Many countries around the world are looking to tourism as a sustainable solution for economic development and many individuals seek business opportunities in the tourism industry. Researchers in the field of anthropology and other disciplines alike have recorded findings of the environmental, economic and cultural impacts of tourism development that are useful both to tourism promoters and new business developers. While there are a number of negative examples of environmental degradation, economic dependency and cultural exploitation resulting from tourism, there are so few positive models that scholars are now questioning whether tourism is a truly sustainable strategy for prosperity. In particular, ecotourism and nature-based tourism have burgeoned from a perceived prospect of increased environmental, economic and cultural sensitivity, but a watershed of criticism has followed in the wake of their emergence. Critics claim that what is touted as eco-sensitive is just another marketing strategy to attract more people to areas of the world vulnerable to hosting a growing number of guests. Overuse of the term ecotourism has parties involved at all levels of tourism development from host communities, to tourism planners, to scholars questioning what is sustainable ecotourism. Due to this ambiguity, a new term, conscientious tourism, is suggested as a euphemism in order to clarify what type of tourism most contributes to sustainability. Cape Scene magazine has evolved as a conscientious tourism product informing guests visiting South Africa how best to interact with the wildlife, environment and local people. The magazine has coupled interesting feature stories and helpful information on navigating around the Western Cape and Cape Town and includes a useful fold out map. The magazine reaches a broad audience of mass tourists, small group tourists and individuals and groups interested in nature, wildlife and cultural experiences. The magazine also informs readers of local conservation and community development projects ongoing in South Africa. This emphasis has created a conscientious tourism product that informs tourists of the country they are visiting while promoting conservation and social development causes that can be benefited by overseas awareness. As mass tourism will never completely give way to smaller conservation minded guided tour groups, the magazine helps to propel conscientious tourism by reaching out to even the most undiscerning holiday maker. The magazine was created by drawing on graduate internship experiences from coastal Oregon, the Micronesian island of Kosrae and Costa Rica. These internships give insights on how conservation, economic and cultural concerns have been and can be better addressed by local people and local businesses in an effort to work towards conscientious tourism and sustainable development. This thesis explores several ecotourism related projects encountered on the way to developing a conscientious tourism product, Cape Scene magazine. The existing body of tourism literature is considered in relation to the projects encountered and current work with Cape Scene magazine. / Graduation date: 2004

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed on Feb. 6, 2007). PDF text: 163 p. : ill. (some col.). UMI publication number: AAT 3221295. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche format.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (PhD (Public Affairs))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

After the Rio United Nations Conference on Enviroment and Development, the need of sustainable development obtained recognition from the vast majority of countries and organization. Human society entered a new development period. More and more people know about sustainable  development. Education for sustainable development is a concern for the world where university can make a  contribution. Students who are the majority in a university, their knowledge, awarenss and action will play an important role to promote sustainable development.   The purpose if this thsis is to study if there is any difference in students' knowledge and awareness on sustainable development in university, based on the comparison betweet freshmen and seniors. Through the comparison, this will explore if students' knowledge and awareness is influence  to their action. This thesis does a literature review to understand deeply about sustainable development and explores students' knowledge, awareness and actions of sustainable development through questionnaire.  The analysis of data from the questionnaire indicates that their knowledge and awareness influences their actions. The freshmen and seniors have difference in knowledge and awareness. Knowledge of students on sustainable development appears to have increased slightly during years study. However, as the knowledge increased, there is not much difference in their knowledge and awareness of sustainable development. Based on the different degree of knowledge and awareness, seniors appear to do better than freshmen in their actions.

