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Undertaking environmental assessments for small, rural development projects has proven to be both vexing and essential. Our research considers one approach to assessing such projects, community-based environmental assessment (CBEA). The purpose of our work was to gauge current CBEA practice and consider next generation approaches in the face of challenges such as lack of adequate capacity, resource and power imbalances, achieving meaningful participation, narrow conceptions of sustainability, and weak follow-up and monitoring. Through a literature review and semi-structured interviews with various EA experts from around the globe, we consider these issues and propose a framework for next-generation community-based environmental assessment (NG-CBEA) that builds on four key next generation themes; sustainability, meaningful public participation, follow-up and monitoring, and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing trends in environmental governance over recent decades have brought more civil society involvement into decision-making processes. The participation of faith communities in these processes is under-researched and poorly understood. This paper applies a governance lens to features of faith organizations to explore their roles, strengths, and shortcomings in contributing to environmental governance. Data were collected through literature review, interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. The data reveal that governance strengths of faith organizations coalesce around providing space for dialogue, helping shape the values and direction of governance, and the existence of strong organizational infrastructure and networks to implement action. Capacity challenges are posed by declining membership in some communities and a large proportion of new immigrants in others. Our research findings also provide a foundation for future studies (as some of the first studies of this kind in Canada) by offering preliminary conclusions and questions for further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world now has decades of experience with impact assessment and most assessment regimes have undergone revision over time. A positive consequence of the debates about these revisions is a rich base of experiential evidence about IA successes and failures, apparent core requirements, best practices and promising innovations. We have been working with the concept of next-generation assessment and associated frameworks for a number of years now and feel that there is a package of essential elements that represent a consolidation of lessons from experience. Here, we present a package of 14 essential elements of next-generation assessment that could serve as a set of globally applicable generic components and a working framework of criteria to inform assessment improvement efforts anywhere. This iteration of the essential elements is based on input from an international audience of IA practitioners, proponents, government representatives, and participants. We conclude that implementation of many of the elements in ways suitably tailored for different jurisdictions would result in an important evolution of assessment toward next-generation approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social-ecological systems face increasing disruptions and challenges, many deriving from human actions, and learning is frequently touted as "the way out" for addressing them. Using a systematic review of 26 studies that span about 20 years and cover four continents, this article interrogates the link between learning, action, and societal transformation toward sustainability. Transformative learning theory provides the analytical framework. Studies indicated abundant instrumental learning outcomes, and substantial communicative learning, while personal transformation was less common. Individual, interpersonal, and collective sustainability action resulted from various kinds of learning, underscoring the important role that learning can play in shaping individual sustainability behavior. Instrumental learning, in particular, provided the skills and knowledge necessary for action. While study findings confirm the fundamental importance of learning, actions were largely individual and had lesser impact at the societal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical to impact assessments (IA) evolution has been the advent of more meaningful processes for participation. The use of the Internet as a tool of participation, as well as the scope and ambition of IA, has been growing since their inception. This work explores e-governance and social media in IA and the potential contribution these may make to meaningful public participation. Research is informed by literature and case studies in Hong Kong and Canada. The cases and literature revealed that e-governance in IA is used predominantly for sharing information and not for generating dialogue. Social media is used primarily by participants to share information, but is also to organize themselves and their input to IA cases. In addition, we found the innovative use of virtual cloud environments for collaboration and the establishment of one of the first websites for starting, signing and submitting public petitions with a focus on the local environment. Suggestions are made regarding how to better connect the rise in e-participation and conventional IA public participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Natural resource management increasingly strives for meaningful public participation as a means to address the complexity, uncertainty, and conflict inherent in planning and decision making. When there are multiple stakeholders, place-based inquiry shows considerable promise as a vehicle for such participation. The Common Ground Land (CGL), important heritage lands in Kenora, Ontario, provides an opportunity to consider the relationship between