Mark Lemon

Better environmental decision making — recent progress and future trends

Recent trends in risk-based decision making are reviewed in relation to novel developments in comparative risk analysis, strategic risk analysis, weight of evidence frameworks, and participative decision making. Delivery of these innovations must take account of organisational capabilities in risk management and the institutional culture that implements decision on risk. We stress the importance of managing risk knowledge within organisations, and emphasise the use of core criteria for effective risk-based decisions by reference to decision process, implementation and the security of strategic added value.

Promoting behaviour change through personalized energy feedback in offices

A body of research suggests that the provision of energy feedback information to building users can elicit significant energy reductions through behaviour change. However, most studies have focused on energy use in homes and the assessment of interventions and technologies, to the neglect of the non-domestic context and broader issues arising from the introduction of feedback technologies. To address this gap, a non-domestic case study explores the delivery of personalized energy feedback to office workers through a novel system utilizing wireless technologies. The research demonstrates advantages of monitoring occupancy and quantifying energy use from specific behaviours as a basis for effective energy feedback; this is particularly important where there are highly disaggregated forms of energy use and a range of locations for that activity to take place. Quantitative and qualitative data show that personalized feedback can help individuals identify energy reduction opportunities. However, the analysis also highlights important contextual barriers and issues that need to be addressed when utilizing feedback technologies in the workplace. If neglected, these issues may limit the effective take-up of feedback interventions.

Challenges for Participatory Institutions: The Case of Village Forest Committees in Karnataka, South India

This article finds that the recent enthusiasm for participatory resource management institutions must be tempered by an ongoing critique of the problems that frequently hinder successful practice. Two key obstacles to effective participation are considered. First, new institutional arrangements often reproduce the social relationships that marginalize certain groups of people in the first place. To this end, the role of gender is examined in some detail, as an example of the problems associated with participation and empowerment. Second, new participatory institutions are often embedded within wider legal and policy frameworks that make it difficult for them to develop the capacity for self-management. Through a study of joint forest planning and management in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, it is argued that local contexts require fuller understanding and that local agency can only be facilitated where policies and legal frameworks are more receptive to local negotiation.

Perceptual Landscapes in Agrarian Systems: Degradation Processes in North-Western Epirus and the Argolid Valley, Greece

The variation in meanings which are attached to the physical landscape by the people who are active within it is the central theme of this paper. Two Greek case studies have been researched since 1992. These formed part of the Archaeomedes programme which was set up to analyse Mediterranean desertification processes.’ An ethnographic study was undertaken in a number of mountain villages in the Epirus region of north-western Greece, with a brief to investigate local understanding of specific forms of land degradation. The second study, in the Argolid region of the north-

Exploring the design and perceived benefit of sustainable solutions: a review

The demand for more innovative solutions to meet progressively complex consumer requirements is increasingly at the forefront of design practice and research. Coinciding with this is the stipulation for more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable services. Although many approaches towards the design of more systemic and sustainable solutions exist, the terminology to describe them is manifold. Subsequently, confusion surrounding the cross-disciplinary process that stakeholders are required to follow is increasingly apparent. This paper presents a critical review of multiple-design approaches from the perspective of the stakeholders involved and identifies a set of attributes that are common to them. It is concluded that stakeholders could substantially benefit from a supportive framework of common characteristics to enable the integrative design of more systemic and sustainable solutions.

Social enquiry and the measurement of natural phenomena: the degradation of irrigation water in the Argolid Plain, Greece

SUMMARY Attempts to formulate appropriate policies for the management of agricultural systems are constrained by the limitations of acquiring information about changes in the natural system across space and through time. The adoption of natural science techniques to measure the transformation of natural phenomena requires considerable investment in time and expertise and may not always be capable of providing information about change in a way that meets the adaptive requirements of planning and policy. A more flexible approach to data collection will require the acceptance of less precise and more general physical data as the basis for understanding changes in complex agricultural systems. This raises interesting questions about the adoption of social enquiry techniques to provide information about changing natural phenomena. The progressive deterioration of water resources, as a result of intensive agricultural activity in the Argolid Plain of Greece, will be considered and the problems of measuring the ...

Deconstructing the orange: the evolution of an agricultural milieu in Southern Greece

Knowledge relating to the coevolution of communities and the technological, economic and natural systems that sustain them comes from a variety of sources. However, interdisciplinary, or more specifically integrated, analyses that formally consider issue-driven and policy-relevant output are now required. This paper will draw upon a case study of crop change, in particular the rapid introduction of oranges, in the Argolid Valley in Greece, and will argue that crops and other agricultural artefacts are elements of complex processes that generate social structures that are more, or less, acceptable to different social groupings. We particularly focus on an illustration of the nature of coevolutionary linkages, and highlight the fluidity of stakeholder decision and opportunity spaces and their relationship to community flexibility and adaptivity. Finally, it will be argued that policies that attempt to affect crop choice have failed to consider the range of networks into which the crop will merge.

Intelligent Urban Management: Learning to Manage and Managing to Learn Together for a Change

Increasing awareness of the complexity of the modern urban setting has led to the questioning of management approaches founded on institutional, administrative and geographical compartmentalisation. The paper develops a conceptualisation of management for responding to complex urban issues that confound bounded problem-solving. The article shows how an interagency management response was fostered in relation to issues of urban air quality in the south-central region of the UK. The notion of intelligent urban management that arises from this experience focuses on improving communication within and between agencies about the highly connected and emergent nature of problems for which management responsibility has been assumed. In conclusion, the paper considers how this kind of transboundary action and learning can be further inspired and sustained.

Elicitation of farming agendas in a complex environment

Abstract Agricultural and environmental issues are currently the subject of a great deal of debate. Many feel that policies affecting farming and the countryside are formulated without sufficient research into their full implications. In this paper a semi-structured interview technique is used to highlight the complexity of the agenda facing a small section of the farming community. Current policy is creating high levels of uncertainty within farming, forcing the farming community into an economic straight-jacket based on short-term survival. It is concluded that policy-makers need to be aware of the complexity of the farming agenda and that a policy framework needs to be constructed which gives clear long-term objectives to farmers and encourages the diverse practice which is central to long-term continuity. The need to develop improved techniques for eliciting information about farming agendas will be seen as a central requirement of this framework.

Perceptions and reality in quality and environmental management systems: A research survey in China and Poland.

Purpose – The aim of the original and recent research in this study is to determine why, in these rapidly developing economies, management systems such as TQM, ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 fail to realize continuing improvement and remediation methodologies capable of improving technical performance and enhancing economic profit.Design/methodology/approach – The research uses cultural frameworks to analyze the mechanisms which are preventing a greater realization of opportunities in the improvement of management systems, going on to suggest interventions. Within this approach there were three modes of data collection, an administered Likert questionnaire (developed from prior research in Poland, and pre‐tested in Lithuania, Greece and the UK) comprising every manager in the management levels of 12 heavy industrial factories in China and Poland, interviews with the senior managers, and the determination of the empirical (true) reality for environmental performance in each factory. Analysis of these data sets sup...