In planning the conduct of his affairs in relation to nature, man is faced with many problems which are so complex and so intermeshed that it is hard to say at first even what kind of problems they are. We are all familiar with the distinction between factual and evaluative questions, and I do not doubt that there is this distinction; but the actual problems with which we are faced are always an amalgam of these two kinds of question. (...) The various methods used by environmental planners are all attempts to separate out this amalgam, as we have to do if we are ever to understand the problems — let alone solve them. I wish in this lecture to give examples of, and appraise, two such methods. I shall draw from this appraisal not only theoretical lessons which may interest the moral philosopher, but also practical lessons which, I am sure, those who try to plan our environment ought to absorb. Though my examples come mostly from urban planning, because that is the kind of planning with whose problems I am most familiar, what I have to say will apply also to problems about the countryside. Whether we have to deal with the human nature of the man in the congested street, or the nature of the nature reserves or of the areas of outstanding natural beauty, the word ‘nature’ may bear slightly different senses, but the problem is still the same: to ascertain the facts about this nature, and then to think how we should conduct ourselves in order to make things better, or at any rate not worse, than they would otherwise be. (shrink)

In planning the conduct of his affairs in relation to nature, man is faced with many problems which are so complex and so intermeshed that it is hard to say at first even what kind of problems they are. We are all familiar with the distinction between factual and evaluative questions, and I do not doubt that there is this distinction; but the actual problems with which we are faced are always an amalgam of these two kinds of question. (...) The various methods used by environmental planners are all attempts to separate out this amalgam, as we have to do if we are ever to understand the problems — let alone solve them. I wish in this lecture to give examples of, and appraise, two such methods. I shall draw from this appraisal not only theoretical lessons which may interest the moral philosopher, but also practical lessons which, I am sure, those who try to plan our environment ought to absorb. Though my examples come mostly from urban planning, because that is the kind of planning with whose problems I am most familiar, what I have to say will apply also to problems about the countryside. Whether we have to deal with the human nature of the man in the congested street, or the nature of the nature reserves or of the areas of outstanding natural beauty, the word ‘nature’ may bear slightly different senses, but the problem is still the same: to ascertain the facts about this nature, and then to think how we should conduct ourselves in order to make things better, or at any rate not worse, than they would otherwise be. (shrink)

This essay present a critical analysis of Hare's article 'Contrasting Methods in Environmental Planning' . It argues that Hare has drawn an important distinction between two 'methods' used in both urban and environmental planning, and that Hare is correct in the conclusion of his argument that one of these methods, 'the trial-design method', is superior to the other, 'the means-end method'. However, this paper presents a new argument in support of that conclusion. This new argument is (...) important for two reasons. First, it points to the existence of at least two different kinds of preference schedule. Second, it supports a type of decision making procedure to be used in 'multiple-client situations' different from the one envisioned by Hare. This procedure, oddly enough, resembles the procedures outlined by both Habermas and Rawls. However, it can be defended on recognisably utilitarian grounds. (shrink)

In an attempt to solve some serious economic and environmental problems, the Netherlands has embarked on an unique experiment over the past few decades. Based on a tradition of cooperation, consensus building, and democratic self-rule, the Dutch have revitalized a corporatist approach to economic and environmental planning. They refer to the polder model to describe the particular characteristics of this approach. Although the polder model is rooted in the past (i.e., the Golden Age of the 17th-century Dutch (...) Republic), its more recent application in planning efforts finds its start with the Wassenaar Accord in economic planning in 1982. A similar approach was used in environmental planning with the introduction of the first National Environmental Policy Plan in 1989. The key feature of the environmental plan is a covenant between business and government. In this article, the author compares the application of the polder model in both areas and concludes that there are serious challenges ahead for its survival. The article attempts to assess whether the model would work in the United States and why the approach used by the Dutch is the favored approach of Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman. (shrink)

This study employs an experiment investigating cognitive mapping of fifth-grade children living in a remote village environment, wherein characteristics of the landscape included paths, landmarks, nodes, edges, and districts. Two aspects of analysis were salient in this study. First, important landscape characteristics and their frequency of appearance in the cognitive maps were tabulated and illustrated as a layout map. Second, inaccurate cognitive maps were structurally analyzed to account for any incompleteness, distortions, and augmentation of actual environments found in some map (...) samples. Focus on gender differences in children’s environmental cognition in terms of symbolic representation skills utilized in cognitive mapping is of special interest in this case study. Results confirm Piaget’s theory that older children, aged ten or more, begin to use projective and Euclidean concepts. Furthermore, boys used a greater variety of symbols to represent a particular landscape characteristic, a cultural temple, than did the girls. Finally, we hypothesize that the ‘hunter–gatherer’ social divisions of labor between men and women in the village’s early historical social structure are consequentially related to gender discrepancies in cognitive mapping symbolic representation skills, in non-English-speaking children. (shrink)

