Academic literature on the topic 'Sustainable development – Ontario – York Region'

The research finds evidence in support of and wide recognition of the practical value of management system standards (MSS) by assisting municipalities in meeting their human health protection, environmental objectives, addressing environmental and property damage risks, and providing an additional mechanism of public accountability and transparency. Semi-structured interviews were applied to assess perceptions with practitioners and environmental non-governmental organizations on whether a similar approach to the legally required drinking water quality management standard (DWQMS) could be applied for the municipal wastewater and stormwater sectors. Twelve Ontario municipalities have adopted or are in the process of adopting an ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS) standard for their wastewater and/or stormwater systems, which represents 66% of Ontario’s population. With the large urban centres (e.g., Toronto, York Region, Durham Region, Halton Region and Peel Region) adopting the standard, this is likely to influence small to medium-sized cities to follow a similar approach. Although, resources might be a factor preventing the cohort of smaller utilities voluntarily taking this path. Regulations governing Ontario’s municipal drinking water, wastewater and stormwater utilities were compared via gap analysis. Gaps on management of the system, performance monitoring, auditing and having minimum design criteria left the municipal wastewater and stormwater sectors behind in comparison with recently updated (2004–2008) regulatory framework for the drinking water sector. Based on the identification and review of significant gaps in wastewater and stormwater regulation (compared with the drinking water sector), environmental MSS should be incorporated to strengthen the regulatory framework of these sectors. These phenomena also depict a form of sustainable governance with the use of MSS, which are initiated, developed and regulated by non-state actors, recognizing the value of non-state rule instruments in the water, wastewater and stormwater sectors.

Government agenda setting has been a focus of research in the field of policy sciences for over two decades. The concept of a policy window is explored as a driver of governmental agenda setting. The Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada was chosen as a case study for exploring the application of strategic environmental assessment at the municipal level through a policy window lens. Problem, policy and political streams converged to provide the necessary conditions for improved environmental assessment and infrastructure planning in York Region. A focusing event and the resulting crisis motivated stakeholders to identify and act on the problem. An SEA-type approach was initiated as one key response. A variety of activities were initiated by York Region including the development of a Sustainability Strategy, synchronisation of master planning, wider consideration of alternatives at the master plan level and improved public consultation. Conclusions are drawn and several recommendations are presented and discussed.

The Genesee Valley has long been recognized as a center of Iroquois development, but the connection between Owasco sites in the Genesee and Iroquois sequences in the adjacent regions has never been adequately demonstrated. Attempts to identify transitional Owasco-Iroquois sites in this region have been hampered by the use of diagnostic criteria based on data from eastern New York. This article examines ceramic patterns in the Genesee and establishes a regional cultural sequence based on ceramic criteria which have local diagnostic significance. This sequence reveals the transition from Owasco to Iroquois culture begins in the Genesee with a sudden influx of Ontario Iroquois ceramic traits from the west ca. 1250 A.D. This Owasco-Ontario Iroquois connection in the Genesee negates certain assumptions regarding Iroquois origins and alters our current concept of in situ development.

Forested lands in southern Ontario are threatened by a myriad of demands. In order to capture the multi-scale, multi-use and multifunction reality of forests within such intense human-nature interdependent landscapes, an integrative approach to sustainable forest management is necessary. Such forest management may be possible by combining the framework of landscape ecology with an understanding of forest multifunctionality. Within the Greater Toronto Area, the management of forests is provided by several agencies; some are responsible for 1) geological landscapes (e.g., the Niagara Escarpment), 2) for watersheds (e.g., Conservation Authorities) and 3) for political regions (e.g., York Region). In this paper, case studies reflecting important management issues are introduced. Wildlife research is then presented to link these issues to landscape ecology and forest multifunctionality in order to illustrate a means of enhancing sustainable forest management. Key words: landscape ecology, multifunctionality, multifunctional approach, sustainable forest management, Greater Toronto Area, wildlife function, integrative forest management

