Posts Tagged ‘Research’
Life Cycle Analysis of Fresh Mango Industry: Reducing Waste
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on March 14th, 2011
Source: CSIRO via FoodMag
Image: visualdensity via flickr CC
A study by CSIRO on the carbon and water footprints of the Australian fresh mango industry has identified areas of waste in the supply chain that could apply to other food industries.
CSIRO determined the impact of food waste on the carbon and water footprints of the Australian fresh mango industry using a technique called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA can also highlight where the greatest opportunities are in the supply chain to help minimise wastage, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, preserve valuable water resources and improve food security. The results show that a staggering 54 per cent of the average yearly production – about 19 000 tonnes of mangoes – are wasted along the way from farm to fork. In this podcast, CSIRO’s Dr Brad Ridoutt explains how and why the LCA on fresh mangos was done and how important Life Cycle Assessment could be in making food systems more sustainable in the future.
“…Probably the bigger issue is how representative is the mango industry of the food industry generally. And that’s where we’d like to expand our future work to understand more broadly, because what we’re really trying to understand is, how can we produce a sustainable food system. The work on mangoes was really just a case study to give us some insights.”
Read the full transcript of the interview or listen to the podcast here.
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Cleaning the Air Could Limit Short-Term Climate Warming
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on March 7th, 2011
From “Cleaning the Air Would Limit Short-Term Climate Warming“:
An assessment report (Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone) released last week by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization shows that reducing emissions of two common air pollutants — black carbon and gases integral to the production of ground-level ozone — could slow the rate of climate change markedly over the next half-century. For decades, scientists have known both substances harm human health. More recently, evidence has emerged showing the particles also affect climate, yet the magnitude of the impact has remained uncertain. Some studies have suggested reducing the pollutants could have a major and immediate climate impact, while others have shown the impact of such reductions would be minimal. Now a panel of some 70 scientists, led by New York City-based Goddard Institute for Space Studies climatologist Drew Shindell, has reviewed the best available science and concludes that just a handful of measures could yield major benefits in the next fifty years.
A NASA writer caught up with Shindell, who presented findings from the report in Washington, D.C. at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to learn more.
Read the interview here
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Livewell Report: Reducing GHG Emissions, Improving Nutrition
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on February 18th, 2011
Source: Food Climate Research Network (FCRN)
Macdiarmid J, Kyle J, Horgan G, Loe L, Fyfe C, Johnston A and McNeill G (2011). Livewell – a balance of healthy and sustainable food choices, WWF-UK, Godalming, UK
This review of the report is by Tara Garnett, Food Climate Research Network:
WWF has released its Livewell report, that looks at whether it is possible to eat a diet that is both lower in GHG emissions and more nutritionally balanced than current dietary norms in the UK. WWF-UK’s One Planet Food Programme (2009-12) has set goals to reduce UK food-consumption related emissions by at least 25% by 2020 and by 70% by 2050, based on 1990 emission levels. The report does three key things:
- it assesses the current ‘normal’ UK diet against government recommendations with respect to fat, protein, fruit and vegetable intakes, and so forth (the Eatwell plate)
- it looks at whether it is possible to develop a nutritionally balanced diet which is 25% lower in embedded GHG emissions than the norm today (ie. the 2020 target), and illustrates what this might look like by developing a one-week sample menu
- it looks at whether it is possible to develop a nutritionally balanced diet which is 70% lower in embedded GHG emissions than the norm today (the 2050 target).
The research was undertaken by the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health at the University of Aberdeen. The report’s GHG data is based, with adjustments, on the FCRN-WWF-UK commissioned How low can we go? Report http://www.fcrn.org.uk/fcrnPublications/index.php?id=6#181 but all the nutrition analysis is completely new.
