China has seen tremendous economic growth in the past three decades, and in the order of eight to ten per cent since 2000. This development has come with ever increasing energy consumption, and thus emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). This trend has been an important topic in the international climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; China is under constant pressure from other large economies to contribute to reversing the GHG emissions trend in order to avoid dangerous climate change. At the same time, the Chinese government has pursued an environmental and energy security agenda focussed at increasing the energy efficiency of its economy and the supply of energy from renewable sources. Alongside, a domestic climate change discourse has developed, and changed over time. This thesis examines elements of the country-specific political ecology in the area of greenhouse gas mitigation in China, looking closely at what climate change means in China, and discussing how this influences the development and institutionalisation of mitigation mechanisms. I take a political ecology approach to scrutinize the nature and evolution of a climate change discourse in China, and the influences and implications of existing governance structures and institutions that affect greenhouse gas mitigation in the country. Adopting mixed empirical methods comprising semi-structured interviewing, media and numerical data analyses, and participant observation in research processes close to the government, data was collected between 2008 and 2011. In five academic papers with distinctive angles, I show the importance of engaging deeply with the formative, distinctly Chinese political, economic and ecological environment when discussing mitigation in China. The Chinese climate change discourse has changed significantly in recent years, for example resulting in different discursively acceptable ways for the country to engage in mitigation. These meanings of climate change in China have developed through specific interactions of the political and academic spheres, based on Chinese understandings of nature and history (and China’s place in it), as well as with limited involvement of the media compared to western developed country cases. The notion of historical responsibility is a major component of what climate change means in China; in this thesis I therefore illuminate the numerical and conceptual ramifications of this part of the discourse, noting that the re-active nature of this frame, with China positioned against the developed countries, has not lend itself to support new mitigation action. Low carbon economy is another newer and now very important element of the discourse, a frame that locates China in an active, entrepreneurial subject position. My study on two cases – mitigation in the Beijing transportation sector and the introduction of seven local emission trading systems through a approach of governance through pilots – shows how this part of the discourse allows for the development of new mitigation approaches when they follow established institutions and governance mechanisms in a path-dependent manner. This thesis contributes to the research of global environmental change by advancing theoretical and practical ways of engaging with climate change in general, and mitigation in particular in China. It stresses the importance of considering the country-specific political ecology when formulating global climate change policy.

Over the last decade, the effects of an unprecedented rise in global temperature due to climate change, on the enjoyment of human rights, especially the right to life, have been subjects of intensive scholarly attention. Gallons of juristic ink have been spilled on the need for States to adopt policy measures aimed at combating climate change. However, recent findings show that policy measures and projects aimed at mitigating climate change are in turn producing even more serious human rights concerns, especially in developing countries. These human rights issues include: mass displacement of citizens from their homes to allow for climate change mitigation projects; lack of participation by citizens in project planning and implementation; citing and concentration of projects in poor and vulnerable communities; lack of governmental accountability on projects and the absence of review and complaint mechanisms for victims to obtain redress for these problems. These secondary human rights impacts of policy measures and projects aimed at mitigating climate change have not received sufficient attention in existing literature. The aim of this research is to examine and analyse the effects of climate change mitigation projects, specifically Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, on the enjoyment of fundamental human rights. It considers how lessons from the approval and execution of CDM projects could inform thoughts on the value and requirements for mainstreaming human rights safeguards into international climate change regimes in general. It analyses the legal and theoretical prospects and paradoxes of adopting the United Nations Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) as a framework through which human rights standards may be systemically integrated and mainstreamed into extant and emerging international legal regimes on climate change.

