Areas Of Environmental Issues Research Articles

Total and bioavailable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in unused and operated heat-not-burn tobacco products and conventional cigarettes

Tobacco product waste poses a global environmental issue, affecting urban and coastal areas alike. The present studies report, for the first time, the total and bioavailable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) concentrations in unused and operated heat-not-burn (HnBs) tobacco products. To enable direct comparisons, identical sets of studies were conducted using conventional cigarettes (CCs). Five low-molecular PAHs were determined in HnBs at total concentrations that were of the same order before and after operation (Σ5PAH = 47.37 ± 3.44 ng unit−1 and Σ5PAH = 69.36 ± 5.78 ng unit−1 in unused and used HnBs, respectively). The incomplete combustion of organics during smoking of CCs, yielded substantially higher amounts of PAHs with their sum (Σ10PAHs = 1449 ± 113 ng unit−1) being >20 times larger than those in HnBs. The tobacco and filter were the most contaminated parts in HnBs. In unused CCs, tobacco had the highest PAHs load and after smoking, the spent filter was the most contaminated part, containing ∼80% of the total amount of PAHs. Naphthalene was the most abundant PAH detected in all tobacco products. Despite the high total PAH concentrations found in smoked CCs, the sums of the bioavailable PAH concentrations were of the same order in all tested tobacco products (Σ5PAH = 61.38 ± 1.79 ng unit−1 in unused HnBs, Σ5PAH = 70.87 ± 7.67 ng unit−1 in used HnBs, Σ4PAH = 66.92 ± 5.95 ng unit−1 in unused CCs, and Σ6PAH = 47.94 ± 1.26 ng unit−1 in smoked CCs). This finding was related to smoking affecting PAHs’ leachability from CCs and delaying their desorption from the solid matrix. Adjusting the pH, salt and humic acids content at environmentally relevant values did not affect PAHs leaching at 24 h of soaking. Finally, the leaching behavior of PAHs in natural waters (river water, rainwater, and seawater) was found similar to that in ultrapure water, experimentally verifying the ability of tobacco product waste to leach PAHs into the aquatic environment.

The Assessment of Environmental Terrorism in The Context of “Security”: Lesson from Eastern Black Sea Region

20. yüzyılın son çeyreği yerel ve bölgesel ekolojik sorunlarının sınır ötesi etkilerinin küresel bir tehdit olarak kabul edilmeye başlandığı yıllara tekabül etmektedir. Ekolojik sorunların sınır ötesi etkileri yanı sıra karşılıklı bağımlılık, karmaşıklık ve belirsizlik ihtiva etmesi gibi özelliklere sahip olması sebebiyle yerelden küresele uzanan yeni bir güvenlik anlayışını (çevresel güvenlik) zaruri kılmıştır. Kaynak kıtlığı ya da bolluğu durumunun güvenlik ile ilişkilendirilmesinde “çevre” ve “güvenlik” kavramlarını bütünleşik olarak tahlil edilmeden rasyonel çıkarımların yapılaması zordur. Diğer taraftan çevresel terör ve terörizm olguları geçmiş dönemlerde olduğu gibi günümüzde de akademik ve politik alanlarda tartışılan güvenlik konuları arasında değerlendirilmektedir. Bu kapsamda güvenlik çalışmalarının odak noktasını oluşturan terör ve terörizm olgularının çevreye ilişkin boyutlarının kapsamlı olarak değerlendirilmesini mümkün kılan sentez çalışmalara ihtiyaç duyulmaktadır. Bu konuda yapılmış çalışmalar çevresel terörizm ve güvenlik konularının kesişim alanlarını aydınlatması bakımından son derece yetersizdir. Pratik açıdan ise çevresel terörizme karşı alınan önlemler yeni bir bakış açısı ile etkin bir politik ve hukuki formulasyonunu gerekli kılmaktadır. Bu kapsamda çalışmanın temel amacı çevresel terörizmin güvenlik açısından izdüşümlerini “Doğu Karadeniz Bölgesi” özelinde incelemektir. Çalışma bu amacı iki farklı aşamada gerçekleştirmektedir. İlk aşamada çevrenin güvenlik ve terörizm olgular ile ilişkisinin düşünsel ve kavramsal olarak aydınlatılması ile gerçekleşmektedir. İkinci aşamada ise çevresel terörizmin güvenlik anlayışı içerisinde nerde ve nasıl konumlandırılacağına ilişkin değerlendirmeler yer almaktadır. Çalışma sonuçları erişilebilmesi kolay ve az maliyetli olan çevresel unsurlarının, etkili ve kalıcı sonuçları oluşturabilen bir araç ya da hedefe dönüşme potansiyeline sahip olması sebebiyle güvenlik anlayışının son aşamada düğümlendiği “insan güvenliği”nden “ekolojik güvenlik”e doğru yeni bir boyut kazandığını ortaya koymaktadır.