As overdevelopment, noise pollution, and land use become considerations in modern life, we become more thoughtful of the quality of our environments, whether the space is for recreation, education, or residential living. Demonstrating how such tenets as "to each his own" have contributed to the demise of our public spaces, Environmental Aesthetics is the first integrated study of this emerging field. Beginning with a brief history of aesthetics, the author explores the concept of landscape, the psychology of human-environment relations, (...) the influences of literary, artistic and legal activism, and the roles of public policy and of planning. Clearly written and lavishly illustrated, the book will prove invaluable to anyone interested in how the physical environment can and should be improved. (shrink)

Environmental landscaping is known to build, plan, and manage landscapes that consider the ecology of a site and produce gardens that benefit both people and the rest of the ecosystem. Landscaping and the environment are combined in landscape design planning to provide holistic answers to complex issues. Seeding native species and eradicating alien species are just a few ways humans influence the region’s ecosystem. Landscape architecture is the design of landscapes, urban areas, or gardens and their modification. It (...) comprises the construction of urban and rural landscapes via coordinating the creation and management of open spaces and economics, finding a job, and working within a confined project budget. There was a lot of discussion about global warming and water shortages. There is a lot of hope to be found even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. AI is becoming more significant in many urban landscape planning and design elements with the advent of web 4.0 and Human-Centred computing. It created a virtual reality-based landscape to create deep neural networks (DNNs) to make deep learning (DL) more user-friendly and efficient. Users may only manipulate physical items in this environment to manually construct neural networks. These setups are automatically converted into a model, and the real-time testing set is reported and aware of the DNN models that users are producing. This research presents a novel strategy for combining DL-DNN with landscape architecture, providing a long-term solution to the problem of environmental pollution. Carbon dioxide levels are constantly checked when green plants are in and around the house. Plants, on either hand, remove toxins from the air, making it easier to maintain a healthy environment. Human-centered Artificial Intelligence-based web 4.0 may be used to assess and evaluate the data model. The study findings can be sent back into the design process for further modification and optimization. (shrink)

While fraught with ambiguities, support for greater public participation in environmental policy making is experiencing a renaissance amongst sections of government and academia, particularly within the field of land-use planning. There is concern within this cohort that the planning system silences public voices through its current mechanisms for community involvement. Proponents of participation often presuppose that more public participation will produce both 'better' decisions and environmental benefits, but to date research has focused on the front-end, or (...) 'processes', of participation rather than the 'products' that result. While procedural aspects of public participation are important it is imperative that critical consideration is also given to what emerges from the participation that is being exalted. This paper addresses this concern by focusing on the products of a public participation exercise conducted in Luton, South-east England in order to consider what it is that ' silence knows'. (shrink)

While fraught with ambiguities, support for greater public participation in environmental policy making is experiencing a renaissance amongst sections of government and academia, particularly within the field of land-use planning. There is concern within this cohort that the planning system silences public voices through its current mechanisms for community involvement. Proponents of participation often presuppose that more public participation will produce both 'better' decisions and environmental benefits, but to date research has focused on the front-end, or (...) 'processes', of participation rather than the 'products' that result. While procedural aspects of public participation are important it is imperative that critical consideration is also given to what emerges from the participation that is being exalted. This paper addresses this concern by focusing on the products of a public participation exercise conducted in Luton, South-east England in order to consider what it is that 'silence knows'. (shrink)

Three decades ago, planned obsolescence was a widely discussed ethical issue in marketing classrooms. Planned obsolescence is topical again today because an increasing emphasis on continuous product development promotes shorter durables replacement and disposal cycles with troublesome environmental consequences. This paper offers explanations of why product obsolescence is practiced and why it works. It then examines the ethical responsibilities of product developers and corporate strategists and their differing responses to this problem. Pro-environment product design and marketing practices and innovative (...) government policies may alleviate the problem over time. However, given the current lack of understanding about consumer replacement and disposal behavior, it is questionable as to whether these practices and policies will be sufficiently informed to be effective. Thus, marketing scholars have a significant opportunity to contribute to sustainable durables product development. (shrink)

In the 40-plus years since the publication of Aldo Leopold's "land ethic," the field of environmental ethics has focused on the fundamental basis of humanity's relationship with, and moral obligations to, the earth community. This paper reports the results of a survey on the extent to which planning programs are contributing to the understand ing and fostering of new ethical relationships, through the teaching of environmental ethics, sustainability, and environmental planning and management subjects. The paper (...) concludes with a discussion of implications for planning education and recommendations for future curriculum development. (shrink)

This paper discusses the impacts of different formal and informal institutions upon the Regional Forest Programme of Southwest Finland. The divide between formal and informal institutions is a binary distinction: it is used as a discursive tool for identifying social structures and processes and for articulating their significance in development and environmental planning, valuation and decision-making. In the end part of the paper, there is a brief discussion of how normative and moral issues can be explicitly and more (...) creatively integrated into the practice of environmental policy. (shrink)

