Building an eco-industrial park as a public project in South Korea. The stakeholders' understanding of and involvement in the project

This study aims to investigate the actual development of an eco-industrial park (EIP) in South Korea by employing a case study approach and deals with a pilot eco-industrial park project in the Macheon Industrial Park of Jinhae, Gyeongnam, in the south of Korea. This paper reviews the stakeholders' understanding of EIPs. Furthermore, research was conducted on the barriers to the actual promotion of the project in South Korea. First, stakeholders' understanding of EIPs is identified as being self-interested. The need for EIPs is mostly found in responding to civil complaints and pollutants resulting from the industrial park. However, the need is quite different from the original intention of EIPs. As a result, the project unsuccessfully deals with the needs of the stakeholders because of technical, economic, and social obstacles. Second, support from the public sector for the project seems quite inadequate. The public sector appears to lack the proper policy means and will to actualize the project. In conclusion, the Korean government needs to participate more actively in the project than it currently is doing. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Data from: Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition

AbstractThe idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win–win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies