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A call for papers on environmental themes to be published at the "Journal of Environmental Planning and Management" is presented.

The author reflects on the offering of landscape management to the rural economy. He states the effect of climatic changes, resources scarcity and raised international competition to landscapes in rural economies. An overview on the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its agricultural impact on landscape, is given. The author also emphasizes the major role of food production, sustainable management of natural resources and climate action to agricultural ecosystems.

Participation is increasingly used to legitimize and improve environmental decision making. However, in practice participants often find the process empty and frustrating. This has adverse consequences for environmental planning and consenting processes, where participants become disillusioned, and negative feelings develop into active opposition, causing delays, spiraling costs, and conflict. This paper addresses the gap between participatory ideals and unsatisfactory environmental decision-making in practice. We take a fresh look at how participatory ideals can be implemented and propose a new framework based on translating participatory ideals into practice. We identified commitments and values for fair and achievable participatory environmental decision-making from science and technology studies (STS), procedural environmental justice, and deliberative democracy. These were synthesized and organized into a set of principles (inclusivity, process-orientation, empowerment, and reflection) and then translated into "practical" criteria. The result is a new framework that links participatory ideals to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural capital accounting requires exchange rather than welfare values, but lack of data and standards have encouraged practitioners to use different approaches (e.g. simple lookup table vs spatial modeling approaches). In this paper, we demonstrate how choice modeling data can provide simulated exchange values which are more robust than simple (fast track) valuation approaches for natural capital accounting. A survey of East of England residents collected the preferences for saltmarsh management and simulated exchange values, coherently linked with the ecosystem conditions. This approach is more informative for environmental local planning purposes. We claim that expanding the set of tools available for natural capital accounting can enhance management of ecosystem services and policy decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the extent and the nature of how the urban planning literature has addressed climate change adaptation. It presents a longitudinal study of 157 peer-reviewed articles published from 2000 to 2013 in the leading urban planning and design journals whose selection considered earlier empirical studies that ranked them these journals. The findings reveal that the years 2006–07 represent a turning point, after which climate change studies appear more prominently and consistently in the urban planning and design literature; however, the majority of these studies address climate change mitigation rather than adaptation. Most adaptation studies deal with governance, social learning, and vulnerability assessments, while paying little attention to physical planning and urban design interventions. This paper identifies four gaps that pertain to the lack of interdisciplinary linkages, the absence of knowledge transfer, the presence of scale conflict, and the dearth of participatory research methods. It then advocates for the advancement of participatory and collaborative action research to meet the multifaceted challenges of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this introductory paper is to put into perspective some key methodological and practical issues raised by the analysis and implementation of Sustainable Development (SD) approaches in recent years. The key point made here is that, while SD analysis has gained in depth and methodological improvement, implementation issues remain problematic as they underlie serious institutional and strategic constraints. Through different angles, the five papers gathered in this special issue provide several illustrations of this ambivalence and emphasise some key practical challenges facing the design of workable SD policies and measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an account of two developments: the effect of EU Natura 2000 biodiversity policy on local planning and implementation processes, and a shift towards a 'Building' or 'Working' with Nature approach when designing water infrastructure projects. The account is based on a longitudinal case study of the 35-year chronology of a flood defence project which has been implemented along the River Scheldt in Flanders. The case study data have been analysed using a chronological time series analysis. The paper concludes that 'Building' or 'Working' with Nature is resorted to both at the EU and local level, because it works to balance previously conflicting interests and is acceptable to most actors who take part in project implementation. By placing ecological goals at the start of the planning process, the authorities elsewhere in the EU could avoid conflicts of interest and speed up project implementation in Natura 2000 estuaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functioning of urban systems involves high levels of resource consumption and a complex web of energy, water and material flows. The fundamental aim of this paper is to understand how future urban systems could be designed to be consistently less damaging to the environment. Its main contribution is the proposal of a methodology for evaluating the urban development process from ametabolic perspective, the Metabolic Impact Assessment (MIA). After a brief introduction to evaluation in environmental planning, the paper describes the main influences of MIA, presents a set of principles for a metabolic assessment, and describes in detail the methodology's evaluation procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Environmental appraisal is a multidisciplinary decision-making support tool, which aims to promote sustainable development through policies of environmental management and planning. It does so by relying on skills and knowledge that come from the social sciences, natural sciences and applied sciences. Within this context, many recognise that to strengthen and improve practice, environmental appraisal needs to evolve into a more interdisciplinary tool, with greater cross-fertilisation between disciplines and closer collaborations between practice traditions and communities of professionals. This paper suggests that, to date, environmental appraisal is far from being truly interdisciplinary. It argues that ‘gate-keepers’ are ensuring that the boundaries, traditions and cultural assumptions between disciplines and professions are maintained, setting the frame of reference that guides the practice of environmental appraisal, and influencing professional views in terms of the way in which things are/should be done. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore the cultural assumptions through which environmental appraisal is practised in competent planning organisations, using a cultural filters approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates whether the level of transaction costs of a Swedish agri-environmental policy measure is attributable to technical factors or whether political factors, such as lobby groups and political majorities at the county level, influence the costs. A previous study indicated that political factors may influence the level of transaction costs, but the extreme bounds analysis performed in this paper reveals that those results are fragile. It shows that three of the technical variables are robust with respect to model specifications but that none of the political variables are. Thus, no evidence can be found that political factors influence the level of transaction costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue in this paper that the urban environmental planning and management literature has paid insufficient attention to the nexus of risk and human psychology in urban dynamics, particularly for the rapidly urbanizing areas of the Global South. We then draw on two household surveys in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to present two empirical examples that incorporate these dimensions, using solid waste management as a contemporary urban environmental challenge. These examples illustrate the sensitivity of behavioral preferences to the framing of risks, and the influence of risk preferences on solid waste behavior. Incorporating such concepts into environmental planning and management research offers the potential to increase understanding of urban dynamics and to improve the environmental quality of life in urban Africa and elsewhere in both developing and developed country settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes efforts to bridge the gap between the existing research and proposed recreation access management for public lands in southwestern Alberta, Canada. Recreation access management has been identified as a complex problem and public consultation is one element in addressing the complexity. An Internet-based survey (n = 945) examined the acceptability and desirability of public consultation processes to assist with access management planning. Non-parametric tests indicate significant differences in desirability of public consultation types existed for all variables except gender. Respondents expressed the desire for a diversity of public consultation approaches with a strong preference for face-to-face field visits. Mechanisms for engagement in access management planning should be based on public consultation preferences to ensure broad, on going engagement and subsequent user acceptance and compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

General backcasting as a decision support and planning method starts from desired future states and simulates developments backwards until reaching the present state. Development pathways that reveal steps to be taken to reach a certain future state, and milestones that serve as interim goals, are created during the process. Backcasting has hitherto only been applied in workshops or as a theoretical framework and no spatially explicit backcasting model has previously been established. This paper presents the development of a spatially explicit backcasting model. The proposed model first creates a future scenario utilizing an agent-based model and then simulates backwards. It is implemented using the programming language Python. The model has been applied to a case study for sustainable land-use planning in Salzburg, Austria. The results of the model run show a successful backcasting of land-use classes from a future state back to the present, in 10 year time steps. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses a current trend of New Environmental Governance (NEG). It examines whether NEG is able to overcome a series of complex regulatory barriers and market shortfalls that stand in the way of carbon emissions reductions in the building sector. Building on an evaluation of 20 NEG arrangements from Australia and the Netherlands, it discusses the limits of the effective implementation and use of NEG in this sector. The paper concludes by suggesting three strategies to improve the performance of NEG arrangements in the building sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies the optimal pollution level under the assumptions of linear, quadratic and exponential damage and abatement cost functions and investigates analytically the certain restrictions that the existence of this optimal level requires. The evaluation of the benefit area is discussed and the mathematical formulation provides the appropriate methods for that to be calculated. The positive, at least from a theoretical point of view, is that both the quadratic and the exponential case obey the same form for evaluating the benefit area. These benefit area estimations can be used as indexes between different rival policies, and depending on the environmental problem, the policy that produces the maximum area will be the beneficial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a case study of the Stadshaven port redevelopment in Rotterdam, this paper explores whether existing spatial planning mechanisms and processes can be used to facilitate local-level investment in climate-resilient public infrastructure and/or whether new processes and mechanisms are required to encourage investment in climate