Today, more corporations disclose information about their environmental performance in response to stakeholder demands of environmental responsibility and accountability. What information do corporations disclose on their websites? This paper investigates the environmental management policies and practices of the 200 largest corporations in the world. Based on a content analysis of the environmental reports of Fortune’s Global 200 companies, this research analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosures with respect to the following seven areas: environmental (...) planning considerations, top management support to the institutionalization of environmental concerns, environmental structures and organizing specifics, environmental leadership activities, environmental control, external validations or certifications of environmental programs, and forms of corporate environmental disclosures. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of non-executive employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) on corporate environmental engagement. We show that granting ESOPs to non-executive employees promotes greater corporate ecological engagement from the perspectives of environmental protection expenditures, environmental information disclosure quality, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings. ESOPs unite members in a common interest, empowering them to put pressure on management to reduce carbon emissions, which benefits their physical wellbeing and increases their residual interest in long-term (...) corporate wealth. Further, our analysis reveals that companies investing in environmental protection forgo short-term profit as a consequence of high initial costs, while increasing long-term firm value. These positive effects are attributable to ESOP schemes with higher employee subscription rates, those granted to a larger number of non-executive employees, and those with longer validity periods of ownership, whose incentive effect is sufficiently powerful to offset the free-rider problem. In addition, the impact of ESOPs is more pronounced in companies with greater media exposure, those confronting intense labor market competition, and those in heavily polluting industries. Fundamentally, our study provides novel evidence of the incentive effect of ESOPs on corporate environmental engagement and of stakeholder dynamics driving the implementation of carbon reduction strategies. (shrink)

Strategic Environmental Assessment, as a support to strategic planning, is a starting point in the creation of a sustainable concept of managing waste that is based on the principles of a circular economy. The role of SEA is to guide the planning process towards the goal of securing the best effects in relation to the quality of the living environment and the socio-economic aspects of development. SEA is also an instrument that can be used when making optimal (...) decisions about spatial development, which further contributes to its importance and role in the planning process. The implementation of SEA allows developers to establish the benefits and implications of the proposed spatial changes, taking into account the capacity of the space to sustain the planned development, and to determine the degree of acceptability of the proposed spatial changes. This paper presents a specific method used for impact assessment in SEA for the Agro-Waste Management Plan for Oplenac Vineyard. The specificity of this method is that it combines specific goals, indicators and criteria for assessing the effect of planning solutions formulated in the simulated AWMP for Oplenac Vineyard using a semi-quantitative expert method. The results of the paper indicate the possibility of using GIS tools to increase objectivity in the expert evaluation of planning solutions, particularly in relation to a group of criteria for assessing the spatial dispersion of the impacts. This reduces the subjectivity that is characteristic of all expert methods. The graphical presentation of the results in GIS technology and the use of matrices and graphs to present the results makes them easier to understand and creates a good basis for making optimal decisions on future activities concerning the elimination of waste from wineries and viticulture. The research was carried out within the framework of the NoAW project, which is supported by the European Commission through the Horizon2020 research and innovation program. (shrink)

Comparative environmental philosophy is valuable in many ways. Perhaps it is most valuable because it reveals some of the foundational assumptions that run so deep in the poles of comparison that they might otherwise have gone unnoticed. These revelations may invite us to challenge those assumptions that have led to the kind of thinking responsible for much of the environmental degradation that we see today. Japanese Environmental Philosophy gathers papers focused on the environmental problems of the (...) twenty-first century. Drawing from Japanese philosophical traditions they investigate our relationships with other humans, nonhuman animals, and the environment. The heart of the book consists of chapters written by fifteen top scholars from Japan, the United States, Europe, and Australia. The essays cover a broad range of topics drawn from various strains of Japanese thought—including Zen Buddhism, Shintoism, the Kyoto school, and Japanese philosophy of art and aesthetics—as well as from traditional Japanese culture and the contemporary science of planning for natural disasters. These articles demonstrate that Japanese scientific, philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions can provide meaningful insight to address the current global environmental crisis. (shrink)

Spatial planning policies are fundamental blocks for the implementation of sustainable development goals. Still, despite the growing adoption of environmental proxies, as it is nature-based solutions, the study of their institutionalization in policy and spatial planning is in the early stages. Simultaneously, the use of discursive and interpretative methods to unfold the social structures related to environmental issues is growing, nonetheless, their application is more common to supranational narratives. This article proposes a conceptual and methodological approach (...) to using critical discourse analysis for studying the institutionalization and conceptualization of nature-related issues in policy and spatial planning at national and local levels. This is done by discussing the ontological relations between the discursive institutionalist theory and critical discourse analysis as a methodology. It contains four main stages: clarifying the analytical focus; mapping policy and planning documents; analyzing macro discourse, which includes critical textual analysis, text-type analysis, and intertextuality analysis, and, at last, the fourth phase, interpretation within the institutional context. It provides a tool for researchers less familiar with linguistics but interested in performing discourse analysis to understand the integration of environmental narratives within policy and spatial planning. (shrink)

