San Diego imports 80 to 90 percent of its water supply, depending on conditions during any particular year. This high level of imports and low diversity of water supply have combined with climate change to generate an urgent need for increased conservation and diversification of San Diego's water supply. Water reuse is one option to mitigate this problem. An attempt was made in the early 1990s to recycle wastewater but the public reacted badly due to a combination of bad public relations, perceived environmental justice issues, and a psychological phenomenon called the yuck factor. With improved public relations and education, the project might go through this year.

This paper argues for the importance of scale, management and sovereign-led development in considering a more human-centric model for Third World development. It begins by reviewing the history of the mainstream Western development model through the evolution of modernization theory and foreign aid. It explores general critiques of this model offered by scholars, focusing on unequal power relations, the high cost of aid, and problems with ‘cookie cutter’ style development projects that don’t take into account disparate environments. As the paper progresses, focus shifts more specifically to hydropower development and ‘Big Dams’. Nepal is the main case study for exemplifying the problems with foreign-aid-funded dam projects and for proposing the alternative model of smaller scale, management-focused, nation-led development projects. While the scope of this study is limited, the growing success of these projects in Nepal suggests that more focus should be paid to applying these methods in other developing countries.

Cigarette butts are rapidly accumulating on our planet; trillions of them are discarded every year. In this paper, I examine why cigarette litter is a problem. I first discuss the biodegradability of filters and its scientific basis, including ways to enhance degradation rates by chemically manipulating filters. I also talk about the persistence of cigarette chemicals and their potential toxic effects on children and animals. I consider other social, economic, and environmental consequences of cigarette filters and chemicals. Furthermore, I discuss various solutions smokers and non-smokers alike have created to address the problem of cigarette litter; these methods come from a wide range of artistic, science-based, and policy-based perspectives. Finally, my thesis examines this issue in the context of a college campus – Pomona College in Claremont, CA. I discuss a map showing the number of cigarette litter around buildings and sidewalks on campus and consider factors that influence the location and high counts of litter. Finally, I make recommendations for the college based on my findings.

There are a series of state and federal incentives in California to encourage the installation of distributed generation (DG) renewable energy, largely photovoltaic (PV). This thesis explores the policies behind the incentives, namely the Federal Investment Tax Credit, California Solar Initiative, and Net Energy Metering requirements. Discussion is informed by environmental policy tools, as well as business models that have acted to increase accessibility to these investment-intensive projects. Underlying this analysis is the theme of a shifting energy paradigm, with distributed generation spreading political, economic, and electric power.

Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. This thesis offers a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The thesis focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found in the dissertation. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market. At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries. This thesis offers empirical and theoretical advances. Empirically, it applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring.

Over the past ten years, the State of California has realized environmental, economic, and social benefits through the increased deployment of solar photovoltaic technologies. However, utility-scale and residential-scale solar projects also pose a variety of problems, which have created barriers to their broader adoption. Community solar projects offer a model for solar development that can reduce the problems associated with utility-scale and residential-scale projects, while simultaneously preserving the benefits of each. This thesis examines the problems associated with current solar projects and proposes policy to support the community solar project model in California.

This study aims at examining the prospects for a policy transfer of a Swedish municipal environmental policy (that of Växjö) to the French urban commune Blois, for which an ambition of becoming a leading eco-city in France, was declared by the mayor in 2008. In the analysis, emphasis is laid on mechanisms to institutionalize the main environmental policy principles, such as political and institutional structures and processes. Other prospects for an institutionalization of a new environmental policy that are to be investigated are economic structures as well as visions of the different decision-makers concerned. Research methods used in the study are qualitative interviews, document studies and a questionnaire. The findings of the analysis show that today’s prospects for an environmental policy in Blois close to that of Växjö, are clearly limited. The limitations can partly be found in economic structures but these seem to be rather related to a lack of priority amongst actors. Moreover, problems have been identified arising from administrative complexity with a lack of internal integration. There is a commitment amongst some of the actors working with environmental issues, but the complexity of decision-makers involved together with unclear priorities make a developed strategic approach hard to achieve.

Rapidly growing quantities of e-waste (WEEE) demand the increasing attention of environmental policy all over the world. Developing countries are particularly affected by recycling and disposal activities, which are deemed harmful to health and environment. Holistic or integrated approaches to WEEE policy are required. The paper discusses first recycling technologies for glass from cathode ray tubes (CRT) and printed circuit boards (PCBs) in Vietnam. Thereafter the German approach to WEEE policy is adjusted to allow for an integrated policy. This is then adapted to allow for the recycling of used monitors and computers. / Sự gia tăng một cách nhanh chóng số lượng các chất thải từ các thiết bị điện, điện tử (WEEE) đòi hỏi sự tăng cường chú ý tới các chính sách môi trường toàn cầu. Các nước đang phát triển bị tác động đặc biệt bởi các hoạt động tái chế, do nó ảnh hưởng xấu tới sức khỏe và môi trường. Các phương pháp tổ hợp và toàn diện đối với các chính sách quản lý chất thải điện tử (WEEE) là đòi hỏi cấp thiết. Trong bài báo này, trước hết phân tích đánh giá các công nghệ tái chế thủy tinh đèn hình (thủy tinh CRT) và bản mạch in điện tử (PCBs) ở Việt Nam. Tiếp theo là phương pháp tiếp cận các chính sách quản lý chất thải điện tử của Cộng hòa liên bang Đức được sử dụng để điều chỉnh cho thích hợp nhằm đưa ra giải pháp tổ hợp có thể thích ứng cho việc tái chế màn hình Tivi và máy tính hỏng, hết hạn sử dụng và thải bỏ ở Việt Nam.

The abatement of ground-level ozone has been a priority of air pollution policy because of its harmful effects on human health, ecosystems, and climate. The responsiveness of ozone to emissions of its principal precursors, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), is known to depend nonlinearly on spatially and temporally variable factors. Given this variability, scientific understanding of ozone formation processes can facilitate the development of sensible control policies. This thesis applies a high-order sensitivity analysis technique, the Decoupled Direct Method in Three Dimensions (HDDM-3D), to examine ozone response to precursor emissions during summertime air pollution episodes in the southeastern United States. HDDM-3D is shown to accurately capture ozone response within an underlying air quality model, even over large ranges of emission perturbations. Nonlinearity of response is quantified, and nonlinear terms are applied to examine how estimates of sensitivity and source attribution respond to uncertainty in an emissions inventory. Ozone production regime is assessed using both HDDM-3D and species indicator ratios and found to be primarily NOx-limited outside urban centers. However, ozone response to region-wide emissions does not necessarily correspond to its sensitivity to local controls, hindering the usefulness of bipartite ozone regime classification. Significant heterogeneity of ozone response to NOx is found even over small spatial scales of emission origin, a potential complication often ignored in atmospheric modeling and emissions trading mechanisms. Atmospheric sensitivity analysis is linked with a comprehensive menu of potential control measures to demonstrate potential integration of scientific and economic considerations for control strategy formulation. Cost-optimized strategies are identified for attainment of federal ozone standards in Macon, Georgia, and for minimizing potential population exposure to unhealthful concentrations of ozone.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--York University, 2007. Graduate Programme in Earth and Space Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-159). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR38802