Project Proponents Research Articles

Translocation of intertidal corals in highly urbanized Mumbai seascape: A pragmatic management initiative towards ecosystem conservation

Coral reefs harbour rich biodiversity by increasing heterogeneous habitat and providing numerous ecosystem services and goods. However, they are highly threatened due to ongoing climate change and various anthropogenic activities. Therefore, the protection of corals is enforced by laws and legislative machinery around the globe. The present work is a case study in the highly urbanized Mumbai city, where a coastal road project required dredging and reclamation that overlapped with a coral habitat. A detailed environmental mitigation plan was undertaken to preserve the fragile corals at the proposed project site. A total of 329 colonies of Pseudosiderastrea tayamai Yabe & Sugiyama, 1935, were relocated from the project site to a recipient site after verifying the habitat suitability. Monthly coral health monitoring was conducted for one year after their relocation to the new habitat. After one year of translocation, 92.1% (n = 303) colonies survived and were in healthy state. Coral bleaching is a well-known phenomenon that occurs due to extreme variability in temperature, salinity and siltation etc. In the present study, coral bleaching was observed during monsoon (July – September 21) wherein maximum (94.83%) occurred in August 21 and minimum (4.86%) was in November 21. Algal overgrowth on coral colonies (maximum 38.9%), and sediment smothering (maximum 44.8%) were observed, but no colony mortality was noted (Jan – May 21). Whereas, 3.4% mortality was recorded during monsoon season only. The gross new recruitment (n = 22) of corals was also recorded collectively during the months of April, May and November 21. Therefore, the current study suggests that relocating corals from coastal development sites, where habitat loss is unavoidable, could be considered a tool that will aid in conservation of urban reefs. This study proves that only committed involvement of stakeholders and project proponents who have developmental perspective with environmental accountability can achieve the sustainability of rare and fragile ecosystems.

Quantifying the “avoided” biodiversity impacts associated with economic development

Achieving global sustainability objectives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals or Aichi Targets, including remaining within planetary boundaries, necessitates proactively avoiding a proportion of the environmental impacts otherwise expected to result from economic development. Quantifying these “avoided” impacts is important for monitoring progress toward meeting sustainability objectives, but doing so in a consistent way is fraught with difficulty. Using the mitigation of biodiversity impacts by development projects as an example, we explored the challenges of defining and measuring impact avoidance. Avoidance can be defined as either action‐based or outcome‐based, and classified by whether it is achieved through project cancellation, spatial avoidance, design‐based avoidance, or temporal avoidance. We also examined what drives different types of project proponents to implement avoidance measures. To support empirical quantification of the contribution that avoidance makes toward conservation goals, we present a framework for structuring assessments of biodiversity impact avoidance. Our framework has widespread applicability in conservation science, policy, and practice, as well as relevance for broader policies that seek to avoid environmental and social impacts.

Household expenditure and accessibility of water in urban India

Accessibility and affordability are critical challenges for household water consumption in urban India. While the previous research on affordability and water tariff setting is substantial, the interplay of water access equity and its impact on household water expenditure is less understood due to the absence of granular household level data in India. This research draws upon the NSSO’s 76th round of data collected across the country to explore the differences in water access and expenditure amongst various income categories. Using regression analysis, this paper investigates the association between the socio-economic, tenurial status, sources of water, sufficiency, and access related factors and the household expenditure on water. Results show that water is a scarce commodity for lower sections of society and that they are incurring higher costs, making the water relatively unaffordable. The research findings indicate that the policymakers and project proponents need to develop more targeted metrics for measuring the disparities and configure interventions that mitigate the inequalities in urban water provision.

Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment—A green-building rating system for catalysing climate-change mitigation/adaptation in India

Green-building rating systems (GBRSs) are critical for implementing climate change (CC) mitigation strategies because they can help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the building sector. From the Indian policy perspective, the ClimateSMART Cities Assessment Framework (CSCAF) provides cities a roadmap toward mitigating CC while planning/implementing their actions and facilitates realising energy efficiency and green buildings through GBRS adoption and incentivisation. Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) is a comprehensive GBRS aligned with CSCAF and India’s climate goals, facilitating the implementation of Government of India’s relevant policies and climate-adaptation measures within a building project’s different phases. This paper examines existing institutional mechanisms for incentivising GRIHA-rated projects and provides recommendations for municipal bodies, regional developmental authorities, and state governments for strengthening resource efficiency in the built environment through GRIHA. Residential buildings are considered because their contribution to GHG emissions is the greatest among buildings. Data were collected through literature review, reviewing smart-city proposals and latest state annual action plans, Right to Information queries, and structured interviews of stakeholders. Feedback from green-building certification agencies, project proponents, and government officials revealed a need for local-level information dissemination and guidance on institutional mechanisms for incentivising green-rated projects. Further, to understand the implementation mechanisms for GRIHA-linked incentives, residential projects under some local-government agencies were documented as case studies, providing useful insights into prevalent mechanisms for availing incentives while facilitating GRIHA compliance. The information provided herein can be useful for local governments in other developing countries for guiding the building sector toward mitigating climate change.

