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1.
The open burning of plastic wastes is a practice that is highly prevalent across the globe, toxic to human and environmental health, and a critical—but often overlooked—aspect of plastic pollution. Most of the countries where such burning is widespread have laws and policies in place against it; open burning continues nevertheless. In this article, using data from ethnographic fieldwork in urban and rural sites in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Zambia, we examine local practices of open burning and investigate why regulations to tackle it have proven largely ineffective. Adopting a harm reduction approach, we then suggest preliminary measures to mitigate the health risks of open burning by targeting those plastics and packaging types that are most toxic when burned. 相似文献
2.
Governments are increasingly supporting initiatives to address plastic pollution, but efforts are largely opportunistic or driven by national socio-political priorities. There is an urgent need to move away from piecemeal single product instruments (e.g. single use plastic bag taxes or plastic straw bans) to deliver system-wide strategies that minimise the most pervasive sources of plastic pollution. Developing a common understanding of a jurisdiction’s plastic waste stream and the solutions available to decision-makers is vital to build consensus across stakeholders and to align on an evidence-based portfolio of priority instruments.This paper presents the Plastic Drawdown framework as a boundary-spanning tool to quickly create a coherent, relevant, and credible analysis and visualisation for stakeholders of plastic waste, leakage hotspots and minimisation opportunities. Using a new plastic waste modelling framework with a consultative structure, Plastic Drawdown explores plastic waste and leakage over a ten-year period and assesses impacts of policy instruments on this projection. Plastic Drawdown is adaptable to the data poor environment typical of many countries and designed as a rapid assessment tool to support the decision making of governments operating in a highly resource-constrained context.The Maldives is used as a case study to show the utility of the tool, where it highlighted strategies with the potential to reduce leakage of plastic waste into the marine environment by up to 85% by 2030. Plastic Drawdown built the case for phasing out single-use plastic waste across the Maldives and supported the Government’s decision to set ambitious targets, as announced at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019. 相似文献
3.
Reducing hunger while staying within planetary boundaries of pollution, land use and fresh water use is one of the most urgent sustainable development goals. It is imperative to understand future food demand, the agricultural system, and the interactions with other natural and human systems. Studying such interactions in the long-term future is often done with Integrated Assessment Modelling. In this paper we develop a new food demand model to make projections several decades ahead, having 46 detailed food categories and population segmented by income and urban vs rural. The core of our model is a set of relationships between income and dietary patterns, with differences between regions and income inequalities within a region. Hereby we take a different, more long-term-oriented approach than elasticity-based macro-economic models (Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) and Partial Equilibrium (PE) models). The physical and detailed nature of our model allows for fine-grained scenario exploration. We first apply the model to the newly developed Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSP) scenarios, and then to additional sustainable development scenarios of food waste reduction and dietary change. We conclude that total demand for crops and grass could increase roughly 35–165% between 2010 and 2100, that this future demand growth can be tempered more effectively by replacing animal products than by reducing food waste, and that income-based consumption inequality persists and is a contributing factor to our estimate that 270 million people could still be undernourished in 2050. 相似文献
4.
Pollution of coastal environments by anthropogenic debris is a global problem that is increasingly in the public eye. We evaluated the influence of socioeconomic and geographic factors on common debris items at a global scale. We compared debris density and socioeconomic drivers of the ten most common items reported on land and the seafloor, analyzing data from 22,508 land-based and 7,290 seafloor clean-ups and surveys across 116 and 118 countries, respectively. We found debris hotspots for different items span numerous countries across all continents. This demonstrates that the debris problem is global and heterogeneous, pointing to the transboundary nature of the issue and necessitating sub-national approaches to implementing effective solutions. Food and beverage packaging items, predominantly made from single-use plastics, accounted for much of the debris. Hotspots of individual debris items were differentially driven by socioeconomic factors. In general, total debris counts increased with the value of infrastructure, and decreased with national wealth. Highly polluted sites occurred in high-infrastructure, low-wealth locations such as Athens, Greece; Tunis, Tunisia and Lima, Peru. Based on these findings, we identify specific opportunities for policy makers and citizens alike to focus efforts aimed at reducing debris entering the environment. 相似文献
5.
