Enhancing engagement with community sector organisations working in sustainable waste management: a case study

Voluntary and community sector organisations are increasingly being viewed as key agents of change in the shifts towards the concepts of resource efficiency and circular economy, at the community level. Using a meta-analysis and questionnaire surveys across three towns in the East Midlands of England, namely Northampton, Milton Keynes and Luton, this study aimed to understand public engagement with these organisations. The findings suggest that these organisations play a significant and wide-spread role, not only with regard to sustainable environmental management, but also a social role in community development and regeneration. The surveys indicated that there were generally high levels of awareness of the organisations and strong engagement with them. Clothes were the items most donated. Key reasons for engagement included the financial value offered and the perception that it helped the environment. However, potential limitations in future public engagement were also determined and recommendations for addressing these suggested

Rural Development Programme measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional ‘hotspots’ and priority measures

© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Agriculture is a significant source of GHG emissions, contributing 10% of total emissions within the EU-28. Emissions from European agriculture have been reduced, albeit at the expense of crop yield and the risk of production displacement (the transfer of production, and associated emissions, to land outside of Europe). This article assesses the impact on GHG emissions of selected European Rural Development Program measures, representative of a diversity of management strategies implemented on cultivated land, within nine European Member States. Climatic zone and underlying spatial environmental variables were accounted for using a novel technique, “Regional Variation Categories,” developed with European-scale GIS data sets. Production displacement is assessed with two benchmarks: (1) compared with existing crop production and (2) relative to a “minimum requirement” land management scenario, where an emissions reduction of less than this does not constitute mitigation. Most measures reduce emissions relative to the baseline crop scenario; however, many do not reduce emissions beyond the “minimum requirement,” this being limited to measures such as catch crops and within-field grass areas to prevent soil erosion. The selection and targeting of measures to maximize agricultural GHG mitigation on cultivated land within Europe is discussed...Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Governing cities for sustainable energy:The UK case

AbstractThe dependence of cities on intensive consumption of energy from fossil fuels is a major cause of climate disruption, and there is increasing interest in the potential for city governments to facilitate a transition to sustainable energy. Little is known, however, about the extent or structures of current urban energy initiatives. Our paper addresses this gap by mapping UK local authority energy plans and project investments and exploring governance processes in three leading cities. It uses socio-technical and urban studies' perspectives on neo-liberal governing and energy systems to interpret findings. This reveals both the gap between local ambitions and capacity to implement plans, and the potential for translation of neo-liberal governing into contrasting commercial and community urban energy enterprises, prefiguring different energy futures. Overall, however, the neo-liberal framework is associated with small scale and uneven initiatives, with limited contribution to a systemic shift to sustainable cities

Consultation on sustainable development framework indicators February 2003

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m03/20322 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Sustainable development goals and quality of life targets: Insights from Metro Manila

This article examines three frameworks utilized in assessing quality of life (QOL) and sustainability, namely, (1) the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), (2) the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD) framework for sustainable development, and the (3) Livable Cities Indicators (LCIs). The study assesses the efficiency, relevance/appropriateness, and effectiveness of these frameworks in assessing the quality of urban life in cities, with special reference to Metro Manila. What do these indicators really tell us about urban quality of life and whose quality of life is reflected or measured in these indicators? The article suggests that the understanding and assessment of the quality of life in cities can become broader and more relevant if we take into consideration that macro indicators may not reflect the socio-economic realities of different sub-groups, especially the politically and economically marginalized urban groups and classes. In short, these QOL frameworks and indicators are not sensitive to issues of social exclusion, inequality, and resource distribution among sub-groups, which have a great bearing on quality of life and sustainability, both in the cities of the North and the global South. To advance this goal, there is a need to contextualize, localize, and decentralize the production and utilization of the QOL knowledge systems

Bridging the gaps between theory and practice: a service niche approach to urban sustainability indicators

Urban sustainability indicators play an important role in helping policy-makers ensure the continued success of their cities. However, a review of current practice suggests that priority is often given to the measurability and policy relevance of these metrics. Their analytical validity - i.e. their ability to act as meaningful representations of the urban system and thus inform appropriate policy responses - is less certain. An examination of London's USIs confirms this gap between theory and practice and identifies vague definitions of urban sustainability as part of the problem. A 'service niche' approach to indicator selection is therefore outlined, using pervasive goal-oriented urban services such as energy or water systems to guide the selection of policy-relevant interconnected metrics. Strategies for expanding such niches to wider assessments of urban sustainability are also discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.