More dams,more violence? A global analysis on resistances and repression around conflictive dams through co-produced knowledge

The present article analyses a unique database of 220 dam-related environmental conflicts, retrieved from the Global Atlas on Environmental Justice (EJAtlas), and based on knowledge co-production between academics and activists. Despite well-known controversial, social, and environmental impacts of dams, efforts to increase renewable energy generation have reinstated the interest into hydropower development globally. People affected by dams have largely denounced such ‘unsustainabilities’ through collective non-violent actions. Nevertheless, we found that repression, criminalization, violent targeting of activists and assassinations are recurrent features of conflictive dams. Violent repression is particularly high when indigenous people are involved. Indirect forms of violence are also analysed through socio-economic, environmental, and health impacts. We argue that increasing repression of the opposition against unwanted energy infrastructures does not only serve to curb specific protest actions, but also aims to delegitimize and undermine differing understanding of sustainability, epistemologies, and world views. This analysis cautions that allegedly sustainable renewables such as hydropower often replicates patterns of violence within a frame of an ‘extractivism of renewables’. We finally suggest that co-production of knowledge between scientists, activists, and communities should be largely encouraged to investigate sensitive and contentious topics in sustainability studies.     

区际生态环境关系理论初探——兼论江苏省与周边省市的环境冲突与合作

区际生态环境关系是随着区域生态环境利益冲突不断加剧,区域之间逐步形成的一种与经济关系、社会关系紧密相关而又相互区别的新型关系。对区际生态环境关系这一环境科学论题进行了理论阐述,初步探讨了区际生态环境关系的内涵、特征、主要内容和分类,以及区域环境合作与冲突等基本问题,着重提出了区际环境冲突的形式、成因与解决机制,试图从区域间环境的矛盾冲突这个新的视角去认识区域环境问题,探索解决区域环境问题和区际环境矛盾的新途径。以江苏省为例,初步探讨了江苏省与周边省、市的环境矛盾冲突以及建立省际环境合作的机制与对策,认为江苏省位于长江和淮河等流域下游,周边环境状况并不乐观,同时又是资源、能源的输入和消耗大省,随着社会经济的发展,省际生态环境利益冲突将会进一步显现,因此应加强与其他省市的资源、环境合作,以解决日益严峻的区域生态环境问题     

Ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability: an overview and conceptual framework

Can ecological distribution conflicts turn into forces for sustainability? This overview paper addresses in a systematic conceptual manner the question of why, through whom, how, and when conflicts over the use of the environment may take an active role in shaping transitions toward sustainability. It presents a conceptual framework that schematically maps out the linkages between (a) patterns of (unsustainable) social metabolism, (b) the emergence of ecological distribution conflicts, (c) the rise of environmental justice movements, and (d) their potential contributions for sustainability transitions. The ways how these four processes can influence each other are multi-faceted and often not a foretold story. Yet, ecological distribution conflicts can have an important role for sustainability, because they relentlessly bring to light conflicting values over the environment as well as unsustainable resource uses affecting people and the planet. Environmental justice movements, born out of such conflicts, become key actors in politicizing such unsustainable resource uses, but moreover, they take sometimes also radical actions to stop them. By drawing on creative forms of mobilizations and diverse repertoires of action to effectively reduce unsustainabilities, they can turn from ‘victims’ of environmental injustices into ‘warriors’ for sustainability. But when will improvements in sustainability be lasting? By looking at the overall dynamics between the four processes, we aim to foster a more systematic understanding of the dynamics and roles of ecological distribution conflicts within sustainability processes.     

Trends in social metabolism and environmental conflicts in four Andean countries from 1970 to 2013

In the global map of environmental injustices (http://www.ejatlas.com), the Andean countries (AC) report many ecological distribution conflicts. Our hypothesis is that the patterns of such conflicts are explained by the structural shifts of the economies and the concomitant changes in their metabolic profiles. Since the 1990s, these countries went through a strong reprimarization process, which changed their social metabolism as well as intensified environmental pressures and conflicts. In monetary terms, in the AC group of countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia), the primary sector increased its importance both in exports as well as in GDP. In the metabolic dynamics, the Domestic Extraction of materials (measured in tons) increased by a factor of 3.4 after jumping from 336 to 1145 MT between 1970 and 2012. This was driven by the fossil fuel and mining sectors. This reality was reflected in the environmental conflicts. Mining, fossil fuels, biomass and hydropower plants are the most conflictive sectors. The research in this article relies on a study of material flow analysis for the four AC carried out by the authors as well as 244 environmental conflicts reported in the EJAtlas until August 2016. The shifts in the metabolic–economic patterns help explain the dynamics and characteristics of the environmental conflicts in the AC. Such conflicts produce social mobilizations, which if successful, might help move society towards sustainability and environmental equity.     