The world population is expected to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050 and to ~11 billion by 2100, and securing its healthy nutrition is a key concern. As global fertile land is limited, the question arises whether growth in food consumption associated with increased affluence surmounts increases in land-use efficiency (measured as food supply per cropland area) associated with technological progress. Furthermore, substantial inequalities prevail in the global food system: While overly rich diets represent a serious health issue for many of the world’s most affluent inhabitants and constitute a critical climate-change driver, undernourishment and hunger still threaten a considerable fraction of the world population, mostly in low-income countries. We here analyze trajectories in cropland demand and their main basic drivers food consumption (measured by a food index reflecting the share of animal products in diets) and land-use efficiency, for 123 countries (clustered in four income groups, covering 94% of the world population). We cover the period 1990–2013 and assess if these trajectories are associated with changes in inequality between countries. We find that while all groups of countries converged towards the high level of the per-capita food consumption of high-income countries, differences between income groups remained pronounced. Overall, cropland demand per capita declined over the entire period in all regions except low income countries, resulting in a tendency towards global convergence. However, the trend slowed in the last years. In contrast, land-use efficiency increased in all income groups with a similar trend, hence international inequalites in land-use efficiency remained almost unaltered. Because population and food requirements per capita are expected to grow in all income groups except the richest ones, failure to improve land efficiency sufficiently could lead to a less unequal but at the same time less ecologically sustainable world. Avoiding such outcomes may be possible by reducing the consumption of animal products in the richer countries and raising land-use efficiency in the poorer countries. 相似文献
6.
In recent decades there has been a sustained and substantial shift in human diets across the globe towards including more livestock-derived foods. Continuing debates scrutinize how these dietary shifts affect human health, the natural environment, and livelihoods. However, amidst these debates there remain unanswered questions about how demand for livestock-derived foods may evolve over the upcoming decades for a range of scenarios for key drivers of change including human population, income, and consumer preferences. Future trends in human population and income in our scenarios were sourced from three of the shared socioeconomic pathways. We used scenario-based modeling to show that average protein demand for red meat (beef, sheep, goats, and pork), poultry, dairy milk, and eggs across the globe would increase by 14% per person and 38% in total between the year 2020 and the year 2050 if trends in income and population continue along a mid-range trajectory. The fastest per person rates of increase were 49% in South Asia and 55% in sub-Saharan Africa. We show that per person demand for red meat in high-income countries would decline by 2.8% if income elasticities of demand (a partial proxy for consumer preferences, based on the responsiveness of demand to income changes) in high-income countries decline by 100% by 2050 under a mid-range trajectory for per person income growth, compared to their current trajectory. Prices are an important driver of demand, and our results demonstrate that the result of a decline in red meat demand in high-income countries is strongly related to rising red meat prices, as projected by our scenario-based modeling. If the decline in the income elasticity of demand occurred in all countries rather than only in high-income countries, then per person red meat demand in high-income countries would actually increase in 2050 by 8.9% because the income elasticity-driven decline in global demand reduces prices, and the effect of lower prices outweighs the effect of a decline in the income elasticity of demand. Our results demonstrate the importance of interactions between income, prices, and the income elasticity of demand in projecting future demand for livestock-derived foods. We complement the existing literature on food systems and global change by providing quantitative evidence about the possible space for the future demand of livestock-derived foods, which has important implications for human health and the natural environment. 相似文献
7.
从我国塑料废物的处理现状及存在的问题出发,介绍了塑料废物回收再利用的方法,并提出了塑料废物污染的防治对策。 相似文献
8.
S L Cutter 《Global Environmental Change》1995,5(3):181-194
The author posits that women and children bear a disproportionate burden of environmental degradation and are in the worst position to mitigate the consequences of deteriorating environmental conditions. This article discusses the concept of environmental equity or fairness and its sociospatial impacts and the different adjustments made by women and children. Environmental equity is both an outcome and a process. Process equity includes the underlying causes of uneven distributions of resources. The 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development defines 27 specific principles that broadly follow three forms of equity: social equity, generational equity, and procedural equity. Social equity is defined as the role of social, economic, and political forces in resource consumption and environmental degradation. Environmental risk is related to locational criteria such as cheap land and transportation access and by the social geography of places. Hazardous waste dumping is used to illustrate inequitable waste disposal in developing countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Lebanon, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and South Korea. Generational equity is defined as fairness over time. The issue of permanent radioactive waste disposal is a current issue that has implications for future generations. Three strategies are important in assuring generational equity: the maintenance of natural and cultural diversity; a reduction in environmental degradation; and the provision of equal access to resources. Preservation of parkland is a positive strategy and lack of access to health services and reproductive health care is a negative strategy. Procedural equity is defined as the extent to which regulations are applied fairly. The example is given of higher fines for dumping waste in "nice White communities" compared to minority ones. Environmental law regulating hazardous waste exports has been minimally effective. Women and children are affected by particulate pollution and environmental toxins (lead and pesticides) in the air and water of urban areas and by a composite of poverty, development, and urbanization. 相似文献
9.
