An innovative sand dune restoration project from Malta

Sand dunes arguably qualify as the most endangered natural habitats in the Maltese Islands due to the small size of the dunes, the low proportion of sandy shores (just 2.4% of the entire islands‟ coastline), the intense human impact, and the lack of public awareness and information about these ecosystems. Out of 32 areas known to have harboured some sort of natural sand dune flora, only five localities now support dunes with a relatively intact characteristic dune vegetation. One of these, the dune at White Tower Bay was earmarked for a dune restoration project since this is the best-preserved sand dune system on the island of Malta. Main threats to the White Tower Bay dune include illegal camping activities and parking especially during summer, trampling by humans and off-road vehicles, ill-conceived afforestation schemes, cultivation in the dune‟s catchment area, and huts that abut on the dune. These threats operate even though the White Tower Bay sand dune is scheduled as an Area of Ecological Importance and a Site of Scientific Importance. Restoration of the White Tower Bay sand dune is being jointly undertaken by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) and the NGO Nature Trust (Malta), as part of MEPA‟s Environmental Initiative In Partnership Programme. Restoration includes both short-term (temporary) and long-term (permanent) measures. Emergency measures included the installation of metal bollards joined by metal chains around the dune‟s landwards border to prevent vehicular access to the dune from the road skirting it, as well as the installation of educational signs explaining the importance of the dune and the scope behind the restoration works. Due to consultation with stakeholders and their involvement from the onset, it was ensured that conflicts were minimized. The permanent restoration measures will be completed within the next few years. These include the gradual relocation of the huts, closure of the road surrounding the dune, the manual removal of alien flora, and the planting of Ammophila littoralis (marram grass) – a stabilising pioneer species of foredunes that is now extinct from the Maltese Islands – along the seaward margins of the dune. In addition, the complete removal of seagrass wrack from the beach will be discouraged. Special emphasis will be placed on the educational value of the site and on effective enforcement of existing and planned regulations concerning the area through wardening. This restoration project is locally (and perhaps regionally) innovative for a number of reasons, including the extensive and ongoing consultative process with all stakeholders, the emphasis on the educational value of the site, the basing of restoration measures on sound scientific research, and the inclusion of a monitoring programme to assess effectiveness of the interventions and to fine-tune these as the need arises. This initiative can serve as a pilot upon which other habitat restoration projects may be based.peer-reviewe

Management of threatened Aphanius Fasciatus at Il-Maghluq, Malta

Over the last decade the distribution of Aphanius fasciatus Nardo has regressed sharply across the Maltese Islands despite numerous legal conservation instruments. In this study we present the results of a one-year phenological study at the protected wetland site known as Il-Maghluq. The A. fasciatus population structure and a number of water physical characteristics were monitored. The biotic data collected was found to be consistent with that of a highly vulnerable population. The authors make a number of management recommendations to improve the conservation status of this population.peer-reviewe

Monte-Carlo tree search for persona based player modeling

Is it possible to conduct player modeling without any players? In this paper we use Monte-Carlo Tree Search-controlled procedural personas to simulate a range of decision making styles in the puzzle game MiniDungeons 2. The purpose is to provide a method for synthetic play testing of game levels with synthetic players based on designer intuition and experience. Five personas are constructed, representing five different decision making styles archetypal for the game. The personas vary solely in the weights of decision-making utilities that describe their valuation of a set affordances in MiniDungeons 2. By configuring these weights using designer expert knowledge, and passing the configurations directly to the MCTS algorithm, we make the personas exhibit a number of distinct decision making and play styles.The research was supported, in part, by the FP7 ICT project C2Learn (project no: 318480), the FP7 Marie Curie CIG project AutoGameDesign (project no: 630665), and by the Stibo Foundation Travel Bursary Grant for Global IT Talents.peer-reviewe

Greening Capitalism? A Marxist Critique of Carbon Markets

Climate change is increasingly being recognized as a serious threat to dominant modes of social organization, inspiring suggestions that capitalism itself needs to be transformed if we are to ‘decarbonize’ the global economy. Since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, carbon markets have emerged as the main politico-economic tools in global efforts to address climate change. Newell and Paterson (2010) have recently claimed that the embrace of carbon markets by financial and political elites constitutes a possible first step towards the transformation of current modes of capitalist organization into a new form of greener, more sustainable ‘climate capitalism.’ In this paper, we argue that the institutionalization of carbon markets does not, in fact, represent a move towards the radical transformation of capitalism, but is better understood as the most recent expression of ongoing trends of ecological commodification and expropriation, driving familiar processes of uneven and crisis-prone development. In this paper, we review four critical Marxist concepts: metabolic rift (Foster, 1999), capitalism as world ecology (Moore, 2011a), uneven development and accumulation through dispossession (Harvey, 2003, 2006), and sub-imperialism (Marini, 1972, 1977), developing a framework for a Marxist analysis of carbon markets. Our analysis shows that carbon markets form part of a longer historical development of global capitalism and its relation to nature. Carbon markets, we argue, serve as creative new modes of accumulation, but are unlikely to transform capitalist dynamics in ways that might foster a more sustainable global economy. Our analysis also elucidates, in particular, the role that carbon markets play in exacerbating uneven development within the Global South, as elites in emerging economies leverage carbon market financing to pursue new strategies of sub-imperial expansion. </jats:p

New England Governors/Eastern Canadian Premiers Climate Change Action Plan 2001

Recognizing the need for the region to provide leadership on the critical issue of climate change and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers established the regional climate change program in 2000. While the northeast represents a significant economic region with greenhouse gas emissions roughly equivalent to those of Spain, climate change is an international issue for which our states and provinces are only a relatively small part of the problem. However, through their leadership the Governors and Premiers have established our region as an internationally-recognized part of the solution

Earth and Environment Sciences: Character of natural organic matter and its role in the environment

Humusvielas un to vieta vidē. Character of natural organic matter and its role in the environmen

Growth in Environmental Footprints and Environmental Impacts Embodied in Trade: Resource Efficiency Indicators from EXIOBASE3

Most countries show a relative decoupling of economic growth from domestic resource use, implying increased resource efficiency. However, international trade facilitates the exchange of products between regions with disparate resource productivity. Hence, for an understanding of resource efficiency from a consumption perspective that takes into account the impacts in the upstream supply chains, there is a need to assess the environmental pressures embodied in trade. We use EXIOBASE3, a new multiregional input-output database, to examine the rate of increase in resource efficiency, and investigate the ways in which international trade contributes to the displacement of pressures on the environment from the consumption of a population. We look at the environmental pressures of energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, material use, water use, and land use. Material use stands out as the only indicator growing in both absolute and relative terms to population and gross domestic product (GDP), while land use is the only indicator showing absolute decoupling from both references. Energy, GHG, and water use show relative decoupling. As a percentage of total global environmental pressure, we calculate the net impact displaced through trade rising from 23% to 32% for material use (1995¿2011), 23% to 26% for water use, 20% to 29% for energy use, 20% to 26% for land use, and 19% to 24% for GHG emissions. The results show a substantial disparity between trade-related impacts for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and non-OECD countries. At the product group level, we observe the most rapid growth in environmental footprints in clothing and footwear. The analysis points to implications for future policies aiming to achieve environmental targets, while fully considering potential displacement effects through international trade