Negotiating the coexistence of mining and pastoralism in Mongolia

ABSTRACT Introduction The relationship between mining developments and local communities has been highly contested. The role of the local population in Mongolia, which is largely comprised of herder households and communities, has not been adequately recognized in government mining policy and regulations. Since 2006, mining project proponents are required to establish local level agreements (LLAs) with local host governments in Mongolia. Objective This paper examines how agreement mechanisms have been implemented and whether they have helped local communities protect their interests while coexisting with mining. Methods The paper draws on a multi-year study on LLAs in Mongolia carried out by the author between 2013 - 2018. Results As the Mongolian case demonstrates, legal prescription by itself will not deliver the desired outcomes of greater benefits for local communities or improved relations between these communities and developers. The negotiation of coexistence of mining and pastoralism requires iterative, multilayered processes involving the communities affected by the project. Unless the rights and claims of project-affected pastoral communities are recognized in the LLA regulations, their meaningful participation in agreement-making will remain limited.

Promoting Creators Intentions: Measurement of Crowdfunding Performance

Crowdfunding is an activity to collect small amounts of funds from a large audience via the internet without involving a financing intermediary. This study aims to determine the effect of fundraising, product testing, relationship reliability, and awareness-raising on the performance of the crowdfunding platform as an alternative source of business or business funding. This research was conducted using a quantitative approach, where Google forms were distributed to 267 project proponents, owners, or administrators in ASEAN countries as a sample and 197 sets of questionnaires were returned with complete answers and further analyzed. The data analysis used includes descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation, and multiple linear regression analysis. The results of this study indicate that all independent variables, namely the creator's intention in the form of fundraising, product testing, relationship reliability, and awareness-raising, have a positive and significant influence on the performance of the crowdfunding platform. This has practical implications that the creator's intention must be a concern for project proponents and fund owners who invest or distribute their funds in addition to paying attention to the business proposal and the reliability of the crowdfunding platform operator.

Revisiting the location bias and additionality of REDD+ projects: the role of project proponents status and certification

Since the establishment of REDD+, hundreds of projects have emerged around the globe. Much attention has been given to REDD+ projects in the literature, but the conditions under which they are likely to be effective are still not well known. In particular, the location bias concept states that projects are more likely to be implemented in remote areas, where development pressure is low, hence questioning the additionality of these projects. In this article, we examine this concept, assessing how the status of REDD+ project proponents and the project certification influence the choice of location and the project's additionality. Using a sample of six REDD+ projects in Brazil, we show that these two dimensions can impact location choice toward areas with higher or lower opportunity costs and that this choice can impact additionality. We also show that the selection of an area with low opportunity costs, which is frequently presented as a location bias, does not necessarily preclude additionality.

Carbon Forests at the Margins of the State: The Politics of Indigenous Sovereignty and Market Environmentalism in the North-eastern Hills of India

In the north-eastern hills of Meghalaya, the Khasi Hills project, self-advertised as ‘one of the first Redd+ initiatives in Asia to be developed and managed by indigenous governments on communal lands’, is often presented as one of the rare success stories of India’s recent experimentation with market instruments as part of its forest governance. This article uses this example to extend existing discussions on the neoliberalization of forest governance, and its intersections with the cultural politics of resource control. Unlike mainstream forestry projects criticized for being too concentrated in the hands of the Forest Department, this project explicitly taps into the particularities of a region located on the margin of the Indian nation-state, where, crucially, ownership and control of the land lie formally with the people rather than with the state. The article explores the politics of this curious marriage of (formal) indigenous sovereignty with market environmentalism, showing, first, the centrality of these assumed cultural and ecological specificities within the regime of justification of such market project; second, how the aspirations of project proponents for community engagement unravelled in practice; and, third, the limits of their endeavours due to larger structural social inequalities and the requirements of such market projects. I conclude with the idea that far from being anecdotal, this case brings interesting perspectives in the context of the struggle for the recognition of forest rights in the rest of India.

