Archive for the ‘Research’ Category
Research refers to reports by organisations or research by academic institutions relating to urban sustainability issues. If you have research that relates to urban sustainability issues and could benefit people and organisations that are relevant to cities around the world, please post this information on SustainableCitiesNet.com. To do so visit the “How to use this site†page and follow the prompts.
“Fair Miles”: rethinking food miles
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on January 21st, 2010
Source: Food Climate Research Network
“Fair Miles: Recharting the food miles map“ by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) & Oxfam warns that Western concern over climate change can do more harm than good if it cuts demand for food produced in developing nations. The authors say locally produced food can actually cause greater emissions of greenhouse gases, and that consumers can harm the livelihoods of poor farmers in developing nations if they stop buying their produce.
“Climate change will hit poorer rural people in developing nations first, fastest and hardest,” says James MacGregor of IIED. “High-value trade with such nations is critical to build rural economies that are resilient to climate change. The trade in fresh produce is one part of a global solution to this challenge…When consumers focus on ‘food miles’ they are ignoring the other social and environmental issues embedded in their shopping decisions…More than one million livelihoods in rural Africa are supported in part by UK consumption of imported fresh produce. We urge consumers to avoid knee-jerk reactions and think instead of ‘fair miles’ and recognise that there are also social and ethical aspects to choices about where food comes from.”
The researchers are not saying locally grown food is a poor choice. “Eating local food when it is in season is a critical element of a balanced diet, and is complementary to eating development-friendly foods out-of-season,” says MacGregor. The book argues that as farmers in developing nations contribute so little to climate change, they shouldn’t be penalised because we emit more in the West. It says consumers serious about changing their behaviour in order to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions should be cycling or walking to their supermarket.
Tags: behaviour change, education, food miles, Research
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Transforming Cultures: State Of The World Report 2010
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on January 14th, 2010
Source: Eanth-L, e-list for the field of ecological/environmental anthropology.
Like a tsunami, consumerism has engulfed human cultures and Earth’s ecosystems. This cultural system encourages people to define their happiness and success through how much they consume. But on a finite planet, this system is maladaptive and threatens to cause significant disruptions to Earth’s climate and ecosystems, and subsequently to human civilization. If, on the other hand, we channel this wave, intentionally transforming our cultures to center on sustainability, we will not only prevent catastrophe, but may usher in an era of sustainability—one that allows all people to thrive while protecting, even restoring, Earth.
Worldwatch Institute’s Transforming Cultures project turns a critical eye to how we can shift today’s consumer cultures into cultures of sustainability. The key to this transformation will lie in harnessing institutions that play a central role in shaping society–such as the media, educational services, business, governments, traditions, and social movements–to instill this new cultural orientation.
In State of the World 2010, sixty renowned researchers and practitioners describe how we can harness the world’s leading institutions—education, the media, business, governments, traditions, and social movements—to reorient cultures toward sustainability.
The report, scheduled for release in January 2010, will include articles from 60 eminent researchers and experts on consumerism, sustainability, and cultural change. It will provide information on how we can make the needed shift to a culture of sustainability and illustrate how people around the world are already taking important steps.
Tags: behaviour change, consumption, new systems/services
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Reactive Glass: Pollutant ‘Sponge’ for Site Remediation
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on January 12th, 2010
Source: CleanTechnica via CleanEdge
Image: diego cupolo via flickr CC
From ““Swelling Glass” Cleans Polluted Water Like a Sponge“, by Tina Casey
This is the discovery that could put the College of Wooster on the map: glass that swells like a sponge. Put together like a nano-matrix, the new glass can unfold to hold up to eight times its weight. The glass binds with gasoline and other pollutants containing volatile organic compounds but it does not bind with water, so it acts like a “smart” sponge, capable of picking and choosing from contaminated groundwater.
The new material was developed by Dr. Paul Edmiston of the College of Wooster, who formed a new company, Absorbent Materials, to market the new glass under the trademark Obsorb. A number of pilot sites are being tested in the United States, and industrialized countries are not the only ones that stand to gain. Obsorb’s unique properties make it ideal for low tech, low-budget cleanups in developing areas as well.
Obsorb is a reactive glass. Unlike conventional glass, it can bond with the chemicals it encounters. However, it is also hydrophobic, meaning that it does not bond with water. At a recent pilot demonstration in Ohio, Obsorb was used in the form of a white powder to suck up a plume of TCE (a volatile organic compound). TCE is particularly difficult and expensive to clean up using conventional means, which is the reason why some contaminated sites are simply shut down, allowing the vapors to dissipate naturally. The process takes decades, so Obsorb could provide a low-cost means of recovering sites more quickly. The venture development group JumpStart Inc. saw the potential and has just committed a $250,000 investment to Absorbent Materials.