High-Speed Rail: A Catalyst for Sustainable City Development
Posted in Models, Research by Kate Archdeacon on February 2nd, 2011
Source: Going Solar Transport Newsletter
From A Track Record of Success High-Speed Rail Around the World and Its Promise for America by the US PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) Education Fund:
As America moves toward construction of new high-speed rail networks in regions throughout the country, we have much to learn from experiences abroad. High-speed rail lines have operated for more than 45 years in Japan and for three decades in Europe, providing a wealth of information about what the United States can expect from high-speed rail and how we can receive the greatest possible benefits from our investment. Indeed, the experience of high-speed rail lines abroad, as well as America’s limited experience with high-speed rail on the East Coast, suggests that the United States can expect great benefits from investing in a high-speed passenger rail system, particularly if it makes steady commitments to rail improvements and designs the system wisely.
High-speed rail systems in other nations have been able to dramatically reduce the volume of short-haul flights between nearby cities and significantly reduce inter-city car travel. In the United States, similar shifts would ease congestion in the skies and offer alternatives to congested highways, reducing the need for expensive new investments in highways and airports. Short-haul plane trips are the least efficient in terms of time and fuel, and replacing those trips allows air travel to be more efficient and focused on long-haul trips. High-speed rail service has almost completely replaced short-haul air service on several corridors in Europe, such as between Paris and Lyon, France, and between Cologne and Frankfurt, Germany.
- The number of air passengers between London and Paris has been cut in half since high-speed rail service was initiated between the two cities through the Channel Tunnel.
- In Spain, high-speed rail service between Madrid and Seville reduced the share of travel by car between the two cities from 60 percent to 34 percent. The recent launch of high-speed rail service between Madrid and Barcelona has cut air travel on what was once one of the world’s busiest passenger air routes by one-third.
- Even in the northeastern United States, where Amtrak Acela Express A Track Record of Success service is slow by international standards, rail service accounts for 65 percent of the air/rail market on trips between New York and Washington, D.C., and 52 percent of the air/rail market on trips between Boston and New York.
A sign of the cities to come – 2 reports into Australian cities
Posted in Research, Sustainable Cities by Rob Eales on January 12th, 2011
Article by Sara Phillips via ABC Environment blog
Image by buiversonian via flickr under this Creative Commons license (the description of this image on flickr is great)
Two reports about Sustainable Cities in Australia (not so recent but still interesting). The interesting thing about these reports is the context in which they were researched and the organisations that commissioned them. One is through the Australian Conservation Foundation and the other was undertaken by KPMG on behalf of Built Environment Meets Parliament, the lobbying arm of a collection of planners and developers. The context of the reports was “…that if we want an understanding of how sustainable we are as a nation, we need to look to our cities.”
The article includes,
The ACF report measured publicly available information across 15 separate parameters. Predictably, for an organisation originally established to protect Australian flora and fauna, the ACF examined such measures as amount of land given over to parks, and ecological footprint – the theoretical amount of land required to create the goods and services used each day by a city’s citizens.
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What is most interesting, however, is that the ACF also included measures of economic prosperity. They looked at debt levels for households and employment data. The inclusion of these measures, according to Matthew Trigg, report co-ordinator from the ACF, was because even the greenest city is not sustainable if its economy is not.
“Sustainability is not just about the environment. Economic issues become environmental issues and environmental issues are wrapped up in economic issues. The two are intertwined.”
and
Meanwhile, KMPG, which does not have a reputation for being a firm overrun with dreadlocked hippies, included many measures of environmental sustainability in its report. Taking its cues from COAG, KPMG reviewed cities’ plans for “social inclusion, productivity and global competitiveness, climate change mitigation and adaptation, health, liveability, community wellbeing, housing affordability and matters of national environmental significance.”
“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.
Beauty & the Bike: from research project to community change
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on January 19th, 2010
Source: Beauty & the Bike via Treehugger
Extract from Beauty and the Bike: Teenage Girls and Urban Mobility Culture:
“Beauty and the Bike aims to document the mobility culture, and particularly the bicycle culture, of an important, future oriented, target group. The project is focussed on girls and young women between 10 and 25 years old, and their attitude towards their travel choice, with the bicycle as the centre of interest.
