Towards understanding governance for sustainable urban water management

Shifting from traditional, large, centralised infrastructure to alternative, distributed technologies is widely accepted as essential for enabling sustainable water management. Despite technical advances in sustainable urban water management over recent decades, the shift from traditional to more sustainable approaches remains slow. Current research on socio-institutional barriers suggests this poor implementation relates to a limited understanding of the different forms of governance needed to support alternative approaches, rather than the potential ineffectiveness of the technologies and practices. While some governance scholars express preferences for ideal hierarchical, market or network governance approaches, others suggest a hybrid of these approaches may be more appropriate for achieving sustainability. Currently, there is limited commentary about the potential characteristics of sustainable urban water governance. To extend the current scholarship, this paper systematically draws on the tacit knowledge of expert sustainability practitioners to identify potential governance characteristics of sustainable urban water management. In comparison with current urban water scholarship, which is supportive of a network governance approach at a conceptual level, the results strongly suggest that sustainability practitioners see the need for hybrid governance arrangements at a practical and operational level. These hybrid arrangements tended to comprise network and hierarchical approaches with market governance instruments. These insights from practitioners to help identify future research needs, focused on examining interaction among governance approaches at a variety of scales and locations.     

A climatic and environmental protection strategy,the road toward a sustainable future

This editorial essay conveys a clear message: The overuse of our fossil fuel resources especially in the North, and the overpopulation in many parts of the South, result in an unacceptable stress to Earth. This manifests itself in some of the most serious threats to mankind, such as global climatic change, environmental degradation, food shortage, hunger, poverty, and migration. It is the purpose of this editorial essay to make a contribution toward a reduction of some of these threats, notably those from climatic change. Specifically, I present a tractable climatic and environmental protection strategy which is designed to give concrete answers to such seemingly simple questions as: What has to be done? (This depends e.g. on the concentration stabilization objective of the Rio Climate Convention, and the global warming ceiling of the Enquete-Commission of the German Parliament). By whom does it have to be done? (This addresses the secret of a successful protection strategy which involves a fair burden sharing among the world's countries). When does it have to be done? (This discusses the problem of setting tractable, i.e. differentiated and binding emission targets). How can it be done? (This relates to individual countries, states, and municipalities. It is demonstrated for Germany how her commitment of a 25 to 30% CO₂ reduction by 2005 can be achieved.) Moreover, the question is addressed: How many people and how much fossil fuel use can our planet stand? The major result is that without self-restraint climate and ecosystem protection cannot be maintained, because it is incompatible with trends in the wasteful fossil fuel use in the North and strong population growth in the South. Finally, a plea is made to share responsibility on the road toward a sustainable future.     

Greenhouse warming or Little Ice Age demise: A critical problem for climatology

A comparative analysis of long-term (several-hundred-year) temperature and carbon dioxide (CO₂) trends suggests that the global warming of the past century is not due to the widely accepted CO₂ greenhouse effect but rather to the natural recovery of the Earth from the global chill of the Little Ice Age, which was both initiated and ended by some unrelated phenomenon, the latter expression of which is the very warming generally attributed to the CO₂ increase of the past century.Notes     

Progress in the scale modeling of urban climate: Review

Summary This paper describes progress made in the scale modeling of urban climate. The studies reviewed are mainly indoor and outdoor experiments that use an array of urban-like flow obstacles or roughness elements such as cubes, blocks, and cylinders. Except for several important and unique studies, the many experiments that use a single obstacle, or those that use an array of elements to create a vegetation-like roughness are excluded from this review. Topics considered include turbulent flow, scalar dispersion, local transfer coefficient, radiative transfer, and the surface energy balance. More than 40 relevant studies are cited, and both significant developments and remaining problems are described. The future application of scale models to obtain a comprehensive understanding of urban climate is also examined, with the focus mainly upon the possibility of outdoor experiments.     

Mitigation scenarios in a world oriented at sustainable development: the role of technology,efficiency and timing

Two different mitigation scenarios for stabilising carbon dioxide concentration at 450 ppmv by 2100 have been developed, based on the recently developed B1 baseline scenario (part of the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios). In both mitigation scenarios, a global uniform carbon tax has been applied as a proxy of pressure on the system to induce a variety of mitigation measures — assuming the presence of some international mechanism for globally cost-efficient implementation of such measures. The two scenarios differ in the timing of mitigation action: early action versus delayed response. Analysis of the scenarios has led to the following findings. First, stabilisation at a carbon dioxide concentration of 450 ppmv from the B1 baseline scenario is technically feasible. In the first quarter/second quarter of this century most of the reduction will come from energy-efficiency and fuel switching options; later on the introduction of carbon-free supply options will account for the bulk of the required reductions. Second, postponing measures foregoes the benefits of learning-by-doing, and, as a result, an early action strategy will at low discount rates lead to reduced mitigation costs compared to delayed response. The most difficult period for the mitigation scenarios is the 2010–2040 period (exact timing depends on early action or delayed response), when ‘bending the curve’ towards a lower carbon emission system will have to be initiated. Finally, while overall costs seems to be limited, there are large differences in costs and benefits for individual regions and sectors for instance in terms of redirection of investments, changing fuel trade patterns and changing energy expenditures.     