Globalization has increased the flow of transnational migrants into many European and North American cities. These shifting socio-demographic patterns have resulted in the rapid development of ‘cosmopolitan’ urban centres where difference and diversity are ubiquitous (Sandercock, 2003). However, as ethnic enclaves form outside the urban core in suburban communities, there is uncertainty about whether cultural homogeneity is desirable or sustainable in a multicultural country. Indeed, planning communities for increasing diversity and difference will remain, what Leonie Sandercock (2004) calls, “one of the greatest tasks for planners of the 21st century”. Thus, this article uses the theory of hyper-diversity to illuminate how immigrants’ interactions with their local suburban community represents cultural pluralism and diversity beyond ethnicity. Specifically, this study explores differing attitudes, activities and lifestyles among diverse immigrant populations in the Region of Peel, one of the fastest growing and most culturally diverse areas in Canada. Focus groups with 60 immigrant youth and 55 immigrant adults were conducted to qualitatively capture perspectives and experiences in ethnic enclaves. The findings highlight the existence of attitudes in favor of multicultural lifestyles, activities that take newcomers beyond the borders of their enclaves, and lifestyles that require additional infrastructure to support sustainability of immigration in the suburbs. In conclusion, this article adds to the debate on cultural pluralism and ‘homogeneous’ ethnic enclaves by using the emergent concept of hyper-diversity as a way to think about the future sustainability of suburbs in an era of global migration.

The urban green belts mechanism was part of the city planning landscape of the 20th century for sustainable urban management. Greenbelt is a land-use policy and designation used in land use/land cover planning. The green belt has long been a design policy that also has a base in London accepted by other renowned cities such as Ottawa, Birmingham, Seoul, Frankfurt, Tehran's, Mashhad, Beijing, Gulbarga, Ontario, etc. Benefits include the value of living close to the green belts, recreational resources, productive farmland, transport connectivity, and a wide range of life support ecosystem services. The study investigated the present green space condition and its infrastructure with other cities around the world and prescribed the other mechanism in reviewing the Master Plan and the Detailed Area Plan of Chittagong city, Bangladesh along with a significant number of journal articles, books, and reports. The study found that the city of Chittagong is facing various problems in the present decades with its various problems like green space, recreational facilities, disaster, public health risk and so many. It also found that the city's geographical condition is suitable for developing an effective green belt in its periphery area. Although green wedges is another park system proposal for the barriers of urban green belt. The importance of land allocation for urban green space is usually neglected or easily reported in the city transition region. Besides, the city of Glasgow, Stockholm, Melbourne, and Copenhagen, etc. are accepted green wedges mechanisms. For some barriers as like as industrial development and some exclusive economic zone, some green wedges are much suitable in the gap of urban green belt in Chittagong city. The concept of green belt and green wedges both supports sustainable urban management in the city of Chittagong. However, these findings and analysis will be of great importance to the urban planners and decision-makers, for making environment-friendly sustainable future planning of modern and the planned Chittagong city.

Aim. The article is aimed to show the evolution of approaches and current thinking on metropolitan regions in the context of world urbanization; to analyze the main tendencies of New York metropolitan area development – one of the biggest metropolitan regions in the world with a core in a global city; basing on the case of New York, to illustrate the evolution of the methodology for metropolitan region delineation, its planning and spatial development in long-term perspective. Methodology. The methodology is based on a long-term analysis of the dynamics of New York city as well as spatial organization of the metropolitan region from the viewpoint of the evolution of approaches for delineation of the urbanized areas in the US and spatial planning perspectives, basing on several generations of New York metropolitan area regional plans. Results. The article reflects the evolution of ideas and basic concepts of metropolitan regions development as spatial entities. Basing on the US experience in the methodology of urban areas delineation, the main changes over recent decades and their relation to urbanization processes are reflected, in particular the role of low-density corridors, population density and housing density as criteria for urban areas identification is analyzed. This experience can be used to develop a methodology for identifying metropolitan regions in Ukraine, making delineation process and providing more balanced governance policy for these regions. Using the example of New York, the article shows the need to constantly update and adapt governance and planning policies in such regions, which is reflected in changes of managing growth, now mostly focusing on reducing segregation, preventing climate change, enhancing institutional transformations and strengthening the role of spatial planning. Novelty. Revealing the experience of metropolitan regions delineation, challenges for their spatial development and planning strategy for the case of New York metropolitan area, the article reflects actual methodological approaches to metropolitan regions delineation, making governance policy and spatial planning that can be adapted in Ukraine. Among the key proposed changes aimed at strengthening the sustainable development of such regions in Ukraine - development the methodology for their delineation, elaboration of metropolitan region development strategy and spatial planning for the whole region.