adaptation. The study reveals several key findings. First, a lack of conventional funding sources or formalised regulatory framework allowed room for experimentation with existing mechanisms and flexible strategies. Second, project planners are currently ambivalent towards introducing new mechanisms as a means to overcome implementation challenges. The case provides evidence about the role of the governance process, not simply as a means of system coordination that exists in isolation from institutional norms and values, but rather as a space for innovation, which can contribute towards reducing the financial gap associated with climate adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With parks and protected areas insufficient to sustain global biodiversity, the role of private land in biodiversity conservation is becoming increasingly significant. This paper reviews global voluntary and involuntary strategies for private land conservation. Involuntary strategies can achieve effective conservation outcomes, but often lack social acceptability. In contrast, voluntary strategies enjoy greater social acceptance but may not achieve sufficient uptake to have meaningful conservation objectives. Based on the review, we propose a classification system for private land conservation as a complement to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN's) classification of global protected areas. The classification system provides a framework for identifying and describing conservation strategies on private land on the dimension of tenure and security. It also identifies opportunities and vulnerabilities in achieving conservation on private land while emphasising the need for systematic data collection similar to IUCN's efforts for protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive co-management and learning are paramount for integrated flood risk management. Relevant literature focuses on adaptation at the level of physical and societal systems. The level of projects and programmes is largely overlooked, but they comprise interventions that adapt our physical systems and they provide opportunities for learning to contribute to transitions of societal systems. This paper aims to increase understanding on how learning takes place and can be stimulated within a programme. The mixed-method case study of Room for the River, a €2.3 billion programme for flood risk management, shows that a programme can be organised using various governance arrangements to stimulate learning and be a means for adaptive co-management to deliver upon environmental objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite consensus on the need to adapt to climate change, who should adapt, and how, remain open questions. While local-level actions are essential to adaptation, state and federal governments can play a substantial role in adaptation. In this paper, we investigate local perspectives on state-level flood mitigation policies in Vermont as a means of analysing what leads top-down adaptations to be effective in mobilizing local action. Drawing on interviews with town officials, we delineate local-level perspectives on Vermont's top-down policies and use those perspectives to develop a conceptual framework that presents the 'fit' between top-down policies and the locallevel context as comprised of three components: Receptivity, Ease of Participation, and Design. We explain how these components and their interactions influence locallevel action. This analysis points to how careful consideration of the components of 'fit' may lead to greater local-level uptake of top-down adaptation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forestry is at the centre-stage of global climate change negotiations as it is a low cost carbon mitigation option. Forests have the potential to be a source as well as sink for carbon emissions. The main aim of this paper is to provide a useful snapshot of the carbon value of India's forests, and give a glimpse of the potential of India's forests to offset both India's and the world's carbon emissions. This paper also highlights the initiatives taken by India towards the implementation of REDD+ and the status of REDD+ in a few other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review discusses high impact research in sustainable urban and land management. The focus is on large European projects that have a holistic and multi-disciplinary assessment approach towards the total environment. This paper clearly indicates that many projects propose decision-making tools partly supported by numerical models. Successful projects were identified as applying the following criteria: a communicative and holistic approach involving economic, environmental and social sciences throughout the project; sufficient geographic coverage; engagement of stakeholders from a wide variety of sectors; and plans for dissemination of project outcomes and active knowledge sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The implementation of urban containment policies is increasingly attracting attention in environment management. Rapid urban growth and the coexistence of decentralisation and marketisation challenge containment strategies that are implemented to control urban sprawl. This challenge is likely to be greater in a transformation country than in developed countries. This paper evaluates the performance of containment strategies in Beijing. The analysis shows that, to a large extent, containment strategies perform well; however, the decreased compactness of the fringes of the inter-suburban areas, caused by dispersed and illegal development, suggest that municipal containment strategies are being challenged by new trends towards local autonomy. Two similar dilemmas to those faced by developed countries are confronting those involved in the implementation of containment strategies in the current transformation process in Beijing: first, the municipal environmental goal might not be achieved by all local jurisdictions when local economic motivations are involved; and second, macro-scale containment policies are unlikely to control an urban sprawl fuelled by the growing power of market forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High taxes on new cars in Israel provide an incentive for car owners to defer the purchase of new vehicles. The result is a vehicle fleet of older, more polluting vehicles, with air pollution costs estimated at up to $530 million annually. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a cost benefit analysis (CBA) of an accelerated vehicle-retirement (AVR) programme. The analysis considers the private car fleet as well as trucks and buses. The study develops an economic model to identify the optimal payment level that will maximise the net benefit of the programme, and then apply the model to three different vehicle categories. It finds that an AVR programme for private cars may indeed yield significant net benefits, while a similar programme for trucks and buses fails to meet the cost-benefit test. For private cars, the study finds that even according to a conservative estimate, the programme will result in the voluntary retirement of approximately 98,000 private cars, with a present value net benefit of more than $50 million. This is equal to a 17% reduction in total annual private car air pollution costs for the five-year time span of the proposed programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the concept of environmental justice in Scotland. It reviews the research and developments in law and policy in this area, starting with the Dynamic Earth speech in Edinburgh in 2002. It analyses the findings by grouping causes and solutions to environmental justice and identifies a particularly wide definition of the concept in Scotland. It concludes that the inclusion of social justice is a defining feature of environmental justice in Scotland; however, measures to mitigate environmental injustice are being implemented in an incremental way, with the most significant achievements being through the implementation of international obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the collaborative planning process for a new landscape planning programme in Ohio that seeks to influence land urbanisation patterns through joint local land use decision making on a watershed basis. The programme was developed through a collaborative process by a state agency-appointed task force that included agency staff and a wide range of stakeholders. The paper describes the process in terms of the collaborative mechanisms, the participants, the programmatic outputs, and the social and organisational outcomes that set the foundation for enhanced watershed quality through better land use decision-making practices. Key collaborations formed during the process were inter-agency collaborations, a non-profit organisation that partnered with the agencies, and that of state agencies with local governments to develop watershed-based land use plans. A most critical outcome was creation of a learning community, through an exploratory research process that used multiple methods of data gathering and consensus-building deliberation. The paper is based on a review of published documents and plans, meeting minutes, participant observation of committee and workgroup meetings and interactive research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While public health and urban planning were closely linked in the past, today both domains are institutionally separate. In most cases, health intersects with spatial planning processes only through obligatory evaluations, such as environmental impact assessments, or restrictive environmental legislation. This institutionalisation of health criteria in most western countries has difficulty in dealing with recent environmental health challenges, leading to continual distrust and conflict between citizens and the government. This impasse has recently been discussed by academics who acknowledge the complexity of both city and health issues. It seems, however, that the full extent of the issue has not been covered yet, leading to recommendations and frameworks that are useful but fixed and retrospective. This paper moves beyond those fixed frameworks to develop a better understanding of the complexity of the current disconnect and explores ideas for a future planning approach, grounded on new ideas of co-evolutionary and adaptive planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart growth and sustainability planning have, in recent years, become central issues in planning discourse. Scholars have argued that planning capacity at the local government level is critical for smart growth planning, and that planners have a fundamental role to play in advancing local and regional sustainability. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which local planning capacity enables communities to promote more sustainable, smart growth residential development. Based on a 2013 survey of 38 county and 53 municipal governments in the state of Wisconsin, USA, this study finds that the majority of the sample communities have permitted residential developments characterized as transit-oriented, New Urbanist, mixed use, infill developments, or conservation subdivisions as alternatives to low-density, automobile-dependent conventional developments. The study also finds that jurisdictions with higher planning capacities are more likely to overcome significant barriers to more sustainable residential development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the Kuhn--Tucker model to estimate recreation demand of parks in Sicily. We estimate a fixed coefficient specification and a random coefficient specification to take into account heterogeneity across visitors. Estimates suggest a diversity of preferences across the population and that parks with higher level of quality attributes are more likely to be visited. We also simulate two sets of hypothetical policy scenarios to evaluate and compare the recreational value of each park and the welfare impacts of changes in a quality attribute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at describing, analyzing and evaluating the relation between management styles and process dynamics of a complex planning process confronted with unexpected dynamics. The development of an aquatic disposal site for dredged contaminated sediments in Oslo was managed by a project management style focused on timely and cost-effective implementation. Coupling the remediation project with another infrastructural project and the actual construction of the site led to unexpected dynamics in terms of resistance and controversy. Project management had difficulties in adjusting its style accordingly, resulting in even more delay and resistance. Managing complex planning projects requires a style suitable to the characteristics of the project and the capability of adjusting it to changing circumstances. The paper concludes with some explanations why it is difficult to change management styles in complex planning and implementation processes and complexity-embracing approaches to deal with this. