Das Projekt "Impacts of well and Human Intrusion on Khulan (Wild Ass) and other threatened species in the Gobi Desert" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Freiburg, Forstzoologisches Institut, Professur für Wildtierökologie und Wildtiermanagement durchgeführt. The importance of the Gobi environment to the conservation of Khulan and other threatened wildlife and to the future of the pastoral livestock production is undeniable. At the present time, Mongolia is anticipating development of a commercialized agricultural sector that could easily cause greater intrusion of human activities in the Gobi environment than current pasto-ral livestock production. Development of other sectors of the Mongolian economy, especially mining and road construction, could also impact environmental security in general and habitat needs of the khulan and associated wildlife in the Gobi environment in particular. Work is required to clarify to what extent (if any) the wild ass is affected or competes with domestic livestock and other human intrusions, and to what degree. On the basis of these findings, ma-nagement steps for both khulan protection and rural livelihood/water resources development can be developed.
Das Projekt "FUNSERVE - Selling a Function instead of a Product - Renting White Goods via Functional Service Contracts" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie gGmbH durchgeführt. In Kooperation mit dem Haushaltsgeräte-Hersteller Electrolux und mit Energieversorgern sowie mit Förderung durch die Europäische Kommission und der Bremer Energie-Konsens GmbH untersuchte dieses Projekt einen neuartigen Service, bei dem energieeffiziente Haushaltsgeräte vermietet und anschließend wieder verwendet werden. In der ersten Projektphase wurde das Konzept des neuen Service detailliert. Durch Befragungen von Kundinnen und Kunden sowie Gespräche mit dem Einzelhandel und Verbraucherverbänden wurden die Machbarkeit und Attraktivität des neuen Service getestet. Eine besondere ökologische Komponente des Konzepts ist, dass nach Ende der Mietdauer der Hersteller die Geräte zurücknimmt und entweder professionell aufarbeitet und erneut in den Verkehr bringt oder ökologisch weiterverwertet. Eine Hochrechnung des ökologischen und ökonomischen Nettoeffekts durch den neuen Service rundete die erste Projektphase ab. Wie die Analysen und Befragungen im Rahmen des Projekts gezeigt haben, könnte ein Functional Service für effiziente Haushaltsgeräte für bis zu 30 oder 40 Prozent der Haushalte attraktiv sein. Er würde die Nutzung von ökoeffizienten Haushaltsgeräten, einfacher, sicherer, umweltfreundlicher und mit zunehmendem Marktvolumen voraussichtlich auch insgesamt kostengünstiger machen. Eine wichtige Voraussetzung dafür wäre eine funktionierende Wiederaufarbeitung und -vermietung bzw. Weitervermarktung der aus der Miete zurückkommenden Geräte. Bei einer fairen Verteilung von Aufgaben, Ausgaben und Einnahmen zwischen Gerätehersteller, Einzelhandel und Energieunternehmen würden darüber hinaus auch alle diese Marktakteure mittelfristig von einem höheren Anteil ökoeffizienter Geräte profitieren, denn diese sind in der Regel auch höherwertige Geräte. In der zweiten Projektphase sollte der neue Service in Feldversuchen bei den Kundinnen und Kunden der beteiligten Energieversorger in Deutschland, Österreich und Schweden getestet und evaluiert werden. Obwohl die Ergebnisse der Konzeptphase einen positiven Effekt erwarten ließen, wurde der Functional Service nur in Schweden durch Electrolux am Beispiel von Waschmaschinen getestet. Aufgrund einer internen Reorganisation wurde der Feldversuch jedoch vorzeitig beendet und nicht evaluiert. In Deutschland und Österreich kam aus verschiedenen Gründen kein Feldversuch zustande. Der Abbruch der Planungen für den Feldversuch im Rahmen dieses Projekts und eines realisierten Feldversuchs von Bauknecht/Yello in Berlin im Jahr 2001 scheint jedoch zu zeigen, dass das Marktumfeld zumindest in Deutschland noch schwierig ist für diesen radikalen Wandel des Geschäfts mit Haushaltsgeräten - weg vom Verkaufen, hin zu Vermietung und Service. Dagegen bietet in Italien der Haushaltsgerätehersteller Merloni seit September 2001 gemeinsam mit dem Stromversorger ENEL das Mieten einer Waschmaschine auf 'pay per wash'-Basis an.
