This article examines the implementation of a bulk water pricing system in the Paraíba do Sul River Basin (PSRB) in southeast Brazil. It argues that four primary factors explain the successful negotiations for water prices in the basin. First, the negotiation process itself was inclusive and open rather than being imposed from the top down. A combination of market factors and state control (in the form of direct involvement of a federal agency) created a necessary balance in setting prices as it simultaneously allowed for powerful industrial sectors to negotiate favorable terms and for state and societal actors to offset the dominance of certain users over the negotiation process. Second, participants successfully demanded that the collected funds be reinvested in the basin rather than absorbed and spent elsewhere by the federal government. Third, a worldwide paradigm shift for water management, including the notions of water as an economic good, decentralization, societal participation and sustainability shaped the actions of key groups within the basin. Fourth, the level of technical capacity in the basin which reached back several decades provided the necessary foundation and support for the process to move forward. Committee members largely agreed on the primary problems facing the basin and on the necessity of implementing a bulk water pricing scheme in order to rectify them.
This article examines the implementation of integrated water-management institutions in the Paraíba do Sul River basin in southeast Brazil. It argues that social learning has been critical in facilitating reform implementation so far, and will likely continue to be an important factor for the future sustainability of the new management system. There has been a synergistic relationship between social learning and Brazil's water-reform hybrid governance institutions, in which social learning facilitated the implementation of the reform's new institutions, which in turn enabled further learning in the context of the river basin committee's decision-making process. Through interviews, surveys, and observations, we identified social-learning capacities, including trust, an ability to work together, and the committee's shared understanding of the institution's problems, possibilities, and mission. Effective management through social learning was demonstrated by the institution's adaptive capacity in the face of a severe drought.
Environmental education (EE) and social studies education share an interest in behavioral outcomes. This study compares behavioral outcomes-including both self-reported knowledge of actions and reported actions taken-in the context of a land use curriculum enacted in secondary science versus social studies classes with 500 students and nine teachers. Data included pre-and posttests for comparison and intervention groups, classroom observations, and student and teacher interviews. Results indicated that students tended to know and undertake individual rather than collective actions toward sustainable land use. The type of actions students identified varied by course type: when the EE curriculum was presented in science class compared to social studies, students showed less diverse knowledge of actions in support of sustainable land use.
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions change earth’s climate by altering the planet’s radiative balance. An important first step in mitigation of climate change is to reduce annual increases in these emissions. However, the many suggested means of limiting emissions rates have led to few actual changes in policy or behavior. This disconnection can be attributed in part to the difficulty of convening groups of stakeholders with diverse values, the polarizing nature of current political systems, poor communication across disciplines, and a lack of clear, usable information about emission mitigation strategies. Here, electronically facilitated ethical deliberation, a method of determining courses of action on common goals by collaborative discussion, is used to evaluate Pacala and Socolow’s climate change stabilization strategies based on economic, technological, social, and ecological impacts across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Few previous analyses of climate mitigation strategies include all of these factors; rather, short-term technological feasibility studies and economic cost–benefit analyses predominate. After accounting for tradeoffs among disparate criteria, strategies involving end-user efficiency (e.g., efficient buildings and vehicles), wind, and solar power rank highest, while carbon capture and storage, hydrogen fuel cells, and biofuels options rank lowest. This electronically facilitated deliberation method offers an alternative to oppositional debate or cost–benefit analysis for assessing strategies where both quantitative and qualitative factors are important, information from disparate disciplines is relevant, and stakeholders are geographically dispersed.
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