Emerging market for sustainable food in Bangkok

More and more food is traded all over the world, changing the general pattern of food production and consumption dramatically. This transformation includes increasing consumer demand for safe and environmentally friendly produced food. Food is no longer produced only by farmers in the vicinity where consumers can easily observe how they produce their food. Nowadays, food can be produced in Asia and presented on a supermarket’s shelf in Europe, this unknown origin makes consumers more concerned about the safety of their food. Food scandals such as mad cow disease, bird flu, and GMOs make consumers concerned, uncertain and worried about their food. In response to these concerns, modern retailers in many countries improve their sustainable development policy and actively increase the provision of sustainable food. As a newly industrialized country in Southeast Asia, Thailand can be expected to witness a similar increasing domestic demand for sustainable food products, particularly in its urban areas. The general patterns of global change affect Thailand as well, but the specific processes of change differ due to specific conditions of urban Thailand. This paper analyzes the process of change towards sustainable food provision in Bangkok by investigating how consumers and the system of provision interact in retail outlets

Governance and non-state actors in municipal solid waste management

A study of governance and urban waste must examine not only the formal structures of government but also the informal structures created by the society, such as community-based institutions, associations, and organizations; their relationships; and the relationship between the formal and informal structures for collection, transportation, and disposal of waste. It is evident that municipalities in developing countries and particularly so in East Africa, typically lack the financial resources and skills needed to cope with the crisis of solid waste management. This raises the important issue of how to deliver quality service in the face of the financial and skill constraints of the public sector. Comparing governance arrangements that incorporate non-state actors in three urban authorities Kisumu (Kenya); Jinja (Uganda) and Mwanza (Tanzania) in East Africa, allowed this study to describe and appraise performance of these non-state actors in solid waste management at the municipal level with an aim of recommending policy options. Issues addressed are legitimacy and influence on decision-making; relations and alliances and the payment systems. Theoretical arguments of neo-developmental states verses network states in governance, guided the discussion. Household surveys; interviews and document analysis were the method used to gather data, SPSS-PASWStatistics_17.0 is used to make analysis of the quantitative data while coding is helpful in handling the qualitative data. The study concluded that a mixed modern approach in governance is needed to achieve sustainability. This would bring together the best features of central system of governance and the decentralized system to obtain an optimum mix

Providing Sustainable Food in Urban Thailand

Increasing demand for sustainable foods can be a driver for environmental improvements along the food-supply chain as a whole. Research in Western Europe has confirmed the importance of distribution channels in supplying sustainable food and particularly in how they are able to combine consumer concerns with the specific presentation of sustainability in the shop. In the urban areas of Thailand only some distribution channels for sustainable food are available, such as supermarkets and specialized shops (including specialized restaurants). Supermarkets mostly offer sustainable products, but the range of sustainable products depends on the location of supermarket. Specialized shops focused on organic products, healthy food, or special dietary needs. This paper reviews sustainable food providers i.e. supermarkets and specialized shops in Bangkok and combines literature review and empirical fieldwork. The focus was on the shop as the location where providers encounter consumers. Sustainability was observed at three levels; the general level, the shop level, and the product level. In particular communication, information, and other trust-building mechanisms at shop level were explored. The paper concludes by confirming the central role of specialized shops and supermarkets in transition processes towards more sustainable food provision. Their engagement creates a pressure on other actors in the food supply chain such as producers, government agencies, and consumers to also shift their practices. Different strategies can be identified as ways to increase sustainability in food provision

Is the Concept of a Green Economy a Useful Way of Framing Policy Discussions and Policymaking to Promote Sustainable Development?