Environmental activism plays a vital role in raising awareness of environmental degradation and halting environmentally destructive activities, which is expected to contribute to safeguarding the Earth’s system against climate and biodiversity loss crises. Although the passion and commitment of environmental activists should be acknowledged, several groups of environmental activists are embracing the radical environmentalist movement. They support using illegal actions to achieve their primary goal of environmental protection. The actions perpetrated by radical environmentalist groups are (...) not impulsive but rather part of a deliberately planned and organized following a long-term strategy. (shrink)

Previous studies have confirmed that individual waste management behavior is influenced by both rational-based and altruistic-oriented beliefs and attitudes. Scholars incorporated personal norms in Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior and confirmed its usefulness in predicting waste management behavior. However, limited attention has been paid to the interactions between the variables in the model. Scholars also commented that the cognitive dimension was largely neglected in the current socio-psychological framework of waste management behavior. This study intends to address this issue by incorporating (...) environmental concern and environmental knowledge in the model and examining the psychological paths linking these variables to waste management behavior within the expanded model of planned behavior. Based on a cross-sectional survey among 434 university students in China, the results showed that subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, personal norms, and environmental knowledge were essential predictors of waste management behavior, whereas the direct effect of attitude was not statistically significant. Environmental concern and subjective norms could influence waste management behavior through personal norms. Environmental knowledge could influence waste management behavior indirectly through environmental concern, personal norms, and perceived behavioral control. Moreover, perceived behavioral control served as a mediator between the relationship of personal norms and waste management behavior. (shrink)

Religiosity is one of the most prominent and extensive social factors influencing one’s behavior; however, there is a lack of research analyzing the religiosity impact on pro-environmental behavior, particularly for women in rural areas. To narrow the research gap, this study established a theoretical research model by incorporating religiosity into the Theory of Planned Behavior to explore factors affecting rural female facilitators’ pro-environmental behavior. The extended Theory of Planned Behavior model was consequently tested by empirical data collected from (...) 110 rural female facilitators in Qom Province in the center of Iran. The results of structural equation modeling indicated that subjective norms and environmental attitude were positively and significantly related to pro-environmental intentions. In addition, pro-environmental intentions and perceived behavioral control were found to be significantly associated with pro-environmental behaviors. The results revealed that there was a direct and indirect relationship between religiosity and pro-environmental behaviors via perceived behavioral control. In addition, there was an indirect relationship between religiosity and pro-environmental intentions via subjective norms and environmental attitudes. Therefore, this study revealed that religiosity as social pressure plays an important role in determining pro-environmental intentions and behaviors among rural female facilitators in Iran. Thus, in order to promote pro-environmental behavior, the religiosity aspects should be considered and people should be stimulated to act in a more environmentally friendly mode via religious prism. (shrink)

This book explores the epistemological and ethical issues at the foundations of environmental philosophy, emphasising the conservation of biodiversity. Sahota Sarkar criticises attempts to attribute intrinsic value to nature and defends an anthropocentric position on biodiversity conservation based on an untraditional concept of transformative value. Unlike other studies in the field of environmental philosophy, this book is as much concerned with epistemological issues as with environmental ethics. It covers a broad range of topics, including problems of explanation (...) and prediction in traditional ecology and how individual-based models and Geographic Information Systems technology is transforming ecology. Introducing a brief history of conservation biology, Sarkar analyses the consensus framework for conservation planning through adaptive management. He concludes with a discussion of directions for theoretical research in conservation biology and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Although various studies have shown thatfarmers believe there is the need for a producer-ledinitiative to address the environmental problems fromagriculture, farmers in several Canadian provinceshave been reluctant to widely participate inEnvironmental Farm Plan (EFP) programs. Few studieshave examined the key issues associated with adoptingEFP programs based on farmers', as opposed to policymakers', perspectives on why producers are reluctantto participate in the program. A study adapting VanRaaij's (1981) conceptual model of the decision-makingenvironment of the firm, and prospect theory on valuefunctions (...) associated with the gains and losses fromrisky choices can be used to characterize how farmersperceive potential risks in environmental farmplanning. This framework can be used to assert thatfarmers are concerned about risks of public disclosureof potentially incriminating environmental informationfrom farms because the EFP program requirements foridentification and extensive documentation of farminformation is perceived by farmers as facilitatingthe accessibility of environmental information to thepublic, and public investigative efforts. Although theEFP program does not explicitly generate informationabout the environmental conditions of a farm nor thedisclosure of such information to the public, itcreates the possibility of generating and divulgingpotentially incriminating information that the farmermay want to treat as confidential. Yet, alone, theserisks of public disclosure concerns should not preventfarmers from participating in the EFP. Awareness ofand participation in environmental farm planning canbe increased if farmers and policy makers understandwhat the risks are, and how they arise. Aspects of theEFP process that have the potential to generate riskof public disclosure concerns relate to farm reviews,documentation and record keeping, and correctiveaction plans. There are legal and policy instrumentsthat can offer various forms of protection and helpminimize such risks, and these need to be assessed. (shrink)