The role and limits of strategic framing for promoting sustainable consumption and policy

Strategic issue framing is widely regarded as an effective communication strategy to alter public opinion and citizens’ policy support. However, it is unclear to what extent strategic framing can increase support for ambitious demand-side actions and policies that make the cost of mitigation perceptible in citizens’ everyday lives. Taking an exploratory approach, we conducted qualitative interviews and a comparative framing experiment with 9,750 survey respondents from China, Germany, and the United States. We analyzed strategic issue framing effects in two areas known to be key for increasing the sustainability of consumption: meat/fish consumption, and fossil-fuel car usage. Employing both classical linear regressions and advanced Bayesian sparse estimations, we show that in all three countries widespread arguments in favor of reduced meat/fish consumption and car use are unlikely to substantially alter citizens’ concern, willingness to pay, behavioral intentions and policy support for demand-side action. Our findings suggest that in the absence of a broader behavioral change campaign, strategic issue framing alone is unlikely to be effective in changing entrenched attitudes and behaviors. On its own, it is also unlikely to substantially increase public support for demand-side policies to reduce consumption. More careful research is needed to help policymakers understand the role and limits of different strategic framing techniques.     

Intra-annual variation of atmospheric static stability in the Mediterranean region: a 60-year climatology

The seasonal characteristics of atmospheric static stability in the Mediterranean region are examined, for the 60-year period 1948–2007 and for the four 15-year sub-periods 1948–1962, 1963–1977, 1978–1992 and 1993–2007. S-Mode and T-Mode Factor Analysis are applied to the mean 5-day values of K static stability index over the Mediterranean region. Three dominant modes are revealed for both, the intra-annual variation and the spatial distribution of K-index. It is found that these modes are connected to the seasonal characteristics of the main atmospheric circulation systems affecting the region and the thermal properties of the Earth’s surface (land or sea). The differences among the results of the four sub-periods partially reflect the inter-decadal variations of the strength of the above factors.     

Sustainable urban water management and integrated development in informal settlements: The contested politics of co-production in Santo Domingo,Dominican Republic

Given the implications of global climate change, including higher likelihood of extreme weather events, and the increasing urban density coupled with reduction in permeable surfaces in the Global South, Sustainable Urban Water Management (SUWM) has emerged as a preferred paradigm for stormwater management. However, the implementation of SUWM, which is premised on using vegetation or engineered capture technologies to control runoff at its source in an effort to replicate natural hydrology, is limited by a lack of institutional integration, not merely between administrative organs with responsibility for stormwater management but also between infrastructure departments, planning institutions, communities, and civil society organizations. This is particularly true in informal settlements in the humid tropics, where excessive impermeable surfaces and a lack of adequate solid waste collection exacerbate municipal limitations in stormwater management. This article discusses an effort to integrate local communities, civil society organizations, and local and regional authorities to improve drainage services within the framework of integrated development in the informal settlement of Los Platanitos, Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic. In order to address the drainage and flooding issues in Los Platanitos while also fostering economic development, representatives of community groups, NGOs, local government, and state agencies have developed a participatory planning structure known as a mesa de concertación, or “cooperating table.” The mesa, which was established in 2014, has succeeded in bringing neighborhood, civil society, and government actors to the same “table” as a mechanism for addressing the community’s drainage challenges within the broader context of integrated community development.     

Innovation for sustainable energy from a pro-poor perspective

The development and transfer of clean energy technologies to achieve universal energy access is challenging due to the inherent complexities of the energy sector, and the energy governance and financial systems in developing economies. Innovation is an essential part of successfully addressing these difficulties. Duplicating the energy infrastructure models of developed countries will not be sufficient to meet the needs of poor consumers. To the extent that innovation can accelerate energy access, it is important to understand the specific types of innovations that are necessary and how they might be facilitated. The general features of existing international clean energy innovation systems, which are predominantly driven by the markets and emissions reduction mechanisms of developed and rapidly growing emerging economies, are reviewed and the alignment of these systems to the innovation processes required to extend energy access globally is evaluated. Drawing on the innovation policy literature, the attributes of effective international and domestic energy innovation systems that are pro-poor and the associated policy approaches are identified.