Sustainability—a theoretical idea or a practical recipe?

In this paper, the notion of sustainability as a general regulative idea is distinguished from sustainable development as a more concrete concept leading to practical actions. After that, different economic meanings of sustainable development are discussed, and a concept of critical sustainability is proposed especially with respect to the problem of climate change. Maintaining critical crash barriers and bottlenecks presupposes, however, demanding, continuous improvements in energy efficiency. After discussing problems of decision theory in cases of uncertainty, which is constitutive for climate change, the links between intragenerational and intergenerational justice are analyzed, and by using Barry's notion of justice and Goodin's concept of vulnerability, two possible positions of the general idea of fairness inherent in sustainable development are presented. We conclude by shortly sketching the notion of sufficiency as an additional supplementary sustainability strategy in cases where efficiency improvements based on innovation are less than sufficient for securing the (energetic) fundaments of economic activity and human life.     

THE ARTICULATION OF PROJECT WORK: AN ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS

This article offers a theoretical framework or model for understanding how work within projects is articulated. A distinction is drawn between articulation of work and a more inclusive organizational process , termed the "articulation process." The theoretical model includes several related concepts that pertain to numerous interlocking and sequential elements of the total work. These include work processes, types of work, and interactional processes. The model avoids assuming a tightly integrated organization of work; rather, it represents an extension of the negotiated order approach to organizations. A discussion of variations in projects revolves around two important dimensions of projects. The article closes with a discussion of extreme disruptions in project work flow, as well as some general considerations about the importance of focusing on articulation in organizations.     

Emergy evaluation of food production in urban residential landscapes

To transform cities from heterotrophic into sustainable ecosystems many authors have called for increased food production, including home gardening, in urban areas. We conducted an emergy analysis of four model backyard landscape plots—a conventional ornamental landscape, an intensive organic garden, an edible landscape, and a forest garden—to assess the yield and sustainability of these systems. Data were collected during the 2001 growing season and extrapolated to make a five year projection. In the 2001 season, all plots had low Emergy Yield Ratios (EYR) of between 0.0003 and 0.17 and extremely low Emergy Sustainability Indices (SI). In the five year projection, all plots still had low EYRs of between 0.0008 and 0.33 and very low SIs. These low indices are due primarily to the high levels of economic inputs required for the installation and maintenance of these plots in an urban context. Analyses performed on larger systems (households, neighborhoods and cities) containing productive landscapes such as those studied here may produce different results. Installing food-producing landscapes in urban areas without altering the networks by which such landscapes are supplied, however, may not substantially alter the heterotrophic nature of cities.     

Open systems evaluation and the logic model: Program planning and evaluation tools

This paper describes two case management projects and efforts to evaluate outcomes. Lessons learned from the first effort suggest that a tool referred to as the logic model and a particular approach to evaluation called the “open systems” model might be useful to planners and program evaluators. The logic model provides a means of presenting conditions a program is intended to address, activities that constitute a program, short term outcomes resulting from program activities and long term impacts. The open systems perspective emphasizes evaluation as a tool to be used to achieve program objectives as opposed to establishing cause and effect relationships. This paper also describes how the logic model and open systems evaluation were used to facilitate the development of an evaluation plan for a project designed to assist homeless, substance abusing, pregnant women.     

Implementation challenges to the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings: Towards the goals of sustainable,low carbon cities

It is well acknowledged that low carbon emissions is one of the key factors contributing to sustainable urban development and effectively tackling climate change. Adaptive reuse of buildings is a form of sustainable urban regeneration, as it extends the building's life and avoids demolition waste, encourages reuses of the embodied energy and also provides significant social and economic benefits to the society. Thus, it embraces the different dimensions of sustainability. However, the debates over which sustainability factors are key, and how to address them all in practice, remain unresolved. This study begins with an intensive literature review of the factors that contribute to the goal of sustainable development in the conservation of built heritage. This is followed by in-depth interviews with practitioners who have participated in adaptive reuse projects in Hong Kong. These interviews confirm the reliability of the shortlisted sustainability factors. More importantly, this paper examines the challenges in incorporating a sustainability framework into adaptive reuse projects. The authors stress that the framework for achieving sustainable, low carbon adaptive reuse should be viewed more holistically, integrating social, economic, environmental, urban and political policies.     