Environmental Dilemmas focuses on the ethical problems and dilemmas that emerge in place-based professional practices—architecture, landscape architecture, planning, engineering, and construction management. Mugerauer and Manzo connect decision-making to major ethical theories, principles, and rules, and professional codes of ethics.

Environmental ethics concerns itself with ethical issues arising from the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Of particular interest are ethical considerations in relation to human efforts to conserve the natural environment. Some of the key environmental ethics issues are whether environmental value is intrinsic or instrumental, whether biodiversity is valuable in itself or whether it is an indicator of some other value(s), and what the appropriate time scale is for conservation planning. But there is (...) much more to environmental philosophy than environmental ethics. For a start, environmental philosophy covers a whole raft of issues in philosophy of science such as the role of mathematical models in population ecology,1 the relationship between the stability of ecosystems and the complexity of those ecosystems,2 the representation and treatment of uncertainty in ecological and conservation biology applications,3 and whether ecology has laws4. None of these issues has anything to do with ethics. But there is another sense in which environmental philosophy is much broader than environmental ethics: even in relation to topics where there are value or ethical issues, there are other philosophical issues that we would do well to disentangle from the ethics. I will argue that it is a mistake to think of the philosophical issues in question as merely environmental ethics. (shrink)

We apply two contrasting principles of human workmanship, the principles of design and eolithism, to the issue of responsible environmental stewardship. Both principles are described and analyzed in an environmental context with an emphasis on the weaknesses of the more popular design principle and the strengths of the lesser known eolithic principle. We conclude with a discussion of the principles’complementary potential for environmental planning and management.

The environmental justice movement began in 1982, when residents of Shocco Township, a low-income, African-American community located in Warren County, North Carolina, protested the state’s plan to...

Environmental pollutants such as lead, mercury, and pesticides interfere with brain development, yet we do not test industrial chemicals for brain toxicity. In this book, Philippe Grandjean argues for the necessity of protecting the brains of future generations and proposes a plan of action to halt what he refers to as chemical brain drain.

Animal research in laboratories is currently informed by the three R’s (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement), a common-sense theory of animal research ethics. In addition a fourth R (Refusal) is needed to address research plans that are so badly conceived that their chances of gaining any knowledge worth the animal suffering they cause are nil. Unfortunately, these four R’s do not always yield workable solutions to the moral problems faced regularly by wildlife researchers. It is possible to develop analogs in the (...) sphere of environmental research to these four R’s, creating a common-sense theory of environmental research ethics that will provide significant guidance to researchers and win acceptance from almost all stakeholders. This theory can be articulated in terms of twenty basic principles. (shrink)

If an organization cares for nature, this paper contends, it will act so as not to harm the ecosystems it affects, or when it cannot so act at the moment it will commit itself to such action over time. For an organization's commitment to ecologically beneficent performance to be credible, one requires an action plan with specified targets determining the best ecologically beneficent pollution abatement and ecosystem improvement approaches in a situation. To this end the 4 Direct Environmental Performance (...) Measures are generally used: L, pollutant loads; C: pollutant concentrations; I, ecosystem impacts; and R, ecosystem restoration. These direct EPMS are preferred to the indirect social performance indices customary in business ethics discourse, such as O: positioning organizations along the social performance spectrum from reactive to proactive; or E: economic indicators; and T: technology development; for environmental performance improvement is what is at issue. This one ground rule of environmental performance ethic; a second is that reducing harmful impacts or restoring an ecosystem are to be preferred over pollutant load/concentration reduction. The scientific, technical form of Direct EPMs is important, for it reinforces economic and technological development and yields performance-related environmental knowledge, in contrast to subjective perception and social debate. It offers management a model of ecologically beneficent performance that is microscopic in detail and regional in scope. It further suggests good environmental management involves linking ecosystem improvement with economic/technological benefits. An important aspect of this model of good environmental performance is to integrate economic, technical and social concerns with environmental ethics. It shows that economics and ecology should be mutually reinforcing, just as sustainable development suggests. (shrink)