Attitude of Peri-Urban Households towards Environmental Protection in Rivers State, Nigeria

The study focused on the Attitude of peri-urban households towards environmental protection in Rivers State. Specifically, the study described the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, identified areas of environmental issues, identified the peri-urban households’ sources of information on environmental issues, ascertained the strategies adopted by periurban households for environmental protection, examined attitude of peri-urban households towards environmental protection strategies and identified the factors affecting the periurban household’s attitude towards environmental protection strategies in the study area. Multi-stage sampling was used to select a sample of 200 respondents. Data were collected with the use of questionnaire and analyzed using frequency, percentage and mean. The hypotheses were tested using Regression Analysis and t -test and results obtained were 6.60 and 0.33 which implied that there was significant relationship between peri-urban households’ sources of information on environmental issues in the study area, a nd there is no significant difference between peri-urban households’ attitude towards environmental protection in the three senatorial district, respectively. The result revealed that 61.51% of the respondents were male, 63.0% of them were married with mean age of 47 years old. Air, water, soil and other forms of pollution ( ̅ 3.57),increased threat on public health ( ̅ ), loss of biodiversity ( ̅ , ocean becoming more acidic ( ̅ ), rapid and steady depletion of atmospheric ozone layer ( ̅ , increase cases of deforestation ( ̅ etc were agreed by the respondents to be environmental degradation issues in the study area. The respondents agreed that their sources of information on environmental issues were mostly radio programmes ( ̅ , print media ( ̅ ), television programmes ( ̅ friends and neighbours ( ̅ The strategies adopted by the respondents for environmental protection include reuse of nylon and other carry bags, protect and use natural resources in an appropriate and cost effective manner. The factors affecting respondents attitude towards environmental protection were media and family influence. It was recommended that Peri-urban, urban and rural dwellers should adopt the various environmental protection strategies to ensure the safety of the environment.

Assessing COVID-19's "known unknowns": potential impacts on marine plastic pollution and fishing in the South China Sea.

This paper examines three of the COVID-19 pandemic’s “known” impacts to date: its widespread and fundamental altering of government policy priorities; record low oil prices and its role in further escalating already heightened levels of strategic competition in East Asia and weakening of the existing multilateral order. The paper then uses some of the observed outcomes of these changes under the pandemic so far, in addition to additional evidence and causal linkages drawn from past research, to assess COVID-19’s potential, but still unknown, longer term influence on marine plastic pollution and overfishing in the South China Sea, two of East Asia’s most pressing marine environmental problems. In addition to flagging potential COVID-19 linked issues of concern in these two important policy areas, this approach also may assist further inquiry into the pandemic’s still unknown potential to undermine environmental protection and regulatory efforts in other environmental issue areas.

Working across languages/cultures in international and environmental communication fieldwork

ABSTRACT As environmental communication grows as an area of study, international and environmental justice issues increasingly need attention. Sustainability, climate change, habitat erosion, water access, and a number of other issues disproportionately affect rural and marginalized communities around the globe. For researchers working in and with such communities, the ethics of interviewing local and/or non-academic people requires much thought and consideration. One of the authors has worked in Indonesian and Spanish, and the other in Hindi, Nepali, and Bengali. Questions such as what voice means, in relationship to postcolonial/decolonial theories, are especially important. Furthermore, how such interviews are recorded, transcribed, and then translated also raise significant ethical considerations. This paper explores how environmental communication researchers might rethink approaches to ethnography and interviews across cultures, languages, and other aspects of difference.

