Textile manufacturing is a multi-stage operation process that produces significant amounts of highly toxic wastewater. Given the size of the global textile market and its environmental impact, the ...development of effective, economical, and easy-to handle alternative treatment technologies for textile wastewater is of significant interest. Based on the analysis of peer-reviewed publications over the last two decades, this paper provides a comprehensive review of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) on textile wastewater treatment, including their performances, mechanisms, advantages, disadvantages, influencing factors, and electrical energy per order (EEO) requirements. Fenton-based AOPs show the lowest median EEO value of 0.98 kWh m−3 order−1, followed by photochemical (3.20 kWh m−3 order−1), ozonation (3.34 kWh m−3 order−1), electrochemical (29.5 kWh m−3 order−1), photocatalysis (91 kWh m−3 order−1), and ultrasound (971.45 kWh m−3 order−1). The Fenton process can treat textile effluent at the lowest possible cost due to the minimal energy input and low reagent cost, while Ultrasound-based AOPs show the lowest electrical efficiency due to the high energy consumption. Further, to explore the applicability of these methods, available results from a full-scale implementation of the enhanced Fenton technology at a textile mill wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) are discussed. The WWTP operates at an estimated cost of CNY ¥1.62 m−3 (USD $0.23 m−3) with effluent meeting the China Grade I-A pollutant discharge standard for municipal WWTPs, indicating that the enhanced Fenton technology is efficient and cost-effective in industrial treatment for textile effluent.
Managing transboundary river basins requires balancing tradeoffs of sustainable water use and coping with climate uncertainty. We demonstrate an integrated approach to exploring these issues through ...the lens of a social-ecological system, combining remote and in-situ earth observations, hydrologic and climate models, and social surveys. Specifically, we examine how climate change and dam development could impact the Se Kong, Se San and Sre Pok rivers in the Mekong region. We find that climate change will lead to increased precipitation, necessitating a shift in dam operations, from maintaining low flows to reducing flood hazards. We also find that existing water governance systems in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia are ill-prepared to address the problem. We conclude that the solution space for addressing these complex issues will be highly constrained unless major deficiencies in transboundary water governance, strategic planning, financial capacity, information sharing, and law enforcement are remedied in the next decades.
•Case study of riverside communities and plans to rehabilitate a riparian corridor.•Mixed-methods approach to assess value of cultural services provided by urban river.•Evidence of positive ...willingness-to-pay to include park space and forest conservation in plan.•Qualitative methods like interviews help identify non-monetary expressions of value.•Potential for integrating landscape design and social science research to enhance social value of green infrastructure.
Cultural ecosystem services are not easily integrated into planning decisions when rehabilitating urban rivers. Methods exist to characterize the value of these cultural services, but there are methodological challenges to obtaining this information and fitting it to a decision context, particularly when weighed against monetary costs and benefits. In a developing country, these challenges can be magnified and thus the value of cultural services is seldom considered. We illustrate this through a case study of a river in Jakarta, Indonesia, where plans call for widening the river channel, stabilizing the banks with concrete, and restricting access to the river. We employ a mixed-method approach of household surveys, a discrete choice experiment and ethnographic interviews, to ascertain historical and present uses of the river, and residents’ preferences for future change to the river. We demonstrate that low-income residents value non- or indirect-use cultural services that the river corridor provides—services that would be lost under the current rehabilitation plan. By assessing residents’ willingness to pay for cultural services, we can more easily compare these scenarios to the current plan. We also show how our mixed-methods approach to valuation can help frame and interpret quantitative results, so that decision makers have additional contextual information. We demonstrate that such approaches are feasible and sometimes necessary in complex, data-poor urban environments.
Negative effects of land use change on water resources are among the most important environmental problems widely found in rapidly developing urban areas. Preserving green open spaces, including ...peri-urban agriculture, has been emphasized in urban planning to maintain or enhance the water catchment capacity of a landscape. However, the effect of agriculture on water-related landscape functions varies depending on the type, distribution, and management of farmland. This paper analyzes the dynamics of agricultural land and its effect on runoff and soil erosion, in order to support agricultural land management in Jabodetabek Metropolitan Area (JMA) with Indonesia’s capital Jakarta at its core. In 2012, agricultural land in JMA covered 53% of the total area, mostly located in the peri-urban zone. Peak Flow and Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) models were used to quantify the increase of runoff and soil erosion in the three most important water catchment areas in JMA caused by an expansion of dryland agriculture and mixed gardens from 1983 to 2012. Critical zones, which generate most of the runoff and soil erosion, were identified in each of the catchment areas. While reforestation of farmland in these zones will be only an option on steep slopes given the great food demands and rural livelihood, adoption of soil and water conservation practices can make a substantial contribution to reduce flood risks and conserve the productivity of agricultural land. A specific set of policy incentives is recommended considering agricultural land use types distribution and their impact on runoff and soil erosion.
