The Natural Capital Indicator Framework (NCIF): A framework of indicators for national natural capital reporting

It is now widely recognised that components of the environment play the role of economic assets, termed natural capital, that are a foundation of social and economic development. National governments monitor the state and trends of natural capital through a range of activities including natural capital accounting, national ecosystem assessments, ecosystem service valuation, and economic and environmental analyses. Indicators play an integral role in these activities as they facilitate the reporting of complex natural capital information. One factor that hinders the success of these activities and their comparability across countries is the absence of a coherent framework of indicators concerning natural capital (and its benefits) that can aid decision-making. Here we present an integrated Natural Capital Indicator Framework (NCIF) alongside example indicators, which provides an illustrative structure for countries to select and organise indicators to assess their use of and dependence on natural capital. The NCIF sits within a wider context of indicators related to natural, human, social and manufactured capital, and associated flows of benefits. The framework provides decision-makers with a structured approach to selecting natural capital indicators with which to make decisions about economic development that take into account national natural capital and associated flows of benefits.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, 1 graphical abstrac

Sustainable Change: Education for Sustainable Development in the Business School

This paper examines the implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) within a business school. ESD is of growing importance for business schools, yet its implementation remains a challenge. The paper examines how barriers to ESD's implementation are met through organisational change as a sustainable process. It evaluates change brought about through ESD in a UK-based business school, through the lens of Beer and Eisenstat's three principles of effective strategy implementation and organisational adaptation, which state: 1) the change process should be systemic; 2) the change process should encourage open discussion of barriers to effective strategy implementation and adaptation; and 3) the change process should develop a partnership among all relevant stakeholders. The case incorporates, paradoxically, both elements of a top-down and an emergent strategy that resonates with elements of life-cycle, teleological and dialectic frames for process change. Insights are offered into the role of individuals as agents and actors of institutional change in business schools. In particular, the importance of academic integrity is highlighted for enabling and sustaining integration. Findings also suggest a number of implications for policy-makers who promote ESD, and for faculty and business school managers implementing, adopting and delivering ESD programmes

EU environmental governance: Uncomplicated and predictable policy making? By Jenny Fairbrass and Andrew Jordan

Based on studies of the reform of the European Union's (EU's) structural funding programmes, some scholars consider the EU to be a disordered, complex and multi-layered polity. According to such a perspective, shifting and contested power relationships in the EU, resulting in the dispersal of decision-making authority among different tiers of governance, have produced some loss of control over policy development among member states' national executives. Critics dismiss these claims on the basis that structural funding is intrinsically distributive and, therefore, inherently pluralistic. By contrast, in this paper we examine aspects of a regulatory policy area (i.e. environmental policy) to see how it has unfolded in the United Kingdom (UK) over a thirty-year period, unveiling the activities of both government and non-governmental (NGOs) actors. The data suggest that UK-based environmental groups who were previously marginalised in the national arena have adapted their behaviour to establish direct relations with EU level policy-makers and channel their demands via European-wide and international groups. This approach has enabled the UK groups to press for environmental policy outcomes that were not likely to have been secured had they relied solely on pursuing their objectives with or via national policy-makers. That the entrepreneurial activities of supranational actors have been a major source of unintended and unwelcome consequences for the UK government is also evident. Our evidence suggests that environmental decision-making in the EU is unpredictable, confused, intricate and multi-centred and not entirely within the control of member states' national executives

European Renewable Energy Governance under the Hammer: Interrogating the Rise and Rise of the RES Auction

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from UACES via the link in this recordAs a renewable energy pioneer, the EU is a laboratory for policy instrument evolution and innovation. Following many years of debate about the relative merit of feed-in tariffs and tradable green certificates for promoting renewable electricity expansion in Europe, there is a new instrument in town. The renewable energy support (RES) auction has rapidly become the instrument of choice, de facto mandated by the European Commission under state-aid law. RES auctions are now the main instrument in many European countries. A common explanation for the adoption of RES auctions by EU member states is that the Commission requires their implementation under state-aid law, and member states acquiesced. This paper casts a critical eye over this “coercive Commission” explanation by constructing an account of the transition to auctions in Germany and Spain, each titans of EU renewable energy. By focussing on the necessary conditions for the coercive Commission argument – institutional compatibility and supportive domestic interest constituencies – we provide a qualified account of Commission action in this area and show a more dynamic and strategic approach to RES policy instrument harmonisation. We conclude by suggesting that future research may usefully examine the implications of a pan-European system of centrally coordinated auctions for the long-term future in of RES policy in the EU.European Commissio

Integrating Natural Capital into National Accounts: Three Decades of Promise and Challenge

Economists and ecologists have worked for decades on measuring sustainability by supplementing or adjusting traditional economic indicators such as GDP. Given the threats to humanity from climate change, environmental degradation, and biodiversity loss, it is vital to incorporate values of natural capital into national economic decision-making. This review focuses on how natural capital applications, historically applied from local to global scales, address national-scale concerns. However, natural capital data and accounts have been only partially developed in most countries, given a lack of common metrics and monetary values. Existing accounts are often incomplete in both the types of natural capital and ecosystems they include (e.g., water, land, different ecosystem types) and the values they measure (e.g., market vs. nonmarket values). While it is important to continue work to embed natural capital into national economic accounts, the need for practical tools to analyze environmental problems is more urgent. We review alternative options for incorporating natural capital into national-scale decision-making and make recommendations for countries where the data, capacity, and political will to conduct formal natural capital accounting are lacking

