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One of the current topical problems is the prediction of climate change and mitigation of its consequences. All-sided analysis of ecological, economic, and social aspects of climate issues relies on interdisciplinary assessment models. This article adapts the MERGE optimization model to the current state of the world economy and introduces into the model a new component that implements a simplified procedure of 'green' GDP calculation ('green' GDP, or GGDP, provides information about the efficiency of use of environmental resources). The objective of our numerical simulations is to tests the consequences of Russia's hypothetical participation in the program for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to analyze the environmental indicators of Russia's GDP. The input data are mainly provided by the project of scenario conditions and main macroeconomic parameters for the forecasting of socio-economic development in Russia in the near future implemented by the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. The calculations reveal the existence of reserves for Russia's 'painless' participation in environment-preserving initiatives that call for not exceeding the 1990 emission level in 2020-2025. At the same time, increasing the environmental efficiency of Russia's GDP is a relevant task that requires immediate attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the Sino-Italian environmental protection cooperation framework established in 2002, a comprehensive air quality monitoring network has been developed in urban Suzhou, a medium-sized Chinese city, in compliance with European standards (Directive 96/62/EC). This paper is among the first attempts to present a systematic and scientific analysis of benzene, toluene, and xylenes (BTX) pollution in China. It presents our analysis of BTX space-related and time-related measurement results. Background BTX concentrations were investigated by passive sampler Analyst® in 2003. We depicted the spatial distribution of average BTX concentrations collected from three 15-day campaigns on isoconcentration maps. This is the first time such detailed BTX concentration maps have been developed in China in a city scale. Continuous measurement of BTX by automatic gas chromatography was carried out at two fixed monitoring stations, one in an urban residential zone and one in a heavy traffic zone, from April to December 2005. The results show similar seasonal trends at both sites, the similarities reaching their greatest level in December and their lowest level in August. The average daily profile of BTX shows greater fluctuation in spring and winter with clear morning and evening peaks. Daily average benzene, toluene, and m,p-xylenes concentrations for the study period were 2.64, 11.52, and 3.52 μg m − 3, respectively. The benzene/toluene ratio we found was lower in Suzhou than those published in studies of other worldwide cities, which indicates serious levels of toluene pollution from local stationary sources. The similarities in seasonal trend and spatial distribution in these manual and automatic measurement results were compared with each other, though the concentration values differed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a decision support system (DSS) for sustainable development and environmental protection of agricultural regions developed in the framework of the Interreg-Archimed project entitled WaterMap (development and utilization of vulnerability maps for the monitoring and management of groundwater resources in the ARCHIMED areas). Its aim is to optimize the production plan of an agricultural region taking in account the available resources, the environmental parameters, and the vulnerability map of the region. The DSS is based on an optimization multicriteria model. The spatial integration of vulnerability maps in the DSS enables regional authorities to design policies for optimal agricultural development and groundwater protection from the agricultural land uses. The DSS can further be used to simulate different scenarios and policies by the local stakeholders due to changes on different social, economic, and environmental parameters. In this way, they can achieve alternative production plans and agricultural land uses as well as to estimate economic, social, and environmental impacts of different policies. The DSS is computerized and supported by a set of relational databases. The corresponding software has been developed in a Microsoft Windows XP platform, using Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Access, and the LINDO library. For demonstration reasons, the paper includes an application of the DSS in a region of Northern Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical review of the multidisciplinary literature on sustainable development reveals a lack of a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding sustainable development and its complexities. A critical review shows that the definitions of sustainable development are vague; there is a lack of operative definitions and disagreement over what should be sustained; the concept is unclear in terms of emotional commitment; and it “remains a confused topic”, “fraught with contradictions”. This article aims to theoretically synthesize the interdisciplinary literature on sustainable development, and then identify the results by broad categories. Therefore, this article uses conceptual analysis, which reviews multidisciplinary literature on sustainable development, which recognizes patterns and similarities within the literature, then it synthesizes the patterns to different categories and independent concepts, where each concept has distinctive meanings and represents close ideas on sustainability. The analytical process elaborates seven concepts that together assemble the theoretical framework of ‘sustainable development’ and each concept represents distinctive meanings of the theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six Black sea and five Caspian sea riparian countries began their way to modern managerial practice at their coasts in 1990s of the previous century. For five Black sea and four Caspian sea countries the time has coincided with launching complicated transitional period from socialism to market economy. The most important activities were carried out within framework of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (CEP) Environmental Programs and resulted in