Evaluating Mine Design Alternatives for Social Risks Using Discrete Choice Analysis

As with other engineering design tasks, mine design involves setting design objectives and constraints (the feasible solution space) and finding the optimal design alternative. Mine engineers often struggle to incorporate the preferences of local community members into their evaluation of mine design alternatives because the mining literature lacks tools to quantify such risks during mine planning. This paper presents an approach to evaluate community acceptance (i.e., community preferences for the alternatives) using discrete choice models and decision-based design during mine planning. Using discrete choice models and a rigorous framework, engineers can estimate the cost of social risks as a function of the probability that individuals in the host community will prefer a particular design alternative. They can then estimate the overall utility of a particular design alternative to the project proponents. This paper illustrates the proposed approach with a strategic mine planning exercise for a gold mine. The framework can be a useful tool for designing mines for sustainability, if combined with effective community engagement and management’s commitment to creating shared value.

Decision-Making for Rewilding: An Adaptive Governance Framework for Social-Ecological Complexity

Rewilding can be defined as the reorganisation or regeneration of wildness in an ecologically degraded landscape with minimal ongoing intervention. While proposals for rewilding are increasingly common, they are frequently controversial and divisive amongst stakeholders. If implemented, rewilding initiatives may alter the social-ecological systems within which they are situated and thus generate sudden and unforeseen outcomes. So far, however, much of the discourse on the planning and implementation of rewilding has focused on identifying and mitigating ecological risks. There has been little consideration of how rewilding could alter the human components of the social-ecological systems concerned, nor governance arrangements that can manage these dynamics. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a generic adaptive governance framework tailored to the characteristics of rewilding, based on principles of managing complex social-ecological systems. We integrate two complementary natural resource governance approaches that lend themselves to the contentious and unpredictable characteristics of rewilding. First, adaptive co-management builds stakeholder adaptive capacity through iterative knowledge generation, collaboration and power-sharing, and cross-scale learning networks. Second, social licence to operate establishes trust and transparency between project proponents and communities through new public-private partnerships. The proposed framework includes structural and process elements which incorporate a boundary organisation, a decision-into-practise social learning exercise for planning and design, and participatory evaluation. The latter assesses rewilding outcomes and pre-conditions for the continuation of adaptive governance and conservation conflict resolution.

How societal expectations, new digital tools, andthe COVID crisis are driving a step-change in human centric remediation.

How societal expectations, new digital tools, andthe COVID crisis are driving a step-change in human centric remediation.

The spatial politics of energy conflicts: How competing constructions of scale shape pipeline and shale gas struggles in Canada

Conflict characterizes energy projects across Canada and around the world. While claims about economics, the environment and Indigenous rights dominate headlines, energy conflicts also feature struggles over the construction of space and scale. Building on work in energy geographies, this paper compares the spatial politics of three contested fossil fuel projects, focusing on how antagonistic parties frame issues to advance their positions, in turn shaping perceptions of scale. Drawing on reports, media coverage, and other secondary sources, we examine: the Trans Mountain pipeline in Western Canada; the Coastal GasLink pipeline in Wet’suwet’en territory, British Columbia; and shale gas drilling in New Brunswick. The analysis reveals how actors construct space and scale to persuade, build alliances, and exclude people or issues from consideration. Project proponents generally ‘scale up’ claims about benefits and ‘scale down’ impacts, while opponents do the opposite – even as both strategically engage with governance at multiple scales. We argue that taking spatial politics seriously can reveal power dynamics in competing representations of space, improve transparency in energy project evaluations by unveiling tacit proponent strategies, and reveal biases in impact assessment and legal processes when their mandates favour the spatial strategies of project proponents.

Cavern fire safety – overview of requirements and pragmatic solutions in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s steep hilly terrain limits the growth of surface urban areas. In response to the society’s needs for land to support social and economic developments, the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is actively exploring the use of caverns as one of the innovative measures to supplement Hong Kong’s land resources. The development of cavern space is an attractive option to meet the land demand not only for “not-in-my-backyard” (nimby) type public utilities but also for a wide spectrum of uses including commercial, industrial and community type facilities. The development of cavern fire safety design in Hong Kong evolved from the first cavern project in around 1980s. The design guideline “Guide to Fire Safety Design for Caverns” was jointly established by Building Authority and Fire Services Department in 1994, by referring to overseas and local experience consolidated in the Study of the Potential Use of Underground Space (SPUN) in 1990. This guideline however was developed with a focus on caverns for use by low population public utilities such as sewage treatment works and water service reservoirs where the fire load is generally localised, closely controlled and relatively low. Whereas, other prescriptive fire safety guidelines commonly adopted in the Code of Practice for Fire Safety in Buildings 2011 (FS Code) and the Codes of Practice for Minimum Fire Service Installations and Equipment and Inspection, Testing and Maintenance of Installations and Equipment (FSI Code) were developed for typical surface buildings only. The existing fire design guidelines are found to be not fully compatible with the recent expanding spectrum of cavern usage in Hong Kong. Each cavern development type has its unique site setting and fire safety characteristics under the proposed usage (e.g. government facilities, industrial and commercial facilities like concrete batching/rock processing/asphalt production plants, data centres, logistics/warehouse facilities, etc.). Strictly following the prescriptive fire safety requirements and the design guidelines for typical buildings to these usages in cavern will pose immense technical issues/challenges to cavern projects and could also lead to unwarranted impacts on their functional operations. A more coherent fire safety design approach for new cavern projects is therefore needed to facilitate project proponents to plan cavern projects in the future. This paper provides an overview of fire safety issues for cavern development, and also discusses the practical solutions in formulating the associated fire safety strategies which have been adopted in the latest cavern projects in Hong Kong, covering the technical issues on fire resisting construction, means of escape, means of access for firefighting and smoke management.