Once full, Obsorb floats to the surface, where it can be skimmed off with something as simple as a coffee filter. After that the pollutants can be retrieved and the glass can be reused hundreds of time. Nanoparticles of iron can also be added to convert TCE or PCE (another volatile organic compound) into harmless substances. As a low cost form of cleanup, swelling glass could provide site remediators with yet another in the growing list of non-conventional cleanup tools along with lactate, vitamin B-12, and even cattails.
From ““Swelling Glass” Cleans Polluted Water Like a Sponge“, by Tina Casey
Tags: enabling technologies, remediation, Water
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Motivating sustainable energy consumption in the home: Research Paper
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on January 11th, 2010
Source: Experientia, from “Design for Sustainable Behaviour (part 2)”
Image: gilgongo vial flickr CC
Abstract: Technologies are just now being developed that encourage sustainable energy usage in the home. One approach is to give home residents feedback of their energy consumption, typically presented using a computer visualization. The expectation is that this feedback will motivate home residents to change their energy behaviors in positive ways. Yet little attention has been paid to what exactly motivates such behavioral change. This paper provides a brief overview of theories in psychology and social psychology on what does, and does not motivate sustainable energy action in the home.
“Motivating sustainable energy consumption in the home”, Helen Ai He and Saul Greenberg, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Calgary
Tags: behaviour change, consumption, enabling technologies, energy
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Residential Design & the Benefits of Plants: Online Resource
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on January 6th, 2010
Source: Sustainable Cities Collective, from “Sustainable Residential Design: Maximizing the Benefits of Plants”
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has created an online resource guide on maximising the benefits of plants through sustainable residential landscape architecture. The guide contains lists of organisations, research, concepts and projects related to plants and sustainable landscape architecture, and includes sections on: native [U.S.] plants, residential agriculture, residential wildlife habitat, indoor plants and residential composting. Developed for students and professionals, the resource guide contains recent reports and projects from leading U.S. and international organisations, academics, and design firms.
This sustainable residential design resource guide is the third in a new four-part series. See earlier guides in the sustainable residential design series: increasing energy efficiency and improving water efficiency. One last future guide in this series will focus on how sustainable residential landscape architecture can incorporate innovative, recycled (and recyclable) materials.
The guide is separated into five sections:
* Native Plants
* Residential Agriculture
* Residential Wildlife Habitat
* Indoor Plants
* Residential Composting
As an example, the section on “native plants” includes models for reintroducing native plants into residential landscapes, as well as plant databases and government and non-profit organization native plant conservation efforts. There are also links to projects that have successfully incorporated these concepts in a residential context.
Go to the Resource Guide to see the full range available.
Tags: landscape architecture, Resource, urban agriculture
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Climate change Guide: how to win hearts and minds
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on December 8th, 2009
Source: Environmental Research Web
From “Climate change: how to win hearts and minds“, by Liz Kalaugher
Despite the fact that in 2007 the scientists compiling the IPCC report were 90% certain that human activities are causing climate change, climate scepticism amongst the public is on the rise. In the US there has been a sharp decline over the last year in the percentage of the population who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising, while in the UK the number of people believing that claims about the effects of climate change have been exaggerated rose from 15% to 29% between 2003 and 2008.
So how can a climate scientist best communicate their work to a sceptical audience?
With that in mind, the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University has issued a guide on the psychology of climate change communication that brings together the latest social science research in the field. Although it’s a serious topic, the guide is easy to read and contains many a cartoon and case study to illustrate its points. “Gaining public support for climate change policies and encouraging environmentally responsible behaviour depends on a clear understanding of how people process information and make decisions,” says the report. “Social science research provides an essential part of this puzzle but there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to the challenges of communicating about climate change. Rather, each of the many barriers presents a new opportunity to improve the way we present information.”
Tags: climate change, communication, community
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Searching for a Miracle: Report
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on December 7th, 2009
Source: PostCarbon Institute
In November, the Post Carbon Institute and the International Forum on Globalization released their important and challenging new report Searching for a Miracle. The report, authored by Post Carbon Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg and edited by Jerry Mander, explores the question of whether any combination of known energy sources can successfully supply society’s energy needs at least up to the year 2100?
The report explores some of the presently proposed energy transition scenarios, showing why, up to this time, most are overly optimistic, as they do not address all of the relevant limiting factors to the expansion of alternative energy sources. Finally, it shows why energy conservation (using less energy, and also less resource materials) combined with humane, gradual population decline must become primary strategies for achieving sustainability.
The report makes the case that it is necessary to prepare societies for dramatic shifts in consumption and lifestyle expectations. It will also be necessary to promote a new ethic of conservation throughout the industrial world. A sharp reversal of today’s globalization of commercial activity—inherently wasteful for its transport energy needs—must be anticipated and facilitated, and government leaders must encourage a rapid evolution toward economies based on localism especially for essential needs such as food and energy.
The study remarks that this is not necessarily a negative prospect, as some research shows that, once basic human needs are met, high material consumption levels do not correlate with high quality of life.