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a multi-criteria selection of the best forest road network with the aim of achieving effective preventive and timely repressive protection against forest fires. The research was carried out in national park (NP) “Tara” at a site which is under constant threat of fire. Four variants of the forest road network were designed and analyzed against seven criteria, and the best variant was selected using entropy weight coefficients (EWC) method. The importance of these seven criteria was studied by the management of the NP “Tara.” The greatest importance was given to the criteria relating to the cost of construction and maintenance of permanent and temporary roads (47% of the total value of all criteria). The EWC method did not select the variant based on the lowest costs of construction and maintenance as the best option, but the variant whose location was the most suitable for effective defense against forest fires. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Environmental risk assessment (ERA) is a powerful technical tool for analyzing potential and extreme adverse environmental impacts, and has found wide application in supporting decision-making processes over the last two decades. However, to date there has been no interrelated application of ERA to support the processes of strategic decision-making (SDM), especially in coastal areas. In this paper, we attempt to verify the feasibility of the proposed integrated ERA–SDM approach and its methodology by applying it to two case studies (in Xiamen Bay and Luoyuan Bay) of the principal coastal functional zoning (PCFZ, a kind of SDM and similar to the coastal and marine spatial planning in western). The results show that the integrated ERA–SDM approach could integrate ERA into the entire SDM process, directly support the PCFZ, and avoid or mitigate dire environmental risk that can be introduced by SDM processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mandatory taxes and/or voluntary contributions are commonly adopted as the payment vehicle when eliciting willingness to pay (WTP) in environmental valuation studies. While mandatory taxes may arouse negative feelings, voluntary contributions may lead to strategic behaviour (over bidding) or free riding (under bidding). In this paper, we explore an alternative payment vehicle which avoids the draconian undertones associated with taxes and may be more incentive compatible than a voluntary contribution – a tax that incorporates a refund option. The template for such a payment vehicle is the value added tax charged to tourists in Ireland, but which can be reclaimed on exiting the country. In the context of raising public funds to support the conservation of rural countryside landscape, a comparison is made between the elicited WTP via a mandatory tax and that elicited via the alternative payment method incorporating a refund option. While we observe similar participation rates between the two payment methods, the refund option reveals a higher stated WTP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broad stakeholder involvement cannot be assumed in all environmental planning and management processes that have critical land use dimensions. This paper illustrates how concepts and techniques from social network analysis (SNA) can be used to examine and better understand the roles of one type of stakeholders, planners, in environmentally oriented planning and management processes led by other professions. Two cases of natural hazard mitigation planning led by emergency managers illustrate the usefulness of three SNA concepts of network structural characteristics in understanding how differences in planner involvement may influence incorporation of land use approaches in local natural hazard mitigation plans aimed at reducing long term risks from natural hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Participatory planning is becoming increasingly integral to governance. Numerous planning innovations are developed which aim to increase democratic legitimacy and improve decision making. This paper critically reflects on a typical Dutch innovation: the area committee. Based on two individual case studies, we investigate whether area committees realise democratic legitimacy in existing planning practices. Analytically, we focus on four democratic goods: inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgement and transparency. Based on the interdependencies between area committees and government structures we discuss the potential and dilemmas for the area committee to contribute to the democratic legitimacy of environmental policy and rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to contribute to coherence in marine, coastal and land use planning and management from the perspective of landscape values. At a time when new sea uses are emerging and marine spatial planning laws and regulations are being adopted, but have not yet been put into practice, research studies are required that provide spatial planners with informed insights concerning public stakeholder attitudes to controversial policies. The undertaken research explored the attitudes of two important social groups (local residents and tourists/recreational users) regarding locating wind parks in the marine and/or terrestrial environment along the Latvian coast of the Baltic Sea. The results of the study indicate that both groups support land-based wind park development versus offshore. Moreover, the visibility of wind turbines influences the willingness of tourists to visit recreation sites and impacts directly on their duration of stay. Research findings indicate that policy makers and spatial planners from both marine and land domains should adopt a broader and more integrated approach when setting priorities and allocating space for development activities where both domains are involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although climate change risks have been studied for a number of economic sectors, banking has received relatively little attention. The