Engineering Oxidative Stress Resistance in CHO Cell Factories

Oxidative stress is a phenomenon created by an imbalance in the amount of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) created within a cell, and the ability of its defence mechanisms to effectively deal with ROS. Oxidative stress is extremely deleterious to the cell, and is known to cause damage to DNA, proteins and lipids (Turrens, 2003). Mitochondria are the cell’s predominant producer of ROS (Murphy, 2009), but it has also been shown that increased protein folding in the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) results in an increase in ROS levels (Malhotra, 2008), an issue particularly pertinent as developers move towards hard-to-express proteins. As well as many enzymes dedicated to the eradication of ROS, such as caspases, peroxidases and superoxide dismutases (SODs) the cell maintains a glutathione pool to buffer the increase of ROS (Lu, 2009). Design of Experiment models were designed and implemented using the growth, productivity and ROS content data from batch experiments in order to design anti-oxidant supplementation strategies. Two rounds of fed-batch screening were performed and a feeding strategy identified that improved the growth and ROS burden of three cell lines producing the same recombinant MAb product. A directed evolution strategy was employed to engineer oxidative stress resistant host cell lines through chronic exposure to Hydrogen Peroxide. Following transfection with a recombinant MAb product, the novel engineered cell line consistently outperformed the original cell line in terms of growth and ROS content, in both transient and stable transfection processes. Doubling time of stably transfected evolved cell line was reduced to 23 hours, a substantial time frame reduction. A link between ROS level reduction and improvement in cell line performance was demonstrated, with further investigation needed to unpick the mechanistic underpinnings of the oxidative stress resistance as well as to attempt to address the imbalance of improvements in growth compared to productivity

Danish nearshore wind energy policy: Exploring actors, ideas, discursive processes and institutions via discursive institutionalis

This article explores Danish renewable energy policy and policymaking, focusing on the development of nearshore wind energy and the role played by various actors, their competing ideas, the discursive processes in which they participate, and the institutional settings where exchanges occur. The research employs a case study design, concentrating on the Vesterhav Syd nearshore windfarm project. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, the paper exploits Discursive Institutionalism and one of its recent refinements, labelled Ideational Power that highlights power over, through and in ideas. The data gathered provides compelling evidence of the ways in which actors struggle for dominance, each seeking to persuade others of their preferred policy problem definition and solutions: a process that oscillates between highly technical coordinative discourses among government agencies and business organisations and more politicised communicative discourses among a wider set of actors that includes community groups. Significantly, this case reveals the power of various policy stakeholders in Danish energy policy, suggesting that once decisions are taken at the national level of governance to construct a windfarm, only limited influence can be exerted by local groups on the outcomes. Our findings raise wider questions about such processes beyond the Danish case

Investigating determinants of compliance with wildlife protection laws: bird persecution in Portugal

Conservation interventions are generally underpinned by formal rules. These rules often suffer from high rates of non-compliance which is difficult to investigate due to its clandestine nature. Here we apply socio-psychological approaches to investigate the prevalence and determinants of three illegal bird-threatening behaviours---shooting raptors, trapping passerines for consumption, and poison use---by surveying 146 respondents in Portugal. We apply the theory of planned behaviour to understand behavioural determinants, and an indirect questioning method, the unmatched count technique (UCT), to estimate behaviour prevalence. The UCT estimated a high prevalence of trapping for consumption (47 {\%} SE 15) and shooting raptors (14 {\%} SE 11); both estimates being higher than from direct questioning. Poisoning had a lower prevalence according to direct questioning (7 {\%}), while the UCT generated a negative estimate suggesting that poisoning is a particularly sensitive behaviour. Different demographic groups were associated with different behaviours and determinants; men with greater rule knowledge were more likely to trap birds, while locally born people were less likely to approve themselves, or to think others approved of, trapping. Those with more positive attitudes to poisoning were more likely to admit to it, and these positive attitudes were found more in older non-hunters. Rule knowledge was better in younger male hunters. These findings suggest that NGOs aiming to reduce poisoning could enlist the support of hunters, while locally born people may be more receptive than others to working with NGOs to reduce trapping. These groups may be powerful allies in reducing illegal behaviours in their communities

Value Modeling and Trade-Off Analysis of the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit

The Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) is a powered, armored exoskeleton designed to enhance an operator’s survivability, lethality, and mobility. The suit is a SOCOM initiative using rapid acquisition practices with a functional prototype expected in 2018. Value modeling allows the TALOS design teams to rapidly perform design trade analysis while ensuring that the proposed system is in-line with the operator’s needs. A stochastic value model was built for the power subsystem through an analysis of the requirements to develop value hierarchies, swing-weight matrices, and value functions. An Excel based tool performed trade-off analysis to determine the best design solution. This tool accounts for uncertainty in raw data values to create distributions in the cost and value of each design alternative, which is critical for assessing risk. The model was expanded to other subsystems as well as the suit as a whole