensive research already carried out on environmental policy integration (EPI) in order to draw out lessons that could help, firstly, to conceptualize climate policy integration, and, secondly, to identify a framework for analysis or a set of criteria that could aid the analysis of climate policy integration at EU level. EPI is an area of literature that rarely deals with climate policy in particular. However, its focus on policy processes, administrative structures and communication channels, for example, can provide lessons for the study and implementation of climate policy integration. This paper contributes to the development of an analytical framework for assessing and studying climate policy integration at EU level, and concludes by highlighting some areas for further research.

Sorption to "hard carbon" (black carbon, coal, kerogen) in soils and sediments is of major importance for risk assessment of organic pollutants. We argue that activated carbon (AC) may be considered a model sorbent for hard carbon. Here, we evaluate six sorption models on a literature dataset for sorption of 12 compounds onto 12 ACs and one charcoal, at different temperatures (79 isotherms in total). A statistical analysis, accounting for differences in the number of fitting parameters, demonstrates that the dual Langmuir equation is in general superior and/or preferable to the single and triple Langmuir equation, the Freundlich equation, a Polanyi-Dubinin-Manes equation, and the Toth equation. Consequently, the analysis suggests the presence of two types of adsorption sites: a high-energy (HE) type of site and a low-energy (LE) type of site. Maximum adsorption capacities for the HE domain decreased with temperature while those for the LE domain increased. Average Gibbs free energies for adsorption from the hypothetical pure liquid state at 298 K were fairly constant at -15+/-4 and -5+/-4 kJ mol(-1) for the HE and LE domain, respectively.