Search

This paper summarizes the innovative approach to setting environmental flows proposed by Baxter in 1961, describes its immediate impact across both engineering and fisheries disciplines and explores the reasons why his approach was not adopted in river flow regulation and management in the UK. Yet, the basic approach was to be used world-wide by the end of the century. Several barriers constrained innovation in flow regulation in England during the 1960s: the overwhelming pollution problems; serious concerns about water shortage and food security, not least in the context of the severe 1959 drought; the influence of the 1963 Water Resources Act and the legacy of previous legislation; the limited availability of both river flow data and biological data; and the lack of awareness of human impacts on the environment. The paper also provides lessons for promoting environmental science into policy and practice to advance the implementation of environmental flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, a growing body of research has examined the role of cities in addressing climate change and the institutional and political challenges which they encounter. For the most part, in these accounts, the infrastructure networks, their material fabric, everyday practices and political economies, have remained unexamined. In this paper, it is argued that this is a critical omission and an approach is developed for understanding how urban responses to climate change both configure and are configured by infrastructure networks. Central to any such analysis is the conception of how and why (urban) infrastructure networks undergo change. Focusing on urban energy networks and on the case of London, the paper argues for an analysis of the ‘urban infrastructure regimes’ and ‘experiments’ through which climate change is governed. It is found that climate change experiments serve as a means through which dominant actors articulate and test new ‘low-carbon’ logics for urban infrastructure development. It is argued that experiments work by establishing new circuits, configuring actors in new sets of relations and through these means realising the potential for addressing climate change in the city. At the same time, experiments become sites of conflict, a means through which new forms of urban circulation can be confined and marginalised, leaving dominant energy regimes (relatively) intact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom in 1948 there have been significant changes in the way waste materials produced by healthcare facilities have been managed due to a number of environmental, legal and social drivers. This paper reviews the key changes in legislation and healthcare waste management that have occurred in the UK between 1948 and the present time. It investigates reasons for the changes and how the problems associated with healthcare wastes have been addressed. The reaction of the public to offensive disposal practices taking place locally required political action by the UK government and subsequently by the European legislature. The relatively new UK industry of hazardous healthcare waste management has developed rapidly over the past 25 years in response to significant changes in healthcare practices. The growth in knowledge and appreciation of environmental issues has also been fundamental to the development of this industry. Legislation emanating from Europe is now responsible for driving change to UK healthcare waste management. This paper examines the drivers that have caused the healthcare waste management to move forward in the 60 years since the NHS was formed. It demonstrates that the situation has moved from a position where there was no overall strategy to the current situation where there is a strong regulatory framework but still no national strategy. The reasons for this situation are examined and based upon the experience gained; suggestions are made for the benefit of countries with systems for healthcare waste management still in the early stages of development or without any provisions at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of the environment on established political parties, especially in polities without an electorally successful green party, is surprisingly under-researched. This article provides a theoretically informed and empirically comprehensive analysis of the party politicization of the environment in Britain. Four hypotheses are developed, drawn from the party competition and `new politics' perspectives, which predict the response of the three major British parties to environ- mental issues. These hypotheses are tested against a range of quantitative and qualitative sources, notably the Manifesto Research Group and expert survey data. Party politicization of the environment is found to be limited, but there are important variations in party responses. Party competition is critical in explaining these responses. However, the `new politics' insight that the environmental issue dimension cuts across the traditional left-right cleavage identifies ideology as a further significant constraint on the willingness of established parties to embrace this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the law that governs the disposal of clinical waste and strategies for improving its management in Great Britain. The private health sector produces 100,000 to 200,000 tons of clinical waste annually. Clinical waste management and disposal is subject to duty of care under the Environment Protection Act of 1990. The effective segregation of clinical and household waste can help reduce the amount of clinical waste and the costs associated with its disposal.

This article highlights the increasing popularity of showering in Great Britain. There is evidence that people in Great Britain are showering more than ever before and that they are using more powerful showers. Industry forecasts currently anticipate a five fold increase in the number of litres used for showering between 1991 and 2021, accompanied by an equally dramatic decline in the use of the bath. More tangibly, demand for separate shower cubicles has increased at an average of twenty per cent per year since 1999, a figure that suggests the composition of Great Britain bathrooms is on the move and that showering is being positioned as a normal everyday activity. Faced with these trends, environmental policy makers have sought to contain consumption through a series of technical fixes, for example, by promoting water metering, advocating low flow shower-heads and labeling appliances. While not irrelevant, these initiatives take future demand and consumption as foregone conclusions. Focusing on resources rather than on changing habits, such measures suppose that patterns of unsustainable consumption are the result of information deficit, inappropriate technology or inadequate regulation.