研究了经济代理人面临红利支付和劳动负效用情形下投资与退休选择问题,其中考虑了风险资产派发红利及 劳动会给经济代理人带来效用损失的情形.代理人享有退休选择权,退休决策使得代理人避免了劳动负效用,却必须要放弃工资收入.代理人效用来自消费,并且受劳动负效用的直接影响.利用动态规划的方法去解自由边值问题,得到了代理人临界财富水平和最优消费投资组合策略显示解. 相似文献
10.
Agricultural land use to meet the demands of a growing population, changing diets, lifestyles and biofuel production is a significant driver of biodiversity loss. Globally applicable methods are needed to assess biodiversity impacts hidden in internationally traded food items. We used the countryside species area relationship (SAR) model to estimate the mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles species lost (i.e. species ‘committed to extinction’) due to agricultural land use within each of the 804 terrestrial ecoregion. These species lost estimates were combined with high spatial resolution global maps of crop yields to calculate species lost per ton for 170 crops in 184 countries. Finally, the impacts per ton were linked with the bilateral trade data of crop products between producing and consuming countries from FAO, to calculate the land use biodiversity impacts embodied in international crop trade and consumption. We found that 83% of total species loss is incurred due to agriculture land use devoted for domestic consumption whereas 17% is due to export production. Exports from Indonesia to USA and China embody highest impacts (20 species lost at the regional level each). In general, industrialized countries with high per capita GDP tend to be major net importers of biodiversity impacts from developing tropical countries. Results show that embodied land area is not a good proxy for embodied biodiversity impacts in trade flows, as crops occupying little global area such as sugarcane, palm oil, rubber and coffee have disproportionately high biodiversity impacts. 相似文献
11.
This paper uses the dataset of Pollution Information Transparency Index covering 113 Chinese cities and the period of 2008–2011 to find out what contributes to different levels of environmental information disclosure across Chinese cities and the correlation between cities’ Pollution Information Transparency Indexes and local pollution. We find that cities whose mayors have longer tenures and PhD degrees are likely to release more environmental information. In addition, the higher the number of internet users and income per capita, the closer a city is to Hong Kong, and the lower a city’s unemployment rate, the greater the level of environmental disclosure is. An efficient local legal system is also found to facilitate information disclosure.We also find that in most cases, high Pollution Information Transparency Indexes are associated with lower pollutant levels and more pollution-control investment, suggesting the effectiveness of China’s environmental disclosure in pollution control. Community pressure for a better environment is shown to reinforce the role of environmental disclosure in pollution reduction. We find no evidence that environmental disclosure improves the efficacy of traditional environmental regulation in pollution control. Nevertheless, different aspects of environmental disclosure vary a lot in their effectiveness in pollution reduction and the results here indicate that inducing cities to respond to public information requests is perhaps the most effective method of pollution control in China. 相似文献
12.
Social network analysis gives a rigid assessment of network structure while cultural theory helps explain management outcomes in more detail. The combination of these methods provides significant and alternative insights about the complexity of water pollution management. Applied in the case study of the Calumpang Watershed in the Philippines, two types of relations were evaluated, namely, resource sharing and cooperative activities. Factors affecting cooperation and the creation of bridges were assessed in social network analysis, while cultural theory was used to reveal the underlying views of key actors on the nature of the river and its management. Evidence showed that cooperation was significantly influenced by resource sharing regardless of institutional affiliation, while bridges were created by becoming the pools of information and resources in the network. Using cultural theory, this study found out that local government officials dominantly have a mixture of hierarchist and egalitarian views characterizing belief in both rule-bound and group-motivated actions to solve the water pollution problem. However, their egalitarian views on management did not manifest in the current network. The study concludes that collaborative partnerships for water pollution management can be facilitated by promoting resource flow, utilizing influential bridges in the network, and understanding the unconventional values of government actors. Combining social network analysis and cultural theory is recommended to generate a more critical assessment of the institutional complexity of pollution and other water issues in watersheds. 相似文献
13.
