Suchergebnisse

Climate change, economic pressures, and shifting geopolitical balances promise unprecedented challenges to the preservation of polar environments and the sustainability of Arctic communities. This volume brings together experts in the Arctic and Antarctic to approach questions about polar governance, environmental protection, and human rights from new perspectives. The emphasis is on cooperation, not conflict, and the use of creative means of diplomacy to build sustainable and adaptive governance structures that will permit the polar regions to survive the challenges of climate change. The first section of the book addresses legal structures and governance; the second focuses on development, particularly of energy, and security; the third section tackles the complexity of community and human rights. Taken together, the contributions in this volume illustrate the multifaceted challenge facing policymakers and stakeholders who seek to ensure that the future of the polar regions is characterized by peace and stewardship.

Purpose
New sustainability certification schemes (SCS) with different scope, governance structure and operating practice are fast emerging. This rapid growth and divergence in metrics has resulted in questions about the effectiveness of such schemes. Although this practice has been growing fast, to date, there are no reviews comprehensively synthesising the literature regarding SCS' main flaws, challenges and improvement opportunities. This paper aims to identify what are the key components affecting effectiveness of SCS, highlighting their benefits, flaws and improvement opportunities.


Design/methodology/approach
An integrated literature review was conducted to identify and assess recent studies related to the benefits, flaws, effectiveness and improvement opportunities of SCS worldwide.


Findings
Key components affecting the effectiveness of SCS were identified (sustainability awareness; market access; management systems and productivity; social, environmental and economic impacts; monitoring outcomes; competition, overlapping and interoperability; stakeholder participation; and accountability and transparency). The authors argue that SCS to succeed have to be effective; provide accountability about their goals and achievements; and manage stakeholders' expectations. Civil Society's awareness of the scientific underpinnings of sustainability issues also contributes to the existence and improvement of such schemes.


Research limitations/implications
The limitations of this study are associated with the secondary material that was publicly available for our literature review.


Originality/value
This paper fulfils an identified need to explore the key components affecting effectiveness of SCS, their benefits, flaws and improvement opportunities. Such a synthesis also identifies the key areas where interoperability between SCS should be pursued by corporations and governments.

Connections between resources and migration operate as a complex adaptive system rather than being premised in linear, causal mechanisms. The systems thinking advocated within this element increases the inclusion of socio-psychological, financial, demographic, environmental and political dimensions that mediate resource-(im)mobility pathways.

Regional planning approaches to mining infrastructure aim to reduce the conflict associated with mining operations and existing land uses, such as urban areas and biodiversity conservation, as well as the cumulative impacts that occur offsite. In this paper, we describe a method for conducting Geographical Information System (GIS) least-cost path and least-cost corridor analysis for linear mining infrastructure, such as roads. Least-cost path analysis identifies the optimal pathways between two locations as a function of the cost of traveling through different land use/cover types. In a case study from South-East Sulawesi, Indonesia, we identify potential linear networks for road infrastructure connecting mines, smelters, and ports. The method used interview data from government officials to characterise their orientation (perceived importance and positive/negative attitude) toward the social and environmental factors associated with mining infrastructure. A cost-surface was constructed by integrating spatial layers representing the social and environmental factors to identify areas that should be avoided and areas that were compatible with linear infrastructure using the least-cost path analysis. We compared infrastructure scenario outputs from local and national government officials by the degree of spatial overlap and found broad spatial agreement for infrastructure corridors. We conclude by discussing this approach in relation to the wider social-ecological and mine planning literature and how quantitative approaches can reduce the conflict associated with infrastructure planning.

Plants are as vulnerable by diseases as animals. Citrus is a major plant grown mainly in the tropical areas of the world due to its richness in vitamin C and other important nutrients. The production of the citrus fruit has been widely affected by citrus diseases which ultimately degrades the fruit quality and causes financial loss to the growers. During the past decade, image processing and computer vision methods have been broadly adopted for the detection and classification of plant diseases. Early detection of diseases in citrus plants helps in preventing them to spread in the orchards which minimize the financial loss to the farmers. In this article, an image dataset citrus fruits, leaves, and stem is presented. The dataset holds citrus fruits and leaves images of healthy and infected plants with diseases such as Black spot, Canker, Scab, Greening, and Melanose. Most of the images were captured in December from the Orchards in Sargodha region of Pakistan when the fruit was about to ripen and maximum diseases were found on citrus plants. The dataset is hosted by the Department of Computer Science, University of Gujrat and acquired under the mutual cooperation of the University of Gujrat and the Citrus Research Center, Government of Punjab, Pakistan. The dataset would potentially be helpful to researchers who use machine learning and computer vision algorithms to develop computer applications to help farmers in early detection of plant diseases. The dataset is freely available at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/3f83gxmv57/2.

Solar geoengineering is gaining prominence in climate change debates as an issue worth studying; for some it is even a potential future policy option. We argue here against this increasing normalization of solar geoengineering as a speculative part of the climate policy portfolio. We contend, in particular, that solar geoengineering at planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international political system. We therefore call upon governments and the United Nations to take immediate and effective political control over the development of solar geoengineering technologies.Specifically, we advocate for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering and outline the core elements of this proposal.

Solar geoengineering is gaining prominence in climate change debates as an issue worth studying; for some it is even a potential future policy option. We argue here against this increasing normalization of solar geoengineering as a speculative part of the climate policy portfolio. We contend, in particular, that solar geoengineering at planetary scale is not governable in a globally inclusive and just manner within the current international political system. We therefore call upon governments and the United Nations to take immediate and effective political control over the development of solar geoengineering technologies. Specifically, we advocate for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering and outline the core elements of this proposal. This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > International Policy Framework.