place-based inquiry and participation. The CGL is the subject of an emerging system of governance initiated by a multistakeholder partnership. Semistructured interviews and modified focus groups were used to promote place-based conversations regarding the CGL. Our inquiry reveals grounded themes related to connections, perspectives, and visions, including subthemes such as “respect,” “spiritual activities,” “community,” and “fear of disconnection.” Our results illustrate that place-based inquiry has potential to work as a vehicle for meaningful participation, and in this case created a supportive avenue for participation in future CGL planning and decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Clothing is an integral part of our lives, yet modes of producing, using, and disposing of apparel have significant impacts on the environment. Our research explored the role transformative learning plays in the transition to more sustainable thinking and actions about clothing to illuminate instrumental learning processes and examine the relationship between instrumental and communicative learning. Using a qualitative case study approach, we gathered data on behaviors and attitudes (n = 32), and examined in depth the learning participants underwent and the action they took (n = 17). The data reveal that instrumental and communicative learning outcomes were plentiful, with participants discussing the array of skills, knowledge, and communicative insights they learned. Results indicate that instrumental learning makes action possible by allowing individuals to identify problems and solutions and to develop plans of action. Results also reveal the important interaction among instrumental and communicative learning as an individual seeks to understand an occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, action on sustainability has been highly influential around the globe and many now recognize the importance of individual and social learning for inspiring action and achieving sustainability outcomes. Transformative learning theory has been criticized, however, for insufficient development of the link between learning and action. The purpose of this paper is to deepen our understanding of the learning–action cycle among adult learners in the sustainability context. We consider this through insights from two studies in Kenya and Canada, utilizing a qualitative approach. Both studies employed semi-structured interviews as their primary data collection instrument and used other tools such as focus groups and journal writing. Three broad nodes of social action—individual, interpersonal and collective—are identified and defined based on the data collected. Results show that while all three types of action were evident in the outcomes of participants, individual social action was the most common and collective social action was the least. Barriers to applying learning in action are also derived from the data, including situational, personal, interpersonal, sociocultural and environmental obstacles. Factors that assist in overcoming such barriers include community support networks and skills training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformative learning theory is applied in a variety of fields, including archaeology, religious studies, health care, the physical sciences, environmental studies, and natural resource management. Given the breadth of the theory’s application, it needs to be adaptable to broad contexts. This article shares insights gained from applying the theory’s learning domains in the analysis of learning experiences outside the classroom. The discussion is based on empirical qualitative research exploring how individual learning emerges from the intersection of faith and the pursuit of sustainability within faith-based organizations operating in Kenya. Data were gathered through semistructured interviews and participant observation. Chronicling our analysis process, problems encountered, and solutions adopted, we introduce a new introspective domain and explore the interactions among learning domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trees play pivotal roles in urban ecosystems through reducing temperature, increasing humidity, reducing wind speed, absorbing air pollutants, and reducing carbon dioxide, among other benefits. The urban forest will become increasingly influential through the 21st century. Urban development, however, alters the relationships and interactions between humans and trees, making their management complex. The values held by urbanites about trees in their towns and cities are critical to socially responsive urban forest management. The purpose of our research, therefore, was to determine how residents of the city of Winnipeg value their urban forests. Our data were collected through site tours, participant journals, photo-elicitation, and interviews. The results indicate that the people of Winnipeg feel strongly about trees, and their urban forest values are most often associated with the naturalness of the urban forest as experienced through recreational activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A close examination of venues for participatory environmental governance reveals highly constrained settings for citizen engagement. This situation is documented within the broader social milieu by Skocpol as a narrowing of public life which is characterized in this paper by professional, stakeholder, and elitist forms of participatory environmental governance. Case-study evidence is presented from three different governance settings in Canada (environmental assessment, land-use planning, and forest management) identifying two distinct types of elitism: elite representation by design and elite representation by procedure. Two options are presented as a response to this analysis. One option involves accepting elitism by strengthening the linkages between stakeholders and constituencies, and the other