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The paper contributes to the under-researched domain of standard setting for bottled water quality in India. The paper opens-up the 'black box' of regulation-making by analysing the mandatory bottled water quality standards set by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The regulation-making exercise is dominated by bureaucrats and technocrats representing government departments, publicly funded institutions and representatives of big industries. In the standard-setting committees, representation of NGOs, small firms, technology suppliers, independent experts, consumers and citizens are either missing or limited. The kind of experts enrolled by the technical committee and the practice and principles employed by BIS for decision-making have a strong bearing on the regulatory standards. The standard setting for bottled water was the outcome of a complex process that was significantly shaped by the views and values of the dominant regulatory actors, especially what was perceived as valid and superior 'regulatory knowledge'. Discrete actors, such as bureaucrats, technocrats, big firms and NGOs, supported the wider adoption of international standards, but they had different rationales for advocating the adoption. However, the uncritical adoption of international standards has resulted in a disregard for incorporating environmental, epidemiological, dietary and diverse socio-economic factors into setting standards. Inclusion of socio-economic and other contextual factors could increase the validity and effectiveness of regulatory standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene term invokes the multiple temporalities through which organisms, ecologies, and environments unfold – from the immediacy of the present moment to the sedimentary timescales of the geological record. Viewed from the perspective of anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation, these organisms, ecologies, and environments, including the planet's human occupants, may well benefit if we took a view of time that was more-than-human in scope and scale. This paper demonstrates how design, creative practice, and technology can be used to make legible human and more-than-human timescales through local, planetary, and celestial imaginaries that are congruent with the Anthropocene term. It first considers various anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic phenomena that are used for time keeping, both human and non-human. It then discusses the design and development of a timepiece that uses observations of environmental light to imaginatively situate daily life within various temporal scales, from embodied, diurnal, circalunar, and annual to the sedimentary timescales of the geological record. Through the timepiece, the paper argues that a hybrid form of timekeeping that brings together human time standards and environmental observation could help align the temporal imaginaries of urban societies with biological, ecological, and planetary processes, while highlighting the presence of potentially damaging anthropogenic processes, such as artificial light at night. Such hybrid forms of timekeeping may help foster meaningful relationships between people and the environment, facilitate day-to-day awareness of the presence and extent of disruptive anthropogenic processes in our environments and provide an imaginative framework for thinking about urban time and life in an Anthropocene context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shipowners are facing increased pressure from changing laws and green investors to scrap and recycle their ships in yards with higher environmental and labor standards, rather than on the beaches of India and Bangladesh. Recently, English shipowner Fred Olsen sold a 50-year old cruise ship to a Turkish company with a clause stipulating it be recycled at a shipyard approved under the European and UK Ship Recycling Regulations. The Turkish company did not comply and sold the ship for scrapping in India. Fred Olsen sued the Turkish company in the United Kingdom and petitioned Indian courts to arrest the vessel in Indian waters. The ship was briefly arrested but then sent to the beach for breaking. Fred Olsen is now only able to seek monetary damages, as their environmentally sound intentions, along the effectiveness of any European ship recycling regime, faced a severe setback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While water consumption and water conservation have been issues in the discussion of sustainable tourism for many years, the residual part of the water cycle, the management of wastewater, lacks attention in tourism and planning research. This study addresses the wastewater challenges in Danish second home tourism. More than 200,000 second homes represent an important touristic resource both for owners and for short-term renters, and increasingly, the accommodation capacity is used over the whole year. Data from the building and housing register (BBR) show that only 54% of second homes are connected to public sewage and purification utilities. The remaining second homes rely on individual solutions such as septic tanks. A substantial regional variance can be partly explained by differences in the spatial layout and location of second homes, but mainly the dissimilar priorities in the responsible municipalities are the result of systemic factors following semi-privatized governance structures. The intensified use of second homes, rising ground water levels, more frequent climate incidences and EU and national quality obligations for the environmental standards of waterways and seas are and will in the future be challenges for the municipal wastewater management. A mobilization of second home owners and users to support updated wastewater infrastructures is hampered by the principles laid down in the governance structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal regulations in the United States of America concerning the environment are currently in the process of being re-implemented and redeveloped after years of roll-back under the Trump Administration. This opinion recommends three steps that individual states could take to support stronger environmental policies, which are rooted in 'environmental justice' in relation to issuing emission permits, so as to mitigate the impact of industry upon overburdened communities, and in doing so improve air quality, whilst the federal government reworks its own standards. Given the current political situation, which is heavily contested, and the complicated legal structure of the USA the opinion concludes, that in the context of issuing permits, and having considered a range of environmental law issues at each level of the United States government, that states have a vital role to play in mitigating the 'environmental impact' of pollution on underserved communities, and in tackling other environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noise generated by rolling stock in High-Speed Rail (HSR) is of paramount importance from environment point of view. A lot of developments and improvements have happened in rolling stock design to reduce noise during running. There exists different standards and methodology for measurement of noise emanating from running of rolling stock at a high-speeds. This paper first discusses the basic concept of noise and then analyses various standards being followed mainly in Europe and Japan; compares them and draws inference in Indian context where the first HSR line, MAHSR (Mumbai Ahmedabad High Speed Rail) is under construction and several others are in planning stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ambivalence within political ecology about whether the unequal power relations that emerge from many development projects are intended or unintended. This ambivalence is a result of an empirical focus on the effects of these programs on target communities, as opposed to an empirical focus on the people who are responsible for developing those programs. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork among people tasked with designing, promoting, and enforcing sustainability standards in global agricultural supply chains, I argue that the empowerment of multinational corporations and well-funded environmental NGOs that characterizes market-oriented sustainability programs is, in fact, intentional. This intention reflects the belief among sustainability professionals that the intersection of western scientific expertise with the dynamics of "the market" is the most effective way to promote sustainability in global supply chains, and to generate global sustainability in a more general sense. Concepts like "stakeholder engagement" and a commitment to flexibility and accommodation in the development and adoption of social and environmental standards are examples of what I call euphemistic sustainability, which shifts critical attention away from a balance of power that is increasingly tilted toward private interests, even as that imbalance remains an intended outcome of non-state market-driven governance systems like ostensibly voluntary sustainability standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant discrepancies between the chemically active substance concentrations in the database and the actual environment can lead to deviations in anti-corrosion design and material selection during electronic product development and even lead to incorrect estimation of product lifetime. This literature research aims to provide a basis for updating the database of gaseous chemical concentrations, which are prone to triggering corrosive effects in power electronic modules and equipment. The current pollutant concentration standards applicable to electronic equipment, as well as agencies and research institutes with relevant expertise, are presented first. The distribution of pollutant concentrations in different regions of the world is shown through literature review and data collection. Moreover, changes in pollutant concentrations over the last 30 years in several German cities are also presented. The rationale and need for updating the European environmental classification are discussed based on the analysis of the collected data and comparison with existing standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research shows that childhood processes affect identity formation. However, there is limited scholarly understanding about how these processes work as children age. The case of environmental behavior offers the opportunity to interrogate these processes. I use reflective interviews with 40 participants in the 2014 People's Climate March in New York to understand how the socialization of environmental behavior in childhood shapes their perceptions of the processes of identity formation related to participation in the environmental movement. I argue that environmental movement behavior is facilitated by the development of compatible identity standards during childhood. I find that four processes—nature experiences, witnessing degradation, parental modeling, and school experiences—influence participation in environmental movement behavior in adulthood. My results highlight varied ways that behavior in adulthood can be facilitated through the shaping of identity standards over the life course. This research has implications for research on socialization, identities, social movements, and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we adopted a novel objective measure of attitude strength based on observable responses, and empirically tested the role of attitude strength in the relationship between environmental attitude and willingness to pay (WTP) for improving air visibility. We proposed the moderating role