Revistas
Revista:
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH
ISSN:
1660-4601
Año:
2022
Vol.:
19
N°:
20
Págs.:
13589
Forest bathing practices benefit individuals' physical and mental health. A growing number of published studies provide evidence of such effects in diverse populations and contexts. However, no literature has been found that evaluates the effects of forest bathing on people with intellectual disabilities. In this paper, we present a quasi-experimental pre-post protocol for assessing the preliminary efficacy and feasibility of a forest bathing intervention in a group of adults with intellectual disability. An 11-weekly session program will be applied in the forests of the Ollo Valley, Navarre (Spain). The preliminary efficacy outcomes will be blood pressure, psycho-physiological coherence parameters and quality of life. The feasibility of the intervention will be assessed through data on barriers and facilitators of the implementation process and indicators of environmental comfort (physiological equivalent temperature and thermic perception). This study offers an opportunity for people with intellectual disabilities to benefit from a forest bathing intervention and explore its effects not only on their quality of life, but also on the improvement in their physiological and psychological state. This feasibility study is an essential step to explore crucial aspects for a future full-scale trial.
Revista:
REVISTA DE EDUCACIÓN AMBIENTAL Y SOSTENIBILIDAD
ISSN:
2659-708X
Año:
2022
Vol.:
4
N°:
1
Págs.:
1303
This educational proposal consisted of the design, development and evaluation of an Environmental Education urban camp at the campus of the University of Navarra. The main objective of this camp addressed to 4-5 year old children was to use Environmental Education as a tool to promote human-nature connectedness and offer children opportunities for playing outdoors and exploring the environment. The methodology for the design and organization of the camp was based on elaborating an Activities Guide, which was tested in several pilot sessions in the formal educational context. The assessment of activities was conducted by using an adapted graphical rating scale through which children were able to express to what extent they enjoyed the activities. Complementarily, educators' observations about the group's behaviour and the activities' development were considered. The full camp experience was conducted in four different weeks during summer 2021, involving a total of 70 participants. The results obtained were positive since 89.2% of the participants expressed that they had a good experience during the camp. The highest rated activities were the ones including hands-on experiences and handicrafts outdoors. Thus, this experience highlights the potential of certain areas within cities to grow into learning spaces and places of connection with nature.
Revista:
FORO DE EDUCACION
ISSN:
1698-7799
Año:
2022
Vol.:
20
N°:
2
Págs.:
319 - 336
El daño ambiental y la injusticia social son dos rasgos característicos del mundo contemporáneo. Ambos evidencian una falta de respeto hacia los valores naturales y humanos que la realidad, per se, posee. El descubrimiento de estos valores puede constituir una oportunidad para promover cambios de conducta que contribuyan a lograr una cultura más sostenible y justa. Tras examinar algunas posibles causas culturales de la insostenibilidad socio-ambiental, los autores plantean que la belleza que encierra la realidad puede desvelar a cada individuo valores naturales y humanos que antes no se percibían como tales. Este descubrimiento del valor interpela a la conducta personal e invita a la adopción libre de un compromiso de respeto hacia el mismo.
Revista:
SUSTAINABILITY
ISSN:
2071-1050
Año:
2022
Vol.:
14
N°:
1
Págs.:
337
Global environmental quality decline builds up through innumerable decisions at many scales that cause damage to ecological and social values. Environmental assessment (EA) is a relevant decision-making framework in this sense. Besides its technical role, EA has a cultural side we should consider in the pursuit of sustainable societies. Despite its limited reach, EA exemplifies and confronts some cultural implicit stances that may unwittingly favor the overall decline of environmental quality, and limit the advancement and efficiency of EA. Many of these cultural traits are well known and easier to point to than to reverse, namely: (1) too tolerant-to-damage standards of environmental protection and equality; (2) inadequate criteria to assess environmental performance; (3) tolerance of the net loss of environmental quality; (4) confrontation between ecological and social values in decision-making; and (5) neglect of full, in-kind compensation of environmental impacts. EA may have not only a technical or procedural, but also a cultural role to play in confronting these sources of unsustainability. A lack of attention to the cultural causes of environmental impacts neglects the deepest roots of environmental damage. This commentary addresses the topics above and brings attention to their disregard for environmental values, which should guide EA towards increased levels of sustainability.
