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Environmental Knowledge (environmental + knowledge)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	77%

Selected Abstracts

Emergency preparation and green engineering: Augmenting the environmental knowledge and assessment tool

ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, Issue 4 2009
Clinton E. Whiteley
Abstract As our society continues to better prepare itself to address biological, radiological, chemical, and environmental emergencies, there is a need for better and more readily available emergency planning information for program managers and military or business personnel. Incorporating an online hazardous materials (HAZMATs) and emergency planning tool into the Environmental Knowledge and Assessment Tool (EKAT: www.ekat-tool.com) would adequately fill that need. Although not yet fully functional, the project report that this manuscript is based on is available for viewing on the EKAT web site. The proposed online emergency preparation and green engineering (EPGE) tool would provide the user with information regarding links to local emergency response teams and resources, guides for developing emergency plans and reports, HAZMATs training information, case studies to illustrate HAZMAT situations, and the ability to judge the environmental greenness of chemicals. In this way, it will serve as a means of facilitating and educating individuals for best responses in an organized fashion. To address their environmental responsibilities, public and private organizations are adopting environmental management systems (EMS). The EPGE tool is used in conjunction with EMS to address sustainability. Currently, the creation of a comprehensive tool that identifies environmental, health, and safety concerns along with supplying relevant emergency data is applicable to any business or organization. It is designed to be used as a guide to characterize and solve the environmental issues that could affect any business. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2009 [source]

Environmental knowledge and small-scale rural landholding in south-west England

THE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010
CAROL MORRIS
This paper explores the environmental knowledge of small-scale rural landholders and comments on the implications of this for environmental policy. The paper draws on conceptualisations of knowledge as ,know what', ,know why', ,know how' and ,know who', recognises a distinction between tacit and codified environmental knowledges and highlights the need to consider the politics of knowledge surrounding environmental issues. Both quantitative and qualitative data are reported, and are derived from structured interviews with 30 small-scale landholders who were participants in a nature and landscape conservation initiative , the Landscape Heritage Scheme , within South Devon, England. These data are used to explore the place of environmental concerns within the land management objectives of respondents; the nature and extent of their environmental knowledge; how a range of factors alongside their environmental knowledge shaped the environmental practices of respondents; and the politics of knowledge associated with the Landscape Heritage Scheme. The paper suggests that small-scale landholders should be of interest to environmental policy, prioritising environmental objectives in their land management, being relatively knowledgeable about the environment and highly responsive to environmental advice and financial incentives that support environmental management. A case is made for developing research in this area, given ongoing processes of rural demographic change and the rising importance within this of an increasingly diverse landholding population. [source]

Unequal Knowledges in Jharkhand, India: De-Romanticizing Women's Agroecological Expertise

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2000
Sarah Jewitt
Taking the Jharkhand region of India as a case study, this article uses empirical data to intervene in ,women, environment and development' and ecofeminist debates regarding women's environmental knowledge. The article first outlines the adoption of gender/environmental issues into development planning and considers the dangers of overestimating women's agroecological knowledges and assuming that they can easily participate in development projects. It then highlights the local complexities of environmental knowledge possession and control with reference to gender and other variations in agricultural participation, decision-making and knowledge transfers between villagers' natal and marital places. Particular emphasis is placed on the economic, socio-cultural and ,actor' related factors that supplement gender as an influence on task allocation, decision-making, knowledge distribution and knowledge articulation. The article concludes that given the socio-cultural constraints women face in accumulating and vocalizing environmental knowledge, simplistic participatory approaches are unlikely to empower them. Instead, more flexible, site-specific development initiatives (coupled with wider structural change) are required if opportunities are to be created for women to develop and use their agroecological knowledges. [source]

Emergency preparation and green engineering: Augmenting the environmental knowledge and assessment tool

Shamans versus Pirates in the Amazonian Treasure Chest

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2002
Beth A. Conklin
This article explores how the recent rise of shamans as political representatives in Brazil addresses tensions and contradictions associated with the internationalization of indigenous rights movements. Identity politics and transnational organizational alliances concerning issues of environmentalism and human rights have greatly expanded the political leverage and influence of indigenous activism. However, some transnational environmentalist discourses collide with Brazilian discourses of national sovereignty, and the 1990s witnessed a nationalist backlash against Indians, whom politicians, military leaders, and media commentators have frequently portrayed as pawns of foreign imperialists. Opponents of indigenous rights also seized on apparent contradictions between rhetoric and action to discredit indigenous claims to environmental resources. The analysis examines how the shift to redefine knowledge as the core of indigenous identity circumvents some of these liabilities by shifting the basis for indigenous rights claims from environmental practices to environmental knowledge. As shamans mobilize and speak out against the threat of biopiracy, they blunt the nationalist backlash, repositioning indigenous peoples as defenders of the national patrimony and solid citizens of the Brazilian nationstate. [Keywords: Brazil, indigenous peoples, identity politics, shamans, biopiracy] [source]

Double exposure in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin

THE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010
JULIE A SILVA
This paper examines how double exposure to economic and environmental stressors , and the interaction between the two , affect smallholder farmers in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin. Studying two case study villages we find that people, in general, are resilient to environmental stressors. However, most households show less resilience to the socioeconomic stressors and shocks that have been introduced or intensified by economic globalisation. Our findings indicate that economic change brought about by structural adjustment policies pressures rural people to alter their approach to farming, which makes it more difficult for them to respond to environmental change. For example, smallholder farmers find it difficult to make a transition to commercial farming within the Limpopo Basin, in part because farming techniques that are well adapted to managing environmental variability in the region , such as seeding many small plots , are not well suited to the economies of scale needed for profitable commercial agriculture. People use a variety of strategies to cope with interactive environmental and economic stressors and shocks, but many face considerable constraints to profitably exploiting market-based opportunities. We conclude that economic stressors and shocks may now be causing small-scale agriculture to be less well adapted to ecological and climate variability, making smallholders more vulnerable to future climate change. Some local level policy interventions, including those that support and build on local environmental knowledge, could assist rural agricultural societies in adapting to future environmental change in the context of economic globalisation. [source]