Das Projekt "Climate Change Mitigation and Poverty Reduction (CliMiP) - Trade-Offs or Win-Win Situations?" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Leibniz-Institut für Globale und Regionale Studien durchgeführt. Research Questions: Does the implementation of climate change mitigation policies in developing countries always involve a trade-off between economic development, poverty reduction, and climate protection, or is there space for 'win-win policies'? This question is relevant for todays fast-growing middle-income economies, which are already or will soon become very significant contributors to global warming. The project will analyse these economies from three different angles: a comparative politics perspective on domestic climate governance and mitigation policy options, an economics perspective on the poverty and distributional impact of mitigation policies, and an international relations perspective on the global discourse surrounding mitigation and economic development (see project in RP 4). The project staff will cooperate closely with domestic partner institutions in South Africa, Mexico and Thailand, the three case study countries. Contribution to International Research: Despite the increasing role of todays developing world in GHG emissions, 'climate and development' research to date has largely focused on developing countries vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, and on climate-related transfers in these countries, such as those of the Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Meanwhile, the critical issue of mitigation is slowly making its entrance into climate negotiation rooms. This focus on mitigation requires a shift in the analytical perspective. While the technological and natural science perspectives that tend to dominate the climate change discourse are clearly important, a social science perspective is warranted as well. This is particularly true because of the latters usefulness in analysing the possible trade-offs between mitigation and socio-economic development. Research Design and Methods: The project adopts a multidisciplinary social science approach with a comparative and global perspective. While they will remain firmly theoretically and methodologically grounded in their respective disciplines, the three study areas - (1) domestic climate governance, (2) poverty and distributional impacts of mitigation policies, (3) global perspective and the mitigation-development discourse - will interact continuously. The investigation of domestic climate governance will rely mainly on qualitative methods. These will include interviews with policy-makers, experts and practitioners to investigate their motivations and the driving and constraining forces behind their actions in climate change mitigation policy processes. We then plan to assess the poverty and distributional impacts of mitigation policies (possibly including most NAMAs) in the three case study countries using incidence-focused general equilibrium models, simulation models based on micro-data, and a combination of these two modelling approaches. usw.
Das Projekt "IWaTec - Integrated Water Technologies" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Duisburg-Essen, Zentrum für Wasser- und Umweltforschung durchgeführt. Egypt passed a revolution and changed its political system, but many problems are still lacking a solution. Especially in the field of water the North African country has to face many challenges. Most urgent are strategies to manage the limited water resources. About 80% of the available water resources are consumed for agriculture and the rest are for domestic and industrial activities. The management of these resources is inefficient and a huge amount of fresh water is discarded. The shortage of water supply will definitely influence the economic and cultural development of Egypt. In 2010, Egypt was ranked number 8 out of 165 nations reviewed in the so-called Water Security Risk Index published by Maplecroft. The ranking of each country in the index depends mainly on four key factors, i.e. access to improved drinking water and sanitation, the availability of renewable water and the reliance on external supplies, the relationship between available water and supply demands, and the water dependency of each countrys economy. Based on this study, the situation of water in Egypt was identified as extremely risky. A number of programs and developed strategies aiming to efficiently manage the usage of water resources have been carried out in the last few years by the Egyptian Government. But all these activities, however, require the availability of trained and well-educated individuals in water technology fields. Unfortunately, the number of water science graduates are decreasing and also there are few teaching and training courses for water science offered in Egypt. However, there is still a demand for several well-structured and international programs to fill the gap and provide the Egyptian fresh graduates with the adequate and up-to-date theoretical and practical knowledge available for water technology. IWaTec is designed to fill parts of this gap.
Das Projekt "Monitoring the Alpine Region's Sustainability" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie gGmbH durchgeführt. Das Projekt MARS 'Monitoring the Alpine Region's Sustainability' arbeitet an der Erstellung eines integrierten Indikatorensets für die Messung und Evaluierung Nachhaltiger Entwicklung im Alpenraum. MARS gehört zum Forschungsprogramm INTERREG IIIB der Europäischen Kommission, in dem ein internationales Projektkonsortium unter der Leitung von BAK Basel Economics forscht. MARS basiert auf einer erweiterten geographischen Fassung des Alpenraumes und umfasst wichtige regionale Zentren wie Wien, Mailand, München, Lyon und Bern. In Deutschland bilden die Regierungsbezirke Oberbayern, Schwaben, Freiburg im Breisgau und Tübingen den alpinen Raum. Für diese Regionen (NUTS 2 Regionen) sowie für die Gesamtregion soll ein Datensatz zur Generierung von Umweltindikatoren erstellt werden. Dies umfasst die Bereiche: inländische Rohstoffentnahme, inländisch verarbeitete Stoffabgabe (DPO Domestic Processed Output = Emissionen, Abfälle und dissipativer Produkteinsatz), Wasserverbrauch, Energieverbrauch, Flächennutzung, sowie eine Machbarkeitsstudie für den Direkten Materialinput (DMI = inländische Rohstoffentnahme plus Importe). Zudem werden die regionalen Projektpartner aus öffentlicher Verwaltung und Politik einbezogen, um deren Bedarf an Daten und Indikatoren für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung ihrer Regionen zu berücksichtigen. Die Ergebnisse von MARS sollen in dieser Hinsicht die lokalen Akteure bei der Evaluation und Planung regionaler Politik unterstützen.
