Different Shades Of Green Research Articles

Different Shades of Green: An Analysis of the Occupational Health and Safety Risks Faced by Wind Farm Workers

The growth of the wind power sector has been marked by environmental, economic, and political drivers. Its starring role is also visible in the emergence of the so-called “green jobs”. Notwithstanding, its evolution ought not to compromise issues related to occupational risks. This exploratory study examines psychosocial risks in the operation and maintenance of onshore wind turbines in a leading Portuguese company. We conducted interviews with main stakeholders (human resources, OHS professionals, and team leaders); developed an “activity diary” for the operation and maintenance technicians to describe their activity and perceived impacts on health, complemented with collective interviews; and applied the Work and Health Survey. The results revealed the following particular risks and health impacts: working under adverse weather conditions, working at heights and in confined spaces, spending long work hours inside of the nacelles to achieve an optimum balance between favourable wind slots to intervene and avoiding additional trips up and down the wind turbines without lifts (70–120 m), and the feeling of early ageing. At a time when these workers are striving for recognition of their profession as a “rapid wear profession”, it is a pivotal moment to discuss these results to guarantee sustainable conditions for future generations of workers.

Different Shades of Green: An Analysis of the EU Issuers' Disclosure Regulation and Its Effectiveness on Limiting 'Greenwashing'

Different Shades of Green: An Analysis of the EU Issuers' Disclosure Regulation and Its Effectiveness on Limiting 'Greenwashing'

Different Shades of Green in Politics: The Greens Party of Germany and Turkey Green Party

Different Shades of Green in Politics: The Greens Party of Germany and Turkey Green Party

A Model of Organizational Symbolism: Understanding the Different Shades of Green

Despite growing institutional pressures for greater transparency, accountability and sustainability in socio-environmental terms, a number of organizations respond to stakeholder demands and expectations in a symbolic way. We develop a richer conceptual understanding of how, when, and why organizations pursue this strategy. Specifically, we characterize the behavioral antecedents and the resulting heterogeneity in organizational symbolism. We use the context of “greenwashing” - an often monolithically perceived, yet fundamentally strategic and complex organizational phenomenon. Drawing on the concepts of conformity and compliance, symbolic and substantive actions, our model considers this heterogeneity (i.e., the “different shades of green”) based on the materiality of the issue and organizational costs and benefits of resource mobilization (or acquisition) to respond to the issue. More specifically, we suggest a model whereby firms decide whether and in what way to decouple their response to a specific issue based on its materiality, and a calculus of the costs and benefits associated with the use of organizational resources and capabilities versus the costs of inaction. We extend the basic model by considering the moderating role of institutional pressures and organizational characteristics. We offer several propositions for future research to unpack organizational symbolism, its various degrees and antecedents.

Different Shades of Green: African Literature, Environmental Justice, and Political Ecology

Different Shades of Green: African Literature, Environmental Justice, and Political Ecology

Different Shades of Green: African Literature, Environmental Justice and Political Ecology by Byron Caminero-Santangelo (review)

