Search

SUMMARY Deforestation in Indonesia and links with the pulp and paper industry has led environmental groups to campaign against the industry's practices. This paper focuses on two environmental campaigns against the activities of an Asian pulp and paper company that were widely perceived to be having a strongly detrimental effect on the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. The analysis is based on interviews and questionnaires of those involved in the campaigns, as well as a review of related published and unpublished documents. The results show that the target company has become more sustainable since the campaigns started, though is still failing on certain issues. These findings are supported by some Environmental Non-Government Organisations (ENGOs), although others strongly believe that the company has made no progress at all and is still involved in illegal and unsustainable practices. Despite the increased awareness of the implications and destructiveness of deforestation in Indonesia, and the increas...

Air toxics are airborne pollutants known or suspected to cause cancer or other serious health effects, including certain volatile organic compounds (VOCs), prioritized by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While several EPA-designated air toxics are monitored at a subset of Canadian National Air Pollution Surveillance (NAPS) sites, Canada has no specific "air toxics" control priorities. Although pulp and paper (PP) mills are major industrial emitters of air pollutants, few studies quantified the spectrum of air quality exposures. Moreover, most NAPS monitoring sites are in urban centers; in contrast, rural NAPS sites are sparse with few exposure risk records. The objective of this pilot study was to investigate prioritized air toxic ambient VOC concentrations using NAPS hourly emissions data from a rural Pictou, Nova Scotia Kraft PP town to document concentration levels, and to determine whether these concentrations correlated with wind direction at the NAPS site (located southwest of the mill). Publicly accessible Environment and Climate Change Canada data (VOC concentrations [Granton NAPS ID: 31201] and local meteorological conditions [Caribou Point]) were examined using temporal (2006-2013) and spatial analytic methods. Results revealed several VOCs (1,3-butadiene, benzene, and carbon tetrachloride) routinely exceeded EPA air toxics-associated cancer risk thresholds. 1,3-Butadiene and tetrachloroethylene were significantly higher (p 0.05) when prevailing wind direction blew from the northeast and the mill towards the NAPS site. Conversely, when prevailing winds originated from the southwest towards the mill, higher median VOC air toxics concentrations at the NAPS site, except carbon tetrachloride, were not observed. Despite study limitations, this is one of few investigations documenting elevated concentrations of certain VOCs air toxics to be associated with PP emissions in a community. Findings support the need for more research on the extent to which air toxics emissions exist in PP towns and contribute to poor health in nearby communities.

Agricultural soils constitute natural, fragile and very complex ecosystems where physical, chemical and biological phenomena occur. This universe of physicochemical and biological processes perfectly integrated to produce crops and sustain life is heavily and continually impacted by human activities. As a result of industrial activities, mining and intensive agriculture, soil holds a wide variety of environmental pollutants that threaten its quality and fertility. Likewise, excessive land cultivation, soil compaction, monoculture, and stubble burning also contribute to degradation of soil quality. Accordingly, several soil conservation measures or bioremediation practices have been implemented in order to reduce the impact of unsuitable land management practices and recover degraded soils. Soil amendment with organic wastes such as cattle manure and sludge from sewage treatment plants is a common agricultural practice to combat the loss of soil organic matter and stimulate microbial communities (biostimulation). This chapter deals with the importance of organic carbon to soil function and the beneficial effects of several organic wastes from municipal wastewater treatment plants, salmon plants and paper-pulp industry on soil fertility.

本研究は, わが国の環境問題・政策の推移を客観的な数値データとして捉えることを目的としている. 具体的には日本の環境白書を基にしたEICネット環境年表を使用し, 年表の記載事項4, 845件を対象にキーワードとセンテンスに着目した分析を行なう. キーワード分析では環境政策の視点が如何に変化したか, センテンス分析ではキーワード分析だけではカバーできない政策の目的や様態の実態を明らかにする. なお, キーワードおよびセンテシスは統一ルールに基づいて独自に設定し判断を行なった. 政策の重点は衛生と公害分野から自然保護, 気候変動, 循環型社会へと移り変わっていることが示された. 政策自体年々増加していることと, その内容が多様化し複雑になっていることも示された.