If an organization cares for nature, this paper contends, it will act so as not to harm the ecosystems it affects, or when it cannot so act at the moment it will commit itself to such action over time. For an organization's commitment to ecologically beneficent performance to be credible, one requires an action plan with specified targets determining the best ecologically beneficent pollution abatement and ecosystem improvement approaches in a situation. To this end the 4 Direct Environmental Performance (...) Measures (EPMs) are generally used: L, pollutant loads; C: pollutant concentrations; I, ecosystem impacts; and R, ecosystem restoration. These direct EPMS are preferred to the indirect social performance indices customary in business ethics discourse, such as O: positioning organizations along the social performance spectrum from reactive to proactive; or E: economic indicators; and T: technology development; for environmental performance improvement is what is at issue. This one ground rule of environmental performance ethic; a second is that reducing harmful impacts or restoring an ecosystem are to be preferred over pollutant load/concentration reduction. The scientific, technical form of Direct EPMs is important, for it reinforces economic and technological development and yields performance-related environmental knowledge, in contrast to subjective perception and social debate. It offers management a model of ecologically beneficent performance that is microscopic in detail and regional in scope. It further suggests good environmental management involves linking ecosystem improvement with economic/technological benefits. An important aspect of this model of good environmental performance is to integrate economic, technical and social concerns with environmental ethics. It shows that economics and ecology should be mutually reinforcing, just as sustainable development suggests. (shrink)

The Australian government's response to the Millennium Drought (1997–2010) has been met with praise and contestation. While proponents saw the response as timely and crucial, critics claimed it was characterized by government overreach and mismanagement. Five months of field research in farm communities in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) identified two dominant discourses: administrative rationalism and a local community-based discourse I have termed community-centrism. Administrative rationalism reflects the value of scientific inquiry in service to the state and is the dominant (...) research-based problem-solving model used by water and natural resource agencies (Dryzek in The politics of the earth: environmental discourses, Oxford University Press, 2013; Colloff and Pittock in Aust J Water Resour, 23(2):88–98, 2019). Community-centrism was identified through discussions with farmers and represents a bottom-up approach to environmental planning and management that seeks to incorporate local knowledge, planning, and direct participation. This investigation reveals how discourses define problems and policy choices. While market-based government interventions were likely necessary to address the crisis in the MDB, community-centred responses could have enhanced the government’s capacity to respond to problems. This paper argues that the long-term sustainability of water management in the Basin will require a reorientation on the part of farmers, academics, and governments to develop a community-centred approach to water policies impacting agriculture. (shrink)

This book draws on the authors' wide range of experience, to provide a greater understanding of the different dimensions of environmental engagement. It is essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, design and health sciences.

As organizations place greater emphasis on environmental objectives, business educators must produce the next set of leaders who can champion corporate environmental sustainability initiatives. However, environmental sustainability represents a polarizing topic with some students dismissing its importance and legitimacy. Limited research exists to understand student behavioral influences on sustainability education, especially as it translates to environmental sustainability behavior in the workplace. This gap challenges our ability as educators to understand how to best teach environmental sustainability (...) in order to reach diverse student mindsets. We apply the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to address this gap, investigating the influence of student attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on environmental sustainability intention and behavior. A structural model tested with student survey data finds that student attitude represents the strongest influence on environmental sustainability intention. The model also validates that subjective norm affects sustainability intention with students considering professors along with business leaders and politicians as valid references for sustainability knowledge. To tie the results to effective educational interventions, we use the TPB to organize an extensive review of the sustainability pedagogy literature and identify specific teaching recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of environmental sustainability education. (shrink)

