Land use conflicts are becoming increasingly apparent from local to global scales. Surface gold mining is an extreme source of such a conflict, but mining impacts on local livelihoods often remain unclear. Our goal here was to assess land cover change due to gold surface mining in Western Ghana, one of the world's leading gold mining regions, and to study how these changes affected land use systems. We used Landsat satellite images from 1986-2002 to map land cover change and field interviews with farmers to understand the livelihood implications of mining-related land cover change. Our results showed that surface mining resulted in deforestation (58%), a substantial loss of farmland (45%) within mining concessions, and widespread spill-over effects as relocated farmers expand farmland into forests. This points to rapidly eroding livelihood foundations, suggesting that the environmental and social costs of Ghana's gold boom may be much higher than previously thought.
The political will to reduce global GHG emissions has largely contributed to increased global biofuel production and trade. The expanding cultivation of energy crops may drive changes in the terrestrial ecosystems such as land cover and biodiversity loss. When biomass replaces fossil energy carriers, sustainability criteria are therefore crucial to avoid adverse impacts and ensure a net positive GHG balance. The European Union has set mandatory sustainability criteria for liquid biofuels in its Renewable Energy Directive (RED) 2009/28/EC to ensure net positive impacts of its biofuel policy. The adoption of sustainability criteria in other world regions and their extension to solid and gaseous biomass in the EU is ongoing. This paper examines the effect of the EU RED sustainability criteria on the availability of biomass resources at global and regional scale. It quantifies the relevance of sustainability criteria in biomass resource assessments taking into account the criteria's spatial distribution. This assessment does not include agricultural and forestry residues and aquatic biomass. Previously unknown interrelations between sustainability criteria are examined and described for ten world regions. The analysis concludes that roughly 10% (98.5 EJ) of the total theoretical potential of 977.2 EJ occurs in areas free of sustainability concerns.Keywords: biodiversity, biomass potential, European renewable energy directive, GHG balance, liquid-biofuels, sustainable energy IntroductionTo mitigate climate change, the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is one of the key challenges for the coming decades (IPCC, 2007). Due to technological path dependencies and a current lack of alternatives, biofuels play a vital role for GHG savings in the transport sector (Gibson et al., 2011). Over the past decade, largely politically driven support has already led to an exponential increase in global production and trade of liquid and solid biofuels (Lamers et al., 2011(Lamers et al., , 2012. This trend is bound to continue, e.g., the European Union's (EU) target of a 20% share of renewable energy in final transport energy supply by 2020. The vast majority of this will be supplied by biofuels (Beurskens & Hekkenberg, 2010). Similar targets are set in the US and China (Ren21, 2011). In the light of past production expansions the potential future demand for biofuels has raised concerns over the sustainability, climate change mitigation potential and availability of the feedstock (Fargione et al., 2008;Melillo et al., 2009;Searchinger, 2010). Current biofuel policies incorporate limited control mechanisms for the mobilization of specific biomass resources to satisfy the growing demand. The European Renewable Energy Directive (RED) 2009/28/EC (EC, 2009) has been among the first to define several sustainability criteria covering land use change, biodiversity, and GHG emissions (Rfa, 2008;Searchinger, 2008; EC, 2009;Dehue & Van De Staaij, 2010;Fritsche, 2010). The RED criteria currently apply solely to liquid biofuels...
Land is under pressure from a number of demands, including the need for increased supplies of bioenergy. While bioenergy is an important ingredient in many pathways compatible with reaching the 2°C target, areas where cultivation of the biomass feedstock would be most productive appear to co-host other important ecosystems services. We categorize global geo-data on land availability into productivity deciles, and provide a geographically explicit assessment of potentials that are concurrent with EU sustainability criteria. The deciles unambiguously classify the global productivity range of potential land currently not in agricultural production for biomass cultivation. Results show that 53 exajoule (EJ) sustainable biomass potential are available from 167 million hectares (Mha) with a productivity above 10 tons of dry matter per hectare and year (tD Mha −1 a −1 ), while additional 33 EJ are available on 264 Mha with yields between 4 and 10 tD M ha −1 a −1 : some regions lose less of their highly productive potentials to sustainability concerns than others and regional contributions to bioenergy potentials shift when less productive land is considered. Challenges to limit developments to the exploitation of sustainable potentials arise in Latin America, Africa and Developing Asia, while new opportunities emerge for Transition Economies and OECD countries to cultivate marginal land.
, and many other shop owners who cooperated closely with us to help provide a sample, review surveys and reports and help us understand the practical realities of the motor repair shop floor. Additional valuable review, comments and insights were provided by Dale Friesen at Manitoba Hydro, Mark Webb at Virginia Power, and Markus Zeller of Demand Side Energy Consultants. We would also like to thank Don Lammers of Vaughen's Price Publishing Company, Tnc., publisher of Vaughen's Complete Price Guide for Motor Repairs and New Motors, which provided data and ideas for motor repair costing issues. This report would not have been possible without the assistance of Linda Dethman and the staff at SB W, Inc. of Bellevue, Washington, which successfully administered a very long and complex survey to the project's sample of motor repair shops. Linda Dethman also provided valuable insight on the final organization of the report. Finally, we would like to thank all of the motor shops which took the time to participate in this survey and allowed site visits. 0 An extensive review of the literature; Key informant interviews and site visits with 10 motor repair shops': and A national survey of 65 motor repair shops conducted in May and June 1993. The Motor Repair Industry As estimated in the survey, there are approximately 4,100 motor repair shops in the United States. These. shops repaired between 1.8 and 2.9 million motors in 1993 generating an estimated $2 billion in gross annual repair revenues. Motor repair services accounted for approximately two-thirds of total shop revenues from all sources. Almost all shops sold new or rebuilt motors in addition to their repair business. 'An "average megawatt" (W) is equal to one megawatt of capacity produced continuously over the period of one year. .(1 megawatt x 8,760 hours (the hours m one 365-day year) = 8,760 megawatt-hours or 8.760,OOO kilowatt hours.) D-Repons7-11W6 Avoiding practices which degrade efficiency; and Appropriate testing before and after repair to diagnose potential sources of decreased efficiency. Barriers to Quality Motor Repair and Rewind Educational, financial, infrastructure, and technical barriers need to be addressed to insure broad implementation of quality motor repair practices that maintain energy efficiency. D-Reports7-llW6 V D-Repons7-11 W6 L t vi D-Reports7-I 1 Wh vii D-Reports7-11W6 vi11 D-Rep01ts7-11 W6 1x , Contents Chapter
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