option involves fighting elitism by drawing on modes of community-based decision, deliberative activism, and promoting research that highlights the consequences of environmental elitism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory irrigation management ( PIM) was adopted in Thailand in 2004 to encourage the sustainable use of water in the agricultural sector. The research presented in this paper sought to understand the relationships between public participation, learning, and the implementation of more sustainable water practices through PIM in Thailand. Data was collected through document reviews, observation, informal meetings, and a total of 55 semi-structured face-to-face interviews of local irrigators from two case study regions around the Krasiew Reservoir. Results showed that participating in PIM activities facilitated both instrumental (e.g., water supply and demand data, benefits of on-time water delivery) and communicative (e.g., reasons for past PIM failure, expectations of fellow farmers) learning among PIM participants. Findings also revealed that social action is fostered through the recognition of human dignity and compassionate communication that instils a sense of ownership and solidarity among irrigators. Sustainable water practices among local farmers were spurred further through learning that the reservoir is a finite water source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores policy action taken by the federal government in Canada to test the potential for substitution of the federal process to regulatory bodies as a means of encouraging environmental impact assessment (EIA) efficiency. Our purpose is to present the experiences of people who participated in the EIA of the Emera Brunswick Pipeline in order to gauge the impact of such process substitutions on meaningful public participation. Our approach included document reviews and a focus group session with some of the public participants in the Emera Pipeline hearings. We find that the National Energy Board hearing process substituted in the case did not meet many of the key requirements of meaningful participation and left some public participants feeling disrespected and marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a renewed global interest in achieving a more sustainable society, the authors reflect on the history of institutionalizing sustainable development in their province, Manitoba, and consider its future. This paper outlines that province's approaches to developing and advancing sustainable development and discusses the success of these approaches in shaping, guiding, and furthering sustainable development in the province. This is achieved through examination of legislation and review of sustainable development documents as well as interviews with various participants in the process including members of the Manitoba Round Table for Environment and Economy, and members of the more recent Manitoba Round Table for Sustainable Development. Reference is made to the Nova Scotia experience. The authors conclude that Manitoba's success in advancing sustainable development is predictably mixed and coalesces around roundtable actions, institutional structure, and policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stakeholder involvement is often cited as critical to sustainable tourism development, but there is limited documentation for niche areas, such as adventure tourism. The main purpose of our research was to understand stakeholder roles in adventure tourism in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve (NDBR), Uttarakhand, India, to identify opportunities for achieving sustainable adventure tourism. Our interviews, treks and other activities revealed that organised adventure activities were still in the early development phase, with trekking being the most popular activity. The roles of various stakeholders are yet to be clearly defined, but the State Forest Department is playing a lead in the rapidly evolving network of relationships among adventure tourism stakeholders. Significant opportunity exists for a more systematic approach to adventure tourism planning that builds on the existing strengths of the various players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the public advisory committee has become a very common tool for involving local people in forest management decisions, it does not necessarily broaden the base of public input and may simply replicate the challenges of access, representation, and capacity to participate that are found in wider society. As a category of social exclusion, this study explores why women are significantly underrepresented on forest management advisory committees in Canada and how these committees function as gendered units. Research involved 25 semistructured interviews with members (and former members) of two forest management advisory committees: Tembec in Manitoba and NewPage in Nova Scotia. The strongest evidence in our study suggests that these committees operate within male-dominated institutions and particular masculine norms that are simply taken for granted. Thus, social relations based on gender often go unacknowledged. Findings also showed that the lack of critical mass of women often limited the active participation of the small number of women involved in committee activities. Our empirical observations suggest that unless we attend to gender when involving communities in establishing strategies for forest management, we will reinforce gender disadvantage and exclusion and overrepresent industrial and utilitarian interests of forestry over other community and ecocentric values. Bien que les comités directeurs soient devenus des outils de participation du public auxquels on recourt de plus en plus afin d'inclure les populations locales dans le processus décisionnel en aménagement forestier, cela n'élargit pas nécessairement la contribution du public et peut simplement reproduire les