The book 'Environmental Impact Assessment' brings to the notice of the readers the various impacts of the environmental changes that are taking place simultaneously. It takes the readers through the ...cases of the environmental changes one by ne and explains the consequences they have on the sustainability of the environment. The book also highlights the importance of assessment of the impact that is taking place on the environment so that strategies can be formed to tackle the unwanted problems.
Understanding and communicating the environmental impacts of food products is key to enabling transitions to environmentally sustainable food systems El Bilali and Allahyari, Inf. Process. Agric. 5, ...456-464 (2018). While previous analyses compared the impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat, and beef Poore and Nemecek,
360, 987-992 (2018), most food products contain numerous ingredients. However, because the amount of each ingredient in a product is often known only by the manufacturer, it has been difficult to assess their environmental impacts. Here, we develop an approach to overcome this limitation. It uses prior knowledge from ingredient lists to infer the composition of each ingredient, and then pairs this with environmental databases Poore and Nemecek
360, 987-992 (2018); Gephart et al., Nature 597, 360-365 (2021) to derive estimates of a food product's environmental impact across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential. Using the approach on 57,000 products in the United Kingdom and Ireland shows food types have low (e.g., sugary beverages, fruits, breads), to intermediate (e.g., many desserts, pastries), to high environmental impacts (e.g., meat, fish, cheese). Incorporating NutriScore reveals more nutritious products are often more environmentally sustainable but there are exceptions to this trend, and foods consumers may view as substitutable can have markedly different impacts. Sensitivity analyses indicate the approach is robust to uncertainty in ingredient composition and in most cases sourcing. This approach provides a step toward enabling consumers, retailers, and policy makers to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of food products.
Reflecting the popularity of nature-based activities such as hiking and mountain biking, there are thousands of kilometres of recreational trails worldwide traversing a range of natural areas. These ...trails have environmental impacts on soils and vegetation, but where has there been research, what impacts have been found and how were they measured? Using a systematic quantitative literature review methodology, we assessed the impacts of trails on vegetation and soils, highlighting what is known, but also key knowledge gaps. Of the 59 original research papers identified on this topic that have been published in English language peer-reviewed academic journals, most were for research conducted in protected areas (71%), with few from developing countries (17%) or threatened ecosystems (14%). The research is concentrated in a few habitats and biodiversity hotspots, mainly temperate woodland, alpine grassland and Mediterranean habitats, often in the USA (32%) or Australia (20%). Most examined formal trails, with just 15% examining informal trails and 11% assessing both types. Nearly all papers report the results of observational surveys (90%), collecting quantitative data (66%) with 24% using geographic information systems. There was an emphasis on assessing trail impacts at a local scale, either on the trail itself and/or over short gradients away from the trail edge. Many assessed changes in composition and to some degree, structure, of vegetation and soils with the most common impacts documented including reduced vegetation cover, changes in plant species composition, trail widening, soil loss and soil compaction. There were 14 papers assessing how these local impacts can accumulate at the landscape scale. Few papers assessed differences in impacts among trails (7 papers), changes in impacts over time (4), species-specific responses (3) and only one assessed effects on plant community functioning. This review provides evidence that there are key research gaps including assessing informal trails, comparing trail types, landscape and temporal scale impacts, functional responses and impacts on threatened ecosystems/species. A more diverse geographic spread of research is also required including in regions experiencing rapid growth in tourism and recreation.
•Research on vegetation and soil impacts of recreational trail infrastructure is limited.•Current research is biased to only a few ecosystems in protected areas in developed nations.•Most responses measured are compositional and are measured at local scales.•There is a need for more landscape-scale, temporal and comparative research on trail impacts.•A greater geographical spread of research is encouraged especially in urban, unprotected or threatened ecosystems.
In the modern economy, international value chains—production, use, and disposal of goods—have global environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims to track these impacts and assess them ...from a systems perspective, identifying strategies for improvement without burden shifting. We review recent developments in LCA, including existing and emerging applications aimed at supporting environmentally informed decisions in policy-making, product development and procurement, and consumer choices. LCA constitutes a viable screening tool that can pinpoint environmental hotspots in complex value chains, but we also caution that completeness in scope comes at the price of simplifications and uncertainties. Future advances of LCA in enhancing regional detail and accuracy as well as broadening the assessment to economic and social aspects will make it more relevant for producers and consumers alike.
This paper presents a review of existing multi-risk assessment concepts and tools applied by organisations and projects providing the basis for the development of a multi-risk methodology in a ...climate change perspective.
Relevant initiatives were developed for the assessment of multiple natural hazards (e.g. floods, storm surges, droughts) affecting the same area in a defined timeframe (e.g. year, season, decade). Major research efforts were focused on the identification and aggregation of multiple hazard types (e.g. independent, correlated, cascading hazards) by means of quantitative and semi-quantitative approaches. Moreover, several methodologies aim to assess the vulnerability of multiple targets to specific natural hazards by means of vulnerability functions and indicators at the regional and local scale.
The overall results of the review show that multi-risk approaches do not consider the effects of climate change and mostly rely on the analysis of static vulnerability (i.e. no time-dependent vulnerabilities, no changes among exposed elements). A relevant challenge is therefore to develop comprehensive formal approaches for the assessment of different climate-induced hazards and risks, including dynamic exposure and vulnerability. This requires the selection and aggregation of suitable hazard and vulnerability metrics to make a synthesis of information about multiple climate impacts, the spatial analysis and ranking of risks, including their visualization and communication to end-users. To face these issues, climate impact assessors should develop cross-sectorial collaborations among different expertise (e.g. modellers, natural scientists, economists) integrating information on climate change scenarios with sectorial climate impact assessment, towards the development of a comprehensive multi-risk assessment process.
