Experimental Design in Environmental Assessment

This book discusses the historical context, country experience, and best practices that led to eliminating infectious diseases from the WHO’s South-East Asia Region, such as malaria, lymphatic filariasis, yaws, trachoma, and mother-to-child HIV in the mid-twentieth and twenty-first century. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (3.3) targets to end AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases by 2030. In this context, this book is of high significance to countries from the SEA region and around the globe. It helps create national strategies and action plans on infectious disease elimination and thus attaining SDG 3.3. This is an open access book.

Forests cover 30% of the Earth’s land area, or nearly four billion hectares. Enhancing the benefits and ecosystem services of forests has been increasingly recognized as an essential part of nature-based solutions for solving many emerging global environmental problems today. A core science supporting forest management is understanding the interactions of forests, water, and people. These interactions have become increasingly complex under climate change and its associated impacts, such as the increases in the intensity and frequency of drought and floods, increasing population and deforestation, and a rise in global demands for multiple ecosystem services including clean water supply and carbon sequestration. Forest watershed managers have recognized that water management is an essential component of forest management. Global environmental change is posing more challenges for managing forests and water toward sustainable development. New science on forest and water is critically needed across the globe.

Introduction: Sustainable water and wastewater services are critical to providing the American public with clean and safe water and helping ensure the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of the communities that utilities serve. Utilities across the country face tremendous challenges, such as aging infrastructure, an aging workforce, increasing mandates, and competing priorities within the communities they serve. The purpose of this document is to assist utility leaders with implementing proven and effective practices over time to improve their operations and move toward sustainability, at a pace consistent with their needs and the needs of their communities. It provides utility leaders with a cohesive structure to help them address various challenges proactively and with confidence. The practices described in this document reflect the lessons learned and the practical experience utilities have derived as they have improved their operations. A utility can use this document to identify specific opportunities for improvement and draw on the example practices to create an individualized “roadmap” to more sustainable operations.