A financial analysis of four carbon offset accounting protocols for a representative afforestation project (southern Ontario, Canada)

Forestry projects participate in carbon markets by sequestering carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) and producing carbon offsets. The creation of forest-based offsets is guided by protocols that dictate how sequestered CO2e is converted into marketable offsets. Existing protocol designs aim to produce offsets that meet sustainability requirements, while providing financial incentives for landowner participation. However, limited Canadian uptake implies that current financial incentives are insufficient to encourage the production of carbon offsets via private landowners. Here we consider various design features of four protocols and their financial implications for an illustrative afforestation project in southern Ontario, Canada. We explore the protocols (two tonne–tonne protocols and two tonne–year protocols) under two afforestation project management systems (“no-harvest” and “harvest” management scenarios). Results indicate that a project that terminates in a harvest is not economically attractive at current CO2e prices under any protocol design at a scale likely to be undertaken in southern Ontario, Canada. Projects that do not conclude in harvest are generally more attractive. Tonne–tonne protocols that pay upfront for sequestered CO2e improve the economic attractiveness of afforestation projects, but the delayed realization of the value of offset credits under tonne–year protocols reduces the economic attractiveness of these projects. We discuss these results in light of the choices facing afforestation project proponents and offset protocol designers (including governments) in general, and provide detailed insights into the financial dynamics of the Canadian case.

Assessing the ecological impacts of transportation infrastructure development: A reconnaissance study of the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya.

Transportation infrastructure, such as railways, roads and power lines, contribute to national and regional economic, social and cultural growth and integration. Kenya, with support from the Chinese government, is currently constructing a standard gauge railway (SGR) to support the country's Vision 2030 development agenda. Although the actual land area affected by the SGR covers only a small proportion along the SGR corridor, a significant proportion of the area supports a wide range of ecologically fragile and important ecosystems in the country, with potential wider impacts. This study used a qualitative content analysis approach to gain an understanding and perceptions of stakeholders on the potential ecological impacts of the interactions between the SGR and the traversed ecological systems in Kenya. Three dominant themes emerged: 1) ecosystem degradation; 2) ecosystem fragmentation; and 3) ecosystem destruction. Ecosystem degradation was the most commonly cited impact at while ecosystem destruction was of the least concern and largely restricted to the physical SGR construction whereas the degradation and fragmentation have a much wider footprint. The construction and operation of the SGR degraded, fragmented and destroyed key ecosystems in the country including water towers, protected areas, community conservancies and wildlife dispersal areas. Therefore, we recommend that project proponents develop sustainable and ecologically sensitive measures to mitigate the key ecosystem impacts.

Exploring New Shores: An Overview of the Legal Landscape Relating to the Supply and Transportation of LNG from Canadian Ports

This article provides an overview of the key areas of the legal landscape downstream of liquefaction terminals in the context of Canadian LNG projects. This will be of particular interest to those involved in Canada's nascent LNG industry, including project proponents, buyers and sellers of LNG, and owners and operators of LNG carriers and other vessels intending to load LNG, either as cargo or bunker fuel, from a terminal in Canada. Canada’s LNG industry has had a rocky start in some respects, with many projects having been shelved and a number of the remaining projects facing an uncertain future due to market conditions, regulatory obstacles, and other challenges. However, there continue to be many factors supporting the development of LNG liquefaction capacity in Canada, including the desire to supply the world with responsibly sourced, cost-effective, and relatively clean fuel, and it is expected that a number of projects will ultimately proceed. The supply and transportation of LNG from such projects once they become operational will engage the body of maritime laws governing the operation of ships in Canadian waters and, where relevant, Canada’s export laws. Other requirements may additionally apply by virtue of the contractual arrangements typically entered into in connection with such activities. Such regulatory and other requirements, and their place within the broader LNG value chain, are the subject of this article.