Revista:
AZAFEA
ISSN:
0213-3563
Año:
2019
Vol.:
21
N°:
1
Págs.:
183 - 206
Ante los indicadores de insostenibilidad ambiental y social, se busca un enfoque educativo eficaz que contribuya a revertirla. A tal efecto, se propone una educación moral, que no se centre tanto en contenidos como en facilitar que cada estudiante aprenda a buscarlos, hacerlos propios y los traduzca en compromisos de conducta personal. La propuesta educativa se presenta ejemplificada en una asignatura concreta, que sirve de hilo expositivo y ejemplo de aplicación. Tras una breve introducción sobre los indicadores de insostenibilidad, se presenta la planificación, metodología y objetivo de la asignatura. A continuación, se reflexiona sobre dos de los obstáculos a los que se enfrenta la educación moral en la actualidad: la fragmentación del saber y la dificultad para que los aprendizajes teóricos se traduzcan en conductas. Por último, se exploran dos oportunidades para la educación moral que pueden facilitar ese vínculo: la búsqueda de las causas profundas de problemas ambientales y sociales actuales, y el empleo de la belleza.
Revista:
NATURE CONSERVATION
ISSN:
1314-3301
Año:
2015
Vol.:
11
Págs.:
113 - 127
Environmental compensation includes a range of activities intended to counterbalance such negative impacts of development projects that remain in the environment after all preventive and corrective measures have been fully implemented. Sweden, being a member state of the European Union (EU), must implement environmental compensation under EU directives such as the Habitat Directive. However, like in other countries, implementation is not yet widespread in Sweden, and new practices and guidelines remain to be developed both nationally and at European level. This need is all the more urgent considering that the European Commission estimates that, within the EU, about 100,000 hectares of land is converted from its natural state each year.
The aim of this paper is to describe current environmental-compensation practices in Swedish road and railway projects and to discuss issues of vital importance to the development of compensation policy, such as what to compensate for, how much, and how.
A national inventory was performed, for the first time in Sweden, to identify compensation measures in road and railway projects. Data were collected from a national mailing list including 141 officials at county administrative boards (CABs), internal e-mail correspondence within the Swedish Transport Administration and databases of court decisions. The inventory focused on compensation measures ordered by virtue of the Swedish Environmental Code. In addition, two case studies were carried ...
Revista:
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT REVIEW
ISSN:
0195-9255
Año:
2014
Vol.:
45
Págs.:
54 - 62
The main scientific bibliography addressing the rationale behind ecological compensation is reviewed in order to examine general guidelines. This contains interesting general guidance on how to implement compensation, and provides the basis for future developments in compensation practice. On this basis, we propose a further step in compensation practice, advancing compensation proposals or rules for specific kinds of projects and contexts, focusing on road projects in the Spanish Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Three main residual impacts of roads are identified which usually remain uncompensated for: the loss of natural and semi-natural land use, the increase in emissions resulting from any new road, and the fragmentation, severance or barrier effect on the landscape and its wildlife. To counteract these, four proposals, or "rules", are advanced: conservation of natural and semi-natural land use area, conservation of dominant plant species physiognomy, compensation for emissions, and the rule of positive defragmentation.
Revista:
PLOS ONE
ISSN:
1932-6203
Año:
2014
Vol.:
9
N°:
9
Págs.:
e107144
Attempts to meet biodiversity goals through application of the mitigation hierarchy have gained wide traction globally with increased development of public policy, lending standards, and corporate practices. With interest in biodiversity offsets increasing in Latin America, we seek to strengthen the basis for policy development through a review of major environmental licensing policy frameworks in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Here we focused our review on an examination of national level policies to evaluate to which degree current provisions promote positive environmental outcomes. All the surveyed countries have national-level Environmental Impact Assessment laws or regulations that cover the habitats present in their territories. Although most countries enable the use of offsets only Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru explicitly require their implementation. Our review has shown that while advancing quite detailed offset policies, most countries do not seem to have strong requirements regarding impact avoidance. Despite this deficiency most countries have a strong foundation from which to develop policy for biodiversity offsets, but several issues require further guidance, including how best to: (1) ensure conformance with the mitigation hierarchy; (2) identify the most environmentally preferable offsets within a landscape context; (3) determine appropriate mitigation replacement ratios; and (4) ensure appropriate time and effort is given
Revista:
BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION
ISSN:
0006-3207
Año:
2014
Vol.:
173
Págs.:
74 - 79
The knowledge of biodiversity within an area is vital if we want to develop adequate conservation strategies. Biosphere Reserves are purposefully established for the sustainable use of their resources, and therefore their biodiversity should be well known. We compared and evaluated information available for Mexican Biosphere Reserves on threatened and non-threatened vertebrate species records from three different sources ¿ the corresponding Biosphere Reserves management plans (MPs), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility index (GBIF), and scientific literature, in order to find potential knowledge gaps. Our results suggest that there were varying gaps in information among sources according to vertebrate group. For each group of vertebrate species, management plans held the largest subsets of information but were not complete, ranging from 89.6% of the combined known species of birds to 70% for amphibians and freshwater fishes. However, both GBIF and literature included data absent from MPs, and GBIF included data not otherwise available, proving it as important as literature or other data sources (e.g. field data) used for crafting such plans. Moreover, we found references to threatened species that were not listed in the MPs, reaching to as many as 50% of the total known species of fish. Species information shared by all three sources ranged from 28% for amphibians to 72.5% for birds. Conservation efforts should therefore take into account that possibly less charismatic taxa such as amphibians, reptiles and freshwater fish lack more information than birds or mammals. The disparity observed in the vertebrate species information constitutes an information gap that could (or should) be solved by scientists and managers alike.