Havza Yönetiminde Bölgesel Elektrik Ticareti Modeli: Aral ve Kura-Aras Havzaları Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme

Transboundary river basin management problems have been on top of the agenda of Central Asian politics, especially after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This issue area has was given priority in the global political-environmental debates since the emergence of the Aral Sea problem during the Soviet era. In contrast, the environmental issues regarding the Kura-Araks river basin were relatively less discussed in the literature and thus have been paid less attention in the global political -environmental debates. This paper compares the environmental and economic issue areas of the water management and hydroelectricity generation in the Kura-Araks river basin and the Aral Sea basin and recommends solutions based on dyad-level regional electricity trade schemes based on regional cooperation models.

Implementation of Environmental Issues in Teaching the Subject of Technical Education at Primary Schools

Nowadays, environmental issues belong to frequently discussed topics. Our article focuses on the implementation of environmental issues in teaching the subject of Technical education at primary schools in the Slovak Republic. Our research sample consisted of 123 students, graduates of primary schools in Trnava, Trenčín and Bratislava regions after they started to study at secondary vocational schools. We wanted to find out more information about their experience related to working with tools, instruments and machines, to developing their creativity, designing and manufacturing of their hand-made products. Our main questions dealt with environmental issues and their acquisition in the subject of Technical education. Up to 55.5 % of respondents stated that they did not learn, or they did not remember the area of environmental issues within the given subject. 7.8 % of respondents remembered mainly the topic of waste sorting out of all environmental issues discussed at the lessons of Technical education. In general, environmental aspects as cross-cutting topics of the educational process can be adequately demonstrated and implemented in the subject of Technical education. However, this implementation also requires a new conceptual approach to the teachers` education and the lifelong education of the whole society, as well.

Synthesis, characterization and applications of poly-aliphatic amine dendrimers and dendrons

In the current era, the dendrimers have vast potential applications in the area of electronics, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, engineering products, photonics, drug delivery, catalysis, electronic devices, nanotechnologies and environmental issues. This review recaps the synthesis, characterization and applications of poly-aliphatic amine dendrimers.

Sociologies of Personal Relationships and the Challenge of Climate Change

The substantive concerns and theoretical insights of sociologies of family, intimate and personal life ought to place this body of work in closer dialogue with environmental sociology over the ‘big issue’ of climate change. However, its research active practitioners typically have a narrower repertoire of engagement with global issues and those who are outside the topic area often miss the value of its contributions. This article discusses common ground between this specialist area and sociologies of environmental issues in unpacking processes of social change through empirically grounded theoretical work. This includes the renewed theoretical emphasis on relationality, empirically based critique of the ‘individualisation thesis’, uses of ‘practice’ to transcend ‘micro’–‘macro’ and ‘social’–‘natural’ divisions, and interest in I/we boundary shifts. More fully recognising the potential of this overlapping territory may help leverage more effective sociological responses to the global challenge of climate change.

When Do International Treaties Matter for Domestic Environmental Legislation?

While thousands of international treaties have been concluded, it remains unclear whether they have been implemented. This article investigates the relationship between the conclusion of environment-related international treaties and the adoption of domestic environmental legislation. Thanks to data sets that are considerably more comprehensive and fine-grained than those previously used, we can analyze the direct link to environmental legislation rather than the less direct link to environmental outcomes. Moreover, we can disaggregate for specific environmental issue areas. Our results suggest a positive relationship between domestic environmental legislation with both international environmental agreements and preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with environmental provisions. This link is more robust for PTAs, mostly present in developing countries, more pronounced before rather than after the treaties’ entry into force, and shows significant variation depending on the issue area. These findings contribute to the literature on environmental regime effectiveness and the domestic impact of treaties.

Negotiating environmental protection in trade agreements: A regime shift or a tactical linkage?

