Development and Planning

Despite the overall importance of biodiversity, the quality measures of biodiversity show worrying figures. Numerous human impacts on nature impose serious hazard to its inherent diversity. This expansion of human activities leaves the battle against loss of biodiversity to be a great challenge -a challenge that needs to be shared between conservationists, green organisations, public authorities, as well as the private sector. A new wave of green initiatives has emerged within the culture of business and marketing. The reasons for why businesses should engage in environmental actions are many, but the effort has until now considered biodiversity actions relatively little, compared to other areas such as e.g. climate related actions.

From late last century there has been a great development of international standards and tools on environment, sustainability and corporate responsibility issues. This has been along with the globalization of economy and politics, as well as a shift in the ...

From late last century there has been a great development of international standards and tools on environment, sustainability and corporate responsibility issues. This has been along with the globalization of economy and politics, as well as a shift in the social responsibilities of the private vis-a-vis the public sectors. Internationally, organisations have implemented a collection of these standards to be in line with such development and to obtain or keep their licence to operate globally. After two decades of development and maturation, the scenario is now different: (i) the economic context has changed dramatically with many of the world’s economies facing downturn and a looming possible recession; and the global economic and political balance changing; (ii) most larger companies and quite a few SMEs now have a mature knowledge of these standards; and (iii) some standards are advocating for integration procedures, such as cases of for example ISO integrated management systems,...

There is a strong connection between economic growth and development of cities. Economic growth tends to stimulate city growth, and city economies have often shaped innovative environments that in turn support economic growth. Simultaneously, social and environmental problems related to city growth can be serious threats to the realization of the socio-economic contributions that cities can make. However, as a result of considerable diversity of competences combined with interactive learning and innovation, cities may also solve these problems. The ‘urban order’ may form a platform for innovative problem solving and potential spill-over effects, which may stimulate further economic growth and development. This paper discusses how waste problems of cities can be transformed to become part of new, more sustainable solutions. Two cases are explored: Aalborg in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden. It is shown that the cities have the potential to significantly contribute to a more sustainable d...

Skallerup Klit is a Danish holiday center certified as CO 2 neutral. They use this label for branding as them selves as the first CO 2 neutral holi-day center in Denmark. There are reasons to question how ambitious "CO 2 neutrality" as a strategy is, because this goal can be reached rather easily by offsetting and without making actual emission reductions. Therefore the pur-pose of this study is to present recommendations on how Skallerup Klit can build up their business strategy using Carbon Footprint (CFP) as a tool. The CPF is calculated and assessed by using financial data in an Input-output LCA. For the LCA the system boundaries of the assessment of Skallerup Klit´s CFP are defined to include both direct and indirect emissions from the supply chain and from transportation and food eaten at the holiday center. Scenarios are conducted to illustrate where the greatest emission reductions are possible and the results are then used to make recommendations on how Skallerup ...