Suchergebnisse

Designing a values-based framework -- Why values? -- Articulating values, framing processes -- Developing a values-based approach : the case of echeri -- Key themes in measuring intangible social values -- Issues in making values tangible -- Designing processes : the criticality of deep participation -- Values and validity -- Putting a values-based framework into practice -- Sustainability and business ethics -- Mapping intangible legacies -- Towards sustainable behavior change in schools

This book explores the complex problem of how to measure the 'success' of social organisations, projects and activities. Whether improving a local situation, organizing a campaign around sustainability, or assessing the intangible effects of perceived social benefits, currently we have only have a very limited range of mechanisms for judging effectiveness. On the one hand, a market-driven logic demands that qualitative perceptions and experiences are quantified into simplified and numerically defined variables. On the other, community projects are left un-assessed, as one-off outcomes of local and situated processes that must somehow automatically 'make things better'. For academics, researchers and other professionals working in this field this has resulted in the deep frustration of not being able to assess the things that are most centrally important: higher human values such as integrity, trust, respect, equality and social justice. Measuring Intangible Values argues that we can make shared social values - and their measurement - central to decisions about improving civil society. But because these social values are intangible, we need to develop ways of eliciting and validating them at the local level that can capture people's shared meanings across multiple goals and perspectives. We need to develop mechanisms for evaluating whether these values are met that use rigorous but also relevant measures. And we need to develop ways of doing this that are scalable, transferable and comparable across different kinds of organisations and fields of activity. This book will be valuable for researchers in all social science disciplines which touch on human values, such as sociology, social psychology, human geography, social policy, architecture and planning, design and community studies.

Worldwide, automotive shredder residue (ASR) is considered an increasingly problematic mixture of materials that needs the development of a processing solution. Pyrolysis is a process that has many advantages to offer, but despite many studies and developments in recent years at various levels of commercialisation, it is still generally considered unproven for this purpose. This paper critically considers developmental work published in the field, presents new results, and suggests that a major reason for the lack of development is the complexity of the landscape created by strong, competing, economic, legislative, environmental and commercial drivers, which in turn make it unclear which products and processes are optimal. This is made doubly complex by the natural variation in the material composition of ASR, with contaminants that can critically affect its potential fate to anywhere in the range from hazardous waste, to energy source, to useful raw material for major cement or steel industries. New data on critical factors such as levels of chlorine and metals in raw and pyrolysed ASR are presented, alongside a much-needed summary of previously published values from references that are often difficult to source. The summaries emphasise the variation in the material, but also indicate rough boundaries for values, which are needed for the design of any potentially successful process. It is suggested that the heterogeneity seen across ASR types implies that specialised processing of SR on its own is unlikely. It is pointed out that small-scale processes that could be suitable for local requirements should be considered for development as they could be able to optimise a process sufficiently to make it viable, e.g. specialised local waste streams of paper pulp and a particular fraction of SR.

Shredder residue is the residue from the shredding of end-of-life vehicles and white goods, after removal of the main metals. Approximately 850,000 tonnes of shredder waste is produced in the UK each year, and historically sent to landfill. Due to European legislation such as the End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive and the Landfill Directive there is pressure to minimise this waste through recycling and recovery. In this paper, primary data are presented showing that 40% of materials are potentially recoverable in the coarser fraction of UK automotive shredder residue (>30 mm). Barriers to such recycling are discussed in the context of several recent drivers, including this waste's possible reclassification as hazardous. The lack of full and timely implementation of the ELV Directive in the UK has made it an ineffective driver, and it is now unlikely that its 2006 recycling targets will be met as intended.

In recent decades, development discourse has increasingly acknowledged the importance of participation and ownership of development programs at the local level. As the discourse has advanced, terms such as community-driven development and community capacity building have become widely used and have attracted significant funding. Yet, despite the prominent place community capacity building has come to occupy in both discourse and practice, relatively little attention has been given to the process of capacity building at the level of the community, particularly as it is understood by key protagonists. In this paper, the authors present a descriptive case study of two community building programs in Yunnan, China, examining how capacity is understood by the key protagonists at the level of individuals, institutions and communities, and which particular capacities are identified as built at each level. The authors show that while there are expected differences in the perceptions of the capacity building process and outcomes at different levels, there are also clear overlaps, and that capacities develop simultaneously at different levels, in an interactive and mutually-reinforcing manner. The results suggest that the interconnection across levels may be very important to study further. This study helps fill a gap in the community capacity building literature and contributes insights that could improve the effectiveness of community building projects. In addition, it provides insight into the specific case of capacity building in China, where literature has tended to focus on institutional capacity and relationships between civil society organizations and the government rather than process and outcomes at the community level.