Infrastructure projects, based on the Build-Operate-Transfer, (BOT), method, have been of interest to governments of developed and developing countries for some time, resulting in their worldwide use. Using the BOT method enables governments to reallocate risks and rewards to the private sector for larger infrastructure projects throughout the projects' operating life. In order to implement a BOT infrastructure project successfully, one of the essential requirements is to carry out a thorough analysis of risks relating to the project including the social, economic, environmental, political, legal, and the financial aspects. Due to the fact that the type of risk study required for large-scale projects is so sophisticated, and therefore expensive and time consuming, the government, due to lack of expertise and time, often obtains a project viability study from the private sector. This can cause problems in that the private sector may incur financial losses or even bankruptcy, unless the host government guarantees compensation to the losers of the bid. Because all parties have different targets which they wish to achieve from the project, a may conflict arise and cause lengthy negotiations, sometimes lasting for years which often result in the death of the project. The greatest opportunity for a successful outcome for a BOT project is obtained when the extensive efforts and costs involved in the risk study process are shared by all parties. The responsibility of the decision maker is to identify, understand and analyze the many risk factors both, qualitative, (linguistic in nature) and quantitative, that will affect funding, procurement, developing, construction and operation, before proceeding with the build stage of the project. Firstly, it is necessary to evaluate the quantitative Risk Factors subjectively, and list them in order of importance. Secondly, conduct an evaluation of the qualitative factors and since the consideration of qualitative factors is subjective, the decision maker will often limit the number of factors being evaluated possibly resulting in inconsistent results. This study proposes a decision framework, which would be useful in determining the influence of the qualitative Risk Factors on the project management of BOT infrastructure projects. A methodology is provided to enable the identification of interrelationships between the Risk Factors and their influence on the project. Using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) techniques, which model the relationships between the Risk Factors, a validation of this approach will be sought using a decomposed evaluation method and also information obtained from three existing case studies, (the Channel Tunnel, Sulaibiya Wastewater Treatment and Reclamation Plant and Marsa Allam Airport). The results of the decomposed approach were compared to experts' holistic evaluations for the same case studies mentioned above. The findings indicate that the decomposed approach showed a strong correlation to the holistic approach. An evaluation of the risks for the Sulaibiya Wastewater Treatment and Reclamation Plant study is provided and suggestions made to highlight risks attached to such a project before it is actually undertaken. Using the decomposed approach enables the decision maker to see the contribution of each risk compared to all of the risks in the total project and will help to determine and subsequently minimize or preventing any risk factors and so considerably improving the risk management of the project.

This paper examines the Swedish travel agencies that offer voluntary carbon offsetting to their costumers. Tourism is expanding in a fast rate globally with international arrivals predicted to reach 1,8 billion by 2030 (UNWTO, 2008). Economic development and more availability of individual free time are two of the most significant drivers to this growth in tourism. Globalization has also resulted in the growth and increase of mobility on a global scale (Harvey, 2000). The reduction of cost and time of mobility in space, driven partly by technological innovation in the transport sector has resulted in the increase of mobility (Harvey, 2000). Tourism is inseparable with transport; an increase in tourism therefore results in an increase of emissions related to tourism transports (Duval, 2007). One of the most alarming challenges facing tourism is the increase of green house gases. A number of Swedish travel agencies are offering voluntary carbon offsetting to their costumers as a way of tackling the problem off the increase of emissions related to tourism. This study however shows that the interest and motivation to buy voluntary offsetting from travel agencies are low, and gives some incentive to why that’s the case. Swedish travel agencies effort to sell voluntary carbon offsetting to their costumers must be seen as a failure, both in numbers and in doing any significant impact on the mitigation of climate change related to tourism.

Abstract Background: Consumer interest and demand for healthy and ecologically produced local food has led to a high market demand that local production cannot meet. Product attributes of perishability and short life cycles ensure that even local supply chains are challenging to manage. This increases potential for risks occurrence in an Organic Food Supply Chain (OFSC) especially with unreliable supply of products. Small and established food retailers import organic food products from across the world. Custom delays, high transport charges, commodity costs and regulatory requirements are associated with food imports. This renders OFSCs complex and vulnerable to disruptions or breakdowns that require appropriate strategies to identify and mitigate risks. Purpose: To gain an overall insight of risks mitigation in OFSCs. The purpose of this thesis is to assess risks affecting suppliers and retailers of organic food and propose risk mitigation strategies to prevent or minimise supply chain breakdowns. Method: This qualitative study utilizes a case study strategy involving seven case firms and seven research respondents. Data is collected through semi-structured interviews and documentary secondary data. The analysis of the empirical findings is conducted by cross analysing empirical findings of respective case firms and then emerging patterns are formulated into a general framework. Conclusions: Low conversion rates of farms for organic production, high costs of investments and regulatory requirements have contributed to prevailing production risks that partly cause low organic output. Other risks identified that could disrupt the food chain under study include sourcing, warehousing, demand, price, financial and institutional risks. Mitigation strategies proposed include production procedures, CAP, supply chain flexibility, supply chain visibility, certification, diversification of retail channels, brand image building, horizontal & vertical cooperation and buyer-supplier relations.