China's development loans and the threat of debt crisis in Kenya

The increased access of African countries to external capital markets has rekindled interest in growing external borrowing and placed debt sustainability at the forefront of the continent's policy agenda. In this article, we discuss the conceptual link between external loans and debt challenges. In this article, the analysis is cast in the context of new sources of loans triggered by Sino–African co‐operation. The article examines the main sectors targeted for financing in Kenya, how the Chinese‐funded projects have been structured, the financial models adopted to deliver on the projects, and the overall gains from such projects. Ultimately, the article examines the external debt situation in Kenya and how Chinese loans are likely to precipitate a crisis of sustainability. The analysis shows that, although the external financial support plays a critical role in addressing the gap in Kenya's infrastructure development, the loans also pose risks of debt sustainability in the longer term, Chinese loans particularly are tied and lack transparency. The emerging debt challenges point to the need for policy reforms in favour of enhancing loans transparency and the beneficial impacts. This would enhance the repayment capacity of borrowing countries.     

Ten years of experience from interactive ergonomics projects

This paper highlights experiences from ergonomics projects, applying an interactive research approach. The aim of this paper is to summarise experiences from seven interactive ergonomics projects with the aim to improve ergonomics and organizational performance jointly. Results from these seven projects were analysed with a model for assessing sustainable change, including the factors active ownership, professional management, competent project leadership, and involved participants. All factors were found giving support to impact and sustainability of the change projects. However, the role of the researcher is difficult and demanding.     

A systematic approach to an organization’s sustainability

This article integrates the concepts of sustainability and quality improvement into a systematic approach to an organization’s sustainability. The article: (a) presents a literature-based model that incorporates the factors that drive an organization’s sustainability; (b) describes how sustainability is operationalized through a systematic approach to quality improvement; (c) discusses the advantages of a systematic approach to sustainability; and (d) shares with the reader literature and experientially-based lessons learned about the approach.     

Vertical greening systems, a process tree for green façades and living walls

This study shows that greening the building envelope with vertical greening systems such as climbing plants or living wall systems provides ecological and environmental benefits. Contemporary architecture in fact is increasingly focusing on vertical greening systems as a means to restore the environmental integrity of urban areas, biodiversity and sustainability. Applying green façades, which is an established feature of contemporary urban design, can offer multiple environmental benefits on both new and existing buildings and can be a sustainable approach in terms of energy saving considering materials used, nutrients and water needed and efficient preservation of edifices. To provide a full perspective and a viable case study on vertical greening systems a process tree is developed throughout this research. Elaborating the process tree has proved to be a useful methodology to analyse main parameters as climate and building characteristics, avoid damages and maintenance problems caused by inappropriate design, and compare different elements such as technologies, materials, durability, dimensions, and plant species employed.     

Urban ecosystems and sustainable urban development—analysing and assessing interacting systems in the Stockholm region

In order to build competence for sustainability analysis and assessment of urban systems, it is seen as essential to build on models representing urban form, landuse and transportation, urban metabolism, as well as ecological processes. This type of analysis of interacting sub-systems requires an advanced model integration platform, yet open for learning and for further development. Moreover, since the aim is to increase urban experience with ecosystem management in the wide sense, the platform needs to be open and easily available, with high visualisation capacity. For this purpose, the LEAM model was applied to the Stockholm Region and two potential future scenarios were developed, resulting from alternative policies. The scenarios differed widely and the dense urban development of Scenario Compact could be visualised, destroying much of the Greenstructure of Stockholm, while Scenario Urban Nature steered the development more to outer suburbs and some sprawl. For demonstration of the need for further development of biodiversity assessment models, a network model tied to a prioritised ecological profile was applied and altered by the scenarios. It could be shown that the Greenstructure did not support this profile very well. Thus, there is a need for dynamic models for negotiations, finding alternative solutions and interacting with other models. The LEAM Stockholm case study is planned to be further developed, to interact with more advanced transport and land use models, as well as analysing energy systems and urban water issues. This will enable integrated sustainability analysis and assessment of complex urban systems, for integration in the planning process in Stockholm as well as for comparative sustainability studies between different cities, with the goal to build more sustainable urban systems and to increase urban experiences in ecosystem management.     