The emphasis by policy makers on growth as the central goal and measure of modern economies is no longer practical or viable, as growth will be limited by both energy shortages and by society’s inability to continue venting energy production and consumption wastes (principally, carbon dioxide) into the environment without catastrophic consequences. Standards for economic success must shift from gross metrics of economic activity, to more direct assessments of human well-being, equity, and the health of the natural world.
Read the full article.
Tags: behaviour change, economics, energy
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Small-scale wind farms
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on December 1st, 2009
Source: Environmental Research Web
Image via physicsworld
From “Fish inspire wind farm configuration”, Edwin Cartlidge
Conventional wind turbines work best when located as far as possible from the destructive vortices of neighbouring turbines. However, a pair of scientists in the US have worked out that the performance of other kinds of turbine actually improves when they are placed close to one another, concluding that wind farms could therefore be made much smaller than they are today. The familiar propeller-like turbine with a horizontal axis of rotation can convert 50% or more of the energy from the wind that it is exposed to. In a wind farm, however, the wake from one turbine will disturb the air reaching the blades of its neighbours meaning that turbines must be placed far apart.
A less familiar family of turbines have a vertical axis of rotation. Individually, these vertical-axis turbines are less efficient than the horizontal-axis devices because only part of the turbine can be pushed by the wind at any one time, and they have therefore proven far less popular. However, these turbines have a significant advantage over the horizontal-axis variety – their power output can be increased when they are placed very close to one another. Now, Robert Whittlesey and John Dabiri of the California Institute of Technology have worked out how best to arrange such closely spaced turbines by drawing on the work of aeronautical engineer Daniel Weihs, who showed in the 1970s how fish save on energy by swimming within schools. Such fish form a series of offset rows, and Weihs found that fish get carried forward by the vortices created by the swimming motion of their two closest companions in the row immediately in front of them. Whittlesey and Dabiri wondered whether the relative spacing of vortices produced by an individual fish might serve as a good template for the arrangement of vertical-axis turbines within a wind farm and set up a computer model to test this idea.
Read the full article by Edwin Cartlidge.
Tags: energy, innovation, wind
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Climate-change affordability: Economic study
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on November 19th, 2009
Source: Environmental Research Web
Image: D Sharon Pruitt via flickr CC
From “Climate-change policy is affordable after all” by Liz Kalaugher
Climate policy is cheaper than most economic studies have suggested. Indeed it is affordable without causing any disastrous effects on our economies. That’s according to Jeroen van den Bergh of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. “I wasn’t satisfied with the dominant economic approaches, notably cost-benefit analysis of climate policy,” van den Bergh told environmentalresearchweb. “In addition, I had the feeling that many important arguments, including very down-to-earth ones, were being left out of the debate on climate policy. I decided therefore to list all the relevant alternative perspectives on the cost of climate policy I could come up with in a single paper.”
Writing in Climatic Change, van den Bergh details twelve new angles on climate policy cost that haven’t received any attention so far. He believes that cost-benefit analysis isn’t appropriate for climate change policies as it’s hard to be certain about the costs of climate damage, to put a cost on the value of a human life, or to handle scenarios that have a small probability of taking place but would have a high impact, including irreversible changes such as a slow-down of the global thermohaline circulation, or the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The studies tend also to neglect the impact of climate change on human conflict, biodiversity, economic development and human populations. Cost-benefit analyses carried out to date have come up with a wide range of estimates for climate costs. Instead van den Bergh prefers to assess the cost of a reasonably safe climate policy.
“If it can be argued that a safe climate policy means considerably lower net costs than the absence of such a policy, it is rational to be in favour of such a policy,” he writes. “This represents a kind of cost-effectiveness combined with precaution, given the uncertainties involved, aimed at avoiding extreme damage costs due to climate change.”
Tags: behaviour change, climate change, economics, governance, policy
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The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Book Release
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on November 11th, 2009
Source: Eanth-L, e-list for the field of ecological/environmental anthropology.
Image: boris van hoytema via flickr CC
Exploring the complexity of sustainable development within a rapidly changing nation…
Though China’s economy is projected to become the world’s largest within the next twenty years, industrial pollution threatens both the health of the country’s citizens and the natural resources on which their economy depends. Capturing the consequences of this reality, Bryan Tilt conducts an in-depth, ethnographic study of Futian Township, a rural community reeling from pollution.
The industrial township is located in the populous southwestern province of Sichuan. Three local factories – a zinc smelter, a coking plant, and a coal-washing plant-produce air and water pollution that far exceeds the standards set by the World Health Organization and China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection. Interviewing state and company officials, factory workers, farmers, and scientists, Tilt shows how residents cope with this pollution and how they view its effects on health and economic growth. Striking at the heart of the community’s environmental values, he explores the intersection between civil society and environmental policy, weighing the tradeoffs between protection and economic growth. Tilt ultimately finds that the residents are quite concerned about pollution, and he investigates the various strategies they use to fight it. His study unravels the complexity of sustainable development within a rapidly changing nation.
“The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society”, by Bryan Tilt
Tags: behaviour change, book, China, sustainable development
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