of environmental attitude strength in the relationship of environmental attitude to WTP, and empirically tested it in a survey on air visibility on a sample of 652 residents in Beijing, China. Our main finding was that the translation of environmental attitude into WTP was 61% less when the same level of environmental attitude was weakly held rather than strongly held. We also investigated the relationships of individual difference variables to environmental attitude strength, showing the interaction of value orientation, environmental knowledge, need for cognitive closure, and demographic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue presents five articles that explore the linkages between social movements and private environmental standards that are not promulgated by governments. They draw on disciplines ranging from economics to political science to sociology to law. This introduction places the articles in context and explains their origins and intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze a brand's disclosure of its supplier list to improve the suppliers' compliance with social and environmental sustainability standards. We develop a model of a buyer, a supplier, and an NGO; when a violation of the supplier occurs, the buyer and the supplier both incur penalties. Given that the disclosure influences the NGO's perception of the supplier and results in a different level of NGO scrutiny, the buyer decides whether to reveal her supplier. Our model characterizes the buyer's optimal revelation strategy and provides the equilibrium efforts of the supplier and the NGO. The results show that an increase in the penalty for the supplier or an increase in the NGO's auditing efficiency always gives the buyer an incentive to reveal the supplier and has a beneficial effect on supply chain sustainability. However, an increase in the penalty for the buyer acts as a deterrent to the revelation, and thus it often has a detrimental effect on sustainability, except when the increase is modest and the buyer makes an individual effort to monitor her supplier. Moreover, although an increase in the NGO's gain in utility from targeting a revealed supplier acts as a deterrent to the revelation, it can have either a beneficial or detrimental effect on sustainability, depending on the extent of the increase and the efficiency of the NGO's auditing. Last, if the buyer can invest in improving the supplier's capability, the above‐mentioned factors that have beneficial (detrimental) impacts on sustainability also make the investment more (less) worthwhile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes and explains why the state of California has long played a leadership role in adopting innovative and stringent environmental standards. It argues that critical roles have been played by the state's attractive natural environment, the extent of threats to its environmental quality, the material interest of citizens in protecting the natural environmental around where they lived, and the support of business interests who stood to benefit from protecting the state's many environmental amenities. These dynamics are illustrated by several historical examples, which have laid the basis for the state's current environmental policy initiatives. It concludes by generalizing from the experiences of California in order to explore the role of politics and public policies in promoting more sustainable business practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary standards certifying environmental qualities of labeled products have proliferated across sectors and countries. Effectuating these standards requires the collaboration among and between creators (typically firms and nongovernmental organizations) and adopters (firms across a particular supply chain). However, the need to collaborate does not rule out the presence of controversy. Drawing on the case of the Marine Stewardship Council, a leading seafood standard to conserve the world's threatened marine fauna, we analyze how this controversy, from economic and sociologic vantage points, impacts a sustainability transition. In essence, interest divergence drives controversy over standard design, which spurs controversy over standard effectiveness and prompts the proliferation of competing standards. Controversy is magnified by the opacity or nontransparency of the fields which such standards seek to govern. We conclude that, while interest divergence and field opacity entail inherent controversy over voluntary environmental standards, the impact of this controversy on sustainability transitions is typically predominantly positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Opinion emphasises the importance of paying attention to how government will be held to account for implementing environmental standards once the UK has left the EU. It focuses on three, relatively simple, accountability mechanisms that have been taken for granted during our membership of the EU: the big sticks of Commission-plus-Court of Justice enforcement mechanisms and fines, a more subtle architecture of transparency and political accountability, and a series of EU legal principles that render judicial review before domestic courts more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advocates of green public procurement (GPP) argue that the public sector can use its purchasing power to influence producers and consumers to reduce their negative impact on the environment. Our aim is to assess GPP as an environmental policy instrument and its ability to lead to the achievement of environmental objectives. Central to our analysis is the extent to which polluting firms choose to adapt to the public sector’s environmental requirements and to invest in greener technologies. Our theoretical finding is that the potential of GPP to function as an objective effective instrument of environmental