défis qu'on retrouve à la grandeur de la société concernant l'accès, la représentation et la capacité à participer. Sous le thème de l'exclusion sociale, cette étude explore pourquoi les femmes sont fortement sous-représentées dans les comités directeurs en aménagement forestier au Canada et comment ces comités fonctionnent en tant qu'entités sexuées. La recherche s'appuie sur 25 entrevues semi-dirigées avec des membres (et ex-membres) de deux comités directeurs en aménagement forestier, soit ceux de Tembec au Manitoba et de NewPage en Nouvelle-Écosse. Le constat le plus manifeste de notre étude indique que ces comités fonctionnent dans le cadre d'institutions à prédominance masculine et où des normes masculines particulières sont tout simplement prises pour acquises. Ainsi, les relations sociales fondées sur le genre passent souvent inaperçues. Les résultats montrent aussi que l'absence de masse critique féminine limite souvent la participation active du petit groupe de femmes qui collaborent aux activités de ces comités. Nos observations empiriques indiquent que, faute de considérer le genre dans la contribution des communautés lors de l'établissement des stratégies d'aménagement, le désavantage envers les femmes et l'exclusion seront renforcés alors que les intérêts industriels et utilitaristes seront surreprésentés au détriment des autres communautés et des valeurs éco-centriques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-organization is a key condition to the success of community-based conservation initiatives, including those recognized by the Equator Initiative of the UNDP. This paper contributes to emerging scholarship that focuses on community-based conservation in South Asia and in particular examines self-organization strategies within a small-scale community-based conservation initiative in a cross-cultural setting to further understanding about how such initiatives originate, sustain and grow. This is achieved through a case study of the Baripada Forest Protection Initiative in India by utilizing in-depth interviews and focus groups. In addition to certain often-cited strategies for self-organization, the Baripada initiative included unique features of self-organization such as village community design, implementation and adaptation of rules for local natural resources use and conservation, little need for financial support, and significant mobilization of human resources. These strategies, along with emerging social learning opportunities (e.g., a community plant diversity register) inspired by the Baripada initiative, inform and enrich the criteria for designing and evaluating conservation and development initiatives, irrespective of their scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The federal environmental assessment (EA) process and most provincial EA processes in Canada either specifically provide for mediation as an option or implicitly allow for it. In spite of this, the actual use of mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has been almost non-existent in Canadian EA. There is an emerging view, however, that mediation could be applied usefully at points of the process when there is conflict among the parties. Such adjustments in process would signal the need for approval agencies and proponents to give serious consideration to more collaborative techniques of participation. The objective of this article is to consider how mediation has been used to date, and whether it has a role to play in improving the effectiveness, efficiency and fairness of EA processes in Canada. This is accomplished through consideration of the use of mediation in recent years and the results of interviews with twenty EA practitioners. Findings show that mediation has been mainly used in the EA context in the province of Quebec. However, most respondents felt that there is potential for the use of mediation to strengthen EA. Based on our findings we conclude by outlining three potential ways mediation could be used in EA: as a tool within a traditional EA process to mediate contentious issues; as a process replacement for a procedural requirement; and as a way to find an interim solution to a policy gap identified in a project EA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional medicinal plant knowledge (TMK) helps meet the health needs of a large section of the world's population, especially socially and economically disadvantaged and aboriginal communities of developing countries like India. However, there is little known about TMK skills and their intergenerational transfer and growing concerns over the erosion of TMK within these communities. Through in-depth interviews with 33 practicing village healers from two remote and economically poor villages of Western India, we identified a set of ten crucial TMK skills and their relative importance. We then interviewed 27 young budding healers from the same villages to establish their views on crucial TMK skills. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the differences in importance that old and young healers attach to TMK skills. We found that old and young healers significantly differ on ascribing importance to five crucial TMK skills, including: interest, identification, rare plants, consultation and harvesting. It was discovered that such differences in perception of old and young healers about critical TMK skills can be attributed to lack of interest by young healers in learning some TMK skills, complexity of the skills, incomplete transmission (due to stricter adherence to transmission rules by old healers) and the impact of formal schooling and modern medicines in generating negative values among young healers towards learning new TMK skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Considerable attention is now being given to the role and importance of education and learning implications of participatory resource and environmental governance. The contention is that such learning has the potential to transform behaviour, and in the case of resource management, may help change current patterns in resource use towards a more sustainable social–ecological system. Our purpose is to establish the opportunities for learning afforded to those participating in local level resource management committees in two Cambodian fishing communities and consider the learning outcomes from such opportunities. Our approach was qualitative and used a case study design. The findings establish a wide range of committee resource management activities that resulted in both instrumental (e.g., learning about administrative procedures) and communicative (e.g., insights into the need to conserve mangroves) learning. It was revealed that such learning can lead to changes in behaviour at the community level (e.g., managing local waste). Our findings also indicated a number of motivators and enablers of learning such as opportunities for dialogue, leadership and the presence of declining resources. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Based on an ongoing qualitative case study in Costa Rica, this article presents the participatory work that the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) is doing with farmers to protect watersheds from erosion and Contamination. Specifically, it includes a description of ICE's Watershed Management Agricultural Programme and how farmers participate in it and a qualitative analysis of the kind of learning that participants are experiencing. ICE uses collaborative and hands-on activities to raise awareness and promote alternative environmentally sustainable farming practices and technologies. These activities result in instrumental and communicative learning as found in transformative learning theory. The instrumental learning that occurs includes acquiring skills and information, determining cause-effect relationships, and task-oriented problem solving. The communicative learning that occurs includes understanding values, concepts, and others' points of view. In conclusion, the learning that occurred resulted in transformations in the conditions of life that promoted sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest management in Canada is evolving from being largely bilateral and closed to being more inclusive and open. In an effort to test new approaches to public participation, many forest products companies have established advisory committees. Since there is little empirical evidence documenting advisory committee processes, our purpose was to determine the strengths and weaknesses of such processes. This was achieved by assessing the advisory committees of three major forest products companies in Manitoba, Canada, responsible for managing over 5 million hectares of productive forest. Our approach was inductive and qualitative, involving standardized, semistructured interviews with committee members. Results coalesce around both process and outcome strengths and weaknesses, such as multiple involvement techniques, information sharing and communication, and breadth of participant learning. While the results are mixed, the study confirms that advisory committees have promise as a method of actively involving a select group of stakeholders in forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the essential policy elements of extended producer responsibility for packaging, and provides direction on two key policy elements that are currently the subject of considerable debate in Canada particularly, and North America more generally: mandatory or voluntary take-back requirements, and hidden or visible levies. The approach taken to this study was qualitative and interactive, and included interviews with packaging manufactures, food producers, trade associations, academics, and senior government officials in Canada, Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Australia, as well as a workshop with Canadian packaging stake-holders. The results indicate that Canadian packagers and fillers have not shown a great deal of interest in assuming either physical and/or fiscal responsibility for the packaging wastes created by the products they sell. This fact, in combination with the policy direction of successful EPR programs,. underscores the need for policies supporting mandatory take-back obligations and integrated levy systems that ensure design for the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Where floods are prevalent, decisions on how to mitigate vulnerability are made within a social-cultural context that includes values (and related customs, norms, beliefs, technology) of local people, which have evolved through interactions with the physical environment. Consequently, the success of floodplain management and flood mitigation activities is determined, at least in part, by the nature of values that impact the decision-making process. This paper explores this contention by considering the community values context surrounding flood risk management in two small Canadian communities in the Red River Basin. Using a qualitative methodology that includes semi-structured interviews with residents, community values are identified and accounted for in the context of flood vulnerability. Values discussions are organized around seven broad categories: community identity and community attributes; community economic development; technical and nonstructural approaches; civic engagement; flood legacy; personal rights and liberties; and shared values. Challenges posed by key identified values and their policy implications are considered. Some values are found to act as constraints if sustainable floodplain management practices are to be realized. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This research examined the opportunities for critical education available to participants of a federal environmental assessment (EA) that includes hearings. The Sable Gas Panel Review, an assessment of a natural gas project situated in the Maritimes, was undertaken between 1996 and 1997. This study documented what participants learned through their experiences and how that learning was facilitated. Primary data collection emphasized the use of semi-structured interviews to record the experientially based observations of panel participants. Primary data were supported by a review of material submitted by hearing participants for consideration by the panel, and complemented with literature related to EA, environmental education, and transformational learning theories. Evidence was considered in terms of assessment-specific operational definitions, developed from Shor (1993) [Education is politics: Paulo Freire''s Critical Pedagogy. In: McLaren, P., Leonard, P. (Eds.), Paulo Freire : A critical Encounter, Routledge, New York, pp. 25–35] ten indicators of critical education. The study revealed that participants of the Sable Gas panel review had an opportunity to engage in critical education. While it is important to acknowledge that the panel did not set out to engage participants in a ‘critical educational’ experience, each of the 10 operational definitions of critical education used in the study were addressed to varying degrees through activities undertaken by the panel secretariat. Results illustrate the types of educational opportunities, such as a class on how to participate in a quasi-judicial hearing, and the importance of participant-led research that can arise out of the panel review process. The findings of this research contribute to the evolving literature regarding the role of critical education in EA and environmental management. Understanding the existing scope of critical education within a panel review provides the foundation for identifying opportunities for expanding the capacity of the existing EA process to facilitate learning by participants. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Involving the public in government decision making regarding sustainable development is a complex and difficult problem. This article suggests that weak public consultation, occurring at the operational planning level, is in part responsible for the lack of policy innovation in this realm. A case study technique considers approaches to public consultation in the development of sustainable development policy in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Using document reviews and qualitative interviews, two specific periods of policy development are traced with the outcomes of each being measured against creative consultative approaches established in the literature. It is revealed that using more complex consultative approaches at the normative policy planning level results in a number of positive implications, including mutual education and learning, participant satisfaction, policy innovation that has broad-based support, and results that have lasting implications on consultative processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the application of guiding principles for building consensus for a sustainable future to a model forest program in Canada. Evolution of forest management policy in the country; Cooperation of stockholders in the program; Decision-making activities in the programs; Management structure of the programs.

Explores the role of education in environmental assessment (EA), identifies the range of techniques used to conduct EA education and, develops a rationale for the concept of critical EA education. Advantage and disadvantage of literature on public investment in EA; What led to concept of critical EA; Case presented for empirical support for critical EA education.

Researchers and advocates have long argued that on-going engagement by broad segments of the public can help make forests and forest-based communities more sustainable and decisions more enduring. In Canada, public engagement in sustainable forest management has primarily taken one of two approaches: advisory forums through forest-sector advisory committees (FACs) and direct decision-making authority through community forest boards (CFBs). The purpose of this paper is to compare these two approaches by focusing on who participates and the values that participants bring to their deliberations. We conducted a national survey of FACs and CFBs involving 402 participants. Results showed that both models favoured well-educated, Caucasian men and fell short on the representation of women and Indigenous peoples. Additionally, despite different levels of authority in relation to forest management decisions, participants in CFBs and FACs shared similar forest values. Hence, we conclude that neither model of forest governance encourages participation from a diverse public. Our findings suggest the need to find new ways of recruiting diverse participants and to investigate more deeply whether local and extra-local pressures and power dynamics shape these processes. Such information can inform the establishment of more robust institutions for decision-making in support of sustainable forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenya is among the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to formally require the assessment of public policies, plans and programs. National strategic environmental assessment (SEA) guidelines were finalized in 2012 to adapt and enhance SEA practice in the Kenyan context. The purpose of this research was to examine recent Kenyan SEA, with a particular emphasis on public participation, by developing and applying an analysis framework that both incorporates commonly accepted SEA principles and approaches and is cognizant of the national context in shaping SEA practice. Results reveal that a number of SEA practices are consistent with the framework in the nine cases considered, such as containing standard SEA components and developing monitoring plans. A requirement that each SEA must include educating the public about SEA is an innovative