Byron Caminero-Santangelo. Different Shades of Green: Literature, Environmental Justice and Political Ecology. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2014. Pp. x, 214. US$27.50. Ecocriticism has always had an ambivalent relationship to literature. As Byron Caminero-Santangelo suggests in Different Shades of Green: Literature, Environmental Justice and Political Ecology, the continent has long been regarded as lacking traditions--a prejudice that colors the reception of many texts. Within ecocriticism, careful attention to writers is hard to find, while ecocriticism's place within literary studies is marginal at best. Different Shades of Green thus sets out to not only show the importance of ecocriticism to literary studies but also demonstrate how the study of literature can help us re-examine key assumptions about the of both and literary texts. As Caminero-Santangelo explains, an emphasis on the social and political aspects of problems, rather than on nature itself, distinguishes literature. African writing, he writes, tends to prioritize social justice; lived environments; livelihoods; and/ or the relationships among practice, representations of nature, power, and privilege (7). Many of the environmental texts Caminero-Santangelo explores are therefore less overtly concerned with the environment than one might expect--Wangarii Maathai and Ken Saro-Wiwa figure prominently here, but so do many figures less known to ecocriticism like Okot p'Bitek, Camara Laye, Ng[??]g[??] wa Thiong'o, and Chinua Achebe. If the inclusion of such writers seems unorthodox, that is precisely the point. By arguing for the ecocritical significance of the foregoing authors, Caminero-Santangelo intends to show how African literature can challenge dominant Western assumptions regarding environments and environmentalism and to interrogate widely accepted definitions of writing and the underlying constructions of and conservation embedded in them (4). Different Shades of Green therefore expands the canon and in many respects the boundaries of ecocriticism itself. For Caminero-Santangelo, ecocriticism in literature is not interested primarily in beautiful landscapes and charismatic megafauna but the social and political contexts that make up the environments with which his texts are concerned. However, Different Shades of Green is as much about the practice of ecocriticism in literary studies as about new ecocritical readings of texts. The notion of postcolonial regional becomes important for Caminero-Santangelo. As he explains, [a] regional focus need not result in a provincializing vision, a narrowing of concerns, or its own suppression of difference at smaller scales. While emphasizing regional alterity that cannot be subsumed by a more universal imperial or condition, ... regional particularism still challenges imperial discourse's suppression of global entanglement in the representation of difference. (9; emphasis in original) Different Shades of Green thus critiques imperialism from the perspective of literary and studies in order to show how attention to texts and contexts can help us think about problems on both local and global scales. Indeed, Caminero-Santangelo is concerned with not only how texts [bring] the local and the global together but also . …

Different shades of green: African literature, environmental justice, and political ecology

As the first published monograph on African environmental literature, Byron Caminero-Santangelo’s Different Shades of Green is an important intervention into the thriving field of postcolonial ecocriticism. Building on his earlier coedited essay collection, Environment at the Margins: Literary and Environmental Studies in Africa (2011), this interdisciplinary work draws on political ecology, environmental history, and environmental activism in order to provide a timely new assessment of the depth and breadth of environmental engagement in African letters. Caminero-Santangelo’s project raises two key questions, both of which he answers with clarity and conviction. The first queries whether ecocriticism offers a viable framework for the exposition of African literature, given the field’s longstanding affiliation with Western environmentalisms that have tended to idealize an untouched nature at the expense of acknowledging the mutually shaping forces of indigenous peoples, colonial conquest, migration, and globalization. Conscious of this precedent, Caminero-Santangelo’s first chapter on “The Nature of Africa” usefully critiques the “environmentalism of the affluent” to be found in “settler pastorals” and travel writing by such authors as Karen Blixen, Elspeth Huxley, and Paul Theroux, whose privileging of wildlife conservation and landscape preservation is endorsed by many so-called “first-wave” ecocritics. In its place, he advocates an ecocritical framework that draws on political ecology in its insistence on the interconnectedness of environmental issues and political questions. This allows him to make a persuasive argument for a more inclusive definition of African environmental writing. Taking as “environmental earlier and more recent African writing that is outside or marginal to dominant notions of environmentalism,” Caminero-Santangelo effectively “challenge[s] hegemonic notions of what that term might mean” (30). If social struggles are inseparable from ecological transformations and vice versa, as he argues, then a wide range of African texts can be seen to develop an ecological sensibility, even those that do not provide an explicit or lengthy engagement with environmental concerns. For example, environmental degradation in Ngũgĩ’s A Grain of Wheat has often been read as a symbol of post-independence social decay. However, Caminero-Santangelo’s interdisciplinary framework suggests that the novel’s linkage of a seemingly anthropocentric concern with indigenous land rights to environmental problems such as soil erosion and infertility is more “historically and ecologically astute” than previously considered (52). Both emerge within the shared context of a harmful colonialism that degrades both Gĩkũyũ culture and local natural resources. By usefully expanding the scope of ecocriticism to include a broad array of African texts, Different Shades of Green raises a second question of scale that demands a methodological solution. How can postcolonial ecocriticism balance detailed analysis of local environmental concerns and their literary expression

"Different Shades of Green: Envy from the Perspectives of Individuals, Groups, and Organizations"

This symposium showcases recent research on envy and its impact on organizations and employees. Our four papers explore two pressing topics in current envy research – the relationship between envy ...