Minimisation of municipal solid waste and diversion from landfill are necessary for the UK to manage waste sustainably and achieve legislative compliance. A survey of householder attitudes and experiences of a trial for minimising household food waste from waste collection in the county of West Sussex, UK is described. The minimisation method used the Green Cone food digester, designed for garden installation. A postal questionnaire was distributed to 1000 householders who had bought a cone during the trial and a total of 433 responses were received. The main reason for people buying the Green Cone had been concerns about waste (88%), with 78% and 67% of respondents, respectively, claiming to have participated in recycling and home composting in the last 30 days. The waste material most frequently put in the digester was cooked food (91%), followed by fruit waste, vegetable matter and bones/meat. Some respondents were using it for garden and animal waste from pets. Most users found the Green Cone performed satisfactorily. Approximately, 60% of respondents had seen a reduction of 25–50% in the amount of waste they normally put out for collection, with analysis showing reported levels of reduction to be significant (p < 0.05). Additional weight surveys by householders recorded an average of 2.7 kg/(h week) diverted to the food digester.

A large, successful, residential food waste sorting (recycling) program in urban high-density housing was studied to elicit perceptions of the key elements of its success. An embedded mixed-methods approach was used with rigorous quantitative measures of weights and compositions of the waste to confirm the success of the program, combined with in-depth semi-structured interviews of stakeholders to reveal their opinions of the elements key for success. The program produced a 70% food waste capture rate slowly decreasing to 45% over 54 weeks, with <1% contamination. The key elements for success were found to relate to clarification of roles and responsibilities, and the usefulness of a 'broker' (here, an NGO) to co-develop new boundaries for stakeholder responsibilities. Residents who acknowledged their responsibility to sort their waste viewed it as civic duty, but first needed to be convinced of the serious intention of the local government to implement the policy. Residents with strong relationships with the local government – e.g. due to greater ongoing interactions – were perceived to perform better. The use of volunteers to demonstrate and interact on a personal level with residents was seen as a key element. The three month period of volunteer involvement was seen as key to good habit forming

Agricultural practices in Jiangnan water towns have historically been identified as maintaining a balance between human activity and the local environment, but are now a significant local source of water pollution. Using a multi-methods approach, this study deduces the environmental impact of traditional practices, and the socially desired conditions for successfully reintroducing critical ones. Oral histories from 31 farmers in Tianshanzhuang village, South Yangtze River were in order to chart changes in farming practices over four historic periods, and used to estimate the nitrogen and phosphorus burdens per acre. Findings show that the use of Lan River Mud—dredged mud for fertilizer—was key in producing a positive impact, but abandoned after the 1980s. Four criteria hindering reintroduction of traditional practices were identified, and potentially useful but fragmented emerging local candidate practices are considered against these, as are recent practices in Japan. We propose that the cooperation of several stakeholders with various related government departments in China could lead to a portfolio of effective policy changes and should be studied further: to include new methods and uses of Lan River Mud; the integration of aquaculture, leisure and tourism industries with agriculture; and the production of organic produce with well-planned internet-linked sales, delivery and coordination mechanisms.

Direct measurements were taken of residential food waste sorting in a sample from over 5000 communities (5 million households) assigned to a pilot program delivered by government branches in Shanghai which relied on an information strategy for implementation. The results are compared to a population of N=36 similar communities (36,000 households) assigned to a different program which involved considerable personal interaction. The results show that the information–based program communities did not noticeably sort their waste, whereas those given personal interaction approaches were very successful, with purity rates of 95%(8) and extra costs of about 50 RMB (8 USD) per household. This is a rare direct comparison of two different programs at such large scales, 6-36 months after launch, and suggests that personal interaction approaches should be considered by policy makers. Qualitative key informant interviews yielded data on each program's activities, which provide suggestions for further studies of the underlying behaviour change determinants involved.

A collaborative partnership is developing a values-based indicator framework for use by civil society organizations (CSOs). A key sub-study on the relevance and usability of such indicators was carried out through an action research process with a CSO and it was found that: 1) it was, indeed, possible to develop useful and relevant indicators for the presence of CSO values; 2) it was not useful to tie each indicator to only one value; 3) the indicators were more 'universal' than the values for which they had been derived; 4) these indicators were not considered valid by the user CSO without being 'localized'; 5) the use of our values-based framework caused substantive transformational learning within this CSO. The importance of these findings to studies on values and to design issues central to formal values-based measurement work, such as face validity and catalytic validity, is drawn out. The principles of emancipatory action research used are shown to be key to the results, which themselves form foundational elements that led to key and significant understandings and modifications of the values-based framework.

The entry into force of the Paris Agreement on climate change brings expectations that states will be held to account for their commitments. The article elaborates on why this is not a realistic assumption unless a broader multilevel perspective is taken on the nature of accountability regimes for international (legal) agreements. The formal accountability mechanisms of such agreements tend to be weak, and there are no indications that they will be stronger for the recent global goals adopted in the Paris Agreement. Looking beyond only peer review among states, national institutions, direct civil society engagement and internal government processes - while each coming with their own strengths and weaknesses - provide additional accountability pathways that together may do a better job. Scientific enquiry is, however, required to better understand, support and find improved mixtures of, and perhaps to move beyond, these accountability pathways. Policy relevance: This perspective provides something of a clarion call for a variety of different types of actors at both global and national levels to engage in ensuring that states keep the promises they made in the Paris Agreement. It particularly highlights the importance of national institutions and civil society to step up to the task in the present world order, where states are reluctant to build strong accountability regimes at the global level.