National and Regional ICZM Reports (Coastal Profiles), ICZM Networks, Transboundary Diagnostic Analyses, Strategic Action Plans. The international assistance in ICZM development in the regions is very important, but the large specificity of the regions and countries required and keeps demanding improvement of the approaches, methods, criteria for efficiency and practical significance of the international activities. The paper analyses heritage, current situation and possible prospects of ICZM development in the regions under consideration. During the last decade, important steps have been taken for the improvement of managerial process at the Black and Caspian seas countries coasts, but the clear need should be emphasized now to move from planning to implementation stage. Among the main findings of this stage are: ICZM is very difficult for real implementation and takes years, it needs proper understanding, and it has to be implemented using both top-down and bottom-up approaches, it has to be implemented using all possible tools and procedures. At the moment the use of sustainable development approaches to the coasts depends, in the first place, on social responsibility and vital motivation of certain key decision-makers, especially at provincial and local levels. Meanwhile, two recent events: (a) new activity in the Black sea region initiated by EU, and (b) launching of the long-waited CEP second phase - produce real infrastructural opportunities for moving forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaders of the PAGES Focus 5 programme ‘Past Ecosystem Processes and Human–Environment Interactions’ identify key issues for research on human–environment interactions for wider discussion. These include the need for long-term perspectives, the opportunities for maximising palaeoenvironmental research, the need for integration and regionalisation and the challenge of developing dynamic simulation models. A new organisational matrix for regional studies is outlined, based on a series of zonal/azonal regions and on the degree of human impact. Future priorities for palaeoenvironmental research include new studies in degraded human-dominated landscapes, highly-valued ecosystems and sites relevant to other IGBP Core Projects. Simulation of future human–environment interactions using modelling approaches that have been tested against long records lags behind global climate modelling, but cellular approaches for biogeophysical and multi-agent systems show promise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of palaeoenvironmental archives—sediments, archaeological remains, tree-rings, documents and instrumental records—is presented as a key element in the global scientific endeavour aimed at understanding human–environment interactions at the present day and in the future. The paper explains the need for the focus on palaeoenvironmental studies as a means of ‘learning from the past’, and presents the rationale and structure of the IGBP-PAGES Focus 5 programme ‘Past Ecosystem Processes and Human–Environment Interactions’. The past, as described through palaeoenvironmental studies, can yield information about pre-impact states, trajectories of recent change, causation, complex system behaviour, and provide the basis for developing and testing simulation models. Learning from the past in each of these epistemological categories is exemplified with published case-studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manifold linkages exist between climate change and sustainable development. Although these are starting to receive attention in the climate exchange literature, the focus has typically been on examining sustainable development through a climate change lens, rather than vice versa. And there has been little systematic examination of how these linkages may be fostered in practice. This paper examines climate change through a sustainable development lens. To illustrate how this might change the approach to climate change issues, it reports on the findings of a panel of business, local government, and academic representatives in British Columbia, Canada, who were appointed to advise the provincial government on climate change policy. The panel found that sustainable development may offer a significantly more fruitful way to pursue climate policy goals than climate policy itself. The paper discusses subsequent climate change developments in the province and makes suggestions as how best to pursue such a sustainability approach in British Columbia and other jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If sustainable development of Canadian waters is to be achieved, a realistic and manageable framework is required for assessing cumulative effects. The objective of this paper is to describe an approach for aquatic cumulative effects assessment that was developed under the Northern Rivers Ecosystem Initiative. The approach is based on a review of existing monitoring practices in Canada and the presence of existing thresholds for aquatic ecosystem health assessments. It suggests that a sustainable framework is possible for cumulative effects assessment of Canadian waters that would result in integration of national indicators of aquatic health, integration of national initiatives (e.g., water quality index, environmental effects monitoring), and provide an avenue where long-term monitoring programs could be integrated with baseline and follow-up monitoring conducted under the environmental assessment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the five papers that follow, all of which were originally presented at a workshop titled “Monitoring the Environment: Scales, Methods, and Systems in Historical Perspective.” The workshop, sponsored by the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History, examined past efforts to develop tools, methods, and systems for measuring or monitoring some aspect of the physical environment. Four of the papers included here focus on various aspects of air quality monitoring; the fifth has to do with monitoring the earth from space. Despite differences in time period and approach, each article examines how specific tools and methods - and the motivations for developing those tools and methods - evolved. Among other things, these papers make clear that systems for monitoring various aspects of the physical environment are shaped by a variety of stakeholders and suggest that efforts to construct such systems should not be viewed as a purely technical task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Guanabara Bay basin, SE Brazil, is shown as an experimental site to evaluate development and sustainability in coastal areas. We developed a Driver–Pressure–State–Impact–Response (DPSIR) framework in a practical context to integrate natural and socio-economic indicators. Sustainability reflects public policies towards the utilization of natural resources. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) included in DPSIR evaluates losses and benefits resulting from such policies. CBA has some limitations due to the difficulty of valuating environmental goods and services. Instead of valuating them we propose to combine sustainability indicators and defensive expenditures for the implementation of public policies. This approach agrees with the environmental conservation paradigm implicit in sustainable development. It allows an estimation of the physical natural capital depreciation (PNCD), by using it to correct the gross domestic product (GDP) of the study area, and demonstrating the present non-sustainable characteristics of the current policies applied to the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These essays are offered as a contribution to the ongoing scholarly discourse concerned with environmental problems in East Central Europe (ECE). In this volume we concentrate on the local through papers that indicate the nature of environmental challenges and ways in which progress is being made not merely by legislation but by negotiating sustainability in a range of local situations. Written by social scientists, largely geographers and anthropologists, from Western Europe as well as ECE and North America these essays provide ethnographically-detailed case studies of local environmental transformations in eight different countries. The emphasis on locality studies unites all the authors who, in different ways, develop the central idea that the macrosociological oversimplifications of the 1980s and 1990s can only be countered, and indeed corrected, through careful consideration of the diversity of local realities. All the case studies are concerned with the environmental dimensions of postcommunist transformations, whether that be through pollution abatement, restructuring over rights to natural resources such as forests or the implementation of ecotourism as a local redevelopment strategy. Sustainable development is therefore a leitmotif of this collection and most of the papers offer empirically-grounded critique of the concept insofar as it has permeated debates about local development in the postcommunist world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability has become a focal topic and important goal for many people concerned about environmental issues. It is, therefore, important for educators, and others, to talk about sustainability with their students and colleagues—about its meaning, curricular application, and practice. However, I do not think this is sufficient. In this paper I will examine limitations of the language of sustainability and implications for environmental thinking. Before launching into a critique, I do acknowledge the importance of "sustainability" and the usefulness of this concept. Many ecological processes are not sustained—not kept going continuously. Species are going extinct at an alarming rate and whole ecosystems are at risk. So, sustainability is important. However, we must also pay attention to what sustainability is not. And, we should consider why these limitations matter. For example, "education for sustainability" has gained rapid acceptance, yet little critical attention has been given to the term. Just as many environmental educators have expressed reservations about "education for sustainable development," I believe there are serious problems associated with allowing our work to be subsumed by the term "education for sustainability." In this presentation I will explore reasons for educators, and others, to be concerned about relying on the language and goals of sustainability. These areas of concern, or limitations, are discussed in terms of determinism, exclusivity, and conceptualization. Some suggestions are provided to help refocus our direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT / The relevant literature is abound with different definitions for sustainability, but the most meaningful definition is set within an evolutionary framework. Mechanistic and evolutionary frameworks for sustainable development are discussed. Evolution and adaptation are characteristics of complex adaptive systems, and a new understanding of sustainable development can be gleaned by using the complex adaptive systems framework. This approach to sustainable development issues implicitly requires proactive involvement by the public. This paper supports that bottom-up participation needs to be nurtured. Appropriate processes to enable participation need to be designed and implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a modelling study on regional sustainable development. First, the use of formal modelling for studying the multi-level relationship between economic, environmental and development processes is discussed. Such a relationship is analyzed for an island region in Greece. A potential conflict exists here between environmental conservation, local interests and rapid growth in tourism. A dynamic model is used to depict the development of the economies of three main islands and their interactions with the terrestrial and marine environment. The presentation of the case study model is followed by a discussion of scenarios, indicators and simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews several Web sites related to clean technologies and environmental policy, including Sustainable Development International, Eco-management and audit scheme, and Research Institute for Managing Sustainability.

The article discusses the different approaches towards sustainability and the need for harmonizing them. The first approach is industrial ecology with a mass orientation, while the second is technology-oriented life cycle. The third approach concerns the mainstream economists who consider account market relations. The last approach involves ecological economists who refrain from general approaches and instead focus on multi-criteria analysis at a case level. Given these varying approaches, there is a need to clarify the relations among them to advance the science of sustainability.