The objective of this study is to develop a quantifying model that predicts the appraised unit value of parcels in San Francisco County based on number of LEED-NC Public Transportation Access (PTA) qualified bus, light rail and commuter rail stops, distance to closest bus, light rail and commuter rail stops, zoning class and parcel size. As a population of interest, San Francisco County was chosen since it is known as a region having well-organized transportation systems including bus, light rail and commuter rail systems. According to the correlation results, for mixed zone, an appraised unit value increases as the number of LEED qualified transit stops increases (bus, light rail, and commuter rail). In addition, the appraised unit value increases as the distance to LEED qualified bus stops light rail stops decreases. For residential zone, the appraised unit value increases as the number of LEED qualified bus and light rail stations increases. Furthermore, the appraised unit value increases as the distance to LEED qualified bus stops decreases. When it comes to the predictive regression model for mixed zone, the adjusted R-square of the transformed model was 0.713, which indicates that 71.3 percent variability in transformed unit value of parcels could be explained by these variables. In addition, for the predictive model of residential zone, the adjusted R-square for the model was 0.622 thus the independent variables together accounted for 62.2 percent variability in the transformed unit value of parcels. The predicting models for mixed and residential zones were significant that suggests that the components of LEED-NC PTA criteria, number and distance from parcels, this could affect land development strategies. In addition, an appraised unit value of parcels in San Francisco County can be estimated by using the predictive models developed in this study. Therefore, the findings of this study could encourage real-estate developers to site their projects according to the LEED-NC PTA criteria.

Sustainable development and climate change is high on the agenda for most cities around the world today. Urban transport is at the heart of these changes. Increasingly, it is recognised that not only is the emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases a problem, but also the detrimental effects of congestion and social exclusion. In order to address these issues, it will be necessary for cities to make strategic long term decisions regarding the future infrastructure and land use, not only in terms of what will be built, but also on measures that affect how these systems are used.This thesis is focused on the decision support tools that we need in order to make well informed decisions. Models that predict the performance of future scenarios, and appraisal frameworks that help evaluate whether these outcomes are desirable or not. The first two papers experiment with different ways of bringing some aspects of sustainability into the appraisal frameworks used to analyse long term strategies. Paper I addresses intergenerational fairness, and Paper II focuses on the emission of greenhouse gases. Paper III develops a model, Scapes, that can help us to better understand the daily travel behaviour, through an activity based approach. By explicitly modelling space-time constraints, and travel time uncertainty in a microeconomic framework, we can get a better understanding of how people can respond to, and value, changes in the transport system. Papers IV and V describe a new integrated land use and transport model, LandScapes.The policy implications from the studies in Papers I, II, and V are that it will be very difficult for Stockholm to reduce its emissions of CO2. Particularly, predicted economic and population growth will inevitably lead to more transport. It is likely that a range of different policies will be necessary to solve that problem. At the same time, we must not forget that decreasing CO2 emissions, although important, is not the only objective Stockholm has. To cope with the increasing travel demand from a growing population, it may well be necessary to build new infrastructure as well. This thesis does not prescribe any such relative valuation between conflicting objectives. It only helps bring them to the fore. / QC 20100817

Date:             2009 – 05 – 28 Level:            Master thesis in Industrial Management with specialization in Sustainable Development, 30 hp Authors:       Nominchuluun Nyamdavaa                      Sam Amirebrahimi                       Engerbrektsgatan 19                         Centrallasarettet Ing.21                       72216 Västerås                                         72189 Västerås                       073 – 696 93 69                                       073 – 907 74 91 Tutor:           Magnus Linderström Title:             Organizational interactions in the energy sector regarding environment and growth – case study of Mälarenergi AB Problem:       Energy sector has been much debated regarding growth and environmental issues. Energy situation in 2020 sets an emergency that a New Energy Policy has to be made immediately in order to meet the growing energy demand without compromising the environment. Thus the energy sector is strictly regulated by national and international level policies. It is interesting to investigate how organizations interact with each other in the sector regarding growth and environment.    Purpose:       Aim of this thesis is to describe the inter-organizational relationships in the Swedish energy sector and analyze how organizations interact with each other depending on their attitude towards sustainable development. The research involves a case study of a local energy company Mälarenergi AB and different actors in its institutional field and how the company acts according to its interests in forming relationships with others. Method:        This thesis is an interpretive case study which aims to research the link between understanding and action. Organizational and institutional theories are used as theoretical framework. Empirical data will be collected through qualitative semi-structured interview with organizational members as well as secondary data that are collected through literature, documentation, archival records and previous researches.   Result:          The Swedish energy sector is a complex field that consists of different actors and complicated relationships. The sector is mainly affected by national and EU-level decisions thus a local energy company is regulated by national and EU-level environmental policies. Interactions with other actors are fundamental in Mälarenergi’s institutional field. Organizations form co-operations and collaborations in order to achieve environmental goals as well as to conduct joint R&D activities. The environment pressure made it clear that the organizations have to work together in order to maintain a sustainable growth in the energy sector.

