Incorporating project uncertainty in novel environmental biotechnologies: illustrated using phytoremediation

"Pollution of the environment by metals and organic contaminants is an intractable global problem, with cleanup costs running into billions of dollars using current engineering technologies. The availability of alternative, cheap and effective technologies would significantly improve the prospects of cleaning-up metal contaminated sites. Phytoremediation has been proposed as an economical and ‘green' method of exploiting plants to extract or degrade the contaminants in the soil. To date, the majority of phytoremediation efforts have been directed at leaping the biological, biochemical and agronomic hurdles to deliver a working technology, with scant attention to the economic outlook other than simple estimates of the cost advantages of phytoremediation over other techniques. In this paper we use a deterministic actuarial model to show that uncertainty in project success (the possibility that full clean up may not be realized) may significantly increase the perceived costs of remediation works for decision-makers." Authors' Abstractbiotechnology, Soil contaminants, Environmental remediation Economic aspects, Industrial crop technologies,

The business of invention: considering project management in the arts and industry

Project management has well developed theoretical constructs and is becom- ing increasingly well established in core strategy beyond the industrial and corporate sec- tors from which it first emerged. With a concurrent increase in the significance of innova- tion, project managing for creativity is an area of research and enquiry of considerable sig- nificance. Notionally occupying polar opposite cultural positions in terms of perspectives and processes of creativity, project management in the arts is widely considered to vary significantly from corporate strategy and process. If business were to be more generally characterised by ‘organisation’ and discipline, the arts are more commonly celebrated for disorganisation, indiscipline, and the fundamental challenge to organisation itself. Consid- ering both the confluences and variations between established project management theory in business and practice in the arts, this text introduces theoretical constructs pertaining to creative processes and highlights areas for consideration in the understanding and further development of project management theory

Advancing national greenhouse gas inventories for agriculture in developing countries : improving activity data, emission factors and software technology

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Scaling Success: Lessons from Adaptation Pilots in the Rainfed Regions of India

"Scaling Success" examines how agricultural communities are adapting to the challenges posed by climate change through the lens of India's rainfed agriculture regions. Rainfed agriculture currently occupies 58 percent of India's cultivated land and accounts for up to 40 percent of its total food production. However, these regions face potential production losses of more than $200 billion USD in rice, wheat, and maize by 2050 due to the effects of climate change. Unless action is taken soon at a large scale, farmers will see sharp decreases in revenue and yields.Rainfed regions across the globe have been an important focus for the first generation of adaptation projects, but to date, few have achieved a scale that can be truly transformational. Drawing on lessons learnt from 21 case studies of rainfed agriculture interventions, the report provides guidance on how to design, fund and support adaptation projects that can achieve scale