Exploring socioeconomic impacts of forest based mitigation projects: Lessons from Brazil and Bolivia

This paper aims to contribute new insights globally and regionally on how carbon forest mitigation contributes to sustainable development in South America. Carbon finance has emerged as a potential policy option to tackling global climate change, degradation of forests, and social development in poor countries. This paper focuses on evaluating the socioeconomic impacts of a set of forest based mitigation pilot projects that emerged under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The paper reviews research conducted in 2001–2002, drawing from empirical data from four pilot projects, derived from qualitative stakeholder interviews, and complemented by policy documents and literature. Of the four projects studied three are located in frontier areas, where there are considerable pressures for conversion of standing forest to agriculture. In this sense, forest mitigation projects have a substantial role to play in the region. Findings suggest however, that all four projects have experienced cumbersome implementation processes specifically, due to weak social objectives, poor communication, as well as time constraints. In three out of four cases, stakeholders highlighted limited local acceptance at the implementation stages. In the light of these findings, we discuss opportunities for implementation of future forest based mitigation projects in the land use sector.

Sustainable urban metabolism as a link between bio-physical sciences and urban planning: the BRIDGE project

Urban metabolism considers a city as a system with flows of energy and material between it and the environment. Recent advances in bio-physical sciences provide methods and models to estimate local scale energy, water, carbon and pollutant fluxes. However, good communication is required to provide this new knowledge and its implications to endusers (such as urban planners, architects and engineers). The FP7 project BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban plannIng Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabolism) aimed to address this gap by illustrating the advantages of considering these issues in urban planning. The BRIDGE Decision Support System (DSS) aids the evaluation of the sustainability of urban planning interventions. The Multi Criteria Analysis approach adopted provides a method to cope with the complexity of urban metabolism. In consultation with targeted end-users, objectives were defined in relation to the interactions between the environmental elements (fluxes of energy, water, carbon and pollutants) and socioeconomic components (investment costs, housing, employment, etc.) of urban sustainability. The tool was tested in five case study cities: Helsinki, Athens, London, Florence and Gliwice; and sub-models were evaluated using flux data selected. This overview of the BRIDGE project covers the methods and tools used to measure and model the physical flows, the selected set of sustainability indicators, the methodological framework for evaluating urban planning alternatives and the resulting DSS prototype.

Flood inundation dynamics and socioeconomic vulnerability under environmental change

Floods are a major threat to human existence and historically have both caused the collapse of civilizations and forced the emergence of new cultures. The physical processes of flooding are complex. Increased population, climate variability, change in catchment and channel management, modified landuse and land cover, and natural change of floodplains and river channels all lead to changes in flood dynamics, and as a direct or indirect consequence, social welfare of humans. Section 5.16.1 explores the risks and benefits brought about by floods and reviews the responses of floods and floodplains to climate and landuse change. Section 5.08.2 reviews the existing modeling tools, and the top–down and bottom–up modeling frameworks that are used to assess impacts on future floods. Section 5.08.3 discusses changing flood risk and socioeconomic vulnerability based on current trends in emerging or developing countries and presents an alternative paradigm as a pathway to resilience. Section 5.08.4 concludes the chapter by stating a portfolio of integrated concepts, measures, and avant-garde thinking that would be required to sustainably manage future flood risk.

Forecasting US output growth using leading indicators: an appraisal using MIDAS models

We evaluate the predictive power of leading indicators for output growth at horizons up to 1 year. We use the MIDAS regression approach as this allows us to combine multiple individual leading indicators in a parsimonious way and to directly exploit the information content of the monthly series to predict quarterly output growth. When we use real-time vintage data, the indicators are found to have significant predictive ability, and this is further enhanced by the use of monthly data on the quarter at the time the forecast is made