The cultural dimension to European urban traffic planning has, until now, been regarded as at best marginal to planners’ concerns. With an education – and a contemporary practice – grounded in the practical solution to apparently technical problems, urban travel planners have historically had little to do with deeper socio-cultural trends. But now that urban travel has taken centre stage in a new and radically different kind of production – the battle against global warming – the urgent need to change CO2 emitting urban travel habits is requiring planners to take account of the cultural climate their apparently technical solutions have spawned. Beauty and the Bike is a cultural urban travel project that aims to help urban traffic planners, by looking at one such mobility culture – that of the teenage girl and young woman.
Central to this project are the ways teenage girls choose their travel modes in two European countries, the United Kingdom and Germany. The core production activity of the project is cultural, with a documentary film, portrait photography exhibition and catalogue as key outputs. But its work is also rooted in, and supported by, progressive urban travel planners in Darlington (UK) and Bremen (Germany). Teenage participants in the project live in these two urban areas.
Looking at their lives superficially, they seem similar – with internet and iPods, fashion, first loves, and the stresses of school. But when you look more closely you find an important difference: their choice of travel modes. And the ways and means teenagers are able to get around, shapes their identity and sense of independence. Especially for girls, these are of vital importance for their development. Whilst most of the Bremen girls use their bikes on a daily basis, the Darlingtonians mostly walk, take the bus, or hope for a lift from one of their parents.”
The project led to the launch of a bike hire group, Velodarlo, as well as a local campaign for cycle paths in Darlington. Velodarlo has recently been awarded funding to become DarLOVElo, which will inherit the Velodarlo Bike Pool and receive initial funding of over £30,000 to buy some 40 more bikes and set up a base near the centre of the town. The young women from the Beauty and the Bike project are committed to founding the Bike Club that will be the central feature of the new project, and they have been receiving skills training from members of Darlington Cycling Campaign in repairs and maintenance.
Climate Change Adaptation Futures
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on September 1st, 2009
Source: Rural Climate Network
Image: SMH
Conference: Climate Change Adaptation Futures: preparing for the unavoidable impacts of climate change
29 June – 1 July 2010, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Co-hosted by Australia’s National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility and the CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, this conference will be one of the first international forums to focus solely on climate impacts and adaptation.
It will bring together scientists and decision makers from developed and developing countries to share research approaches, methods and results. It will explore the way forward in a world where impacts are increasingly observable and adaptation actions are increasingly required.
The Climate Adaptation Futures Conference will showcase leading impacts and adaptation research from around the world.
It will explore the contribution of adaptation science to planning and policy making, and how robust adaptation decision making can proceed in the face of uncertainty about climate change and its impacts.
Registrations open online Monday 31 August, 2009.
Sustainable Cities for the Future
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on July 9th, 2009
Image: amirjina via Flickr
Graduate Research Conference: Sustainable Cities for the Future
Globally, economies are facing challenges to future sustainability and are investing in strategies to mitigate, and adapt to, the potential of new climatic realities. People are increasingly moving into urban areas, placing stress on transport and other basic infrastructure. Australia provides an excellent ‘laboratory’ to review the future sustainability of cities, with climate scientists suggesting it will be one of the first countries to be impacted by climate change. Read the rest of this entry »
Introducing the EcoTipping website
Posted in Models by fedwards on April 27th, 2009
The EcoTipping website provides numerous diverse examples of communities resolving environmental problems. The site defines an EcoTipping Point is a lever that reverses environmental decline, setting in motion restoration and sustainability. The website showcases environmental pioneers in community organizations, business, and government who are demonstrating how the right change can turn ecosystems away from ruin and back towards health and sustainability. To visit the site go to http://www.ecotippingpoints.org.