This thesis is about the making of futures – in the sense of planning, through which the world of tomorrow is crafted, and in the sense of images of the future, developed through the futures studies approach of backcasting. The point of departure for the thesis is that more visionary and strategic forms of planning are needed if the challenges of sustainable development are to be met, and that backcasting, through its long-term, integrative and normative character, can be a helpful tool towards this end. The thesis explores how backcasting can be used when planning for sustainability by looking into three areas of problems and possibilities. The first of these concerns target setting, for which was found that both backcasting and planning tend to use targets that are elusive, rendering it difficult to understand what is included in the target and what is omitted. As a way to rectify this, a framework of methodological considerations for target setting is presented (Paper I). There is also a need for further methodological development on how to set targets for environmental aspects other than energy and GHG gases. The second area concerns the identification of measures and actors, where both backcasting and planning were found to have the problem of being techno-biased and/or taking a rather superficial approach to ‘the social’ which means that the socio-technical complexity of everyday life is left unattended (Paper II). This has consequences in terms of delimiting the scope of measures identified and proposed and of the potential of these to result in intended changes. Two approaches are suggested to deal with this: a methodology for developing socio-technical scenarios, in which an iterative identification of objects and agents of change is a central trait (Paper III), and a service-orientated energy efficiency analysis, in which the social logic of energy use is highlighted (Paper IV). The third area concerns how backcasting can be used in a more explorative approach to the governance of change, instead of leaving this unaddressed and/or unaltered (Paper V). In relation to this, the institutional and political dimensions of planning for sustainability are emphasised, with the focus on path dependency, discursive power and critical junctures (Paper VI). The connection described between the fields of backcasting and planning for sustainability study and practice is thus beneficial for planning by showing how this could be made more visionary and strategic, while also contributing to the theoretical and methodological advancement of backcasting. One of the main contributions of the thesis is the exploration of how backcasting studies could benefit from including the question of ‘Who?’: Who could make the changes happen? Who should change (whose) lifestyle? Who (what group/s in society) benefits and who loses from the images of the future that are developed? And who is invited to take part in the making of futures and whose futures are being heard? Including the question of ‘who’ highlights the normative character of sustainable development and makes issues of environmental justice and equity visible. The formulation of images of the future is also a question of resources and ultimately of power. In relation to this there is a need for groups of society besides those in power to be encouraged to develop their images of the (sustainable, desired) future, and to give room for these in policy-making and planning. The openness of the future renders desirability and ethics, and not probability, the basis on which the feasibility of images of the future must be assessed. / <p>QC 20120514</p> / SitCit / ICT as a motor for transition

Nowadays, the strategy of improving the energy conserving situations of existing buildingshas been playing a more and more important role of further promoting the worldwide sustainabledevelopment paths, especially in China. This thesis presents the results of a case study based researchwhere several different building Energy Conservation and Efficiency Refurbishment (ECER) options toimprove the energy performance of two representative Chinese Residential Multi-Family Buildings(RMFBs) of two very different climate conditions are evaluated and compared, which have been seenas the typical case buildings of existing and aging less energy efficient urban residential building inthat regions (i.e. one in Urumqi belongs to north cold winter region; and other one in Shanghai belongsto south cold winter and hot summer region). In order to provide a scientific base to present the detailenergy conserving improvements in a quantity and quality way, the research methods are including: therelevant literature reviews; the real case data based interview data collections from the professionalworkers in building ECER field; the simulation and analysis processes are based on the building energysimulation computer program – VIP-Energy (Version 2.0.7). The study results are presented in acomprehensive yet straightforward way, and allow for later interesting comparisons between thedifferent building ECER measures for improvement. In a broader perspective, this research will help toexplore a comparative long-term perspective point of view on the existed and most commonly usedresidential building envelope refurbishment measures in a more comprehensive way, and identify thepotential opportunities for further promoting the building energy consumption reductions to meet thefuture increasingly restrict national building energy conservation standards. In addition, the researchalso suggested the optimal RMFB envelope refurbishment strategy based on the case buildings’ statusquo and subject ECER measures, which is introducing an advancing system thinking pattern to theexisting conventional ECER measures, implementing the combined building ECER options to the casebuildings are put forward. And the separate considerations of environmental and economic benefits thatobtained by the subject ECER measures are both presenting simultaneously in the end.