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Globalisation and Climate Change
Published in Dalia Štreimikienė, Asta Mikalauskienė, Climate Change and Sustainable Development, 2021
Dalia Štreimikienė, Asta Mikalauskienė
The results showed that between the year 1995 and 2009, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions decreased by approximately 12%. The key engine for energy consumption and emissions was a decrease in energy intensity (a decrease of more than 50%), while the carbon factor decreased by 12%. Therefore, the energy combination in the analysed economic sectors can be further improved. In fact, only oil production showed an increase in energy intensity. The researchers also established the Environmental Performance Index (EPI). Analysed economic sectors were divided into four groups based on the average EPI and its growth rate. Sectors of pulp, paper, and agriculture were indicated as the best performing group with the highest average EPI and the highest growth rate. Sectors of oil extraction and air transport were distinguished as the ones with the lowest environmental profile. The latter sectors should, therefore, be of particular importance in the development of sustainability strategies. According to the authors, the fuel mixture change of economic activity may be the most important factor in the air transport sector’s environmental performance and clean technologies in the oil sector sustainability improvement basis. The energy sector has improved its relative productivity; notwithstanding this, the value of the EPI has remained relatively low. Thereby, the development of sustainable energy production and consumption still needs to be intensified in Lithuania. Changes in the structure of energy production sources can also contribute to the improvement of environmental performance in Lithuania.
Global Environmental Health Programs and Policies
Published in Barry L. Johnson, Maureen Y. Lichtveld, Environmental Policy and Public Health, 2017
Barry L. Johnson, Maureen Y. Lichtveld
A second index, called the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), is designed to measure current environmental results at the national scale [60]. The EPI is a complement to the ESI, covering “[a] broader range of conditions aimed at measuring long-term environmental prospects” [60]. Four indicators comprise the EPI: air quality, water quality, climate change, and land protection. Each indicator has two to four variables that can be calculated, e.g., dissolved oxygen, phosphorus concentrations, and biological oxygen demand comprise the variables for water quality calculations. Like the ESI, the EPI ranges between 0 and 100. Unlike the ESI, calculation of a country’s EPI requires the existence of specific databases, such as concentration of sulfur dioxide in outdoor air. Few countries possess such databases, yielding a ranking of only 23 countries. The top five ranked countries were Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Austria, and Denmark, with EPIs ranging from 74.9 to 60.6. The U.S. ranked 14th, with an EPI of 44.1, due in measure to low scores on climate change and air pollution control. In 2006, the EPI was modified to include more data on sustainability measurements. Using the modified EPI, the U.S. ranked 28th among 68 countries for which enough data were available to derive an EPI [61]. Most countries in Western Europe, as well as Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica, and Chile all ranked ahead of the U.S. According to the report, “The United States placed 28th in the rankings [...] indicates that the United States is under-performing on critical issues such as renewable energy, GHS emissions, and water resources” [61].
Water Governance Indicators Challenges and Prospects for Improving Transboundary Lake Governance
Published in Velma I. Grover, Gail Krantzberg, Lake Governance, 2018
By 2010, the international emphasis on ‘good governance’ and ‘capacity-building’ were well established and indicators of governance and good governance began to emerge in many policy domains. Water governance begins to replace IWRM as a central concept in water policy discourse and as the foundation for indicator development. At the same time, in the environmental and water policy area critiques continue about the inherent tension between indicators trying to simplify complex social and environmental phenomenon and the complex, multi-level, multi- sector, multi-actor reality of environmental problems. As Kaufmann and Kraay (2008) noted, “… any particular indicator of governance can usefully be interpreted as an imperfect proxy for some unobserved broad dimension of governance”. The challenges, limitations and hazards of environmental indicators were by this time well recognized (Barnett et al. 2008). Nonetheless, in the past several years, indicators have become more sophisticated and indexes have gained in popularity. Efforts to streamline the number of indicators and use indexes have also been criticized by those who highlighted the problems associated with aggregating sets of quantitative measures in indices (Kaufman et al. 2005). Broader environmental indexes continue to include water governance indicators. The Yale Environmental Performance Index (EPI) for example evolved from having numerous indicators related to water to most recently having three key indicators related to water: access to drinking water; access to sanitation; percentage of population with water treatment/wastewater management. The Yale EPI measures these across 180 countries and argues they are the best indicators to date based on available comparative data.