The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale

This paper presents an assessment of the implications of climate change for global river flood risk. It is based on the estimation of flood frequency relationships at a grid resolution of 0.5 × 0.5°, using a global hydrological model with climate scenarios derived from 21 climate models, together with projections of future population. Four indicators of the flood hazard are calculated; change in the magnitude and return period of flood peaks, flood-prone population and cropland exposed to substantial change in flood frequency, and a generalised measure of regional flood risk based on combining frequency curves with generic flood damage functions. Under one climate model, emissions and socioeconomic scenario (HadCM3 and SRES A1b), in 2050 the current 100-year flood would occur at least twice as frequently across 40 % of the globe, approximately 450 million flood-prone people and 430 thousand km2 of flood-prone cropland would be exposed to a doubling of flood frequency, and global flood risk would increase by approximately 187 % over the risk in 2050 in the absence of climate change. There is strong regional variability (most adverse impacts would be in Asia), and considerable variability between climate models. In 2050, the range in increased exposure across 21 climate models under SRES A1b is 31–450 million people and 59 to 430 thousand km2 of cropland, and the change in risk varies between −9 and +376 %. The paper presents impacts by region, and also presents relationships between change in global mean surface temperature and impacts on the global flood hazard. There are a number of caveats with the analysis; it is based on one global hydrological model only, the climate scenarios are constructed using pattern-scaling, and the precise impacts are sensitive to some of the assumptions in the definition and application.

Indicators to monitor protected area sustainability: the INNOVA indicator handbook

The Mediterranean is an important eco-region, however, it suffers from the lack of common procedures for the management and monitoring of its protected areas sustainability. The INNOVA project addresses this issue by developing a procedure namely PASEMP as well as tools which can assist Protected Areas Managers and responsible authorities to develop and implement a monitoring strategy for their areas. This handbook is proposed as a flexible tool, or a reference text which should be used in combination with the PASEMP guidelines to identify indicators, but also contains guidance on how to implement and report the monitoring strategy results.

Probability functions to build composite indicators: a methodology to measure environmental impacts of genetically modified crops

There is an on-going debate on the environmental effects of genetically modified crops to which this paper aims to contribute. First, data on environmental impacts of genetically modified (GM) and conventional crops are collected from peer-reviewed journals, and secondly an analysis is conducted in order to examine which crop type is less harmful for the environment. Published data on environmental impacts are measured using an array of indicators, and their analysis requires their normalisation and aggregation. Taking advantage of composite indicators literature, this paper builds composite indicators to measure the impact of GM and conventional crops in three dimensions: (1) non-target key species richness, (2) pesticide use, and (3) aggregated environmental impact. The comparison between the three composite indicators for both crop types allows us to establish not only a ranking to elucidate which crop is more convenient for the environment but the probability that one crop type outperforms the other from an environmental perspective. Results show that GM crops tend to cause lower environmental impacts than conventional crops for the analysed indicators.

Sustainability assessment indicators and methodology for intelligent buildings

The sustainable intelligent building is a building that has the best combination of environmental, social, economic and technical values. And its sustainability assessment is related with system engineering methods and multi-criteria decision-making. Therefore firstly, the wireless monitoring system of sustainable parameters for intelligent buildings is achieved; secondly, the indicators and key issues based on the “whole life circle” for sustainability of intelligent buildings are researched; thirdly, the sustainable assessment model identified on the structure entropy and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is proposed.

On the predictive content of leading indicators: the case of U.S. real estate markets

This paper employs a probit and a Markov switching model using information from the Conference Board Leading Indicator and other predictor variables to forecast the signs of future rental growth in four key U.S. commercial rent series. We find that both approaches have considerable power to predict changes in the direction of commercial rents up to two years ahead, exhibiting strong improvements over a naïve model, especially for the warehouse and apartment sectors. We find that while the Markov switching model appears to be more successful, it lags behind actual turnarounds in market outcomes whereas the probit is able to detect whether rental growth will be positive or negative several quarters ahead.

Information content and forecasting ability of sentiment indicators: case of real estate market

We evaluate a number of real estate sentiment indices to ascertain current and forward-looking information content that may be useful for forecasting demand and supply activities. Analyzing the dynamic relationships within a Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) framework and using the quarterly US data over 1988-2010, we test the efficacy of several sentiment measures by comparing them with other coincident economic indicators. Overall, our analysis suggests that the sentiment in real estate convey valuable information that can help predict changes in real estate returns. These findings have important implications for investment decisions, from consumers' as well as institutional investors' perspectives.