In this article, the authors discuss the use of green economy to promote sustainable development. Research and Partnerships Unit Head Sheng Fulai states that sustainable development is composed of economic, social and environmental development. Furthermore, it features Research and Partnerships associate Gary Flomenhoft who believes that green economy is useful when it deals with factors such as distribution of wealth and throughput of materials and energy

Colorectal liver metastases: Surgery versus thermal ablation (COLLISION) - a phase III single-blind prospective randomized controlled trial

Background: Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and microwave ablation (MWA) are widely accepted techniques to eliminate small unresectable colorectal liver metastases (CRLM). Although previous studies labelled thermal ablation inferior to surgical resection, the apparent selection bias when comparing patients with unresectable disease to surgical candidates, the superior safety profile, and the competitive overall survival results for the more recent reports mandate the setup of a randomized controlled trial. The objective of the COLLISION trial is to prove non-inferiority of thermal ablation compared to hepatic resection in patients with at least one resectable and ablatable CRLM and no extrahepatic disease. Methods: In this two-arm, single-blind multi-center phase-III clinical trial, six hundred and eighteen patients with at least one CRLM (≤3cm) will be included to undergo either surgical resection or thermal ablation of appointed target lesion(s) (≤3cm). Primary endpoint is OS (overall survival, intention-to-treat analysis). Main secondary endpoints are overall disease-free survival (DFS), time to progression (TTP), time to local progression (TTLP), primary and assisted technique efficacy (PTE, ATE), procedural morbidity and mortality, length of hospital stay, assessment of pain and quality of life (QoL), cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) and quality-adjusted life years (QALY). Discussion: If thermal ablation proves to be non-inferior in treating lesions ≤3cm, a switch in treatment-method may lead to a reduction of the post-procedural morbidity and mortality, length of hospital stay and incremental costs without compromising oncological outcome for patients with CRLM. Trial registration:NCT03088150 , January 11th 2017

The politics of sustainable consumption: the case of the Netherlands

The environmental pressure associated with contemporary modes of material provisioning in advanced countries suggests the need to foster more sustainable consumption. Despite growing interest in sustainability, the Netherlands currently has few effective and legitimate measures in place that focus on the role of citizen-consumers. Existing policy styles and instruments have not reduced significantly the environmental impacts of consumption. An explanation for this inadequacy resides in the technocratic origins of environmental policymaking and the pronounced tendency to rely on the presumed rationality of producers situated on the supply side of production-consumption chains. A central issue, therefore, becomes the organization of an overt politics of sustainable consumption. We explore here possible alternatives to facilitate sustainable consumption in the Netherlands and review the policy initiatives that non-governmental organizations and the Dutch government have to date undertaken. The analysis evaluates these efforts through a theoretical framework designed to chart the development of a democratic vision of sustainable consumption

Citizen-Consumers as Agents of Change in Globalizing Modernity: The Case of Sustainable Consumption

The roles that individuals can adopt, or get assigned, in processes of global environmental change, can be analyzed with the help of three ideal-type forms of commitment: as environmental citizens, as political consumers, and as individual moral agents. We offer a discussion of the three roles in the context of sustainability changes in everyday life practices of consumption. Sociological accounts of (sustainability) transitions are discussed with respect to their treatment of the concept of agency vis à vis the objects, technologies, and infrastructures implied in globalizing consumption practices. Using consumption practices as basic units of analysis helps to avoid individualist and privatized accounts of the role of citizen-consumers in environmental change, while making possible a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between the personal and the planetary in the process of greening everyday life consumption

Citizen-Consumers as Agents of Change in Globalizing Modernity: The Case of Sustainable Consumption

The roles that individuals can adopt, or get assigned, in processes of global environmental change, can be analyzed with the help of three ideal-type forms of commitment: as environmental citizens, as political consumers, and as individual moral agents. We offer a discussion of the three roles in the context of sustainability changes in everyday life practices of consumption. Sociological accounts of (sustainability) transitions are discussed with respect to their treatment of the concept of agency vis à vis the objects, technologies, and infrastructures implied in globalizing consumption practices. Using consumption practices as basic units of analysis helps to avoid individualist and privatized accounts of the role of citizen-consumers in environmental change, while making possible a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between the personal and the planetary in the process of greening everyday life consumption.citizen-consumers; social practices; sustainable consumption; lifestyle-politics; globalization