•Spatial MCA involving scenarios, hydrologic modeling, preference weighting, and optimization.•Application to regional spatial planning in metropolitan Jakarta, Indonesia.•Flood mitigation and ...erosion control threatened by future land use change.•Service bundles offer synergies that might not be realized under sector-based strategies.•Our approach is useful in areas experiencing rapid land use change.
Spatially explicit information on ecosystem services can be an important input to regional spatial planning, but must be framed in a particular social context in order to be useful. We present a case study in metropolitan Jakarta, Indonesia, where stakeholders are discussing a spatial plan to help mitigate flooding risk, conserve scarce agricultural land, and restore forests in the upper catchment areas. We demonstrate an application of a four-step spatial multi-criteria analytical (MCA) approach that involves scenario development, ecosystem service quantification and mapping, preference weighting, and optimization to maximize preferred ecosystem services while minimizing cost. We improve upon similarly-oriented MCAs by incorporating information on ecosystem service potential, supply, beneficiaries, and likely costs to conserve them, with the aim of assisting stakeholders in negotiating future land development. Stakeholder-weighted preferences provide information on potential areas of conflict or agreement, but the aggregated weights do not have a significant impact on the optimization model's outputs. Our results also reveal possible synergies between, for example, biodiversity conservation and erosion control, which are typically considered and planned for by separate stakeholder groups. We also find that if we include monetary estimates of flood damages by sub-basin and population data by groundwater basin, optimal solutions include more expensive interventions when compared to a model omitting this information. Overall, our approach offers a transparent way to collect and process relevant information on regional ecosystem services, and can be particularly useful in areas where land use is changing rapidly and land use controls are either weak or decentralized.
Indicator systems can improve water governance by integrating and simplifying data on water resources. However, to our knowledge, no indicator systems have been comprehensively assessed against the ...water governance framework within which they operate. We assess the policy relevance of the Freshwater Health Index (FHI) to the governance frameworks of Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Viet Nam. These governance frameworks were chosen because the FHI has been applied to the transboundary Sesan, Srepok, and Sekong (3S) river basin, which traverses the three nations. We conduct an institutional analysis, assessing the FHI indicators against each nation’s relevant laws, plans, policies and strategies, as well as international agreements. The FHI indicators varied in their alignment with the 3S’s transboundary water governance framework. Ecosystem Vitality indicators, which measure environmental health, tended to show a greater alignment than Ecosystem Service indicators. The Governance and Stakeholders indicators, which assess aspects of the governance system, were highly relevant. Comparing the 3S FHI assessment results to the water governance framework provided a case for delivering environmental flows and headwater reforestation, and improving biodiversity protection and fish passage. The generally close alignment of FHI metrics with the 3S’s water governance frameworks shows that the FHI is a policy-relevant tool.
Sustainable watershed management requires effective stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production. Currently, most methods for stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production in the field are ...case-specific, applied in an ad hoc manner, and not tested across various spatial scales or water management contexts. Moreover, these methods are not often evaluated, limiting our ability to learn from and adapt them. We critically assess the Freshwater Health Index (FHI), an indicator-based platform for stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production, which has been applied in a variety of social-ecological systems. Using an ex-post analysis, we examined nine FHI case studies against an evaluative framework based on Talley et al.'s. (2016) five pillars for effective stakeholder engagement and Norström et al.'s. (2020) four principles for knowledge co-production, from which we derived six principles (Context-based, Clear objectives/Goal-oriented, Systematic representation/Pluralistic, Use relevant methods, Create opportunities for co-ownership, Interactive/Reflective). We first identified activities in the FHI process that aligned with the six principles, then used narrative descriptions and guiding questions to evaluate individual case studies. Although we demonstrate that the FHI supports stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production in a variety of contexts, the FHI process seldom fulfilled all six principles due to differences in watersheds. Key takeaways include the importance of aligning projects with existing water management schemes, and the need to establish a sustainability plan that empowers stakeholders to stay engaged beyond a single project timeline. Our evaluative framework can serve as a checklist in both the design and monitoring of place-based sustainability research projects more generally.
Sustainable water resource management is a wicked problem, fraught with uncertainties, an indeterminate scope, and divergent social values and interests among stakeholders. To facilitate better ...management of Southeast Asia’s transboundary Sesan, Sekong and Srepok (3S) River basin, we used the Freshwater Health Index (FHI) to diagnose the basin’s current and likely future level of freshwater health. We used the conditions for December 2016 as a baseline, where Ecosystem Vitality and Ecosystem Services scored 66 and 80, respectively, out of a possible 100, whilst Governance & Stakeholders scored 43. Thus, the 3S provided a range of desired ecosystem services, but there were signs of environmental stress as well as undeveloped water governance systems and limited stakeholder engagement. We also modelled four hydropower development scenarios and found that increasing development reduced the scores of a subset of indicators. This compromised the future ability of the 3S basin’s ecosystem to provide its current range of services. The FHI helped identify data deficiencies, illuminated important social dynamics, made ecosystem–human–water dynamics more understandable to stakeholders, and examined the long-term dynamics of the basin.
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