The effect estimation and channel testing of the technological progress on China’s regional environmental performance

To study the effects of and approaches to technological progress on China’s regional environmental performance, this study first estimates China’s regional environmental performance and its variation indexes by applying a slack-based model (SBM) and an entropy-based model (EBM). The results indicate that the environmental performance in different regions of China has improved, but the rate of improvement differs greatly. This may be attributed to heterogeneous characteristics and changes in the green technology innovation level in different regions. Considering the overflow effect of environmental pollution among different regions, we study the impact of various technological progress patterns on China’s regional environmental performance using spatial econometrics, and we find that there are significant spatial effects of technology innovation, technology transfer, and imitative innovation on China’s regional environmental performance. Also, different technological progress patterns have different effects. Specifically, independent innovation has failed to effectively improve regional environmental performance, whereas the introduction of technology and imitative innovation have significantly improved this performance. Moreover, after the cross-items of independent innovation and human capital are introduced, the effects of technology introduction and imitative innovation on China’s regional environmental performance through the absorptive capacity of human capital remain significant, whereas the effect of independent innovation on regional environmental performance via the absorptive capacity of human capital becomes more obvious. Based on this and from the perspective of environmental enhancement, we believe that China should strengthen human capital accumulation and give consideration to imitative innovation and technology introduction while emphasizing independent innovation.     

Inupiat Health and Proposed Alaskan Oil Development: Results of the First Integrated Health Impact Assessment/Environmental Impact Statement for Proposed Oil Development on Alaska’s North Slope

We report on the first Health Impact Assessment (HIA) for proposed oil and gas development in Alaska’s North Slope region. Public health is not generally analyzed in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process in the U.S. We conducted an HIA for proposed oil development within the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska in response to growing concerns among North Slope Inupiat communities regarding the potential impacts of regional industrial expansion on their health and culture. We employed a qualitative HIA methodology, involving a combination of stakeholder input, literature review, and qualitative analysis, through which we identified potential health effects. The possible health outcomes identified include increases in diabetes and related metabolic conditions as a result of dietary change; rising rates of substance abuse, domestic violence, and suicide; increased injury rates; more frequent asthma exacerbations; and increased exposure to organic pollutant, including carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. There are also potential benefits, including funding for infrastructure and health care; increased employment and income; and continued funding of existing infrastructure. Based on these findings, we recommend a series of public health mitigation measures. This project represents the first formal effort to include a systematic assessment of public health within the U.S. EIS process. The inclusion of public health concerns within an EIS may offer an important and underutilized avenue through which to argue for environmental management strategies that focus on public health, and may offer communities a stronger voice in the EIS process. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Making the best of both worlds: Can high-resolution agricultural administrative data support the assessment of High Nature Value farmlands across Europe?