Das Projekt "Low Cost and High Efficiency CO2 Mobile Air Conditioning system for lower segment cars (B-COOL)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Centro Ricerche Fiat Societa Consortile per Azioni, Vehicle Systems - Cabin & HMI durchgeführt. Objective: The Project objective is the development of a low cost and high efficiency air-conditioning system based on CO2 (R744) as refrigerant fluid. Methods to assess performance, fuel annual consumption and environmental impact will be identified and they will constitute a first step for EU new standards. The EU, as Greenhouse Gas emission reduction measure, proposed the ban for Mobile Air Conditioning systems of fluids having a Global Warming Potential lower than 50 (i.e. R-134a and R-152a) with complementary measures - e.g. measurement of the MAC fuel consumption - This represents a challenge and an opportunity for OEMs and Mobile A/C Suppliers. The CO2 - R-744 when used as a refrigerant - is the favourite candidate to replace the R-134a. Besides safety, reliability and efficiency, the present estimated additional cost, ranging from 70 up to 150 Euro with reference to the low priced car systems, represents a obstacle. The lower priced vehicles constitute up the 70Prozent of the present EU car market, this number will rise up to the 80Prozent with the EU enlargement. A low cost and high efficiency R 744 MAC will support the EU efforts reducing the resistance to the approval of the HFC ban, allowing a rapid diffusion of the new system with the related environmental benefits and making the EU industries more competitive. The consortium composition - 2 major OEMs, 4 suppliers and three acknowledged excellence centres - makes the risk acceptable assuring an effective exploitation. Finally the Project gathers the most skilled European scientists and engineers in this specific field, so high level scientific and technical know how are expected to be produced as well as scientific advances in the dynamic system modelling. This will contribute to strengthen EU industries position in other domains (e.g. domestic air conditioning). The BCOOL project forms a cluster with the project named TOPMACS,focused on innovative adsorption mobile air conditioning systems...
Das Projekt "Ressourcenindikatoren für nachhaltige Industrien und nachhaltige industrielle Entwicklung (RISI)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Ecologic Institut gemeinnützige GmbH durchgeführt. Das Projekt RISI zielt darauf ab, die Vielzahl an Indikatoren, die im Bereich Ressourcennutzung und Ressourcenverbrauch auf globaler Ebene Anwendung finden, anhand eines Scopings des wissenschaftlichen Kenntnisstandes überblicksartig zusammenzuführen und sie anhand spezifischer Kriterien daraufhin zu beurteilen, ob sie vor dem Hintergrund nachhaltiger Industrien geeignete Messgrößen sind und zielführende Aussagen ermöglichen. Aus dieser Beurteilung heraus werden dann Empfehlungen gegeben, welche Indikatoren verwendet bzw. ob weitere Indikatoren entwickelt werden sollten.
Das Projekt "New biocide dry toilet with improved hygienic functionalities (DRYCLOSET)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Ecosphere Technologies Sarl durchgeführt. Water is essential for life. This element supposes also a determinant factor in the economy and ecology of the different regions. But water not only has influence in the human life, humans also affect to water cycle. The human activity is responsible of the climate change by which the Mediterranean region is being affected by drought and water shortage. Water shortage in Mediterranea countries is becoming an essential question. The domestic sector accounted for about 24 percent of total water withdrawn in Europe in 2000, which is about 7,320,00ML. In fact, toilet flushing supposes 30Prozent of the domestic use of urban water. The consume of such amount of water could be avoided using dry toilets, it is calculated saving of 50L/cap/day. In addition, it is estimated more than 20 million citizens without access to a safe sanitation in Europe. This situation is critical in rural areas of eastern European, where the most common system in these areas usually consist of pit latrines and septic tanks. Dry toilets are common in Nordic countries but their rustic technology makes them unacceptable in urban or large communities. At present dry toilets implies several factors, such as unpleasant odours and the manual manipulation of the latrine waste, which makes them unviable in most of urban environments. Also, there are other problems of drytoilets such as struvite formation on pipe connections. But this situation can be changed by applying the technical innovations that will be developed in this project. In adittion, the project?s success will allow the possibility to save important drinking water (1,875L/cap/year). This will be of essential importance in the Mediterranean countries, where the drought menace is each time more obvious. The use of dry toilets in rural areas with poor infrastructure will have safe sanitation systems to citizens DRYCLOSET project will develop a new dry toilet with a biocide toilet, low bad odours emissions and low maintenance.
