Food, Energy, and Water Nexus at Household Level: Do Sustainable Household Consumption Practices Promote Cleaner Environment?

Governments around the globe are trying to find sustainable solutions for lessening pressure on natural resources and reducing carbon emissions. Daily household consumption of food, energy, and water has an impact on stocks of natural resources, environmental quality, and climate change. Households have significant potential for increasing conservation actions for efficient use of natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions. Households could contribute to a clean and healthy environment by adopting sustainable household practices through lower per capita consumption and carbon emissions. This study explored the role of different sustainable household consumption practices in promoting a clean environment as well as the factors affecting the adoption of these practices in Pakistan. Factor analysis and an ordered probit model were used to analyze the data from 1424 participants chosen through a multistage random sampling technique. The factor analysis identified 35 sustainable household practices for sustainable consumption. These 35 practices were grouped into the underlying factors of "Food" (14 items), "Energy" (12 items), and "Water" (9 items). The results from the econometric model showed a significant relationship between gender, education, residential area, family size, and income and the adoption of sustainable household consumption practices. Statistically, higher levels of reported sustainable consumption practices were apparent among females, households living in urban areas, more educated people, individuals of large family sizes, and more affluent households. Therefore, public policies for taking care of the environment need to put households at the center while at the same time promoting mass uptake of sustainable consumption practices related to food, energy, and water. In addition, the sector-specific policies also need to be augmented through focus on household-level consumption and production dynamics for achieving the UN's SDGs.

Sustainability assessment of different land tenure farming systems in tea farming: The effect of decisional and structural variables.

This study focuses on the sustainability of different land tenure farms in tea farming and explores the effect of structural and decisional variables on tea farm sustainability. For this, a total of 138 tea growers from the Rize province of Turkey were selected through a stratified sampling approach and interviewed directly. The positive and negative effects of independent variables on all dimensions of sustainability were emphasized after an extensive review of the literature. This reviewing activity also facilitated hypothesizing the possible influences of variables on overall tea sustainability. A tobit model was used to examine the influence of the structural and decisional variables on tea farm sustainability. The results described that owners were more sustainable compared with shareholders. Their economic and social sustainability levels were not significantly different from each other. However, environmental sustainability at owners' tea farms was more satisfactory than that of shareholders. Among structural variables, land slope, age of tea orchard, and farmers' age were negative influences, whereas cooperative membership and terrace status affected tea farm sustainability positively. Similarly, among decisional variables, family labor, fertilizer application methods, farmers' willingness to perform a soil test, and sale value of tea had positive influences, whereas the cost of chemical fertilizers had a negative influence on tea farm sustainability. The land tenure was found to have a significant effect on sustainability when the tea farmer was the owner of the farm. Thus, farmers should replant their orchards on time, and adopt sustainable practices such as terracing and employing environment-friendly fertilizer application methods for increasing tea sustainability in the locality. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;17:814-834. © 2020 SETAC.

Evaluating eco-efficiency and optimal levels of fertilizer use based on the social cost and social benefits in tea production.

The extensive use of synthetic fertilizers is increasing continuously to meet the growing demand of food worldwide. This excessive use of fertilizer not only pose a threat to the sustainability but also cause negative externalities in form of hidden social cost to the society The present study estimated social costs and benefits associated with excessive use of chemical fertilizers at tea farms and also evaluated eco-efficiency of tea growers in Rize Province of Turkey. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used in this study. Tea growers are 68% eco-efficient in the locality. They can reduce their average fertilizer use from 115.45 to 66.45 kg and labor from 9.88 to 8 days per decare. The overuse of fertilizers at tea farms emits 289.3 kg/hectare of greenhouse gases. Therefore, by applying the eco-efficient fertilizer target level, 1574.48 tons of gas emissions only in Rize Province and 23,997.57 tons in whole Turkey can be reduced. The cost of 1 kg gas emissions was calculated as 0.3316 TL. The optimal level of fertilizers (social costs = social benefits) was also similar to the target level. The fertilizer use efficiency analysis showed that the tea growers cannot only reduce their fertilizer quantity by 49.03 kg/decare without compromising the crop yield, but can also contribute to the healthy environment with a low level of greenhouse gas emissions. Tea growers should replace their older tea orchards with new ones in order to achieve social and eco-efficient levels as well as to maintain viable yield level.

Adaptation options for small livestock farmers having large ruminants (cattle and buffalo) against climate change in Central Punjab Pakistan.

Climate change is not a myth anymore and changing with every passing year regardless of the efforts to mitigate its root causes. Livestock being a key source of employment to a large poor world population also contributes to food security and poverty eradication. With the changing climate livestock farmers are also making their farms compatible to the new natural ecosystem. Therefore, this study investigated how small livestock farmers having large ruminants inventory perceive changes in climate, which strategies they adapt and the factors influencing the adaptation of climate changes strategies in livestock. Primary data was collected from 180 small livestock farmers of Central Punjab, and multiple (step-wise) regression analysis was used to determine the factors affecting adaptation of climate change strategies. Livestock farmers are also well aware of the climate change as majority of the farmers (63.4% and 71.4%) perceived an increase in temperature and precipitation, respectively. Livestock farmers made an attempt to adopt conventional climate change strategies such as mix farming, reduction in animals, provision of more drinking water, use of tree shades, livestock diversification, use of muddy roof, and floor in order to cope with climate changes. The adoption of these measures was significantly influenced by animal inventory, climate knowledge, livestock working hours, livestock experience, distance of veterinary hospital, and livestock-related training/workshops. Government needs to increase technical and logistic capacity of veterinary doctors, and should create awareness among small livestock farmers through media.