Carbon-based forestry (CBF) projects for the carbon market have been proposed with the aim of mitigating climate change, enhancing forest cover and improving livelihoods in developing countries. Debate has ensued regarding the validity of applying market-based mechanisms to climate mitigation in the form of CBF activities. Through in-depth interviews and focus groups, this study explores the various stakeholders’ involvement in the development of CBF projects in the Peruvian Amazon and reveals how their interests influence the types of activities that are established. Farmers’ perceptions on the carbon trade are examined and it is demonstrated that the potential of earning a carbon credit may influence farmers’ current land management practices in favor for implementing reforestation or agroforestry systems on their terrain. Regardless, the number of obstacles and the preferences of stakeholders significantly limit the ability of small-scale farmers to access and benefit from the emerging market.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol has been hailed as the grand compromise of the North-South divide over climate change mitigation for its ability to reconcile the economic demands of the North with the developmental needs of the South. Having been primarily analyzed from isolated economic, environmental, or developmental perspectives, the CDMs efficacy in bridging the North-South divide remains poorly understood. This research evaluates the CDM against three qualitative criteria focused on issues affecting Southern nations participation in international agreements. An examination of distributive and procedural issues characterizing the CDM shows that significant trade-offs exist between Northern and Southern interests under the CDM and suggests that the interests of the South are often sacrificed. On this basis, conclusions are drawn which point to the need for increased attention to and accommodation of Southern interests in the CDM specifically, and global climate change efforts more broadly.

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), is a market-based mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. It allows developed countries to implement emission reduction projects in developing countries, to assist their sustainable development; meanwhile, developed countries gain credits which could be used to meet part of their emission reduction targets under this protocol. There is a wide range of various types of CDM projects, among which, wind power projects account for the largest share. Additionality is a key component for CDM projects’ eligibility and to ensure CDM’s environmental integrity. It means that the emission reduction after the implementation of the project is additional to any that would have occurred in the absence of the certified CDM project. For wind CDM projects, the controversy on additionality raised debate and attention internationally, especially the concern if project developers deliberately underestimated Plant Load Factor (PLF) so as to meet the CDM additionality criterion. At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) CDM Executive Board 63rd meeting, the UNFCCC Secretariat and the Registration and Issuance Team (RIT) proposed different decisions regarding a request forissuance of a Wind CDM project due to different views on the estimated PLF. The Board discussed the issue andrequested a study on the PLF variations, which is the origin, and also a partial content of this thesis.In this thesis, relevant parameters are firstly defined – parameters such as Estimated PLF, Actual PLF, etc, and to better illustrate the magnitude of the PLF variation, the concept of Relative Variation of PLF is adopted, which is measured as the absolute difference of Estimated PLF and Actual PLF compared with Estimated PLF. Then a database in spreadsheet with all defined parameters of sampled projects is set up on the basis of collected information and calculation. Afterwards an investigation of PLFs and comparison analyses of Estimated PLFs and Actual PFLs is conducted. Considering there are two groups of Wind CDM projects, i.e. small-scale and large-scale; and considering the distributions of projects’ hosting countries, the comparison analyses are then conducted firstly for all projects, and then separated for small-scale and large-scale projects, and lastly separated for projects based on different hosting countries. The final results show that a minority of projects have underestimated PLFs, and a very small proportion of projects, either in all projects, or on different scales or in different hosting countries have underestimated PLFs to a level that is out of acceptable range. Therefore, thestudy concludes that there should be no concern on the PLF issue in Wind CDM projects.

This master thesis project was initiated in connection to the research project “Green Production Systems”, which is being conducted at Mälardalen University with involvement of academics and Swedish automotive and manufacturing industries. This thesis is prepared in guidance of “Development of guidelines for environmental value improvement and cost decrease” work package and the work package associated “Lean and Green Production Systems” master thesis proposal (see Appendix I). The aim of the thesis is to provide the work package with an international aspect under the given master thesis proposal scoping. The main objective of this thesis has been to contribute to a further understanding of how approaches to lean and green can be used to develop competitive production systems. A theoretical frame of reference has been presented in order to provide the research with a theoretical foundation. Further, empirical studies of four companies from China and Turkey have been carried out to investigate how companies perceive and work with their production systems in terms of applications of lean and green approaches. The empirical studies also aimed at identifying good examples of current practices that the companies achieved within the area.