Das Projekt "An Assessment of Regional Water Endowments, Crop Water Productivity, and Implications for Intra-country Virtual Water Trade in Iran" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von EAWAG Eidgenössische Anstalt für Wasserversorgung, Abteilung Systemanalyse und Modellierung durchgeführt. The overall goal of this project is to provide a systematic assessment of the feasibility of applying the virtual water concept to improve water productivity in individual provinces and for the whole country in Iran, taking into account various natural, socio-economic and resources constraints. Specific objectives relating to the overall goal include: 1 To assess the water resources availability and reliability in different regions/provinces taking into consideration the fluctuation within a year and between years. 2 To estimate the water requirement of different crops in different regions/provinces with improved spatial resolution. 3 To estimate crop water productivities with respect to quantity and value of product on irrigated and rain-fed land concerning consumptive water use and water supply in different regions/provinces. 4 To assess the water use intensity in different regions/provinces based on the water resources availability and water demand in the industrial, domestic and agricultural sectors at present and in the next 10-20 years. 5 To provide scenarios for improving regional/provincial and national water productivity through regional crop structural adjustment and inter-provincial food trade, taking into account natural, socio-economic and resources constraints at different levels and other regional and national objectives. Water resources endowment in Iran is generally poor and the spatial distribution is uneven. Some regions are enduring severe water stress. Producing more food with increasing water scarcity is a daunting challenge to the country. In this project, water resources availability and crop water requirement across provinces/regions in Iran will be estimated to lay the basis for the assessment. Water productivity across regions will be evaluated with respect to physical yield and value of products and different expressions of water input. Scenarios for improving water productivity through regional crop structural adjustment and virtual water trade are proposed for individual regions and then aggregated to the whole country, taking into consideration constraints concerning natural and socio-economic conditions and other regional and national objectives. The SWAT model (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) will be used for the assessment of water resources availability and crop water requirement in different provinces/regions. The SWAT model is currently used in several other projects at Eawag. The regional socio-economic data and farmers' water use behavior will be sought from both secondary data and field surveys and interviews. Scenarios for regional crop structural adjustment and virtual water trade will be proposed based on optimizing water productivity subject to various constraints.
Das Projekt "Neos-Quick - Testing of Novel Earth Observation Systems for Supporting Quality Control Activities required by the Kyoto Protocol" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Technische Universität Wien, Institut für Photogrammetrie und Fernerkundung (IPF) durchgeführt. The Kyoto Protocol as a substantial extension to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) contains quantified, legally binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and allows emissions to be balanced by terrestrial biological carbon sinks. The Austrian target for the first commitment period (2008 2012) is a reduction of GHG emissions of 13% below those of 1990, the EU aims at a reduction of 8%. Due to further increased GHG emissions since 1990, an actual reduction target of 22% can be expected for Austria. The KP and its implementation rules provide for human induced net changes of domestic sinks in the land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector to be counted in the emission balance of Annex 1 countries (developed countries and economies in transition). With the so called flexible mechanisms the Kyoto Protocol designated three international mechanisms, including sink projects abroad and GHG emission trading, to increase flexibility and costeffectiveness in achieving GHG emission reductions in the first commitment period 2008-2012. Under the UNFCCC and the KP, parties must follow clearly defined GHG inventory and reporting obligations including the verifiable and transparent documentation of the LULUCF sector. The latter is very precisely specified by the recently published IPCC Good Practice Guidance (GPG) for LULUCF, which suspects that in most countries the existing land use and inventory systems are inadequate to meet all the land reporting requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. Remote Sensing is attributed a significant role for LULUCF reporting and verification by the IPCC GPG. Remote sensing can be applied to supplement missing elements of existing land use and forest inventory systems, or to deliver the basic LULUCF information and to estimate (via models) above ground biomass changes on the one hand, and/or as an independent verification/validation tool for land use/forest area changes and above ground biomass. The development of RS as an independent verification tool as done in NEOS-QUICK, based on a multi-sensor approach, integrating GIS and ground observations, nevertheless leaves room for flexible applications of the elaborated RS techniques in either of the above mentioned ways.
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