2010 January - 22 articles
This essay explores a specific aspect of the role of attitude in design. The design of the built environment requires us constantly to make aesthetic and ethical judgments; every design decision has to be satisfactorily justified. Surprisingly perhap...
Participation as a tool has been applied as a social learning process and communication platform to create awareness among stakeholders in the context of resource utilisation. The application of participatory processes to aquatic ecosystem management...
In the building and construction sector, most efforts related to sustainable development have concentrated on the environmental performance of the operation of buildings and infrastructure. However, several studies have called for the need to mitigat...
Human urine and faeces are products formed every day in every human society. The volume and fertilisation value of urine is higher than that of faeces. This paper reviews data that urine has been used successfully as a fertiliser for cereals and some...
Measuring the comparative sustainability levels of cities, regions, institutions and projects is an essential procedure in creating sustainable urban futures. This paper introduces a new urban sustainability assessment model: “The Sustainable Infrast...
Produced from incomplete combustion of biomass and fossil fuel in the absence of oxygen, black carbon (BC) is the collective term for a range of carbonaceous substances encompassing partly charred plant residues to highly graphitized soot. Depending...
It is clear that globalisation is something more than a purely economic phenomenon manifesting itself on a global scale. Among the visible manifestations of globalisation are the greater international movement of goods and services, financial capital...
Economic development and urbanization poses myriad challenges to transportation systems in relation to negative externalities such as traffic congestion and environmental health risks. Accra, the capital of Ghana, faces mounting urban planning proble...
A history of the implementation of a system of water storage roof gutters illustrates the difficulties which may be encountered in delivering more sustainable construction systems. Utilizing some rainwater at the site where it falls has considerable...
Survey responses of producers and institutional buyers in northeastern Kansas (United States) were analyzed to understand barriers and opportunities for sustainable food systems in the region where their emergence has been limited. Producers and buye...
The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence earned income of organic farmers explicitly incorporating farmer decisions to engage in local selling. The stochastic frontier model identifies role model producers who are th...
The paper uses the framework of the IPAT equation, as applied to CO2 emission, to decompose the various driving forces in the global energy use. Data from recent history are superimposed on projections of SRES IPCC scenarios to determine if enough su...
Community level action towards sustainable development has emerged as a key scale of intervention in the effort to address our many serious environmental issues. This is hindered by the large-scale destruction of both urban neighbourhoods and rural v...
Organics is the one of the fastest growing segments in food sales. Though the amount of certified organic land is increasing, the supply of organic foods lags behind demand in the United States. The reasons for this gap include a lack of government s...
Asian countries are facing major air pollution problems due to rapid economic growth, urbanization and motorization. Mortality and respiratory diseases caused by air pollution are believed to be endemic in major cities of these countries. Regulations...
This paper argues that there are essential features of capitalist modes of production, consumption, and waste dispersal in interaction with the environment and its built-in systemic features that contradict long-term sustainable development. These fe...
Semi-structured interviews with 47 key actors were conducted in Swedish water utilities on why Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) are or are not used. Important influencing aspects identified included organizational inertia, social capital, th...
Public regulations can result in improved environmental performance of products. In this paper eco-efficiency is used to assess the most likely outcome of potential new regulations. The paper presents a case study of furniture production in Norway wh...
Proponents of participatory plant breeding (PPB) contend that it is more conducive to promoting agricultural biodiversity than conventional plant breeding. The argument is that conventional plant breeding tends to produce crops for homogenous environ...
This paper investigates the political economy of the development of sustainable agriculture programs and initiatives in the United States. Sustainable agriculture emerged as part of a growing critique of the negative environmental consequences of unq...
This paper presents the Structural Mental Model Approach aimed at understanding differences in perception between experts and farmers regarding the various livelihood risks farmers are confronted with. The SMMA combines the Sustainable Livelihood Fra...
Traditionally, high initial capital costs and lengthy payback periods have been identified as the most significant barriers that limit the diffusion of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. In November, 2006, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) introduced t...