58 Background: Emerging evidence indicates that the transition of well breast cancer survivors to primary care is safe and effective. Methods: Prospective longitudinal cohort study across 14 health regions in Ontario, Canada. Each region received $100 000 (CAN) to develop and implement a sustainable new model of survivorship care for BC survivors that involved transition from medical oncology-led practice. Each region had a designated lead, and support from primary care. Funding could be used to develop any aspect of the model including personnel support, development of communication materials and outcome measurement. A minimal dataset reporting requirement included a description of the program, documentation of transitioned BC survivors as well as standardized patient and provider experience feedback once transition completed. Results: All 14 health regions in Ontario participated and all developed a survivorship care plan and patient educational materials. The models developed included direct transition to primary care in 6 regions, a nurse-led transition clinic in 4 and a GP-led transition clinic in 4. To date, 3,418 BC survivors have transitioned. Of 676 BC respondents to date, 83% felt there was a clear plan for follow up and 87% felt adequately prepared for transition. Feedback from primary care providers demonstrated that many feel informed about intent of transition and understand their role in on-going follow-up care. Process outcomes such as re-referral back to cancer center and adherence to follow-up guidelines are currently underway. Conclusions: The wide scale transition of appropriate BC survivors to a primary setting appears feasible with high acceptability by patients and providers.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Writer and farmer Shannon Hayes lives with three generations of her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in West Fulton, New York, a rural community at the northernmost tip of Appalachia. Like many of her peers, Hayes left the region after high school. However, after receiving a BA in creative writing from Binghamton University and an MA and PhD in sustainable agriculture and community development from Cornell, she returned to the farm where she was reared and became what she calls a radical homemaker: a woman or man who focuses on a sustainable domestic life without rejecting feminist ideals. In making this choice, Hayes is part of a larger group of people who are rejuvenating communities while growing and consuming more local food....

The Regional Municipality of York is located immediately north of the City of Toronto. It is the fastest growing municipality in Ontario. The rapid expansion of residential, industrial and commercial development in the municipality has led to a weakness in the electrical and gas infrastructure. The Ontario Power Authority (the agency responsible for managing the power requirements in the Province of Ontario) has recognized this weakness and has developed plans calling for a new gas-fired generating station and improvements to the electrical grid. The shortages of gas supply and electricity have not developed overnight. Hydro One, which runs the electrical grid, initiated a supply study in 2002. The study recommended upgrading a 115 kV transmission line to a double circuit 230 kV transmission line on the existing corridor. The ensuing public outcry resulted in the municipality passing a resolution against the upgrade. Similarly, a large gas-fired generating station proposal was abandoned as the result of citizen opposition. In 2003, the Ontario Energy Board approved new Environmental Guidelines for the Location, Construction and Operation of Hydrocarbon Pipelines and Facilities in Ontario. The guidelines include specific new requirements for planning pipelines in urban areas. Among other things, these requirements involve the identification of indirectly affected landowners and a more detailed analysis of public issues and how they were resolved. It became clear that in order to achieve regulatory success, not only would the public have to become actively engaged in the decision-making early in the process, the technical reviewers (federal, provincial and municipal agencies) would likewise have to be actively involved. Through the use of two case studies of proposed large-diameter natural gas pipelines initiated in York Region in 2005, this paper describes the techniques used to engage the public and the regulators. It also describes how the public involvement requirements contained in the Ontario Energy Board’s new guidelines were incorporated into the planning process. The case studies begin with a rationale for the study area selected. A description of issues follows. The techniques used to address these issues and the success of the program are documented. Techniques include face-to-face project initiation meetings, use of technical and citizens’ advisory committees, sub-committee meetings to resolve specific issues and site-specific field work. The study results illustrate that it is possible to plan a right-of-way in such a manner as to satisfy the general public and regulators, be compatible with existing development, conform to the new Ontario Energy Board guidelines and minimize the amount of remedial work required to mitigate the impacts occurring on and adjacent to the right-of-way.

Anaerobic codigestion of dairy manure and food-based feedstocks reflects a cradle-to-cradle approach to organic waste management. Given both of their abundance throughout New York State, waste-to-energy processes represent promising waste management strategies. The existing waste-to-energy literature has not yet fully realized the environmental impacts associated with displaced grid electricity generation and feedstock-hauling emissions on the net environmental impact of centralized codigestion facilities. The key objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive environmental impact assessment with the purpose of understanding the existing environmental status of centralized codigestion facilities. Real-time data from an operational codigestion facility located in Western New York State was used to conduct this environmental impact statement. A comprehensive inventory of greenhouse gas emissions associated with renewable electricity production at the codigestion facility was developed using the Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) (U.S. EPA), while emissions associated with feedstock hauling were quantified using the fuel life-cycle approach developed by the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation model (GREET) (U.S. DOE). With each of the emissions models used for this analysis, it was determined that the net environmental impact associated with hauling food-related feedstocks from the many locations throughout the Northeast U.S. region would be acceptably low, and thus could be part of future sustainable development of centralized codigestion facilities.