policy is limited and can actually be counterproductive. From an environmental policy point of view, it is crucial that the GPP aims for an environmental standard beyond the technology of the polluting firms and is designed with reference to defined environmental objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent climate change statistics attribute over a quarter of carbon emissions to residential energy use in the United Kingdom. To address this, a building standard (Code for Sustainable Homes) was introduced to aim to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption. This paper analyzes how such an environmental standard reconfigures the sociotechnological relations and practices of housing professionals that design, construct, and manage social housing. We focus on how actors engage with the standard’s recommendation for incorporating low and zero carbon technologies into new buildings. We identify diverse practices that emerge from these engagements, which, we contend, have significant consequences for the working relationships of professional actors and for renewable energy provision. By being entwined in, and generative of actors’ practices, we argue that the Code becomes part of the sociotechnological relationships and infrastructures that shape energy provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buyer firms in the apparel industry are using environmental standards to coordinate their global value chains (GVCs). In turn, supplier firms are complying with environmental standards as a way to increase their competitiveness. This article addresses the nascent gap in the GVC literature in relation to firm-and chain-level responses to environmental concerns, which enable apparel firms to upgrade. The article examines the drivers and conditions under which apparel firms embrace environmental upgrading in Sri Lanka. Findings suggest that GVCs represent both the drivers of environmental upgrading and the means by which to obtain the knowledge needed to upgrade particularly for firms in relational networks. The strategic intent and capability of the suppliers to assimilate the transfer of knowledge and upgrade are critical. However, upgrading does not necessarily yield higher profits for supplier firms. The incentive for upgraded firms to maintain their environmental performance is competitive advantage arising from reduced costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criteria defi ning 'good agricultural practice' (GAP) were originally developed for on-farm production methods and resource use. For a decade, GAP principles have been applied throughout the entire agri-food supply chain by organisations promoting voluntary private standard (PS) schemes. Although the stated aim of such schemes is to provide consumers with guarantees of food safety and quality, they are strongly driven by the desire to reduce transaction costs within the chain and to limit the legal liability of chain operators and retailers in the wake of food safety lapses. They raise issues concerning their compatibility with the polluter pays principle, the legitimacy of the standard-setting process, potential duplication of the safeguards enshrined in public legislation, and the extent to which they erect barriers to market entry and impede competition. The extension of voluntary PS schemes to global food chains raises further questions about their compatibility with sustainable development goals and with WTO rules regarding import restrictions based on production methods. Current challenges include the operational coexistence of mandatory public standards and voluntary private standards in the agri-food arena, and how they might be better harmonised within national and international legal frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study determined whether a private room or open ward design better met optimal environmental conditions for a neonatal intensive care unit with regard to sound level, light level, temperature and humidity. Background: Multiple-bed designs for hospital neonatal intensive care units were the standard until recently. Now, private room designs promise to provide better conditions for neonate development and patient care quality. Methods: The study compared an eight-bed open ward design with a private room design of a 45-bed neonatal intensive care unit, measuring the environmental parameters of sound, light, temperature, and humidity before and after the construction and occupation of a new private room unit. Results: Average light levels were higher in the private room design because of the increased number of windows, but both designs were within the recommended levels. Mean temperature readings were two degrees cooler in the private room environment, and readings were more stable. Mean humidity readings in the two environments were the same, but humidity levels in the private room design were more stable. Median sound level in the private room design was lower than the open ward design, but the range was similar. Conclusion: The private room design allows for a more controlled patient care environment that can be maintained within a smaller range of variation nearer optimal environmental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Santiago was one of the first cities outside the OECD to implement a tradable permit program to control air pollution. This article looks closely at the program's performance over the past 10 years, stressing its similarities and discrepancies with trading programs implemented in developed countries and analyzing how it has reacted to regulatory adjustments and market shocks. Studying Santiago's experience allows us to say that a middle-income country such as Chile is capable of implementing this type of scheme even if much work remains before the design is really satisfactory. Considering the urgency of improving the environment in many of these