Climate change and sustainable development are interlinked in several ways. A global sustainable development with decreased emissions of green-house gases is seen as a prerequisite for mitigation of climate change. Simultaneously a changing climate will put constraints to development endeavours in developing countries. Yet, a sustainable pathway should include both mitigation and adaptation to climate change facilitating social development, economic growth and a stable environment in developing countries. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is combining reduced green-house gas emissions with sustainable development in the CDM project’s host country. This so called dual goal has turned out hard to fulfil, especially the local development objective.   This thesis studies how CDM projects contribute to local development and how this development is viewed differently by various stakeholders. This was made through qualitative interviews with actors connected to two CDM projects in Southern India. In addition, a literature review and a document study was made. The projects chosen are in the renewable energy sector, using biomass fuel. Renewable energy is regarded as an important factor to come to terms with increasing green-house gas emissions.   The results from the literature review and document study show that the expected contribution by CDM projects to local sustainable development is usually expressed in terms of employment, distribution of benefits, social infrastructure, access to energy and technology transfer. The environmental benefit is included in the reduction of green-house gas emissions. In the context of local development, stakeholder participation is brought up as an important factor. The results of the interviews present similar categories of development linked to CDM projects. However, differing views of actual local development assisted by the CDM project was discerned in the answers.   This study points to scale-related problems linked to the global benefit of mitigation of climate change in combination with local development. In conclusion, there is a need for monitoring and evaluation of actual contribution by CDM projects to local sustainable development. To facilitate local sustainable benefits of CDM projects, enhanced stakeholder participation is necessary during the whole project activity period.

A predicted loss of agricultural rice-wetlands and increasing urbanization and development threatens the remaining freshwater wetlands along the upper Texas coast. To avoid, minimize, and mitigate wetland loss, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is directed to enforce Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (1975 amendment) by administering permits for development. Furthermore, a 1990 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Corps and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a national goal of no net wetland loss (NNL). My goals were to identify the frequency of occurrence of freshwater wetland loss due to dredge or fill, assess final plans to mitigate wetland loss, and verify the persistence of the created compensatory wetlands. I created a database of 96 individual, Section 404 permits issued from 1981 to 2001 in the counties of Chambers, Hardin, Jefferson, Liberty, Montgomery, Orange, and San Jacinto (Galveston District Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). Descriptive statistics were calculated for permit characteristics in relation to issue date (pre- or post-NNL). Public comments received from national and state agencies were rank ordered against mitigation plan type to determine Spearman's Rank Order Correlation Coefficient. Visual identification (via site visits and 1996 aerial photos) was used to validate compensatory wetland persistence. Shoreline protection of private property and oil and gas drilling (64% of permit applicants and 59% of impacts) had the greatest effect on wetland loss in the region, particularly Chambers, Jefferson, and Montgomery counties. Overall, 79.3 ha of freshwater wetlands were gained; however, gain was overestimated due to large projects for habitat enhancement. Permits issued post-NNL were more likely to have formal mitigation plans (58% vs. 13% pre-NNL) and allowed no net wetland loss. Although agency comments recommending more formal mitigation plans increased after NNL, only a weak positive correlation was detected (Spearman's r less than or equal to 0.4). Six of seven created wetlands remained in existence through 2006 though they are freshwater ponds replacing more diverse aquatic systems. I recommend the development of a comprehensive method to track wetland loss, mitigation, and changes in watersheds over time.

This thesis studies the following four topics by CFD simulation. First, the detailed airflow patterns and pressure characteristics of a semiconductor fab were analyzed and verified by available experimental data. Second, both transient and steady state simulations of a fire incidence were conducted to study the influences of fire source volume, fire source altitude, and clean room filter face velocity on the temperature distribution around the vicinity of fire source. Note the temperature distribution at the altitude of fire distinguisher (close to the height of ceiling) is very related to the action mechanism of fire distinguisher. Third, the mean trajectories of various particle sizes in the very early stage of a fire occurrence were simulated to provide substantial information to properly locate the VESADs (very early smoke detect active). Fourth, the performances of three commonly adopted smoke control/exhaust systems for semiconductor fabs were evaluated. An appropriate smoke control/exhaust system is provided and discussed.

