Judith A. Cherni

A multicriteria approach to sustainable energy supply for the rural poor

Despite significant progress in energy technology, about two billion people worldwide, particularly the poor in rural areas of developing countries, have no access to electricity. Decision-making concerning the most appropriate energy technology for supplying these areas has been difficult; existing energy decision-support tools have been useful but are mostly incomplete. Trade-offs, as well as impacts that can be positive or negative, may emerge as a result of implementing modern forms of energy. These can affect both community’s livelihoods as well as the confidence of decision-makers in relation to alternative technologies. The paper discusses a newly designed multicriteria approach and its novel robustness analysis for selecting energy generation systems for the improvement of livelihoods in rural areas. The proposed methodology builds upon a sustainable rural livelihoods framework to address multiple interactions and calculate trade-offs aimed at boosting decision-makers’ confidence in the selected technologies. The methodology is tested via a case study in Colombia.

Coal mining in China: policy and environment under market reform

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the main environmental impacts of coal mining in China, examine the main institutions and reform factors that failed the control of these damages, and discuss what would be necessary to establish a sustainable and environmentally responsible coal mining sector in the context of market and institutional reforms.Design/methodology/approach – Review of existing knowledge, and semi‐structured interviewing with key informants in the policy and industry sectors has been the main method of primary and secondary data collection. Grounded theory was used to analyze original data.Findings – The large and fast growing coal industry in China has caused significant environmental degradation, including land subsidence and water intrusion, as well as remarkable records of miners poor safety and health. Market reform was mostly unsuccessful in integrating environmental consideration into production and marketing decisions. Main factors of reform that have been associate...

A Multi-criteria Decision-Support Approach to Sustainable Rural Energy in Developing Countries

Numerous models have been developed to aid in the decision making process to identify the most suitable energy provision options for a given community or area. Some models focus strictly on one key planning aspect, such as cost or technology (single-criteria decision analysis), while other models take multiple criteria into consideration, such as cost and technology, social, human and environmental factors (multi-criteria analysis). This chapter aims to show that the inclusion of multiple technical and non-technical criteria can lead to more sustainable development outcomes. To do so, it provides a comparison between several single factor and multi-criteria models, highlighting their applications and limitations in the context of rural energy planning in developing countries. This is followed by a discussion of the factors that should be considered to ensure optimal service provision,, long-term sustainability of rural electrification projects and poverty alleviation. The subsequent section introduces and analyses the components of the Sustainable Rural Energy Decision Support System (SURE-DSS) approach and methodology. The novelty of the SURE tool lies in its objective to match rural community’s energy needs in developing countries to appropriate technologies and thereby improve livelihoods and project sustainability. The chapter explains the approach and illustrates the tool’s application through a case study in Colombia.

Globalization and Local Change

The theoretical analysis of Chapter 3 mentioned nature as something that is crucially affected both by the economy and by policy. But what the ‘something’ is, why and how it is being ruined, and how it relates to human beings, have hitherto remained inadequately discussed. This chapter describes the processes that affect the environment and how these make the identified contradiction between nature and society more explicit. We discuss the transformation of Houston into a world city as part of a general trend taking place in other developed countries. The focus in Houston has been on the rise of the profitable, but highly contaminating, oil industry in the region. The petrochemical and other related businesses have played crucial roles in the growth of the city and its involvement in the global energy business. They have ensured that Houston has fulfilled specific functions for the international economy, irrespective of any ecological or human cost. The extent to which residents have benefited or, conversely, suffered from local and global directions in the economy, is difficult to assess. This chapter evaluates what for decades has been accepted as causing only benefits — economic growth.

The Knowledge on Urban Pollution and Health

The absolute concentration of industrial and domestic pollutants has undeniably decreased since the 1950s, and its characteristics have noticeably changed in relation to the type of air contamination registered in the past. Yet, in the last decades, the insidious impact of lower levels of air pollution on health, and the damage that new pollutants and their combination may cause, have been the subject of increasing scientific recognition and have awoken public concern. Immediate and acute episodes of high concentrations of air pollution are not only a feature of the industrial past. It is only their degree of severity and the type of participating pollutants that make modern episodes of air pollution different from earlier ones. Despite cleaner air in many major cities, air pollution trends have thus, essentially, not been reversed.

Politics of Protection Betrayal

In any modern city, the triggering of an environmental episode takes place because the socially constructed context allows it. Hence, factors other than the purely physical, chemical and biological also intervene in the relationship. Indeed, remarkable levels of industrial air pollution in Houston have necessarily presupposed the development of industrial plants, the use of motor vehicles, and a particularized environmental legislation. Rather than pinpointing industrialization as the ultimate cause of excessive contamination, this chapter argues that lax environmental regulation has accompanied unrelenting economic growth, and that together, these have represented crucial factors in the institutional and practical degradation of the local environment.

Social Inequality and Health Risks

Chapter 5 has indicated that although environmental regulations put in place since the 1950s and the 1970s may have ameliorated some of the degrading effects of economic activity, they have mostly failed to reverse the generally rising trend of pollution and maintain harmless levels of air pollution in many cities. The benefits arising from improvements in new combustion technologies have been outstripped by rising output resulting from international economic growth (see Chapter 4). The current chapter argues that relying on improved access to health care may provide temporary alleviation for low-income population to cope with the effects of pollution. It cannot, however, guarantee any lasting solution to the wide and unknown consequences of exposure to air contaminants experienced by so many residents, particularly in large cities of the developed world.

Theory and Practice of Growth and Degradation of Nature

Chapter 2 identified the main theoretical paths that define, measure and analyse those factors that are constituents of the relation of air pollution and ill health. Social theory and the natural sciences can certainly continue to make major contributions to the understanding of environmental problems, but the danger is that their comparatively distinct disciplinary compartments will remain unconnected. The social and the natural sciences have indeed made great strides in their own specialties and each now has its own well-developed discourse. None the less, the problem is that they are talking past each other even though the sharing of data has become common practice among disciplines. The present chapter attempts to connect them under the rubric of the political-economy analysis.

Monitored and Reported Local Air Pollution

A concrete legacy of rampant industrial development over time and the integration of the city’s economy particularly the energy sector, in the international market are evident in a world city like Houston. A disfigured landscape of oil refineries, petrochemical plants and other industries extends over some 25 miles long. Remarkable levels of pollution could not but arise from years of activity in such a massive and concentrated industrial complex. This chapter shows that air pollution has remained as uninterrupted and striking a feature of Houston as has economic growth. The previous chapter traced the origins of environmental pollution to the development of the oil industry in particular. Local industrialists, national policy and the global economy have been identified here as the main promoters of the oil-led growth in this part of the world. In the past, official emission control has suffered from a lack of commitment towards the environment and the residents. Identification of the chain of interactions between social developments and environmental degradation in one city contributes to challenge the well-established dualism between the interests of the natural and social sciences. It is argued now that, while the previous chapter showed that this history of growth and success has gone hand in hand with abusive extraction from nature or environmental withdrawals, this chapter sets out to prove that the other corollary has been the toxic additions to the environment.

La globalización de la insalubridad y la contaminación del aire urbano

Through bio-medical and political-economy multidisciplinary analysis of urban air contamination and related ill-health, the article shows that contemporary e...