On the threshold of adulthood: a new approach for the use of maturation indicators to assess puberty in adolescents from medieval England

Objectives: This study provides the first large scale analysis of the age at which adolescents in medieval England entered and completed the pubertal growth spurt. This new method has implications for expanding our knowledge of adolescent maturation across different time periods and regions. Methods: In total, 994 adolescent skeletons (10-25 years) from four urban sites in medieval England (AD 900-1550) were analysed for evidence of pubertal stage using new osteological techniques developed from the clinical literature (i.e. hamate hook development, CVM, canine mineralisation, iliac crest ossification, radial fusion). Results: Adolescents began puberty at a similar age to modern children at around 10-12 years, but the onset of menarche in girls was delayed by up to 3 years, occurring around 15 for most in the study sample and 17 years for females living in London. Modern European males usually complete their maturation by 16-18 years; medieval males took longer with the deceleration stage of the growth spurt extending as late as 21 years. Conclusions: This research provides the first attempt to directly assess the age of pubertal development in adolescents during the tenth to seventeenth centuries. Poor diet, infections, and physical exertion may have contributed to delayed development in the medieval adolescents, particularly for those living in the city of London. This study sheds new light on the nature of adolescence in the medieval period, highlighting an extended period of physical and social transition.

Impact of socioeconomic and clinical factors on child oral health-related quality of life (COHRQoL)

Child oral health-related quality of life (COHRQoL) has been increasingly assessed; however, few studies appraised the influence of socioeconomic status on COHRQoL in developing countries. This study assessed the relationship of COHRQoL with socioeconomic backgrounds and clinical factors. This study followed a cross-sectional design, with a multistage random sample of 792 schoolchildren aged 12 years, representative of Santa Maria, a southern city in Brazil. Participants completed the Brazilian version of the Child Perceptions Questionnaire (CPQ(11-14)), their parents or guardians answered questions on socioeconomic status, and a dental examination provided information on the prevalence of caries, dental trauma and occlusion. The assessment of association used hierarchically adjusted Poisson regression models. Higher impacts on COHRQoL were observed for children presenting with untreated dental caries (RR 1.20; 95% CI 1.07-1.35) and maxillary overjet (RR 1.19; 95% CI 1.02-1.40). Socioeconomic factors also associated with COHRQoL; poorer scores were reported by children whose mothers have not completed primary education (RR 1.30; 95% CI 1.17-1.44) and those with lower household income (RR 1.13; 95% CI 1.02-1.26). Poor socioeconomic standings and poor dental status have a negative impact on COHRQoL; reducing health inequalities may demand dental programmes and policies targeting deprived population.

Risks Associated With Tendinitis: Effects From Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Psychological Status Among Brazilian Workers

Background Self-reported tendinitis/tenosynovitis was evaluated by gender, age group, skin color, family income, and educational and psychological status. Methods The study was carried out in a representative sample of formally contracted Brazilian workers from a household survey. A total of 54,660 participants were included. Occupations were stratified according to estimated prevalences of self-reported injuries. Non-conditional logistic regression was performed, and all variables were analyzed in two occupational groups. Results The overall prevalence rate of tendinitis/tenosynovitis was 3.1%: 5.5% in high-prevalence occupations (n=10,726); and 2.5% in low-prevalence occupations (n=43,934). White female workers between the ages of 45 and 64 years and at a higher socioeconomic level were more likely to report tendinitis/tenosynovitis regardless of their occupational category. An adjusted OR = 3.59 [95% CI: 3.15-4.09] was found between tendinitis/tenosynovitis and psychological status. Conclusion Among formally contracted Brazilian workers, higher income can imply greater physical and psychological demands that, regardless of occupational stratum, increase the risk of tendinitis/tenosynovitis. Am. J. Ind. Med. 53:72-79, 2010. (C) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.