Worldwide, the role of farmlands for biodiversity conservation and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services has been widely acknowledged. In the European Union (EU), societal demands to include environmental conservation concerns within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have resulted in the recognition of the importance of maintaining High Nature Value farmlands (HNVf).HNVf constitute complex social-ecological systems, which owe their nature conservation value to the maintenance of specific, mostly low-intensity farming systems, supporting high levels of species and habitats dependent on agricultural practices. Even though HNVf assessment in space and time is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of Rural Development Programmes, the diversity of rural landscapes across EU, the scarcity of data on farming systems, and the lack of common methodological guidelines has hampered the implementation of HNVf mapping and monitoring across Europe. Thus, there is a pressing need to develop and test methodological approaches that may support HNVf assessment across the EU.The Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) which is mandatory for all EU Member States constitutes a system for the management and control of CAP payments to farmers. Essentially, IACS comprises high-resolution, spatially explicit information on the type and intensity of agricultural land-use. Even though such data exhibits high thematic, spatial and temporal resolution, IACS has seldom been used, due to significant access restrictions. Here, the potential to use IACS data to support the assessment of HNVf was evaluated within the German Federal State of Lower Saxony by implementing a recently developed methodological framework. Sets of indicators known to be essential for identifying potential HNVf and underlying farming systems (expressing landscape structure and composition, farming systems, and crop diversity), were derived from IACS. Spatial patterns of indicators were analyzed at two different scales to delineate the potential distribution of HNVf across Lower Saxony.Results highlighted that most regions in Lower Saxony were characterized by intensive farming practices including high livestock density, high share of intensive crops and low density of linear elements. Only 3% of the Utilized Agricultural Area (UAA) of Lower Saxony potentially constituted HNVf, with the majority of HNVf coinciding with mosaics of arable and/or permanent crops and semi-natural features under less intensive farming practices. Semi-natural grasslands, partially under agri-environment scheme management contracts, covered roughly 1% of the UAA and were mostly intermingled with other farmland habitats in extensively managed agricultural landscapes.In the context of the EU-wide HNVf assessment, IACS constitutes an important source of data, characterized by a high spatial, thematic and temporal resolution of data collected annually. Whilst having the potential for use in HNVf assessment, some challenges remain, especially due to significant access restrictions. Nevertheless, IACS constitutes a powerful tool to evaluate the extent and condition of HNVf across the EU countryside. Making use of IACS data in such a way could provide a stepping-stone towards achieving a more effective balance between the management and control of CAP support payments and the growing societal demands related to the maintenance and enhancement of farmland biodiversity and ecosystem services.     

The impact of forest encroachment after agricultural land abandonment on passerine bird communities: The case of Greece

Agricultural land abandonment is one of the main drivers of land use change, leading to various responses of farmland ecological communities. In an effort to better understand the effect of agricultural land abandonment on passerine bird communities, we sampled 20 randomly selected sites [1 km × 1 km] in remote Greek mountains, reflecting an abandonment gradient, in terms of forest encroachment. We sampled 169 plots using the point count method of fixed distance (47 passerine species), and we investigated bird diversity and community structure turnover along the gradient. We found that grazing intensity has a beneficial effect hampering forest encroachment that follows progressively land abandonment. Habitat composition changes gradually with forests developing at the expense of open meadows and heterogeneous grasslands. Forest encroachment has a significant negative effect on bird diversity and species richness, affecting in particular typical farmland and Mediterranean shrubland species. Birds form five distinct ecological clusters after land abandonment: species mostly found in pinewoods and cavity-dwelling species; species that prefer open forests forest edges or ecotones; species that prefer shrubland or open habitats with scattered woody vegetation; Mediterranean farmland birds that prefer semi-open habitats with hedges and/or woodlots; and, generalist forest-dwelling or shrubland species. We extracted a set of 22 species to represent the above ecological communities, as a new monitoring tool for agricultural land use change and conservation. We suggest that the maintenance of rural mosaics should be included in the priorities of agricultural policy for farmland bird diversity conservation.     

Traditional farming and key foraging habitats for chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax conservation in a Spanish pseudosteppe landscape

1. Agricultural land devoted to low-intensity practices supports many declining bird species in Europe. The potential effects of intensification or abandonment of traditional farming practices are assessed from the point of view of the conservation of the chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax .
2. The study was conducted in Los Monegros (north-east Spain), in a pseudosteppe landscape of special relevance for this species. In this area traditional farming survives in the form of low-intensity arable systems including fallowing and extensive sheep grazing.
3. Foraging choughs showed a strong selection for field margins, avoided any remnant of the original scrubland and halophitic vegetation, and utilized other habitats maintained by traditional crop rotation (e. g. fallow, stubble) at different times of the year.
4. A highly complex pattern of habitat selection was found which was not only related to seasonal changes in habitat availability, but also differed between territorial pairs and the non-breeding population. This emphasizes the importance of taking all the different components of bird populations into account when analysing interactions between habitat selection and the annual farming cycle.
5. Chough habitat selection suggests that both agricultural intensification and land abandonment would have detrimental consequences for this species in Los Monegros. The maintenance of traditional farming is recommended, especially by promoting the use of long fallow rotations grazed extensively by livestock, encouraging the increase of grassland edges around landholdings and sand roads, and maintaining a low input of biocides. These management measurements could also favour most other endangered species of steppe birds, and could be supported by the establishment of Zonal Programmes under the CAP Agri-Environment Regulation (2078/92).     

