Organic vegetables from community-supported agriculture in Italy: emergy assessment and potential for sustainable, just, and resilient urban-rural local food production

Global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic highlight the interconnectedness and vulnerability of human systems, requiring integrated transdisciplinary studies aimed at breaking unsustainable and unjust practices. In this work, a horticultural collaborative production system is addressed, inspired by the community-supported agriculture (CSA) model. In a highly industrialised area of Northern Italy, with significant wild land consumption, an alternative bottom-up experience is described for the provision of vegetables in a short and cooperative not-for-sale supply chain. Local organic farming and just labour conditions seek ecological sustainability and social equity beyond market dynamics. This CSA project contributes to the resilience of a territory currently affected by health and economic plights. Its claims, limits, and potentials of a project of this kind are investigated for the first time by means of the Emergy Assessment (EMA). The socio-ecological and economic inputs in the system at issue are identified and quantified, partly eased by the transparent process of the target community, and some key indicators are calculated. The new specific emergy values for the organic horticultural produce at hand are 3.15E+12 sej/kg (without labour and services), with organic manure as a leading input (37%) and 1.02E+13 sej/kg (with L&S), with labour as a leading input (38% paid, 8% voluntary) as key inputs; their calculation corrects underestimations present in some biased studies. This EMA provides fruitful insights of a single replicable and/or scalable project, thus offering current barrier and future opportunities for local improvement and exportability to crisis and post-crisis scenarios, and anyway for pursuing sustainability goals

Traditional knowledge in the approach to sustainability: Making sense of Bhutanese gross national happiness and Buen Vivir in Bolivian constitution

In the past few decades, due to the global environmental crisis humanity is facing, a sudden growth in environmental policies and sustainability strategies has been registered. This article discusses two of such policies, namely that of Gross National Happiness (GNH) in the Himalayan country of Bhutan and the inclusion of the concept of Buen Vivir (BV) in the Bolivian Constitution, through a critical analysis - based on political ecology approaches - of their implementation within state policy and their wider implications within the global discourse on the so-called “sustainable development” paradox. This paper highlights the role that the aforementioned policies might play in the path to decolonisation, seeing as how they draw inspiration from their own local contexts and values instead of those provided by the Global North, more specifically focusing on their ancestral and traditional knowledge to supposedly guide the countries’ policy-making process. Although several points of criticism are identified in both policies, innovativeness is detected in their potential to offer alternative views on human wellbeing, both for global southern and global northern contexts, as their original intent would be to remarkably operate outside of the Western framework of development based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and economic growth. GNH appears to be mostly oriented toward supporting political national budget discussion and allocation, while BV acts at a higher level (constitutional), thus also inspiring overall politics

Whose health in whose city? A systems thinking approach to support and evaluate plans, policies, and strategies for lasting urban health.

An increasing interest has been present in scientific literature and policy-making for the links between urban environments and health, as also learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic. Collaboration between urban planning and public health is therefore critical for enhancing the capabilities of a city to promote the well-being of its people. But what leverage potential for urban health can be found in existing plans, policies, and strategies that address urban health? Starting from the relationship between urban systems and health issues, the purpose of this contribution is to broaden the systemic knowledge of urban systems and health so as to try to figure out the impact potential of local urban governance on public health. Considering the systemic nature of health issues, as defined by the World Health Organisation, this is done through a Systems Thinking epistemological approach. Urban health proposals are studied and assessed in four European cities (Copenhagen, London, Berlin, and Vienna). Current criticalities are found, starting from the guiding goal of such proposals, yet a systemic approach is suggested aimed at supporting and evaluating lasting and healthy urban planning and management strategies

‘Kill Venice’: a systems thinking conceptualisation of urban life, economy, and resilience in tourist cities

Mass tourism has been creating increasing complaints and resistances in many tourist cities worldwide. The global Covid-19 health emergency has further affected the complex relationship between the activities of city dwellers and those of the tourist flows. Be the visitors present or abruptly absent, the effects of tourism on housing, labour, and the urban economy as a whole can threaten the very survival of a tourist destination. The ultimate goals of tourist-based transformations are not clear, nor their relationship with the resilience of destinations. A systemic perspective is here offered on tourism in cities, with a focus on the city that likely exhibits the highest level of tourist attraction with respect to its vulnerability, that is, Venice, Italy. Various aspects of its sustainability and resilience, along with the involved interconnection and dependency links, are taken into consideration. Currently proposed alternative scenarios are presented, and their weaknesses commented. Some implications are also addressed for sustainable and resilient transformations. The comprehension of the dynamics that drive a tourist city system, together with the study of its systemic leverage points, appear to be mandatory for effective urban policies and planning

Systemic sustainability and resilience assessment of health systems, addressing global societal priorities: learnings from a top nonprofit hospital in a bioclimatic building in Africa

Health services represent a cornerstone to ensure well-being and human rights, particularly in deprived areas. The resource cost and appropriate use for the implementation of a top-quality hospital in Sudan are here investigated. An emerging approach such as systems-based Emergy Accounting is applied to assess its sustainability and resilience, also relying on Life-Cycle Assessment data to calculate some new unit emergy values. Very few similar studies have addressed civil works so far, even less bioclimatic buildings, while the focus on health systems is an absolute novelty. Particular attention is paid to design in adverse climate and economic conditions, to the humanitarian nongovernmental organisation running the hospital, and to the cutting-edge medical staff and technologies imported from abroad, also letting local practitioners to train in excellence medicine. The system’s direct and indirect socio-ecological requirements are expressed as emergy (resource investment) per patient-day, per cardiac surgical operation, per outpatient visit, and per year. From a quantitative viewpoint, these indicators represent a benchmark for improvement scenarios, comparison with new studies in a deserving field, and future investments, driven by effective healthcare policies. They also provide an overview of the efforts required by nature and society to ensure a human right in conditions of scarcity. Besides the possibility to lower a hospital’s environmental impact (sustainability-oriented) and to keep it functioning over time in changing climate, resource, societal, economic, and geo-political scenarios (resilience-oriented), this study leads to original remarks upon societal priorities and upon the challenges of guaranteeing high-quality health systems in an uncertain century

Testing energy and emissions assessment models: A highway case study in virtual reality

The estimation of pollutants from road transport systems is examined, by comparing emission factors (EFs) calculated with static and dynamic methods. Information technology is used to test currently operational assessment models in the European Union. The negligibility of the effects of variation in speed is questioned: acceleration/deceleration imply use/dissipation of energy, and directly affect pollutants release. An investigation based on drive simulation is conducted, proposing increasing traffic flow conditions. Two scenarios are simulated: an existing highway before and after major modernisation works. Benefits and detriments of its renovation are also examined. Results are processed through recent European Environment Agency models and a system that continuously computes the operations of an engine. The correlation found between average speed and EFs is not representative. Instead, a good correlation is observed between increases in speed variation and increases of EFs. Synthetic parameters are proposed to support the analysis, based on intensity and duration of acceleration/deceleration events. EFs are substantially lower if calculated through the static models. The assumption that the effects of speed variation can be neglected is rejected: driving cycles due to traffic flow conditions are identified as crucial for realistically evaluating emissions. A need is detected to formulate correcting parameters

Physical and Transport Property Variations Within Carbonate-Bearing Fault Zones: Insights From the Monte Maggio Fault (Central Italy)

AbstractThe physical characterization of carbonate‐bearing normal faults is fundamental for resource development and seismic hazard. Here we report laboratory measurements of density, porosity, Vp, Vs, elastic moduli, and permeability for a range of effective confining pressures (0.1–100 MPa), conducted on samples representing different structural domains of a carbonate‐bearing fault. We find a reduction in porosity from the fault breccia (11.7% total and 6.2% connected) to the main fault plane (9% total and 3.5% connected), with both domains showing higher porosity compared to the protolith (6.8% total and 1.1% connected). With increasing confining pressure, P wave velocity evolves from 4.5 to 5.9 km/s in the fault breccia, is constant at 5.9 km/s approaching the fault plane and is low (4.9 km/s) in clay‐rich fault domains. We find that while the fault breccia shows pressure sensitive behavior (a reduction in permeability from 2 × 10−16 to 2 × 10−17 m2), the cemented cataclasite close to the fault plane is characterized by pressure‐independent behavior (permeability 4 × 10−17 m2). Our results indicate that the deformation processes occurring within the different fault structural domains influence the physical and transport properties of the fault zone. In situ Vp profiles match well the laboratory measurements demonstrating that laboratory data are valuable for implications at larger scale. Combining the experimental values of elastic moduli and frictional properties it results that at shallow crustal levels, M ≤ 1 earthquakes are less favored, in agreement with earthquake‐depth distribution during the L'Aquila 2009 seismic sequence that occurred on carbonates