paper proposes a methodology and an associated decision-support tool for quantifying, in monetary terms, the risks for banks from the exposure of their loan recipients and/or applicants to climate change. The framework and tool are applied to a case study based on input from a Greek bank; results indicate that climate change risks for banks are considerable, and thus decision makers need to estimate their magnitude and possibly consider these within the credit management process, and in environmental planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that regional collaboration can facilitate adaptation to climate change impacts through integrated planning and management. In an attempt to understand the underlying institutional factors that either support or contest this assumption, this paper explores the institutional factors influencing adaptation to climate change at the regional scale, where multiple public land and natural resource management jurisdictions are involved. Insights from two mid-western US case studies reveal that several challenges to collaboration persist and prevent fully integrative multi-jurisdictional adaptation planning at a regional scale. We propose that some of these challenges, such as lack of adequate time, funding and communication channels, be reframed as opportunities to build interdependence, identify issue-linkages and collaboratively explore the nature and extent of organisational trade-offs with respect to regional climate change adaptation efforts. Such a reframing can better facilitate multi-jurisdictional adaptation planning and management of shared biophysical resources generally while simultaneously enhancing organisational capacity to mitigate negative effects and take advantage of potentially favourable future conditions in an era characterised by rapid climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model-based decision support systems are increasingly used to link knowledge to action for environmental decision making. How stakeholders perceive uncertainty in models and visualisations affects their perceptions of credibility, relevance and usability of these tools. This paper presents a case study of water decision makers’ evaluations of WaterSim, a dynamic water simulation model presented in an immersive decision theatre environment. Results reveal that decision makers’ understandings of uncertainty in their evaluations of decision support systems reflect both scientific and political discourse. We conclude with recommendations for design and evaluation of decision support systems that incorporate decision makers' views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mounting evidence of global climate change encourages planning responses that seek to mitigate change and to adapt to changes considered to be inevitable. The province of British Columbia recently mandated that municipal official community plans (OCPs) contain targets and policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The authors use content analysis to evaluate mitigation and adaptation content in 39 OCPs, and find that 25 of the OCPs explicitly address climate change, and that the OCPs are stronger with respect to goals and policies than to fact base and implementation provisions. The paper concludes with recommendations for strengthening municipal climate change planning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper identifies and describes experience with ‘green’ stormwater management practices in Germany. It provides the context in which developments took place and extracts lessons learned to inform efforts of other countries in confronting urban stormwater challenges. Our findings show that an integrated environmental planning approach helps to balance environmental and urban development. Further, the transformation to a mixed grey and green infrastructure necessitates both a quantifiable long-term goal and a suite of policies to incentivise green infrastructure and support implementation. Finally, public authorities must assume leadership while enabling the participation of stakeholder groups in the transformation process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Individuals and public groups generally participate in public involvement events in an effort to gain influence over decisions that affect them. However, not much is known about how the process actually results in the public gaining influence over agency decisions. This paper reports the results of an online survey completed by 489 Forest Service National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) team leaders. Respondents reported how much influence they thought the public should have during the NEPA process, how much influence they thought the public generally had, and how much influence the public had on a specific NEPA process at different points in the process. Sixty per cent of the respondents believed the public should have greater influence than they do. Respondents reported that more public influence should and does happen at earlier stages in the process. Early public influence and substantive comments appear to be related to positive perceptions of the public involvement process and public relations outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contentious policy arenas where planning has traditionally been driven by the triad of expert knowledge, bureaucrats and public representatives, often public involvement is understood as a panacea that is used to legitimise decisions, reduce conflict and enhance public acceptance. This paper, based on evidence of public involvement in environmental planning over hydropower projects in India, argues that quite contrary to the expectation, there could be a mismatch between the legality and legitimacy of the public involvement exercise which may possibly then transform into situations that exacerbate rather than reduce conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated environmental management and related approaches have been widely endorsed for emphasising interconnections between water, land and related resources and placing them within a broader social and institutional context. Yet there has been limited application of those approaches to wetland conservation. This paper introduces an integrated wetland conservation (IWC) framework for analysing and identifying opportunities for integration within state (subnational) wetland