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Commons were traditionally associated with rural societies, but socioeconomic changes have triggered new forms of commons linked with urban areas. Despite an emerging literature on these new commons and their connection to landscape management, more knowledge is needed. This study focuses on various forms of commons and their contribution to...

The report assesses the level of public awareness of microplastic pollution and related hazards as well as the current status of microplastic monitoring facilities available in Sri Lanka’s state and private sector institutes, with an emphasis on the public water supply chain and identifying microplastic point sources upstream to ensure safe...

The rapid growth in microplastic pollution research is influencing funding priorities, environmental policy, and public perceptions of risks to water quality and environmental and human health. Ensuring that environmental microplastics research data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) is essential to inform policy and...

Droughts and floods are some of the major climatic hazards in the semi-arid areas of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Climate change affects the periodicity and severity of such hazards, and eventually the well-being of many rural communities in the region, including semi-arid Ghana. Enhancing the resilience of local communities to droughts and floods...

Operational monitoring of vegetation and its response to climate change involves the use of vegetation indices (VIs) in relation to relevant climatic data. This study analyses the temporal variations of vegetation indices in response to climatic data (temperature and precipitation) to better understand the phenological changes in the Wa -West and...

Using “the sharing paradigm” as a guiding concept, this book demonstrates that “sharing” has much greater potential to make rural society resilient, sustainable and inclusive through enriching all four sharing dimensions: informal, mediated, communal and commercial sharing. The chapters are divided into two parts, one that focuses on case studies...

To classify Very-High-Resolution (VHR) imagery, Geographic Object Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) is the most popular method used to produce high quality Land-Use/Land-Cover maps. A crucial step in GEOBIA is the appropriate parametrization of the segmentation algorithm prior to the classification. However, little effort has been made to automatically...

Plastics are part of everyday life for most of the people in the world and it is also used extensively in the industry. Globally about 368 million tonnes are produced annually where Asia accounts for more than half of the global plastic production. Sri Lanka currently imports virgin plastic raw materials for varying applications which amounts to...

近年、木材輸入国において、違法伐採対策が法制度化され実施されている。違法伐採対策法の導入の目的は、その国における違法伐採木材製品の輸入、流通を減少させることである。法律の導入からその目的が達成されるまでには、規制対象である木材輸入事業者 が①自身の行うビジネスが法律の対象であることを認識し、②法律の要求を理解し、③法律を遵守することで、最終的に、④輸入先の変更などの行動変化を起こすというプロセス がある。そして、この目的を達成するためには、政府の法律の執行や運用が重要である。本稿では、ドイツとオーストラリアにおける、政府による違法伐採対策法の運用 状況を報告する。ドイツは、規制対象事業者の検査に重点を置き、EU諸国のうち最も積極的で厳しい法の運用を行っている。一方...

EU木材規則（EU Timber Regulation）は正式名称を、「木材・木材製品を市場に出荷する事業者の義務を定める欧州議会および欧州理事会規則」と言い、2010年に公布され、2013年に全面的に施行された。EU木材規則は、木材関連事業者に対し、違法に伐採された木材を欧州市場に供給することを禁止するだけではなく、取り扱う木材が違法に伐採されたものである可能性（＝リスク）を評価し、リスクがあればその低減措置を取るデューデリジェンス（以下DD）を行うこと、そのためのデューデリジェンスシステム（以下DDS）を構築することを義務づけている。しかし欧州の事業者のこの規則に対する対応状況の報告例は少ない。 EU木材規則と同様の目的を持った法律として...