Development of a nature value index for pastoral farmland—A rapid farm-level assessment

Sustainable agriculture is important for the safeguarding of natural resources (e.g. semi-natural habitats, clean water and energy), food production and for the survival of rural communities. As part of the EU strategy towards sustainability Member States are committed to identifying and protecting areas of agrobiodiversity. Identification of the extent and support of High Nature Value (HNV) farmland across the EU was an important policy requirement of Member States Rural Development Programmes (RDP) (2007–2013) but problems defining the extent of HNV farmland have delayed progress to date. Following a five step statistical process, we developed a simple 10 point nature value index based on percentage improved agricultural grassland, stocking density (LU/ha Utilisable Agricultural Area) and length of linear habitats per hectare on a farm. We propose an index that can be used to highlight farms with low biodiversity allowing targeting of sustainability measures such as increasing field boundary area or reducing inorganic Nitrogen inputs, farms that are already sustainable from a biodiversity perspective, and could be labelled as such through national programs or even farms that are High Nature Value (HNV) and should be targeted through results-based agri-environment schemes. This nature value index has potential to be applied to a range of farmed pastoral landscapes in North West Europe's Atlantic biogeographic region. The methodology used in the development of the index has the potential to be used in other biogeographic zones to develop similar indices of nature value at farm level. This index is a simple to use, easily accessible identification tool based on farm-level data which can be utilised in sustainability indices and HNV farmland identification.     

Management framework for sustainable development indicators in the State of Selangor, Malaysia

The perception that better information on environment and development is the determinant of effective rational decision- and policy-making processes provide the impetus for global interest in the use of sustainable development indicators (SDIs). Accordingly, proposals for SDIs are framed either on organisational goals or on disciplinary and multidisciplinary theories—aiming to reduce uncertainties in choosing the best alternative among a set of options concerning sustainability. Despite the fact that many SDI initiatives are explicitly aimed at improving policy-making, it is not apparent that political settings and organisational realities are taken into consideration in designing the framework for sustainability assessment. Ignoring the realities of policy-making dynamics can result in poor institutionalisation of the SDI development process, and therefore reduced impact of indicators. Linkage of SDIs to policy processes must also take into account the complex role of information in policy processes. The importance of societal values, cultural contexts and behaviour of bureaucracies must be understood and used to assist the assessment of progress towards sustainability using SDIs. Essentially, objective knowledge must be tampered with pragmatism in governance. This paper highlights the case of SDI development in the state of Selangor where the notion of instrumental rationality is balanced with the ‘incrementalism’ of the policy process that provided the foundation for institutionalising the reporting and use of SDIs. The ideals and paradoxes of participatory decision-making, the principles of the rational model and decision-making processes within a state government are critically examined.     

Do agri-environmental schemes contribute to high nature value farmland? A case study in Emilia-Romagna (Italy)

The objective of the paper is to determine whether the agri-environmental schemes included in the rural development programme of Emilia-Romagna (Italy) have played a role in enhancing the nature value of farmland in that region. An indicator is developed for biodiversity friendly farming practices (BFFP) and its level and distribution at the municipality level is measured, using data derived from the two last national agricultural censuses, year 2000 and 2010. Thereafter, the relationship between BFFP and participation in rural development measures is analysed by way of spatial econometric techniques. The main result of the paper are consistent with the expectation that RDPs have an impact on how BFFP changes. However, measures supporting organic farming contribute to the evolution of its distribution in a positive manner, whilst the other measures investigated, such as integrated production, do not. The paper also highlights the fact that these effects have significant spatial correlations.