programmes. The authors apply the IWC framework to an evaluation of the state wetland programme in Wisconsin. The framework identified limited current integration in Wisconsin, although the state programme has opportunities to improve IWC by increasing watershed-scale planning and mechanisms for interaction and co-ordination between stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systems model to address the need for a stakeholder analysis tool in the environmental planning and management literature. It captures the dynamic and complex nature of environmental conflicts. This is developed using the system dynamics methodology and is applied to a New Zealand case, the Transmission Gully motorway project. Experiments conducted using the model showed that although the proposed Transmission Gully motorway is capable of easing traffic congestion in the short term, it will not reduce traffic congestion in the long term. Policy and scenario experiments conducted using the model revealed that policies aimed at reducing traffic congestion could also reduce the conflict between stakeholders; however, they showed some counter-intuitive behaviour in the system which highlighted the complexity of the problem situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a co-ordinated system for monitoring European biodiversity that can provide policy makers with information to underpin the management of ecological resources requires an appropriate environmental stratification to facilitate sampling and data analysis. This paper quantifies the similarities between the European Environmental Stratification (EnS) and four regional stratifications to test whether the EnS is able to distinguish locally important environmental gradients. The results show that in general the EnS is comparable with regional stratifications, and resolves border effects where divergent environmental conditions are combined into dominant strata. However, some regional gradients are not discerned, illustrating the value of national stratifications to provide local detail within continental monitoring strata. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Environmental planning has not yet sufficiently considered climate protection and mitigation functions as well as the potential for combining mitigation measures with other landscape functions. The aim of this paper is to present a methodological approach which addresses this deficit. The assessment of climate protection functions of the agricultural landscape was based on exiting soil and land use data and was applied in a case study. The potential for synergies with other landscape functions and for site-specific multifunctional measures is also demonstrated in the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Golf is a major and expanding sport, leisure and tourism activity with significant environmental impacts. The impacts of golf and other sports facilities are increasingly addressed through Voluntary Environmental Programmes (VEPs). Since the late-1980s, VEPs have gained popularity because they theoretically overcome the weaknesses of environmental legislation, improve environmental performance beyond minimum legal compliance and confer competitive advantage. Yet their effectiveness is contested and they are only partially accepted. There is very limited research on the growing participation of golf and other sports in VEPs. Our international review paper outlines the environmental impacts of golf, analyses the strategic 'green' pressures affecting the sport, reviews the theory and practice of VEPs, and draws conclusions on this under-researched field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green Area Ratio (GAR) is an urban site sustainability metric which has been used in Berlin, Germany since 1997 to enhance the urban environment by requiring green infrastructure enhancements on private properties. Following an overview of the principles of the GAR instrument, this paper outlines metric development and implementation procedures in Berlin and then analyses how instrument features might affect its potential environmental, social and economic impacts. Despite identified policy deficits and the lack of adequate outcome monitoring in Berlin, the GAR instrument resonates with the environmental planning needs of many urban communities, including its compatibility with dense urbanism, utilisation of green infrastructure techniques, and an aim toward comprehensive environmental planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a synthesis of grassroots activities designed to promote the learning and conservation of traditional knowledge and related biocultural resources among Adi, Monpa and Khasi tribes of northeast India. The results indicate that the participation of knowledge holders in various village level activities can enhance the promotion of traditional practices, learning of knowledge and conservation of related resources. Knowledge holders of varying age groups and social systems have many notable traditional practices that provide promising solutions to current challenges. The promotion of traditional knowledge-based products can also facilitate the conservation of resources and the subsistence survival of people. Strong multi-level networks between all stakeholders are needed to ensure the sustainability of traditional knowledge and conservation of biocultural resources of communities of northeast India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses, by using a constructivist methodology, how sustainability is perceived by Russian urban and regional planners and how environmental planning is understood on a discursive level. The planning discourse, which was reconstructed primarily with the help of 14 thematic interviews undertaken in St Petersburg, is positioned on the axes of the triangle of planning contradictions. The analysis shows that the promoted planning paradigm - the interpretations about the priorities of environmental planning - stem from the expert-centred approach of the Soviet era, and poorly suits the changing governmentality of St Petersburg. Due to regime changes, a significant step from a mute to a reflective governmentality was taken in St Petersburg, but the professional planning discourse is in conflict with this context reality and prohibits a more sustainable planning standpoint from developing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]