Revista:
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT REVIEW
ISSN:
0195-9255
Año:
2013
Vol.:
42
Págs.:
87 - 94
To reduce ecological impacts caused by development projects, avoidance, minimization and compensation techniques have to be taken together into consideration along Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedures. This paper explores the particular role that ecological compensation has had in recent road and railway EIA procedures in Spain, as seen through the review of a set of recent EIA Records of Decision (RODs) that confirms precedent findings. Noticing that residual impacts are not paid much attention, and that there is no evidence of a solid public participation in ecological impact evaluation, it proposes to increase the awareness on residual impacts, as a way to make easier public access to the allegedly most sensitive moment of EIA implementation: (residual) impact evaluation.
Revista:
OCEAN AND COASTAL MANAGEMENT
ISSN:
0964-5691
Año:
2013
Vol.:
71
Págs.:
46 - 51
Revista:
Environmental Engineering and Management Journal
ISSN:
1582-9596
Año:
2012
Vol.:
11
N°:
6
Págs.:
1059 - 1075
We characterize the primary biodiversity data records that have been made public for retrieval for the Pyrenean region. Such data, spanning more than a hundred years, have been collected by many institutions and individual researchers and digitized in databases, some of which have been shared through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility platform by using a standard format, Darwin Core. The datasets are not homogeneous in extent, coverage, taxonomy, or accuracy. Differences arising from taxonomic depth or group, georeferencing precision, age of collection, and other features result in biases and gaps that may influence the fitness for use of such data. Knowledge of patterns found in the data may help researchers and managers operating in the Pyrenees to estimate the reliability of available information and to assess what uses for the data are acceptable.
Revista:
Environmental Engineering and Management Journal
ISSN:
1582-9596
Año:
2012
Vol.:
11
N°:
6
Págs.:
1133 - 1140
The establishment of protected areas is one of the main tools used for biodiversity conservation, one of the components of environmental management. Although the theoretical framework for protected areas has been long known and discussed, there are few data about their practical effectiveness as a means to preserve biodiversity. Through the analysis of information from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), we have looked for any relationship between the protection status and the general species richness (i.e., number of all living species, taken as a surrogate for biodiversity) in the Spanish Pyrenees. We found that higher protection levels were associated to higher richness of non-endangered species. However, additional reliability tests have shown that for endangered species, the amount of currently available data may still be insufficient for effective management. To avoid this lack of reliability, enhancing public access to biodiversity data or improving sampling effort is mandatory.
Revista:
Environmental Engineering and Management Journal
ISSN:
1582-9596
Año:
2012
Vol.:
11
N°:
6
Págs.:
1213 - 1220
Road construction and improvement have long been studied as precursors of new development. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) of roads needs to gauge the phenomenon as long as possible, particularly across mountainous areas, because new urban and industrial uses on these valuable and fragile environments may cause significant impacts that should be counteracted to preserve their environmental quality. The aim of this article is to study and compare the occurrence of urban and industrial land-use changes, their rate and their distribution, between 1998 and 2010 and along two newly-built mountain motorways in Navarre (Spain), as a way to approximate the induction phenomenon.
First, urban and industrial land-use changes have been identified, registered and mapped alongside each motorway. From these data, the maximum induction rate has been directly obtained, by hypothetically assuming that all of the new developments that took place alongside a route over a period of time had been induced by the newly-built motorway. This rate may be valuable in future environmental impact assessment scenarios.
Land-use change data have been also set against the distance of the new developments to the motorway, the distribution of formerly existing urban and industrial settlements, and the steepness of the terrain, in order to make a preliminary approximation to how these factors may intervene in land use change processes around the studied motorways.
Revista:
Journal of Environmental Planning and Management
ISSN:
0964-0568
Año:
2012
Vol.:
55
N°:
3
Págs.:
339 - 353
Revista:
Journal of Fish Biology
ISSN:
0022-1112
Año:
2011
Vol.:
79
N°:
6
Págs.:
1563 - 1591
Revista:
Environmental Impact Assessment Review
ISSN:
0195-9255
Año:
2010
Vol.:
30
N°:
6
Págs.:
357 - 362