With the increase in globalization of Integrated Circuit (IC) design and production, hardware trojans have become a serious threat to manufacturers as well as consumers. These trojans could be intensionally or accidentally embedded in ICs to make a system vulnerable to hardware attacks. The implementation of critical applications using ICs makes the effect of trojans an even more serious problem. Moreover, the presence of untrusted foundries and designs cannot be eliminated since the need for ICs is growing exponentially and the use of third party software tools to design the circuits is now common. In addition if a trusted foundry for fabrication has to be developed, it involves a huge investment. Therefore, hardware trojan detection techniques are essential. Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) system designers must now consider the security of a system against internal and external hardware attacks. Many hardware attacks rely on system vulnerabilities. Moreover, an attacker may rely on deprocessing and reverse engineering to study the internal structure of a system to reveal the system functionality in order to steal secret keys or copy the system. Thus hardware security is a major challenge for the hardware industry. Many hardware attack mitigation techniques have been proposed to help system designers build secure systems that can resist hardware attacks during the design stage, while others protect the system against attacks during operation. In this dissertation, the idea of quantifying hardware attacks, hardware trojans, and hardware trojan detection techniques is introduced. We analyze and classify hardware attacks into risk levels based on three dimensions Accessibility/Resources/Time (ART). We propose a methodology and algorithms to aid the attacker/defender to select/predict the hardware attacks that could use/threaten the system based on the attacker/defender capabilities. Because many of these attacks depends on hardware trojans embedded in the system, we propose a comprehensive hardware trojan classification based on hardware trojan attributes divided into eight categories. An adjacency matrix is generated based on the internal relationship between the attributes within a category and external relationship between attributes in different categories. We propose a methodology to generate a trojan life-cycle based on attributes determined by an attacker/defender to build/investigate a trojan. Trojan identification and severity are studied to provide a systematic way to compare trojans. Trojan detection identification and coverage is also studied to provide a systematic way to compare detection techniques and measure their e effectiveness related to trojan severity. We classify hardware attack mitigation techniques based on the hardware attack risk levels. Finally, we match these techniques to the attacks the could countermeasure to help defenders select appropriate techniques to protect their systems against potential hardware attacks. / Graduate / 0544 / 0984 / samerm@uvic.ca

Crowded places have been the target of terrorist attacks for many years. Their inherent nature has resulted in a vulnerability to a range of attacks, most notably the threat of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs). Government agendas have been seeking to reduce the extent of this vulnerability, by encouraging those who are responsible for the design, construction and operation of such places to incorporate counter-terrorism measures (CTMs) into their designs, and where necessary, retro-fit them into existing places. However, little is known about what measures can be used, as well as their performance and consequences. The aim of the research is therefore to identify the aforementioned range of measures through the development of a typology that also examines their relative performance and consequences for a range of scenarios, in order to inform key decision makers who are responsible for the protection of crowded places. Through the use of a qualitative research strategy and respective research methods, interviews, site visits and document analysis were carried out in both the UK and in the USA. A total of 47 participants were recruited for the research, with the collection of data spanning 16 months. A preliminary study was undertaken that determined a range of influences on whether crowded places are protected, as well as influences on the value of CTMs themselves. A theoretical framework was developed to capture and understand those influences. Conventional data analysis methods and internal validation techniques were used to subject the data to methodological rigour, ensuring the validity and reliability of the research. While the negative consequences of incorporating CTMs can be profound, every CTM that can be used has additional benefits; measures can be incorporated at no cost and can even generate revenue; and designing-in CTMs has a number of advantages over retro-fitting them. This research s contribution to knowledge in relation to methodology, empiricism, theory, industry, and policy has resulted in the creation of a significant amount of guidance for key decision makers who are responsible for the design, construction and operation of crowded places, as well as providing data on the benefits that can be gained from incorporating mitigative measures that is of interest to those who have a role to play in the design, construction and operation of the built environment more broadly. Recommendations for further research posit that greater understanding is needed in relation to the specific monetary costs of CTMs themselves, the experience of users of protected places, the implications of invisible CTMs, and the need for research into the assessment and incorporation of proportionality into the built environment. Practical recommendations put forward the need for clarification of legislation in relation to duties of care, the dissemination of the incentives to protect, and benefits of protecting, crowded places, the need for further debate and transparency regarding proportionality and what constitutes proportionate design, and the need to encourage greater engagement between stakeholders and the means through which this can occur. The research posits that legislative requirements encompassing the mitigation of terrorist attacks are apparent, and that therefore, organisations should incorporate CTMs into vulnerable places, yet as previously indicated, such CTMs do not have to cost anything.

