Refine
Document Type
- Doctoral thesis (2)
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (2)
Language
- English (2)
Keywords
- Haushalt (2) (remove)
Water is a primordial resource for the development of urban agglomerations. Today, 50% of the population worldwide is concentrated in urban settlements and 10 - 20% of all worldwide freshwater consumption occurs in the domestic sector (UN: World water development report 3). By 2030, 60% of the world’s population will be living in urban settlements (UNESCO), and domestic freshwater consumption will rise by 70% in 2025. Urban areas inflict high pressure on the local and even regional water sources, since the high population density requires large flow volumes in a restricted area, with often competing pressures on the water resource per se as well as for the space needed for water storage or aquifer recharge. This becomes complicated and even critical in areas where natural water availability is already scarce and urban demand is high due to large population sizes. Today 700 million people in 43 countries are living in water stress condition (Human Development Report 2006). Mexico, ranking 88 on a global scale in water availability per capita, is a clear example of this situation, where the most populated urban settlements, such as Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla or Queretaro are located in regions which concentrate only 31% of the renewable water of the country (CONAGUA). Thus, the main question arises: How will the urban settlements develop a sustainable water supply now and in the future?
The city of Guadalajara, in particular, has seen an extremely fast and chaotic development in the past three decades, where the population of the city increased from 1,354,000 inhabitants in 1970 to 4,064,000 in 2005; by 2020 Guadalajara is expected to overpass the 5 million inhabitants thus becoming a megacity. Nowadays, overall water consumption in the city is about 9.3 m3/sec. and it is estimated to be 10.3 m3/sec by 2030, with Lake Chapala as the main water source, supplying 55% of the water demand. However, Lake Chapala has been confronted with several severe droughts which critically lowered its water table as was the case between 1998 and 2003 and due to its weak equilibrium droughts could be more recurrent in the future. As the water supply of Guadalajara is strongly linked to the faith of Lake Chapala, Guadalajara needs to reduce its pressure on the lake by adopting strategies based on sustainable development.
The main goal of this research is to provide governments and decision makers with a robust tool that integrates the most amount of information possible but presents this information in a simple way, offering at the same time the possibility to detect the factors that need to be addressed in order to reach sustainability.
The specific aim is to test the use of composite indices (CIs) to the case of the city of Guadalajara in the period of the year 2000 to 2009. CI is a holistic methodology in which independent variables can be aggregated into a single result. CIs thus allow for the comparison between different cases, the integration of qualitative and quantitative variables and the easy use by decision makers. We used 11 carefully selected variables from all three sectors of sustainability, economical, ecological and social, which were first normalized using ranging procedures and process capability indices, and aggregated by using the weighted geometric mean. A set of best strategies Guadalajara should follow are suggested in order to have a sustainable water supply in the future.
With this study, we have been able to show that CIs are an effective tool for evaluating sustainability of domestic freshwater supply at local scale. Overall, Guadalajara reached a CI of 0.29 showing, that its domestic water supply is currently not sustainable. It was able to identify the following three main problems: a) lack of wastewater treatment with just less than 3% of the waste water being treated; b) water loss in the distribution system, with 34% of the water extracted being lost at some point in the distribution system (during treatment, in the pipelines and dweller connection to the distribution net); c) water availability, with increased flow volumes of Lake Chapala in the last six years, but only surpassing its natural storage twice (2004 and 2009). Nonetheless, a clear trend of continuous improvement could be seen overall in the past years with a decline in the domestic water consumption per capita to levels comparable to the one in Berlin, as a consequence of people awareness after the several drought Lake Chapala suffered in the beginning of the decade, and an increase in the level of access to piped water and connectivity to the drainage system to 94% of the city’s coverage in 2009 (on year 1990, the access to piped water was 89% and the connectivity to the drainage system was 92%).
The rapidly developed Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products have made great contributions in various application areas. However, the related problems in the consumption of household ICT appliances are crucial to economy, environment and society. As concluded from literature review of practice, assessment and legislation, there is obvious lack of information and understanding of the household consumption pattern of the ICT appliance in a more systematic “life-cycle thinking” approach – from purchase, usage to end-of-life, in environmental-social- economic three dimensional perspective. This deficiency could lead to ineffective policy programmes and implementation.
This exploratory study tentatively develops a measurement and benchmarking method, named as Sustainable Consumption Index (SCIndex) model, aiming at improving knowledge and holistic understanding of consumption patterns of household ICT appliances along the value chain in global or regional consumers’ households. This dissertation accomplishes the preliminary design of the SCIndex model and its pilot application with a global Internet survey on consumer behavior for detailed analysis, such as, cross-cultural comparison, three stages analysis (purchase, usage and end-of- life), and total SCIndex score benchmarking and analysis.
This study identified that overall consumption patterns of household ICT appliances in the developed countries are not necessarily more sustainable than in the developing countries, if all the stages of consumption are overviewed. The findings contribute to the gaps in knowledge of underlying behavioral factors that influence sustainable consumption of household ICT appliances entirely or in any stage; furthermore, they sketch out the national profiles and improvable aspects on the path of more sustainable consumption. The SCIndex model and pilot application stress the importance and provide empirical evidence to support concrete modelling with a multifaceted approach in measurement and benchmarking of household ICT appliances’ life-cycle consumption for “going beyond GDP”. The model is suggested to be optimized in sampling, design and structure, data analysis methods and the implementation.
To efficiently promote sustainable consumption of the household ICT appliances, the pilot application provides further recommendations to the engaged stakeholders that include: i) sufficiency in purchase; ii) efficient usage; iii) responsible disposal; iv) smooth channels for reuse; v) further in-depth researches and projects.