As global temperatures go up and incomes rise, air conditioner sales are poised to increase dramatically. Recent studies explore the potential economic and environmental impacts of this growth, but relatively little attention has been paid to the implications for inequality. In this paper we use household-level microdata from 16 countries to characterize empirically the relationship between climate, income, and residential air conditioning. We show that both current and future air conditioner usage is concentrated among high-income households. Not only do richer countries have much more air conditioning than poorer countries, but within countries adoption is highly concentrated among high-income households. The pattern of adoption is particularly stark in relatively low-income countries such as Pakistan, where we show that the vast majority of adoption between now and 2050 will be concentrated among the upper income tercile. We use our model to forecast future adoption, show how patterns vary across countries and income levels, and discuss what these patterns mean for health, productivity, and educational inequality. 相似文献
14.
Affluence drives the global displacement of land use 总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2
Jan Weinzettel Edgar G. Hertwich Glen P. Peters Kjartan Steen-Olsen Alessandro Galli 《Global Environmental Change》2013,23(2):433-438
Increasing affluence is often postulated as a main driver for the human footprint on biologically productive areas, identified among the main causes of biodiversity loss, but causal relationships are obscured by international trade. Here, we trace the use of land and ocean area through international supply chains to final consumption, modeling agricultural, food, and forestry products on a high level of resolution while also including the land requirements of manufactured goods and services. In 2004, high-income countries required more biologically productive land per capita than low-income countries, but this connection could only be identified when land used to produce internationally traded products was taken into account, because higher-income countries tend to displace a larger fraction of land use. The equivalent land and ocean area footprint of nations increased by a third for each doubling of income, with all variables analyzed on a per capita basis. This increase came largely from imports, which increased proportionally to income. Export depended mostly on the capacity of countries to produce useful biomass, the biocapacity. Our analysis clearly shows that countries with a high biocapacity per capita tend to spare more land for nature. Biocapacity per capita can be increased through more intensive production or by reducing population density. The net displacement of land use from high-income to low-income countries amounted to 6% of the global land demand, even though high-income countries had more land available per capita than low-income countries. In particular, Europe and Japan placed high pressure on ecosystems in lower-income countries. 相似文献
15.
Katherine Calvin Shonali Pachauri Enrica De Cian Ioanna Mouratiadou 《Climatic change》2016,136(1):109-125
Today Africa is a small emitter, but it has a large and faster-than-average growing population and per capita income that could drive future energy demand and, if unconstrained, emissions. This paper uses a multi-model comparison to characterize the potential future energy development for Continental and Sub-Saharan Africa under different assumptions about population and income. Our results suggest that population and economic growth rates will strongly influence Africa’s future energy use and emissions. We show that affluence is only one face of the medal and the range of future emissions is also contingent on technological and political factors. Higher energy intensity improvements occur when Africa grows faster. In contrast, climate intensity varies less with economic growth and it is mostly driven by climate policy. African emissions could account for between 5 % and 20 % of global emissions, with Sub-Saharan Africa contributing between 4 % and 10 % of world emissions in 2100. In all scenarios considered, affluence levels remain low until the middle of the century, suggesting that the population could remain dependent on traditional bioenergy to meet most residential energy needs. Although the share of electricity in final energy, electric capacity and electricity use per capita all rise with income, even by mid-century they do not reach levels observed in developed countries today. 相似文献
16.
Alexander Popp Hermann Lotze-Campen Benjamin Bodirsky 《Global Environmental Change》2010,20(3):451-462
Today, the agricultural sector accounts for approximately 15% of total global anthropogenic emissions, mainly methane and nitrous oxide. Projecting the future development of agricultural non-CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is important to assess their impacts on the climate system but poses many problems as future demand of agricultural products is highly uncertain. We developed a global land use model (MAgPIE) that is suited to assess future anthropogenic agricultural non-CO2 GHG emissions from various agricultural activities by combining socio-economic information on population, income, food demand, and production costs with spatially explicit environmental data on potential crop yields. In this article we describe how agricultural non-CO2 GHG emissions are implemented within MAgPIE and compare our simulation results with other studies. Furthermore, we apply the model up to 2055 to assess the impact of future changes in food consumption and diet shifts, but also of technological mitigation options on agricultural non-CO2 GHG emissions. As a result, we found that global agricultural non-CO2 emissions increase significantly until 2055 if food energy consumption and diet preferences remain constant at the level of 1995. Non-CO2 GHG emissions will rise even more if increasing food energy consumption and changing dietary preferences towards higher value foods, like meat and milk, with increasing income are taken into account. In contrast, under a scenario of reduced meat consumption, non-CO2 GHG emissions would decrease even compared to 1995. Technological mitigation options in the agricultural sector have also the capability of decreasing non-CO2 GHG emissions significantly. However, these technological mitigation options are not as effective as changes in food consumption. Highest reduction potentials will be achieved by a combination of both approaches. 相似文献
17.