The prolific literature on the relationship between the trade and environmental regimes suffers from three shortcomings. First, it myopically focuses on multilateral institutions, while the vast majority of trade and environmental agreements are bilateral. Second, when studies consider preferential trade agreements’ (PTAs) environmental provisions, they are often limited to USA and EU agreements. Third, it examines how the trade and environmental regimes negatively affect each other, leaving aside their potential synergies. Conversely, this article assesses the potential contribution of PTAs to international environmental law. Several PTAs include a full-fledged chapter devoted to environmental protection and contain detailed commitments on various environmental issue areas. One possible scenario is that countries that are dissatisfied with traditional settings for environmental lawmaking engage in a process of “regime shifting” toward PTAs to move forward on their environmental agenda. The alternative is that PTAs’ environmental provisions are the result of “tactical linkages” and merely duplicate extant obligations from international environmental law to serve political goals. We shed light on this question by building on two datasets of 690 PTAs and 2343 environmental treaties. We investigate four potential contributions of PTAs to environmental law: the diffusion of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), the diffusion of existing environmental rules, the design of new environmental rules, and the legal prevalence of MEAs. The article concludes that the contribution of PTAs to the strengthening of states’ commitments under international environmental law is very modest on the four dimensions examined.

Policy Integration for Sustainable Development through Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Abstract Over the past three decades, policy integration has become a key objective for guiding and harmonizing policies for sustainable development. Most recently, the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals have added new impetus to efforts of integrating competing objectives of environmental sustainability, social development, and economic growth, as well as of integrating issue-specific environmental policies on climate change and terrestrial and marine biodiversity. While multilateral environmental agreements are important international instruments for achieving sustainable development, there has been little focus so far on their contribution to policy integration. Covering the years from 2007 to 2016, this article presents an empirical analysis of sustainability policy integration (i.e., how multilateral environmental agreements integrate environmental, social, and economic issues in their decisions) and environmental policy integration (i.e., the outreach of multilateral environmental agreements to different environmental issue areas beyond their mandate). The analysis finds that multilateral environmental agreements have not moved toward further policy integration over the studied period. If policy and institutional coherence is a key global governance target in the post-2015 era, a concerted effort will be required to improve the extent of policy integration by multilateral environmental agreements.

Engineering graduation: why introduce sustainability

This article exposes the importance of training engineers who, since graduation, have in depth knowledge in both practical and theoretical areas of social, environmental and economic issues, including sustainability in its entirety. Through a bibliographical review of the existing materials in this context and the results obtained through researches, it was possible to confirm the theories addressed throughout the text. The pertinence of this article comes from the need to control the progress of the destruction of the environment that is directly influenced by the practice of the Engineering profession. The engineer, because of his active participation in the changes in the environment in which he lives, has increasingly felt the need to adapt to the new world reality, which requires, both socially and economically, the introduction of sustainability in the practice of the profession. From this, we have succeeded in researches that demonstrated, through data and graphs, the growing requisition of the economic market for environmental certificates such as ISO 14001: 2015, used in Brazil, which had its emission intensified around 544% in the period of 2016 to 2017. However, with a survey conducted at the Polytechnic School of Pernambuco, it was possible to note that only an average of 1.94% of the engineering curriculum is intended for sustainability education, thus confirming the importance of upgrading university programmes. In addition to this innovation in the faculties, it is necessary to live the principles of sustainability, as in the concept of "living laboratory", in which engineering undergraduate institutions become the means that allows and provides the insertion in the labor market , of a conscientious professional in relation to the sustainability pillars, including the social, environmental and economic spheres.

In Search of Feasible Environmental Policy Making Tools in the United Arab Emirates: The Multi-Goal Approach

Public Policymaking in general and environmental policymaking, in particular, are not conducted in a scientific manner. Public policy makers usually adopt piecemeal and hoc and reactive approaches. Environmental problems are multifaceted and interdependent. This characteristic of interdependence means their impacts affect other public policy issue areas such as health, employment, and productions. Therefore, the impact of policies adopted to address environ­mental problems is not confined to the environmental issue area. Every public policy in any policy issue area is susceptible to have intended and unintended positive and negative side effects. Intended effects are goals policymakers intend to achieve by adopting specific public policies. Unintended positive and negative side effects result as byproducts of a specific policy being implemented. Hence, alternative policies considered to address any environmental problem should be weighed carefully against multiple sets of criteria and goals. Also, analysts must exert some efforts to look for potential negative side effects of policies. One pos­sible rational policy tool is the Multi-Goal analysis which permits policy analyst to compare several alternatives against several criteria to choose the one that attains the highest scores in these criteria. The Multi-Goal, as part of the ration­alistic model of policy analysis, follows certain steps to address public policy problems. These steps are compiled into two main categories: problem analysis and solution analysis.