local adaptation. Results also show a number of practices that are still emerging, such as initiating SEA early and disseminating results to the participants. We conclude that SEA is still developing in Kenya, but processes for conducting it are slowly adapting to the Kenyan context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India and Canada share a common heritage in natural resources management. Both have a colonial background, settlers and indigenous peoples; there is a history of management agencies with utilitarian attitudes, and a history of treating public lands as commodities for commerce rather than as resources for local livelihoods. This historical context guided the overall goal of this study, which was policy development for the sustainable use of mountain environments. Interviews, workshops and seminars were held with local people and resource management professionals in a comparative case study in two regions; the Kullu area in Himachal Pradesh, India and the Arrow Lakes area in BritishColumbia, Canada. The paper is organized around two main objectives of the work relating to the successes and failures of mountain environment resource management policies and the development of criteria for assessing and monitoring sustainability in mountain environments, in particular, criteria for examining relevant cross-cultural dimensions of sustainable development in these environments. By way of conclusion the paper considers further ways in which traditional resource policy development and implementation is being challenged by changing values and priorities; ecosystems management with people; and co-management and public participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last four decades, consumer convenience - emphasising throw-away packaging and disposable products - has become as much a tool of marketing as quality and price. The quantity of packaging in the waste stream, its visibility and the overall reduction in capacity to effectively manage such wastes has resulted in the development of policies for packaging stewardship or extended producer responsibility (EPR) in many countries. This paper reviews the set-up, operations and results of two early entrants on the stewardship scene: The Duales System Deutschland in Germany and the Manitoba Product Stewardship Program in Canada. The variable stewardship that has resulted, due to differing obligations on producers and consumers, is highlighted and policy direction suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the majority of Canada's population concentrated in cities, it is important to determine what people consider important in urban nature. The concept of values can help illustrate what people consider important in urban nature beyond utilitarian considerations. This is the case for urban forests. However, many studies about public opinion on urban forests do not capture expressions of importance, focus on all the trees of the city, or provide respondents with a direct experience of urban forests. In Canada, most assumptions about Canadian urban forest values are based on results from the United States. In this study researchers present and analyze urban forest values data gathered with a sidewalk interception survey in the cities of Fredericton, New Brunswick; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, to address some of these limitations. Respondents were asked to rate the level of importance of urban forests and mention the reasons. Results show that respondents rate the urban forest at a high level of importance and the reasons for this are aesthetics, air quality, shade, and naturalness, among other themes. There was a tendency for older people, women, and non-students to rate urban forests at a higher level of importance. Weather, related to time of year of survey delivery, has a discernible influence on the way value themes are distributed in the data. The study authors infer that this method helps capture data on respondents' psychological states instead of their intellectual awareness as to what they consider important about urban forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This research uses transformative learning theory to explore how Farmers Field Schools (FFS) of the Taita Hills, Kenya have contributed to environmental sustainability, with a particular focus on gendered learning. Both genders experienced transformations in their meaning schemes related to farming (e.g., men and women switched their traditional roles in tillage and planting). A significant change in meaning perspective occurred among men who overcame personal biases and a cultural practice of land inheritance for males to now include their daughters. More research is needed to explore how all participants (farmers, extension agents, scientists) could enhance sustainability efforts and gender equality through agricultural participatory education projects such as FFS. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Addressing environmental problems through conventional expert and scientific approaches alone is largely ineffective. Therefore, Canadian forest management has evolved to include governance processes such as public advisory committees. Public participation is mandated by federal and provincial policy and is a key part of forest certification processes. In this context, self-reports of committee effectiveness and satisfaction are common indicators of meaningful governance. Yet we often know very little about what people mean when they indicate that a process is effective. Using a 2016 national survey of PAC members across Canada (n = 345), empirical findings confirm that personal perceptions of fairness, inclusion, and (to a lesser extent) social learning determines individual judgments of committee effectiveness and satisfaction. Policy recommendations include a sharper focus on social learning as a key governance outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]