Environmental Risk

Ensuring acceptance of dedicated biomass feedstocks by landowners, agricultural communities, environmental and public interest groups, requires that the environmental benefits, concerns, and risks associated with their production be quantified. Establishment and management measures to benefit soil and water quality are being identified by ongoing research. Field studies are showing that nutrients are retained within the rooting zone of dedicated feedstocks, subsurface herbicide transport does not occur, and off-site chemical transport is minimal compared with traditional agricultural crops. The amounts and timing of fertilizer application were critical to minimizing off- site transport of nutrients. Maintaining soil cover decreased runoff, sediment losses, and nutrient transport compared with traditional agricultural crops. Conversion of traditional croplands to biomass and no-till crop production improved soil quality and soil carbon storage. Subsurface nutrient losses were less fr...

Aims: To examine the psychosocial correlates of substance use among adolescents in six European countries. Design: Cross-sectional school population survey (ESPAD) based on standardized methodological procedures. Setting: High schools in six European countries: ...

Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia are faced with the challenge of developing more efficient and sustainable use of natural resources. In past decades poorly adapted development interventions and inadequate land-use policies aggravated by population growth have weakened pastoral rangeland management. Ignoring pastoralists’ technical and organizational capacities has contributed to progressive land degradation, the erosion of social structures and poverty. The Endogenous Livestock Development concept recognises pastoralists’ indigenous knowledge-based strategies and priorities, and uses them as the bases for further development of their production system and social relations, to be utilized, improved and combined with modern technologies. This paper explores the Borana pastoralists’ adaptive strategies for improved utilization of natural resources and the manner in which they respond to environmental risk and external influences such as water development and new formal administ...

Disputes concerning industrial legacies such as the disposal of toxic wastes illustrate changing pressures on corporations and governments. Business and governments are now confronted with managing the expectations of a society increasingly aware of the social and environmental impacts and risks associated with economic development and demanding more equitable distribution and democratic management of such risks. The closed managerialist decision-making of the powerful bureaucracies and corporations of the industrial era is informed by traditional management theory which cannot provide a framework for the adequate governance of these risks. Recent socio-political theories have conceptualised some key themes that must be addressed in a more fitting approach to governance. We identify more recent management and governance theory which addresses these themes and develop a process-based approach to governance of environmental disputes that allows for the evolving nature of stakeholder relations in a highly complex multiple stakeholder arena.

The public debate on obesity will turn on the question of who or what is responsible for causing and curing this emerging epidemic. Previous research suggests that public health problems become amenable to broad policy solutions when those problems can be reframed in systemic terms—specifically, in terms of involuntary risk, universal risk, environmental risk, and knowingly created risk. This article assesses the framing of obesity in news coverage since 1985 to determine whether obesity is being reframed in these terms. The data suggest that a vigorous frame contest is currently under way between arguments emphasizing personal responsibility for health and arguments emphasizing the social environment, including corporate and public policy. The evidence suggests that one of these frame dimensions (environmental risk) has moved decisively toward the systemic pole, while two frame dimensions (involuntary and knowingly created risk) have not moved toward the systemic pole, and the move...

This paper develops an alternative (or supplementary) theoretical justification for the regulation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social and environmental accounting and reporting (SEAR) to the justification contained in the extant academic literature. It does this by demonstrating how, contrary to the dominant business discourse, increased regulation designed to protect the social and environmental interests of a range of stakeholders can also serve to enhance corporate economic performance and shareholder value.The theoretical perspectives developed in this paper are drawn from Beck's and Giddens’ theories on reflexive modernity, and indicate that reflexively appropriated knowledge can be a key factor in developing socially constructed understandings of the social and environmental risks to a range of stakeholders inherent in business operations.In situations where voluntary self-regulation of CSR and SEAR has been ineffective in preventing corporate actions and decisions that have resulted in damaging social and environmental consequences, processes of reflexivity can substantially increase public awareness of the level of risk they face from corporate operations. Such increased perceptions of risk can lead to a loss of trust in an individual corporation or a whole industrial sector, and this can be exacerbated where stakeholders begin to actively seek out alternative risk discourses to inform themselves about possible risks of which they were previously unaware. We argue that effective statutory regulation could avoid these outcomes, and the loss of shareholder economic value that can flow from these outcomes.

This article builds upon earlier risk narrative research, focusing upon their historical development primarily in the US and UK and drawing upon a wide range of key historical and contemporary moments and examples. It proceeds from an understanding risk not as a thing, but a tool that brings together an understanding of threats, what is threatened and how that might be remedied in the future, increasingly based upon past experience. Risk narratives emerge historically with the growth of concern for the public impact of environmental events, through individuals prepared to articulate this and then challenge the denial of institutional responsibility. The explicit language of environmental risk only emerges in postwar America through challenges to fluoridation, pesticides and consumer safety, however, amidst concern with the greater impact of man-made risk and situated within a radical discourse of systemic blame. The introduction indicates the power and 'independence' of narratives with the important example of 'nuclear catastrophism', and then sets out definitions and location, including the related fields of framing and stigmatization. The article then begins with the absence of narrative in ancient Roman accounts of environmental events and proceeds chronologically through 18 th century beginnings, the development of more critical responses in the 19 th and early 20 th Century and the full emergence of 'risk society' type narratives, to today. After summarising, it finally suggests that if narrative is to be used in risk communication it will require more sophisticated forms that go beyond only exposing risk and insisting upon blame, based upon cultural assumptions of necessary harm from association with the corporate, 'unnatural' and stigmatized.

Development of hilly areas requiring deforestation and increased human activities has raised many environmental issues in the world. This paper presents the results of investigation to assess the parameters that contribute to the risk to environment by reviewing available reports from Penang Island and surrounding areas. Nine parameters were identified that mostly contribute to the environmental risk. These are casualties of people, soil properties, earth coverage, soil grading characteristics, land use suitability, factor of safety, blasting area, distance between proposed structure to slope and geometry of slope. From these parameters, the rated risk approaches were proposed based on the prediction of occurrences of environmental issues. The rated risks were categorised from very high (5) to very low (1) with high, medium and low in between. The assessments were reviewed and evaluated based on rated risk for the chosen parameters. A map was developed identifying areas of environmental risk. The map can be used to quantify risk to the environment based on the parameters due to the proposed development. The overall result shows that areas PD3 of Tanjung Bungah and PD3, PD8 and PD9 of Paya Terubong have high-rated risk. No development area is classified as very high risk and very low-risk areas. These rating approaches can be used to develop potential risk zoning of proposed development areas. From this zoning guideline or standard, the viability of any proposed development can be measured.