Popularization of Science in Exercise, Nutrition and Lifestyle: A Successful Example of Science Communication in Iran

Background: Today, more than ever before we need to encourage people for behavior change toward healthy behaviors and active lifestyle. Using the power of branding, we launched a health campaign to send out health messages to the population. Objectives: The aim of this report was to present data from a new experience in science communication of health concerns for adults. Methods: The “health and life” campaign covered different areas of physical, psychological, social and environmental health issues to promote an active lifestyle. Generally, in monthly sessions, we presented 45 - minute talks by health experts on a specific health topic (e.g., smoking, healthy diet) and people with an interesting experience related to the topic were given a time to talk about their story. Participants and lecturer’s information were gathered between January 2013 and July 2017 by on-site registration. Results: Until July 2017, a total of 54 events have been held with a total number of 41566 audiences. Preliminary results indicated that 86-92 % of participants have reported a high level of satisfaction about the quality of health talk program. Conclusions: Through this paper, we presented a new health campaign (health and life campaign) that uses social marketing strategies to promote healthy lifestyle among a wide range of population.

Regime Learning in Global Environmental Governance

An increasingly complex governance architecture has become a major characteristic of current global environmental governance, often resulting in different degrees of complexity and fragmentation within global environmental regimes. Social learning processes are introduced by scholars and policy makers alike as management approaches for governing complex dynamic systems in situations that feature a high degree of complexity and uncertainty. Scholars argue that actors in complex environmental issue areas can learn in their social context and could develop the necessary knowledge, attitudes and behaviour to enhance their capacity to effectively address the environmental problem. This is where this article picks up the discussion and assesses the impact of a regime's complexity on its learning capabilities. It further identifies major drivers and barriers of regime learning processes in international environmental regimes.

Teacher’s Competence Needs in the Multidisciplinary Approach of Implementing of Environmental Education

This study was designed to determine the competence needs of teachers under this approach. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. The sample consisted of 737 teachers proportionally sampled from 67 public secondary schools in the three education zones of Cross River State. The teacher competencies needs questionnaire in the implementation of Environmental Education Curriculum was used for data collection. The data analyzed showed that majority of the teachers require basic competencies needs in several areas of environmental issues.

The Present and the Future of Polystyrene Foam in Construction

Chain of the life cycle of construction expanded polystyrene (production – construction application – liquidation after the end of the life cycle) is connected with significant energy consumption, consumption of oil, and production of considerable volume of construction and demolition waste. A sustained effort has been applied to increase effectiveness and to reduce the ecology waste from this process. Tools of this effort are the market mechanisms and legislation in the area of environmental issues and also the societal changes. Their consequences are especially the changes in structure of polystyrene producers and their production technologies, changes in composition of polystyrene and modification of procedures for handling the construction and demolition waste.

The role of superconductivity technology in the areas of energy conservation and environmental issues

The role of superconductivity technology in the areas of energy conservation and environmental issues

Study of an Alternative Model for Sustainable Development

Today all the companies are interested in the area of Sustainable Development as they have to concentrate on the areas of social, economic and environmental issues for the future generations. The companies have started planning for the long run issues that they would face from the public, planet and plant. Sustainable development means attaining a balance between the environmental protection and human economic development between the present and future needs. Some of the companies have a framework which matches the need for Sustainable development such as Global reporting Initiative, Carbon foot printing etc.This paper is mainly targeted towards the concept of Sustainable Development and a reframed structure model associated with it. This paper also concentrates and correlates issues of Sustainability with the three P’s of Sustainability development i.e. Profit, People and Planet.Addressing to the various areas such as inequities that usually dependent on international recognition that makes projects intolerable and makes a commitment of change and set standards to monitor the progress. The viability of the business is measured in terms of resources of healthy ecosystems-fresh water, clean air, robust diversity, productive land and stability of societies.