Social, political, and economic trends suggest that the United States may soon join other United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) countries in drafting substantive, national climate change policy. After providing a brief overview of past and present climate action taken both nationally and internationally, this paper explores different economic solutions to address the externalities of fossil fuel emissions. Alternatives include command-and-control regulation, a carbon tax, and a cap-and-trade program. Several factors, including domestic political anti-tax sentiment, suggest that a cap-and-trade framework is the most promising market-based alternative to reduce carbon emissions within the United States’s electricity sector. Case studies focus on the power generation components of four Texas utilities: Austin Energy, CPS Energy of San Antonio, NRG Energy, and Luminant and assess cap-and-trade’s ramifications on electricity prices. Utilities would seek to pass through to customers in the form of higher electricity prices up to 100 percent of expenses incurred from mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Three primary factors will determine how a given carbon dioxide cap-and-trade allowance price will affect the electricity price charged by utilities: the carbon intensity of the generation fuel mix, whether the wholesale electricity market is regulated or competitive, and whether greenhouse gas allowances are auctioned or grandfathered to covered entities. Consumer elasticity would determine resulting demand for the higher priced energy. Relatively inelastic electricity consumption could cause electricity sector customers to incur financial losses approximately eight times larger than producers by the year 2020 under a mature cap-and-trade framework. Furthermore, evidence suggests market-based GHG reduction tools such as a cap-and-trade schema alone are not sufficient to decarbonize the electricity generation sector. Without complementary regulatory policies that mandate transition to clean energy sources, cap-and-trade will only succeed in redistributing the opportunity cost associated with the carbon externality. / text

Two projects are documented within this MEM Report: I. The first project examined what was learnt involving the critical infrastructure in the aftermath of natural disasters in the Canterbury region of New Zealand – the most prominent being the series of earthquakes between 2010 and 2011. The project identified several learning gaps, leading to recommendations for further investigations that could add significant value for the lifeline infrastructure community. II. Following the Lifeline Lesson Learnt Project, the Disaster Mitigation Guideline series was initiated with two booklets, one on Emergency Potable Water and a second on Emergency Sanitation. The key message from both projects is that we can and must learn from disasters. The projects described are part of the emergency management, and critical infrastructure learning cycles – presenting knowledge captured by others in a digestible format, enabling the lessons to be reapplied. Without these kinds of projects, there will be fewer opportunities to learn from other’s successes and failures when it comes to preparing for natural disasters.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.15.4 standard presents a very useful technology for implementing low-cost, low-power, wireless sensor networks. Its main focus, which is to applications requiring simple wireless connectivity with relaxed throughout and latency requirements, makes it suitable for connecting devices that have not been networked, such as industrial and control instrumentation equipments, agricultural equipments, vehicular equipments, and home appliances. Its usage of the license-free 2.4 GHz frequency band makes the technique successful for fast and worldwide market deployments. However, concerns about interference have arisen due to the presence of other wireless technologies using the same spectrum. Although the IEEE 802.15.4 standard has provided some mechanisms, to enhance capability to coexist with other wireless devices operating on the same frequency band, including Carrier Sensor Multiple Access (CSMA), Clear Channel Assessment (CCA), channel alignment, and low duty cycle, it is essential to design and implement adjustable mechanisms for an IEEE 802.15.4 based system integrated into a practical application to deal with interference which changes randomly over time. Among the potential interfering systems (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cordless phones, microwave ovens, wireless headsets, etc) which work on the same Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) frequency band, Wi-Fi systems (IEEE 802.11 technique) have attracted most concerns because of their high transmission power and large deployment in both residential and office environments. This thesis aims to propose a methodology for IEEE 802.15.4 wireless systems to adopt proper adjustment in order to mitigate the effect of interference caused by IEEE 802.11 systems through energy detection, channel agility and data recovery. The contribution of this thesis consists of five parts. Firstly, a strategy is proposed to enable IEEE 802.15.4 systems to maintain normal communications using the means of consecutive transmissions, when the system s default mechanism of retransmission is insufficient to ensure successful rate due to the occurrence of Wi-Fi interference. Secondly, a novel strategy is proposed to use a feasible way for IEEE 802.15.4 systems to estimate the interference pattern, and accordingly adjust system parameters for the purpose of achieving optimized communication effectiveness during time of interference without relying on hardware changes and IEEE 802.15.4 protocol modifications. Thirdly, a data recovery mechanism is proposed for transport control to be applied for recovering lost data by associating with the proposed strategies to ensure the data integrity when IEEE 802.15.4 systems are suffering from interference. Fourthly, a practical case is studied to discuss how to design a sustainable system for home automation application constructed on the basis of IEEE 802.15.4 technique. Finally, a comprehensive design is proposed to enable the implementation of an interference mitigation strategy for IEEE 802.15.4 based ad hoc WSNs within a structure of building fire safety monitoring system. The proposed strategies and system designs are demonstrated mainly through theoretical analysis and experimental tests. The results obtained from the experimental tests have verified that the interference caused by an IEEE 802.11 system on an IEEE 802.15.4 system can be effectively mitigated through adjusting IEEE 802.15.4 system s parameters cooperating with interference pattern estimation. The proposed methods are suitable to be integrated into a system-level solution for an IEEE 802.15.4 system to deal with interference, which is also applicable to those wireless systems facing similar interference issues to enable the development of efficient mitigation strategies.