India is developing fast in the lines of some of the greatest cities of the world. Graph from the last 20-25 years show that India has majorly borne a paradigm shift in development icons as such Its cities have surpassed even double to its initial infrastructure during this period. Most of these infrastructural icons have a lot to do with the IT industry boom in the country as such most of these cities (e.g. Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc.) are further burdened with employable youth, who require transit accommodation in the same city as well. There are some other cities too who used to enjoy the tourist or the pilgrims’ inflow by virtue of some kind of religious, natural or heritage resource attached to it. But, as evident in History, India and the Indians are known to be cultural driven, Pilgrimage friendly people. As such, these Blessings to such cities are continuously turning out to be the sufferings in the light of the number of pilgrims/tourists (floating population) these cities bear on daily basis. Most of these cities lack the sustainable infrastructure to uphold these burdens and to meet the energy demands for the well-being of people and city. These infrastructural additions must contemplate the Energy demands of the built form, people and their activities. One of such vulnerable town due to Paradigm shift in its development priorities is KATRA town, which is continuously getting burdened with more and more buildings, people & loss of Rural Greens as such contemplation of energy requirements is the need of the hour. Katra town is world famous for the rich religious history attached to it as it forms the base town (Camp) of Trikuta Hills upon which (12 kms away from base town) the Holy Shrine of Goddess Maa Vaishno Devi is located. Every year millions of Pilgrims from around the globe visit the shrine & the Katra Town. The Katra town is the major contributor of J&K (Jammu & Kashmir State) economy & India at Large. Pertinently, its being projected as one of the smart cities of India in next few years in the lines of leading smart cities of the world.

Industry should be sited at locations where its environmental load does the least damage. We examined the particular case of paper production at eight paper mills in relative pristine environments in Norway and calculated resource use, emissions, and environmental effects, the last theme in terms of 12 end point criteria. Compared to a scenario corresponding to fictitious mills sited in densely populated industrial regions in West-Central Europe we obtained end point damages ranging from 3% to 23% of these “worst-case” damages for 9 of the 12 end point attributes. For three of the end points there were no clear differences. Reasons for the smaller damages in the Norwegian environment were higher dilution and self-cleaning capacity of air and water recipients, lower background concentrations of pollutants, and lower concentrations of natural and cultural resources. When we applied low-end and average “unit pollutant prices” for a selection of the paper industry's resource uses and pollutant emissions, the ...

The international collaboration on marine biodiversity increases in the proportion of the world’s scientific papers produced with more than one international author, 2006-2010. The number of scientific papers from 2006 to 2010 describing “marine new species (or spec. nov., n. sp.)” published 401 (international ranking : 13 th ) by S. Korea, 824 (7 th ) by China, r1,249(5 th ) by Japan, 1,282(3d) by Austrailia, and 3,679 (1 st ) by United States. The papers having an international co-authorship account for 52.0% by S. Korea, 79.0% by China, 67.0% by Japan, 81.0% by Australia at the same period. The proportion of national publication output produced in collaboration with other countries differs proportionately between countries. In S. Korea, the overall numbers of international collaboration were not growing significantly. Both in Japan and China, an overall numbers of international collaboration increased well in accordance with the proportion of national output with international collaboration. Key words : Marine biodiversity, International research cooperation, Elsevier, New species Corresponding author : 051-720-2962, ohtek@korea.kr “ (RP-2016-ME-001)” .

The present study renders the results of the observations made in the biotopes located within the perimeter of International Airport Craiova and its close proximity (0-3 km), during all the seasons between 2013 and 2014. During the research, we recorded a total of 58 species of birds, many of them showing a high degree of adaptability to the environmental conditions marked by an increased anthropogenic impact. Large-sized species that fly highly and the species characterized by a gregarious behaviour, represent a real threat to aircraft safety. The temporary or longer presence of birds in the area of the airport is due to the optimum living conditions generated by a series of natural and anthropogenic factors. Besides the enumeration and presentation of the way these factors act, we developed a series of measures that can reduce or counteract the area attractiveness to birds by eliminating or restricting to a minimum the trophic resources and opportunities for rest.