countries, it is important to use the whole range of potential instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of arguments that citizen science has the potential to make environmental knowledge and policy more robust and democratic, this article inquires into the factors that shape the ability of citizen science to actually influence scientists and decision makers. Using the case of community-based air toxics monitoring with ''buckets,'' it argues that citizen science's effectiveness is significantly influenced by standards and standardized practices. It demonstrates that, on one hand, standards serve a boundary-bridging function that affords bucket monitoring data a crucial measure of legitimacy among experts. On the other hand, standards simultaneously serve a boundary-policing function, allowing experts to dismiss bucket data as irrelevant to the central project of air quality assessment. The article thus calls attention to standard setting as an important site of intervention for citizen science-based efforts to democratize science and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using cross-country data, the major thrust of this study is to establish the existence of a nonlinear relationship between environmental performance and ethnic diversity, while controlling for factors known to affect a country's ability to meet environmental standards. Using the Environmental Performance Index developed by Columbia and Yale Universities in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, this study finds that countries with moderate levels of ethnic diversity experience the greatest environmental performance as they reap the benefits of a civically engaged society with creative, innovative, and efficient human talent pool and do not bear the negative effects of a highly fractionalized society that typically suffers from poor communication and social cohesion, among other societal ills. The policy implications are important, as policy makers need to understand how ethnic diversity affects a country's ability to meet environmental goals such that these effects are accounted for in new environmental policies and initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the heart of ongoing debate over Community waste policy (and thus its regulatory form) is an unclear message about its goals, which include both ‘preventing’ and ‘regulating’ waste and, after a new Directive, maintaining high environmental standards for the use of resources generally. This article asks whether the new Directive is likely to resolve the tension that arises in determining which of these goals takes priority, or whether it perpetuates it. It answers this question by analysing the changes introduced by the 2008 Waste Directive and by examining its goals and the legal issues that arise from the Directive's efforts to clarify, simplify and reorient the provisions of previous Waste Directives. The article concludes that the new Waste Directive is broadly and overly ambitious, at the expense of clarity concerning its goals and certainty in relation to its regulatory provisions. In short, there is a lot to digest in legally understanding and appraising the new Directive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effect of Japan's official development assistance (ODA) over 10 years that proposed to facilitate environmental conservation in developing countries. Special emphasis is given to ODA disbursements in the energy sector to evaluate whether Japan's foreign aid has shifted its policy toward more environmentally sound goals. The article finds that despite its articulated premise, Japan's ODA for the energy sector has favored environmentally problematic projects, that is, those based on fossil fuels and larger scale (10 megawatt or larger) hydropower. Similar to patterns in the early 1990s, environmentally friendly projects have received little attention. It is not surprising that the expected amount of greenhouse gas emissions from Japan's ODA-supported energy projects appears substantial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective solution of environmental problems calls for changes in levels of consumption. Sociologists have described moderation in households of high socio-economic status in affluent countries, and also a type of modesty which cannot be a response to the experience of abundance. However, its essence is not the way of life of a traditional community. Sustainable living based on self-restraint could be considered to be a symptom of the summit of cultural evolution to date. Nevertheless, historical experience warns us against making too much of contemporary cases of moderation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in environmental decision-making and the contingent valuation (CV) technique as input into traditional CBA to elicit environmental values in monetary terms has stimulated an extensive debate. Critics have questioned the appropriateness of both the method and the technique. Some alternative suggestions for the elicitation of environmental values are based on a social process of deliberation. However, just like traditional economic theory, these alternative approaches may be questioned on their implicit valuejudgements regarding the legitimacy of the social-political organisation of the process of value elicitation. Instead of making assumptions a priori, research efforts should be focused on the processes by which actual public attitudes and preferences towards the environment can best be elicited and fed into environmental or other public policy decision-making. In the study presented in this paper, support was found for both the individual WTP based approach and a participatory social deliberation approach to inform the environmental decision-making process, suggesting that a combination of both approaches is mostappropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]