The Economics of the Site C Hydroelectric Project in British Columbia

The Site C hydroelectric project is an 1100-Megawatt hydroelectric facility under development on the Peace River in British Columbia. Construction costs for the project are currently estimated to be $10.7 billion. The project has been criticized for its high cost and the impacts it will have on the river system, including the flooding of land to establish the reservoir. Project proponents argue that Site C will provide low-carbon electricity that will help BC and Canada reach their greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. In this paper, we assess the cost-effectiveness of the Site C project using a detailed linear programming capacity expansion and dispatch model of the British Columbia and Alberta electricity systems. Our model includes hourly electricity demand data for sixteen sub-regions within BC and Alberta, hourly wind resource data for 681 grid cells in the two provinces, hourly solar irradiation data from 112 weather stations to characterize the solar resource, and a detailed hydroelectric model that accounts for the chaining of hydroelectric facilities and reservoirs within the Peace River, Columbia River, Kootenay River and Bridge River watersheds. We assess the value of the Site C project by calculating the optimal electricity system for supplying BC and Alberta electricity demand in 2030 both with and without the presence of the Site C project. Our model simulations reveal that under current electricity sector policies, the Site C project is uneconomic. We find that the value created by Site C only exceeds its costs in scenarios where BC and Alberta coordinate electricity markets, build additional transmission capacity, and work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly below baseline levels.

Stealing Air and Land – The Politics of Translating Global Environmental Governance in Suau, Papua New Guinea

Global environmental governance today is grounded in a set of ontological assumptions that involve measurement and commodification of carbon emissions as tradeable units between countries for mitigating climate change and preventing deforestation. These ontological assumptions are not necessarily shared by communities that are targeted for implementing projects developed under such agendas. This article provides an ethnographic account of the tensions around a REDD+ Pilot Project and a Save the Forest conservation program in Central Suau, Papua New Guinea. Despite efforts by project proponents to conduct 'awareness' on the programs to local communities, people feared these interventions as attempts to steal their air and land to sell to other countries. The study shows that differing assumptions of reality between project proponents and communities are related to the politics of translation that are embedded in past histories of colonisation, missionisation, and ongoing resource extraction. The ensuing disagreements highlight failures to mediate ontological intersections, which are manifested in local fears of new forms of power and external appropriation of their land and air through global environmental governance mechanisms.

Community-based project assessment using the indicators of resilience in SEPLS: Lessons from the GEF-Satoyama Project

As sustainable management of production landscapes and seascapes is increasingly becoming important for global conservation of biodiversity, understanding people dimensions holds key to successful conservation projects. The “Indicators of Resilience in Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes” (the Indicators) had been developed to capture the multifaceted nature of landscapes and human interactions with them.. Although the Indicators had been used in many projects around the world, they had not been used before and after project interventions to determine project impacts. The information from the assessment workshops conducted in Ecuador, India and Seychelles were analyzed to determine the effectivity of the Indicators in project evaluation and monitoring. We then explored how information derived from the use of the Indicators can help project proponents understand the impact of the projects. The results show that the Indicators can be effectively used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of projects being implemented by obtaining input and feedback from stakeholders involved and/or affected by project interventions. We conclude that the Indicators serve as an effective tool for community-based assessment for projects and the overall status of resilience of landscapes and seascapes. We emphasize that qualitative information in discussion among participants of assessments using the Indicators hold rich contents that can be used to better understand the project impact and community needs; thus the project proponents should use the Indicators to obtain and learn from such information, rather than the numerical results which the Indicators also give.

Still in Need of Norms: The State of the Data in Citizen Science

<p class="Normal1">This article offers an assessment of current data practices in the citizen science, community science, and crowdsourcing communities. We begin by reviewing current trends in scientific data relevant to citizen science before presenting the results of our qualitative research. Following a purposive sampling scheme designed to capture data management practices from a wide range of initiatives through a landscape sampling methodology (Bos et al. 2007), we sampled 36 projects from English-speaking countries. The authors used a semi-structured protocol to interview project proponents (either scientific leads or data managers) to better understand how projects are addressing key aspects of the data lifecycle, reporting results through descriptive statistics and other analyses. Findings suggest that citizen science projects are doing well in terms of data quality assessment and governance, but are sometimes lacking in providing open access to data outputs, documenting data, ensuring interoperability through data standards, or building robust and sustainable infrastructure. Based on this assessment, the paper presents a number of recommendations for the citizen science community related to data quality, data infrastructure, data governance, data documentation, and data access.