Different Shades of Green: Comparative Study on Nature Relatedness and Ecologic Consciousness among South Korean, Swiss, and Czech Students

How concerned are today’s students about environmental issues? Do they sense urgency for change towards a more environmentally compatible life? Who should act and what impact does one’s individual action have? And last but not least, does ecological consciousness and action go together with a sense of nature relatedness? More than 1600 South Korean, Swiss, and Czech students have participated in this comparative survey. Nearly all of them affirm that ecological considerations influence their daily behavior. Whereas most of them see the main agent of change in themselves, the impact of one’s individual action, however, is seen differently along the East and West cultural divide. Also when it comes to one’s personal sense of closeness to nature, we can observe an East West cultural variation. On average the South Koreans reveal a greater closeness towards nature than Swiss and Czech students, this despite the fact that they have the largest percentage in urban background, and consequently reveal the least physical familiarity with the natural world. In our effort to interpret these results, we have included a discussion about the diverging cultural background of the three sample groups. While they all agree on the urgency of the issue and the necessity of a more pro-environmental change, depending on their culture their ideas about the right means to introduce a change in behavior differ.

Different Shades of Green: a Comparative Study on Nature Relatedness and Ecological Consciousness among South Korean, Swiss, and Czech Students

How concerned are today's students about environmental issues? Do they sense urgency for change towards a more environmentally compatible life? Who should act and what impact does one's individual action have? And last but not least, do ecological consciousness and action go together with a sense of nature relatedness? More than 1,600 South Korean, Swiss, and Czech students have participated in this comparative survey. Nearly all of them affirm that ecological considerations influence their daily behavior. Most of them see the main agent of change in themselves; the impact of one's individual action, however, is seen differently along the East and West cultural divide. Also when it comes to one's personal sense of closeness to nature, we can observe an East West cultural variation. On average, the South Koreans reveal a greater closeness towards nature than Swiss and Czech students, this despite the fact that they have the largest percentage in urban background, and consequently reveal the least physical familiarity with the natural world. In our effort to interpret these results, we have included a discussion about the diverging cultural background of the three sample groups. While they all agree on the urgency of the issue and the necessity of more pro-environmental change, depending on their culture, their ideas about the right means to introduce a change in behavior differ.

Different Shades of Green: Environmental Management in Hotels in Accra

AbstractThis paper assesses the environmental management practices of different categories of hotels in Accra, Ghana. Managers of 200 hotels were surveyed, employing the stratified random sampling method. Results of the study indicate significant differences in the extent of environmental management of the hotels suggesting that the better the quality of a hotel, the better the environmental management performance. Suggestions are made towards improvement in waste management and voluntary environmental programmes in small and medium hotels that did not perform well in those areas of environmental management Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Different Shades of Green: A Case Study of Support for Wind Farms in the Rural Midwest

Benton County, in north-central Indiana, USA has successfully sited more than 500 turbines. To understand Benton County's acceptance of wind farms, a holistic case study was conducted that included a document review, a survey of local residents and interviews with key stakeholders. Survey questionnaires were sent to 750 residents asking questions about attitudes toward the wind farms, perceived benefits and impacts from the wind farms, environmental attitudes, and demographic information. Key stakeholders were also interviewed for a deeper understanding of the historical timeline and community acceptance of the wind farm development. While there is limited opposition to the turbines, on the whole the community presents a front of acceptance. Financial, rather than environmental, benefits are the main reason for the acceptance. Although significant in other case studies, transparency and participation do not play a large role in Benton County's acceptance. Most residents are not concerned with either visual impacts or noise from the wind turbines. More concrete benefits to the community, such as reduced energy bills for county residents, could help to extend acceptance even further within the community. Although there are concerns about the acceptance of wind farms and the impacts of those farms on local residents in both peer-reviewed literature and popular media, we found little evidence of those concerns in Benton County. Instead, we found Benton County to be a community largely accepting of wind farms.