In this thesis, we propose a cost-based CLEAN algorithm to accurately find dense multi-path parameters and improve the performance of selective RAKE receiver in indoor UWB systems. RAKE receiver can resolve the dense multi-path interference problems with the multi-path parameters. Because the weak paths are of lower valuable for system performance improvement, selective RAKE receiver combines only the strongest multi-path components and reduce the number of fingers to lower the complexity of RAKE receiver. However, selective RAKE receiver needs accurate multi-path detection to decide the suitable number and parameters of fingers. In order to improve the performance of selective RAKE receiver, the main issue in this thesis is to detect the best paths of channel with the CLEAN algorithm. CLEAN algorithm uses the correlation of the received signal and the template signal as the basis for searching paths. If there are closely adjacent paths, or if one of signal paths is relatively stronger, the detection error of paths may occur and thus affects the performance of the receiver. EP-based CLEAN algorithm uses the cost function and the evolutionary programming (EP) to search the multi-path delay times and gain coefficients for minimizing the cost function. Accurate multi-path detection and high resolution of adjacent paths can be obtained. However, EP-based CLEAN algorithm makes a time-consuming blind search. In the thesis, a CLEAN algorithm based on the cost function is proposed. The proposed cost-based CLEAN algorithm searches the delay times near the peaks of the cross-correlation for local minimum of the cost function, and then uses CLEAN algorithm to extract autocorrelation components and obtain the accurate multi-path detection. By testing the IEEE802.15.3a UWB channel models, and comparing with CLEAN algorithm, the cost-based CLEAN algorithm in the thesis can achieve better detection accuracy in multi-path searching, and improve the performance of selective RAKE receiver.

<p>Climate change and sustainable development are interlinked in several ways. A global sustainable development with decreased emissions of green-house gases is seen as a prerequisite for mitigation of climate change. Simultaneously a changing climate will put constraints to development endeavours in developing countries. Yet, a sustainable pathway should include both mitigation and adaptation to climate change facilitating social development, economic growth and a stable environment in developing countries. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is combining reduced green-house gas emissions with sustainable development in the CDM project’s host country. This so called dual goal has turned out hard to fulfil, especially the local development objective.</p><p> </p><p>This thesis studies how CDM projects contribute to local development and how this development is viewed differently by various stakeholders. This was made through qualitative interviews with actors connected to two CDM projects in Southern India. In addition, a literature review and a document study was made. The projects chosen are in the renewable energy sector, using biomass fuel. Renewable energy is regarded as an important factor to come to terms with increasing green-house gas emissions.</p><p> </p><p>The results from the literature review and document study show that the expected contribution by CDM projects to local sustainable development is usually expressed in terms of employment, distribution of benefits, social infrastructure, access to energy and technology transfer. The environmental benefit is included in the reduction of green-house gas emissions. In the context of local development, stakeholder participation is brought up as an important factor. The results of the interviews present similar categories of development linked to CDM projects. However, differing views of actual local development assisted by the CDM project was discerned in the answers.</p><p> </p><p>This study points to scale-related problems linked to the global benefit of mitigation of climate change in combination with local development. In conclusion, there is a need for monitoring and evaluation of actual contribution by CDM projects to local sustainable development. To facilitate local sustainable benefits of CDM projects, enhanced stakeholder participation is necessary during the whole project activity period.</p><p><strong> </strong></p>

As global economic competition has intensified, many countries have begun focusing on the competitiveness of larger regions of city networks called megaregions. Consisting of two or more cities with specific linkages and connections, megaregions are becoming a new unit that researchers are using to analyze the global economy. The world’s 40 largest megaregions produce two thirds of the global economic output and more than eighty percent of the world’s innovations (Florida et al., 2007). Therefore, understanding the economic characteristics of megaregions can help isolate various challenges and opportunities associated with building on inter-relationships that enhance competitiveness. The Texas Triangle is one of 10 major megaregions in the U.S., and it functions as the primary economic engine of the Texas economy. This study analyzes how the economic characteristics of the major metropolitan areas in the Texas Triangle have changed over time by studying the basic dynamics of these metropolitan areas over the last decade. Results from this study show that each metropolitan area contains specialized export industries and that competition among them seems to be encouraging the economic growth of Texas. The basic industrial structure of the Texas Triangle has not been affected significantly by economic changes over the last decade. Finally, this report presents policy implications related to strengthening traditional economic bases and promoting sustainable economic development such as clean energy in the Texas Triangle. / text