In the growing phenomenological and humanistic literature on environmental design and theory, genius loci--that is, sense of place--receives increasing academic and professional attention. Genius loci has become a major focus in this work because it draws together the various natural, built and human qualities that are present in a particular building or environment. This essay asks how genius loci might be explored in terms of such underlying phenomenological structures. The author uses the question of how places are the same (...) and how they are different to identify 3 structures--people, space, and environment--that may provide value in understanding genius loci as a whole, particularly in terms of design implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Environmental Genome Project and BioethicsRichard R. Sharp (bio) and J. Carl Barrett (bio)Eight years ago, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal published a brief selection by Eric Juengst (1991) entitled “The Human Genome Project and Bioethics.” That essay introduced and described the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Program at the National Center for Human Genome Research. 1 Since that time, the ELSI program has grown to (...) become one of the largest and most well regarded bioethics programs in the country, sponsoring the work of hundreds of researchers and coordinating bioethics activities both nationally and internationally (Marshall 1996; Meslin, Thomson, and Boyer 1997). In 1991, however, Juengst, the first director of the ELSI program, had no way of anticipating these developments. Juengst’s goal in his essay was simply to highlight some of the moral and social issues that were emerging as focal points for the ELSI program. Looking back, the issues he outlined may seem vague and overly broad. At the time, however, the essay served an important purpose, to identify areas requiring additional study and thereby to serve as a guide to others interested in joining in these discussions.In many ways, Juengst’s article serves as an inspiration to those of us working on a new bioethics project. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) recently launched a multi-year project aimed at better understanding genetic influences on environmentally associated diseases (Albers 1997; Brown and Hartwell 1998; Cannon 1997; Kaiser 1997). This project, known as the Environmental Genome Project (EGP), plans to identify and study a number of common genetic variants that may play an important role in determining how individuals respond to environmental exposures. NIEHS hopes that the information learned through the EGP will be instrumental in developing more effective disease-prevention strategies and intervention programs. Following the precedent developed in connection with the Human Genome Project, NIEHS also plans to address the moral and social implications of the EGP. Efforts in this regard include sponsoring workshops and conferences to address such issues, as well as supporting research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of the EGP. Through this work, NIEHS hopes to anticipate potential problems before [End Page 175] they arise and to develop policies that maximize the benefits of the research while avoiding potential misuses of the information learned.In exploring the social implications of the EGP, we at NIEHS are very fortunate to be able to draw upon the work being done by the ELSI program at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), as well as the ever-expanding bioethics literature that has been sparked by the ELSI program. Still, there is much to be done and this is an exciting time for those of us involved with the EGP. Many of the ethical, legal, and social implications of the project are only beginning to become clearer, and several of these issues appear quite different from the sorts of concerns that have previously been discussed in connection with other types of genetic research.This essay highlights some of the ethical, legal, and social implications that are emerging as important focal points for the Environmental Genome Project. Like Juengst’s 1991 paper, the goal of this article is to provide an overview of current areas of interest and to encourage others to join us in thinking about these difficult issues.The Environmental Genome ProjectIndividuals differ greatly in their responses to chemicals, drugs, radiation, smoking, alcohol, and other environmental exposures. These differential responses are the result of complex interactions between many factors, including an individual’s genetic make-up, age, sex, nutritional status, and overall health. The EGP aims to better understand the genetic basis of differential responses to environmental exposures. The vast majority of diseases, many forms of cancer, for example, are the consequence of both environmental and genetic contributions (Perera 1997). Hence, understanding the relationships between genetic variation and response to environmental exposure is important for understanding the causes of human disease and is crucial for the development of effective disease-prevention strategies.The EGP and projects like it represent a new stage of genomic research. It is expected that the Human Genome Project will complete... (shrink)

As a tool for regulating the environment in China, does environmental information disclosure reduce pollutant discharge? To answer this question, we empirically analyzed the emission data of “the three wastes” in unit industrial GDP in 31 provincial units. As a measure to reduce institutional emission, environmental information disclosure only slightly influenced waste discharge reduction in the implementation period of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan of China. Instead, command control and market-based tools significantly affected waste discharge reduction. Representative measures included (...) penalties and charges. With the continuously enhanced pressure of control, environmental information disclosure facilitates the effects of command control tools on waste discharge reduction. Content analysis of environmental information disclosed by sample listed companies in Jiangsu Province was conducted. The disclosure of insufficient environmental information on emission reduction can be attributed to “adverse selection” in system performance and to the limited quality of overall environmental information disclosure. This study provides empirical evidence for Chinese policy makers to improve the system for environmental information disclosure of listed companies. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, leading environmentalists and philosophers explore the relationship between environmental ethics and policy, both in theory and practice. The first section of the book focuses on four approaches to change in ethical theory: ecological science, feminist metaphysics, Chinese philosophy, and holistic postmodern technology. In subsequent sections the contributors emphasize the need for nontraditional solutions and attempt to expand awareness of the most pressing practical problems. Among the topics discussed are the possibilities of real international cooperation, (...) the inequitable but economically intractable issue of global gasses, the political and ethical challenges of city planning, and the growing evidence of fundamental inappropriateness in treating land as legal private property. This volume is based on essays presented in 1992 at the Second International Conference on Ethics and Environmental Policy. The conference was held in response to the increasing need for a new ethics that would counter the traditional human-centered, dominantly individualistic approach of the industrial world toward the environment. (shrink)

Despite projected devastating impacts on human communities, the US still lacks comprehensive national policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This vacuum has provided the space for a surge of promising sustainability and climate action planning efforts at the state and local level. Meanwhile, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (2015) Out of Reach Report, ‘there is no state in the US where a minimum wage worker working full time can afford a one-bedroom apartment at the fair (...) market rent’. We are calling for a reimagining of local climate action planning that encourages policies and programs designed to reduce GHG emissions from the built environment while explicitly and comprehensively addressing the affordability component. With equitable local climate action planning, we can address both environmental and social justice issues. (shrink)