Development of Renewable Energy Technologies in rural areas of Pakistan
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2020
Muhammad Yousaf Raza, Muhammad Wasim, Muhammad Sohail Sarwar
According to environmental performance index (EPI) 2018, Pakistan is in the ranking of 169/180 countries of the world. The overall score is 37.50 and regional standing is 23 and 148/178 countries with a score of 34.58 with 10 years trend (Hsu and Zomer 2016). The information points out that Pakistan faces losing environmental confronts that is more dangerous to the country’s long-standing environmental strength. Furthermore, water wealth is also one of the EPI indicators. Recently, water is declining through ground resources due to excess use. Although investments in drainage have been important in Pakistan through the last two decades, water logging still influences large tracts of land. Solidity and Salinity also restrain farmers and influence agricultural production. These problems are additional intensifying by the use of poor quality groundwater. Tube wells provide excessive freshwater by pumping (Gabriel and Khan 2010) and redeployment of the groundwater quality.5 Annual groundwater output in Pakistan is predicted at 67.9 BCM. So, the annual growth of water has increased from 4 BCM in 1959 to 59 BCM in 1996–97. Fresh groundwater is found in Punjab and Sind with 79% and 28% which is appropriate for agriculture (Ahmad and Sufi 1993). The results may occur in melting glaciers and declining freshwater if the country continues to use fossil fuels-fired energy plants.
Who Is Afraid Of The Dark? Some Evidence From A Cross-Country Investigation
Published in Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy, 2021
Rocco Caferra, Annarita Colasante, Andrea Morone
where i indicates the ith people interviewed from the j country. The other variables are the Energy intensity index (EII), the environmental performance index (EPI), Household Energy Consumption (HEC), the log of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the worried about climate change (WaCC), and some control variables such as age, gender, and education. indicates the related coefficient and is the intercept. is the residual term that would be inserted as a regressor in the second model to consider the WaES variable removing the effect of the other regressors included:
Pressure or premium: what works best where? Antecedents and outcomes of sustainable manufacturing practices
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2020
Sirish Kumar Gouda, Haritha Saranga
Therefore, despite the considerable attention from management researchers, the evidence from the literature is not sufficiently consistent for further theory development in this important field of sustainability. One reason could be that extant research (Aboelmaged 2018; Adebanjo, Teh, and Ahmed 2016; Gimenez, Sierra, and Rodon 2012; Ødegaard and Roos 2014; Yang, Hong, and Modi 2011) has studied these relationships on a piecemeal basis using firm level data from different countries, which have varied levels of development. Since sustainability-related aspects fall at a much higher level in Maslow’s hierarchy from an industrial development point of view, it is likely that firms experience different levels of pressure depending on which country they are located in. For instance, firms operating in emerging markets are likely to feel relatively lower pressure on environmental and social sustainability-related aspects by stakeholders, compared to firms operating in developed countries, since the former’s focus would be more on economic sustainability. Various rankings of countries on sustainability parameters indicate the relative preferences of firms and individuals being in line with this argument. For instance, Environmental Performance Index (EPI)4 which ranks countries on environmental health and ecosystem vitality, ranks developed economies such as UK and US high (Rank 6 and 27, respectively) and emerging economies like China and India very low (Rank 120 and 177, respectively). Thus, it is important to distinguish between the developed and emerging markets while examining various drivers of sustainable manufacturing practices and their impact (Sarkis and Zhu 2017).