This paper demonstrates how the slope of a production possibilities frontier (PPF) can be used to empirically identify the presence of an ecosystem externality. Complementarity between non-market ...ecosystem services implies the PPF between these services may be upward sloping. In contrast, private landowners that ignore these complementarities will treat non-market ecosystem services as competing products thereby ensuring a downward sloping PPF. Using data from 738 U.S. watersheds, we compare the slope of PPFs on predominately private and predominately public watersheds. We find evidence that private markets are failing to internalize complementarities between forest habitat and two other non-market ecosystem services: instream flows and grazing. In addition, we show how three-stage least squares regression can be used to reduce endogeneity bias associated with more common approaches to estimating ecosystem service relationships.
This paper shows that exports are an important cause of resource depletion. The paper uses detailed country–species–level fisheries data to estimate the causal effect of a fishery’s exports on the ...collapse of the fishery. Identification is based on an export demand shock originating from Japan. The results reveal that an increase in logged exports by one standard deviation raises the probability of a fishery’s collapse in the following year by 31 percentage points. Particularly fisheries without catch share programs collapse when exports surge.
•The importance of the fisheries sector in global food systems is often overlooked.•Nutrition-sensitive fisheries policies are needed to contribute to healthy diets.•Policy focus on aquaculture ...productivity and economic gains inhibits healthy diets.•Complementarity of capture fisheries and aquaculture improves nutrition and health.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda makes achieving food security and ending malnutrition a global priority. Within this framework, the importance of fisheries in local and global food systems and its contribution to nutrition and health, particularly for the poor are overlooked and undervalued. This paper reviews current fish production and consumption from capture fisheries and aquaculture, highlights opportunities for enhancing healthy diets and outlines key multi-sectoral policy solutions. Mirroring the call for a diversification of agricultural research and investment beyond a few staple grains, it is anticipated that productivity gains for a few farmed aquatic species will not suffice. Capture fisheries and aquaculture have a complementary role to play in increasing fish availability and access, and must be promoted in ways that support measurable nutrition and health gains. This paper argues that the lack of a nutrition-sensitive policy focus on capture fisheries and aquaculture represents an untapped opportunity that must be realised for ensuring sustainable healthy diets for all.
Lactic acid production to purification: A review Komesu, Andrea; de Oliveira, Johnatt Allan Rocha; Martins, Luiza Helena da Silva ...
Bioresources,
02/2017, Volume:
12, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Lactic acid is a naturally occurring organic acid that can be used in a wide variety of industries, such as the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, chemical, food, and, most recently, the medical industries. ...It can be made by the fermentation of sugars obtained from renewable resources, which means that it is an eco-friendly product that has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a report that listed lactic acid as a potential building block for the future. Bearing the importance of lactic acid in mind, this review summarizes information about lactic acid properties and applications, as well as its production and purification processes.
Managing multiple ecosystem services (ES) is a pressing field in sustainability research. ES bundles (ESBs), which closely link ES trade-offs and synergies, provide a comprehensive approach to ...exploring the relationship between natural ecosystems and human well-being. In this study, we quantified eight ES in terms of provisioning, regulating and cultural services using geographical data and other available information (both ecological and social) in the Pearl River Delta, China. We identified ESBs based on K-means clustering and redundancy analysis. The results showed that spatial patterns of each ES were quite heterogeneous at watershed level. Provisioning services were mainly distributed in watersheds with high proportion of cultivated land and waterbody. Remote forest areas provided high regulating services. Moreover, densely populated urban areas provide high cultural services. Five ESBs were detected ranging from 2941 to 16,249 km2. According to the Pearson correlations and the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), we detected the trade-offs between provisioning and cultural services, and between regulating and cultural services, and synergies happened within regulating services. Intensive land-use and management in urban areas contributed to ES trade-offs. These results provide deeper understanding of the relationship between ES and land-use type at watershed level and detailed guidelines for ecosystem management.
Payments for Environmental or Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes have become a popular tool to address environmental degradation and to promote sustainable management of ecosystem services. We use ...meta-regression analysis on a sample of 110 individual studies to investigate the determinants of the environmental effectiveness, defined as the probability to increase environmental services (ES) provision, of about 149 PES-schemes implemented worldwide. We find that increased effectiveness of PES schemes is strongly associated with periodical third-party monitoring, generic reference design and to a lesser extent results-based payments. We further study the determinants of PES additionality, defined as direct changes in ES provision induced by the PES scheme, compared to a baseline without PES, on a smaller sample of 41 studies from which we could obtain the necessary data. The results confirm the role of certain design variables, such as monitoring type, and raise a potential trade-off between enrolment and additionality in the assessment of PES effectiveness.
Some classical economists, most notably Malthus, predicted that scarcity would undermine long-term human well-being. John Stuart Mill, in contrast, predicted that the threat of scarcity creates ...incentives for innovation that help to avoid some of the worst outcomes. Popular claims of marine ecologists often apply the Malthusian narrative to supplies of seafood, yet global supplies have continued to grow. We examine the modern seafood industry and evaluate Mill’s claims about innovation. We argue that the mechanisms that Mill discusses–innovation in response to and in anticipation of scarcity–account for much of what we see. Scarcities induce technological, policy, and market innovations that enable seafood supplies to grow, and these innovations can build on each other. The challenge for policy makers is to avoid knee-jerk responses to Malthusian narratives and craft policy responses that encourage innovation while recognizing physical limits of ocean resources.
Abstract
Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide with renewable energy is a sustainable way of producing carbon-neutral fuels. However, developing active, selective and stable electrocatalysts is ...challenging and entails material structure design and tailoring across a range of length scales. Here we report a cobalt-phthalocyanine-based high-performance carbon dioxide reduction electrocatalyst material developed with a combined nanoscale and molecular approach. On the nanoscale, cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc) molecules are uniformly anchored on carbon nanotubes to afford substantially increased current density, improved selectivity for carbon monoxide, and enhanced durability. On the molecular level, the catalytic performance is further enhanced by introducing cyano groups to the CoPc molecule. The resulting hybrid catalyst exhibits >95% Faradaic efficiency for carbon monoxide production in a wide potential range and extraordinary catalytic activity with a current density of 15.0 mA cm
−2
and a turnover frequency of 4.1 s
−1
at the overpotential of 0.52 V in a near-neutral aqueous solution.
Recent fire seasons in the western United States are some of the most damaging and costly on record. Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface on the Colorado Front Range, resulting in thousands of ...homes burned and civilian fatalities, although devastating, are not without historical reference. These fires are consistent with the characteristics of large, damaging, interface fires that threaten communities across much of the western United States. Wildfires are inevitable, but the destruction of homes, ecosystems, and lives is not. We propose the principles of risk analysis to provide land management agencies, first responders, and affected communities who face the inevitability of wildfires the ability to reduce the potential for loss. Overcoming perceptions of wildland-urban interface fire disasters as a wildfire control problem rather than a home ignition problem, determined by home ignition conditions, will reduce home loss.
This paper presents the first comprehensive synthesis of economic valuations of wetlands in developing countries. Meta-regression analysis (MRA) is applied to 1432 estimates of the economic value of ...379 distinct wetlands from 50 countries. We find that wetlands are a normal good, wetland size has a negative effect on wetland values, and urban wetlands and marine wetlands are more valuable than other wetlands. Wetland values estimated by stated preferences are lower than those estimated by market price methods. The MRA benefit transfer function has a median transfer error of 17%. Overall, MRA appears to be useful for deriving the economic value of wetlands at policy sites in developing nations.
PDF