Death tolls and economic losses from natural hazards continue to rise in many parts of the world. With the aim to reduce future impacts from natural disasters it is crucial to understand the variability in space and time of the vulnerability of people and economic assets. In this paper we quantified the temporal dynamics of socio-economic vulnerability, expressed as fatalities over exposed population and losses over exposed GDP, to climate-related hazards between 1980 and 2016. Using a global, spatially explicit framework that integrates population and economic dynamics with one of the most complete natural disaster loss databases we quantified mortality and loss rates across income levels and analyzed their relationship with wealth. Results show a clear decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability, with global average mortality and economic loss rates that have dropped by 6.5 and nearly 5 times, respectively, from 1980–1989 to 2007–2016. We further show a clear negative relation between vulnerability and wealth, which is strongest at the lowest income levels. This has led to a convergence in vulnerability between higher and lower income countries. Yet, there is still a considerable climate hazard vulnerability gap between poorer and richer countries. 相似文献
18.
The shift away from coal is at the heart of the global low-carbon transition. Can governments of coal-producing countries help facilitate this transition and benefit from it? This paper analyses the case for coal taxes as supply-side climate policy implemented by large coal exporting countries. Coal taxes can reduce global carbon dioxide emissions and benefit coal-rich countries through improved terms-of-trade and tax revenue. We employ a multi-period equilibrium model of the international steam coal market to study a tax on steam coal levied by Australia alone, by a coalition of major exporting countries, by all exporters, and by all producers. A unilateral export tax has little impact on global emissions and global coal prices as other countries compensate for reduced export volumes from the taxing country. By contrast, a tax jointly levied by a coalition of major coal exporters would significantly reduce global emissions from steam coal and leave them with a net sector level welfare gain, approximated by the sum of producer surplus, consumer surplus, and tax revenue. Production taxes consistently yield higher tax revenues and have greater effects on global coal consumption with smaller rates of carbon leakages. Questions remain whether coal taxes by major suppliers would be politically feasible, even if they could yield economic benefits. 相似文献
19.
随着我国城市矿产开发的大力进行,其各方面的积极效益日益凸显。本文分析了我国城市矿产开发利用现状,并利用IPCC 提供的温室气体排放清单计算方法,对2011-2014 年我国废钢铁、废纸和废塑料的回收引起的CO2 和CH4 减排量进行统计分析。结果表明：2011-2014 年我国主要城市矿产开发的再生资源累计回收量为803.275 Mt,其中废钢铁、废纸和废塑料回收量最大,分别占2014 年回收总量的62.2%、18.0% 和8.2%;2011-2014 年废钢铁、废纸和废塑料回收引起的温室气体累计减排量分别为27.962 Mt CO2-eq,954.695 Mt CO2-eq 和22.502 Mt CO2-eq,合计 1005.159 Mt CO2-eq,温室气体减排效益明显。 相似文献
20.
In recent years, the environmental problems associated with plastics have become a matter of global concern. Current responses seek to replace plastics with other materials, however it is not yet clear that these alternatives will deliver improved environmental outcomes. There remains an urgent need for more nuanced understandings of plastics, their role in society, and their environmental impacts. Drawing on social science perspectives that emphasise the co-evolution of materials and society, this paper outlines a socio-technical approach to plastics and social change. In this view, plastics are understood in terms of the networks and relations of which they are part – highlighting the limitations of both technological solutions and the blanket condemnation of particular materials. The analysis focuses specifically on plastic packaging, exploring the interplay of technological innovation and consumer practices to better account for processes of change. Our arguments are advanced through reference to three case studies: the launch of a ‘roast in the bag’ chicken by a food retailer, the switch to compostable packaging by a potato crisps (chips) brand, and the refilling of plastic bottles by a cosmetics company. Particular attention is paid to the relationships between commercial, environmental and regulatory concerns. To conclude, we consider implications of the approach presented here for transdisciplinary and policy debates about the problems associated with single-use plastics. 相似文献