•Key definitions of multi-hazard, multi-hazard risk and multi-risk are explored.•Relevant organizations, tools, projects and methodologies are critically reviewed.•Gaps and challenges toward the development of a multi-risk assessment for climate change impacts are discussed.
The study of environmental DNA (eDNA) has the potential to revolutionize biodiversity science and conservation action by enabling the census of species on a global scale in near real time. To achieve ...this promise, technical challenges must be resolved. In this review, we explore the main uses of eDNA as well as the complexities introduced by its misuse. Current eDNA methods require refinement and improved calibration and validation along the entire workflow to lessen false positives negatives. Moreover, there is great need for a better understanding of the "natural history" of eDNA-its origins, state, lifetime, and transportation-and for more detailed insights concerning the physical and ecological limitations of eDNA use. Although eDNA analysis can provide powerful information, particularly in freshwater and marine environments, its impact is likely to be less significant in terrestrial settings. The broad adoption of eDNA tools in conservation will largely depend on addressing current uncertainties in data interpretation.
Hydrogen is a clean, renewable secondary energy source. The development of hydrogen energy is a common goal pursued by many countries to combat the current global warming trend. This paper provides ...an overview of various technologies for hydrogen production from renewable and non-renewable resources, including fossil fuel or biomass-based hydrogen production, microbial hydrogen production, electrolysis and thermolysis of water and thermochemical cycles. The current status of development, recent advances and challenges of different hydrogen production technologies are also reviewed. Finally, we compared different hydrogen production methods in terms of cost and life cycle environmental impact assessment. The current mainstream approach is to obtain hydrogen from natural gas and coal, although their environmental impact is significant. Electrolysis and thermochemical cycle methods coupled with new energy sources show considerable potential for development in terms of economics and environmental friendliness.
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•Various H2 production methods from renewable/non-renewable resources were reviewed.•H2 production methods were compared in terms of cost and life cycle assessment.•The current mainstream approach is to obtain hydrogen from natural gas and coal.•Electrolysis and thermochemical cycle using new clean energy are more sustainable.
The relationship between ecological footprint and economic complexity has important policy implications for environmental sustainability. Furthermore, institutional quality can be an imperative tool ...to ensure environmental sustainability, and it may also moderate the nexus between economic complexity and ecological footprint. Therefore, this study investigates the linkage between economic complexity, institutional quality, disaggregated energy consumption, and economic growth on environmental degradation in emerging countries from 1984 to 2017. In addition, it also probes the moderating effect of institutional quality in the nexus between economic complexity and footprint. To do so, the study applies an advanced econometric approach, cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) estimator, for short-run and long-run estimation, that allows heterogeneity in the slope parameters and dependencies across countries. The analytical outcomes demonstrate that economic complexity increases environmental degradation by exacerbating ecological footprint, while a high level of economic complexity mitigates ecological footprint. The findings of the study unfold that institutional quality supports environmental sustainability by reducing the ecological footprint. The outcomes also indicated that institutional quality promotes environmental sustainability by moderating the nexus between economic complexity and ecological degradation. Moreover, renewable energy is found to decrease ecological footprint, whereas non-renewable energy use leads to intensifying the ecological footprint. It was also found that there is an inverted u-shaped association between ecological footprint and economic growth. Based on the results, the study suggests that emerging countries should accelerate economic complexity along with a stronger institutional framework to combat environmental issues without compromising sustainable economic growth.
•Examined the effect of economic complexity and institutional quality on footprint.•CS-ARDL and CCEMG estimators are employed for emerging countries.•Inverted U-shaped link between economic complexity and environment is found.•Institutional quality (IQ) promotes environmental sustainability.•IQ moderates the relationship between economic complexity and footprint.
Environmental impacts of climate change adaptation Enríquez-de-Salamanca, Álvaro; Díaz-Sierra, Rubén; Martín-Aranda, Rosa M. ...
Environmental impact assessment review,
05/2017, Letnik:
64
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Climate change adaptation reduces adverse effects of climate change but may also have undesirable environmental impacts. However, these impacts are yet poorly defined and analysed in the existing ...literature. To complement this knowledge-gap, we reviewed the literature to unveil the relationship between climate change adaptation and environmental impact assessment, and the degree to which environmental impacts are included in climate change adaptation theory and practice. Our literature review showed that technical, social and economic perspectives on climate change adaptation receive much more attention than the environmental perspective. The scarce interest on the environmental impacts of adaptation may be attributed to (1) an excessive sectoral approach, with dominance of non-environmental perspectives, (2) greater interest in mitigation and direct climate change impacts rather than in adaptation impacts, (3) a tendency to consider adaptation as inherently good, and (4) subjective/preconceived notions on which measures are good or bad, without a comprehensive assessment. Environmental Assessment (EA) has a long established history as an effective tool to include environment into decision-making, although it does not yet guarantee a proper assessment of adaptation, because it is still possible to postpone or even circumvent the processes of assessing the impacts of climate adaptation. Our results suggest that there is a need to address adaptation proactively by including it in EA, to update current policy frameworks, and to demand robust and reliable evaluation of alternatives. Only through the full EA of adaptation measures can we improve our understanding of the primary and secondary impacts of adaptation to global environmental change.
•Climate change adaptation may have undesirable environmental impacts.•The impacts of adaptation are yet poorly analysed in the literature.•There is an excessive sectoral approach to adaptation, mainly non-environmental.
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