Geoengineering – roughly “the intentional manipulation of the planetary systems at a global scale” (Keith 2000) – to combat climate change is often introduced as a “plan B”: an alternative solution in case “plan A”, reducing emissions, fails. This framing is typically deployed as part of an argument that research and development is necessary in case robust conventional mitigation is not forthcoming, or proves insufficient to prevent dangerous climate impacts. Since coming to prominence with the release of the Royal Society (...) report in 2009 (Shepherd et al. 2009, v), the Plan B framing has proved popular with scientists, in policy circles, and in the news media (see Nerlich and Jaspal 2012; Luokkanen, Huttunen, and Hilden 2014). Though sometimes used to refer to geoengineering as a whole, it is associated particularly strongly with stratospheric sulfate injection (SSI) techniques. Consequently, these will be our focus here. We argue that the plan B framing is particularly ill-suited to the integrative assessment of options within climate policy, because it oversimplifies a complex issue in a misleading and deceptive way. For instance, it highlights extreme positions, presents SSI as an alternative independent from mainstream policies, ignores the multiplicity of options available, and neglects threats of morally indecent SSI in a context of ongoing political inertia. We are particularly concerned about the way ‘Plan B’ risks conveying an implicit hyper-optimism about SSI, and so obscures the need for ethical standards. (shrink)

With the rapid development of urban economy and the acceleration of urbanization, the demand for urban traffic is increasing rapidly. The single traffic-oriented planning does not take into account the requirements of traffic development on resources and the impact on the environment. The traffic construction of most cities can not fully meet the standard of ecotype. In this paper, the vehicle distribution route optimization problem under multiresource constraints such as vehicle energy capacity and vehicle loading capacity is studied, and (...) the static and dynamic models of distribution route optimization under multiresource constraints are established. In the static distribution route optimization model, the distribution route optimization problem with subloops is solved by modifying the network structure and adding virtual resource points. In the dynamic model, the spatiotemporal network model is used to avoid the generation of subloops, and the description of the vehicle distribution route planning problem is more intuitive and accurate. The model enriches the vehicle distribution route selection scheme at the cost of expanding the model scale. And it can solve the time when the vehicle arrives and leaves the customer point. This paper provides a good countermeasure for solving the environmental and social problems in the transportation system under the condition of resource constraints. (shrink)

Much of Edmonton’s municipal past lacked any overarching development plan. Once such absentee municipal planning gave way to more concrete forms of municipal planning in terms of shaping the urban environment, conflicting goals soon emerged. Between 1949 and the early 1980s a conflict in planning goals within both the Edmonton District Planning Commission and the City of Edmonton, at this time governed with a commission board became apparent. Often this conflict played out in Edmonton’s river valley (...) with competing visions of preservation and freeway construction. River valley neighborhoods were threatened with land acquisition policies that viewed the river valley as the sole domain of parkland. Concurrently, those neighborhoods and much of the river valley were also threatened by the Metropolitan Edmonton Transportation Study. Citizen engagement in an otherwise politically apathetic city led to its demise, although the threat of large-scale removal of river valley parks and homes throughout the city loomed for some time. The period between 1949 and 1983 represents a period in Edmonton’s history where environmental protection policy clashed with transportation policy that advocated for the wholesale destruction of the river valley and countless homes. It is this conflict that led to increased political awareness that directly contributed to the demise of the METS scheme and gave rise to renewed support for river valley protection while making rapid transit a possibility for Edmonton. (shrink)

This paper uses an environmental justice framework to examine government response to weather-related disasters dating back some eight decades. It places the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in socio-historical context of past emergencies with an emphasis on race and class dynamics and social vulnerability. Key questions explored include: What went wrong? Can it happen again? Is government equipped to plan for, mitigate against, respond to, and recover from natural and manmade disasters? Can the public trust government response to be fair? (...) Why are so many African Americans Alocked out@ of New Orleans= post-Katrina rebuilding, reconstruction, and recovery? (shrink)

This study focuses on the prediction of the engagement of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in environmental management practices, based on a random sample of 689 SMEs. The study finds that several endogenous factors, including tangibility of sector, firm size, innovative orientation, family influence and perceived financial benefits from energy conservation, predict an SME’s level of engagement in selected environmental management practices. For family influence, this effect is found only in interaction with the number of owners. In addition (...) to empirical research on SMEs’ environmental behavior, this article draws on the ecological modernization literature as well as the theory of planned behavior. (shrink)

In his remarks E. I. Ignat'ev considered a number of economic matters associated with the problem of the environment. Ignat'ev emphasized that environmental protection is becoming a vitally essential field of social activity. Inasmuch as this is the fact, he said, it is natural that, under the conditions existing in our country, this field of activity be planned in a specific way. The financial, material, and human resources needed to implement the program of conservation and improvement of the environment (...) must be planned. Moreover, this planning must be done in close connection with the further development of the country's productive forces. Since a serious basis in science is essential for successful implementation of all the activity associated with maintenance and improvement of the environment on the scale of the country at large, Ignat'ev emphasized the significance of the new resolution of the USSR Supreme Soviet. It provides that measures for conservation, and for protection and improvement of the environment, will henceforth in our country be incorporated into the annual and five-year plans for development of the economy and will also find expression in a special section of the long-term plan now being prepared for the prospective development of the economy. (shrink)