Community-based household waste management: Lessons learnt from EXNORA's ‘zero waste management’ scheme in two South Indian cities

This paper presents two case studies on the efforts by a community-based organisation to promote a sustainable integrated waste management system in Indian mega cities. This effort was initiated in 1989 by a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) called EXNORA and is based on a ‘zero waste management scheme’ set up, run and financed by the residents themselves. As this model has been widely quoted as successful, the study aims at learning from two communities implementing this model.Results are reported from a survey of the two schemes that used various tools to assess both their performance and sustainability in selected residential areas of two Indian cities, Chennai and Hyderabad. The results indicate limited success of the schemes both in saving a significant fraction of the generated waste from dumping, and in rehabilitating the local poor. However, they show that motivated individuals can successfully set up and manage waste collection systems that lead to overall environmental improvements. The differences in the two schemes reflect how the local assets and contexts impact on the success of the scheme. The scheme in a rich neighbourhood of Hyderabad was less ambitious in its overall objectives and focussed on the provision of a waste management service, using the opportunity to provide local employment to a socially deprived fraction of the population. The scheme in a middle-class area of Chennai, although pioneering in its approach, suffered from diseconomies of scale and lack of social integration, making it less viable in the medium to long term. Both schemes suffered from a lack of community involvement, motivation and political support, which threatens the long-term sustainability of the enterprise. The research concludes that the role that communities can realistically play in management of their own waste depends on the local context. The system advocated by EXNORA seems to require significant local resources, and political and technical support which are hard to find and sustain without strong local leaders. Another model set up in the city of Visakhapatnam is finally introduced as an alternative. This is based on triangular contracts between the municipality, the residents and micro-enterprises and may provide a good solution in dealing with the technical and commercial aspects which communities find difficult.     

Project beneficiary participation and behavioural intentions promoting project sustainability: The mediating role of psychological ownership

It is of great importance that development projects (especially those projects that target improving the livelihood of rural communities) continue to deliver their intended benefits over their intended economic life—we call this “project sustainability.” Applying an experimental design, our study reveals that active involvement of project beneficiaries during the needs assessment and planning stages has a significant positive influence on the behavioural intentions of the project beneficiaries toward project sustainability. Our study also finds that psychological ownership plays a mediating role in the relationship between project beneficiary participation and project sustainability. Implications for project sustainability and directions for future research are discussed.     

Ecologically unequal exchange: A theory of global environmental injustice

In this article, we review the theory of ecologically unequal exchange and its relevance for global environmental injustice. According to this theory, global political–economic factors, especially the structure of international trade, shape the unequal distribution of environmental harms and human development; wealthier and more powerful Global North nations have disproportionate access to both natural resources and sink capacity for waste in Global South nations. We discuss how the theory has roots in multiple perspectives on development, world‐systems analysis, environmental sociology, and ecological economics. We detail research that tests hypotheses derived from ecological unequal exchange theory on several environmental harms, including deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and water pollution as well as related human well‐being outcomes. We also discuss research on social forces that counter the harmful impacts of ecologically unequal exchange, including institutions, organizations, and environmental justice movements. We suggest that ecologically unequal exchange theory provides an important global political–economic approach for research in environmental sociology and other environmental social sciences as well as for sustainability studies more broadly.     

Material Flows Accounting: A Biophysical Approach to Macroeconomic Sustainability

The increasing dimension of socio-environmental problems make sustainability a macroeconomic issue and new methodological instruments are needed. In this paper, Material Flows Accounting is presented as a new statistical approach for an evaluation of macroeconomic sustainability. Based on the pre-analytic vision that economies are an open system embedded in the environment, it provides an overview in tonnes of annual material inputs and outputs of an economy. It quantifies the physical dimension of societies and analyses the “size” of the human economy in the geo-biosphere. As it provides information about efficiency and material requirements, it is a very important method for analysing whether a nation is moving towards sustainability or away from it. Used in many official statistics, it will become one of the most powerful tools in describing sustainability at the macroeconomic level. In this paper, after the presentation of the Material Flows Accounting approach, an Italian case study is considered.     

关于特大城市经济可持续发展与承载力的探讨——以“北、上、广、深”为例

本文分析了特大城市经济可持续发展与承栽力的相互关系,提出随着科技进步和发展,一定区域内人们的生存与发展对区内已有资源存量的依赖性将越来越低,而对经济资源的倚重渐大,并与自然资源形成互补关系。特大城市因其规模和经济实力,比一般城市拥有更多的经济资源,通过转变经济增长方式和资源利用方式,可以提高城市综合承栽力。     

Who Contributes to the Provision of Public Goods at the Community Level? The Case of Potable Water in Ghana

This article offers an analytical framework to explain participation in the provision of drinking water in communities in Ghana along with empirical evidence of the individual factors that influence this provision. Framed in the context of the debate about the devolution of responsibilities from the government to the users of public goods to increase management efficiency and sustainability, the study analyzes how individuals respond to potable water participation activities. Distinguishing activities by the type of participation incentives they offer, the study finds that social exclusion is more likely in activities that lack effort complementarities and which have larger impacts on output allocation. Appropriation of social benefits is found to determine participation more strongly than the appropriation of the natural resource itself.     

Between the Global Environmental Regime and Local Sustainability: A Local Review on the Inclusion, Failure and Reinventing Process of the Environmental Governance

Abstract: Japan has undergone drastic changes in ecological policy and practice over the past 40 years. Although this short history began with significant levels of pollution, notoriously termed “kogai”, the country seems to have achieved great ecological improvements, both technologically and institutionally, and now is one of the most highly ecologically modernized countries. But can this process really be posited as a simple, linear one of ecological modernization, a sort of natural, historical progress toward ideal environmental governance? This paper proposes some questions that cast doubt over this view. It focuses on local struggles for environmental governance, particularly in the city of Kamakura, which proclaimed itself an “environmental municipality” in 1993, a designation that seemingly fell by the wayside in 2001. Investigating this 8‐year case we can extract some lessons concerning the contradictions between global and local, and consequently about the inherent difficulties of top‐down environmental ordinances and insufficiently decentralized environmental governance. At the same time, through this case readers may also discover a new type of civic activity: cities with agriculture. After a short sketch of agri‐environmental movements, I will suggest that such movements are converging with more conventional ones and prevailing throughout the country. Therefore, the ecological modernization process can be seen to include a sort of restoration process: an updated return to perma‐cultural sustainability. Consequently, this essay contributes to international environmental discussion, not only by uncovering the cleavages between global and local, but also by suggesting the possibility of environmental governance alternative to technologically and institutionally driven ones.     

Income generation, local economic development and community development: paying the price for lacking business skills?

The introduction of the notion of developmental local governmentas entrenched in the South African constitution in 1994 hasrequired municipalities and cities to consider initiatives toenhance their local economies. At the same time, the socialwelfare paradigm has shifted from one of welfare to development.One way of ensuring the sustainability of this developmentalparadigm is to embark on income-generating projects or businesses.The Free State provincial government created various projectsto develop local economies and to establish income-generatingprojects with a view to making people more self-reliant andtheir livelihoods more sustainable. This article aims to evaluatelocal economic development and income-generating projects inthe Free State province from the perspective of business principles.     

Spatial and genetic distribution of a north American termite, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Reticulitermes flavipes</Emphasis>, across the landscape of Paris

Urbanization often negatively impacts biological diversity. Some organisms, however, have traits that are preadapted to urban environments and thus may thrive. Reticulitermes flavipes is one such organism. Indigenous to the Eastern US, it has been introduced into multiple countries. In France, R. flavipes causes major damage to buildings. Although Paris is one of the country’s most infested cities, the factors determining R. flavipes’ distribution and propagation are poorly understood. Using data on termite occurrence, termite genetics, and environmental variables, our study aims to identify factors that explain the distribution and spread of R. flavipes within Paris. First, we explored the association between several environmental variables and the termite’s distribution pattern in Paris; since 2000, a total of 2106 infestations have been recorded. Second, we inferred termite population and colony genetic structure at 66 sample locations using 9 microsatellite loci. Third, we used least-cost models and partial Mantel tests to study the effects of environmental variables on the termite’s population genetic structure. Our analyses revealed that building-related variables were significantly associated with termite infestations and could thus help explain the termite’s spatial distribution pattern. Furthermore, railway networks also explain termite propagation and genetic patterns. Additionally, we found that the termite’s spread is likely driven by budding dispersal, which may be constrained by buildings and roads. Even if budding dispersal could facilitate R. flavipes’ spread in urban areas, it cannot explain the termite’s distribution in Paris all on its own. Indeed, termite propagation seems to be significantly driven by anthropogenic activities.     

Some generalizations of p1: External constraints,interactions and non-binary relations

In 1977, Holland and Leinhardt introduced a new statistical approach to sociometric data analysis. The details of their approach, based on a model termed P₁, were published in 1981 in papers by Holland and Leinhardt, and Fienberg and Wasserman. Since then, many researchers have adopted this model, addressing substantive questions that were unanswerable with existing methodology. The continuing methodological research of Fienberg and Wasserman has allowed this approach to be applied to many different types of sociometric data. We carry on this research by extending p₁ to three new situations: networks of such size that it is impossible for every actor to have contact or knowledge of the other actors; networks in which actor interaction can not be adequately modeled by the simple additive main effects of expansiveness and popularity; and networks in which we measure the strength of the relationship between actors using a non-binary or multivalued relational quantity.