Competing societal and ecological demands for groundwater: boundary judgments and convergence mechanisms in the Netherlands

Conflicts between human demands for clean water and terrestrial ecosystems’ needs for water are increasing. Such conflicts are stronger in the case of groundwater, as one of the cleanest forms of drinking water, and are expected to increase in frequency, in the context of population growth and climatic changes. This paper argues that behavioral approaches are essential not only toward understanding how socio-ecological conflicts emerge, but also how they could be overcome. A theoretical the framework is proposed, which suggests that the behaviors/actions of actors who sustain such conflicts can be understood by examining their ‘boundary judgments’ regarding natural resources and sustainability, in interaction with their powers/resources to implement the preferred behaviors. The concept of boundary judgements is rarely used in investigating sustainability conflicts. This concept is operationalized in relation to nature-society conflicts and applied empirically to illuminate the conflict in a case study from the Netherlands. Further, the theoretical framework suggests a parsimonious, yet comprehensive, typology of mechanisms that can be used to change/‘converge’ the behaviors and actions of the actors contributing to the problem, toward conflict closure. These are referred to as convergence mechanisms and can be persuasive, enabling or constraining. The paper concludes with reflections on the practical usefulness of the framework and concretes suggestions for further research, drawing on these convergence mechanisms and their interactions with boundary judgments on natural resources and sustainability.     

Ecological Function Zoning for Environmental Planning at Different Levels

Environmental planning at different levels has been called for by environmental departments in China during last years to integrate environment consideration to economic development. Based on the accomplished environmental planning practice in Xiamen China, the paper suggests a general environmental planning process with ecological function zoning as its key steps, at the same time an effective method for ecological function zoning was formulated. The case studies of Dongfu suburban town environmental planning and Xiamen eco-city conceptual planning indicate that scientifically sound results of ecological function zoning can contribute to improving not only the adaptability and acceptability of environmental planning, also the environmental management and the decision-making. The experience shows that the ecological function zoning methods should be applied according to the principles of adaptive management, resource-based and community-based, so that it can integrate science into decision-making process, avoiding both narrow-minded viewpoints of planners and natural resource use conflicts among variety of stakeholders. Problems to be resolved in the future are also pointed out in the ending part.     

Indonesia’s Accidental Island: Composing the Environment in the Echo of Disaster

By presenting stakeholders’ competing representations of an extraordinary geological formation, an island with a surface that is comprised of runoff from an infamous mud volcano in East Java, this article explores the communicative openings and closures that arise during an environmental disaster. A particular concern is attuning communicative practices to the diverse human and nonhuman actors that not only produce disasters but also shape our understandings and responses to disasters. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour, this article suggests that non-anthropocentric modes of inquiry present new communicative and political possibilities for pursuing both social justice and safe environments. While this article focuses on a specific set of incidents in Indonesia, this project develops tools and perspectives that can be applied to environmental conflicts at other places.     

Sri Lanka: a political ecology of socio-environmental conflicts and development projects

By analyzing 26 cases in the EJ Atlas for Sri Lanka, their causes, the impacts, the social actors involved, the forms of mobilization, and the main outcomes of the conflicts, this article examines in what ways activities aiming at economic growth produce socio-environmental conflicts. Such activities increase the social metabolism causing changes that translate into environmental, social, and health impacts which due to inequality of power are unequally distributed. As a result, those who are negatively impacted sometimes mobilize claiming environmental justice. The mining of construction materials to support the boom in the building sector and the expansion of intensive plantations into ‘extraction frontiers’ in new territories, cause deforestation, biodiversity loss, and hurt the local communities. Tourism and industries and new infrastructures are causing displacement, pollution, land degradation, and water shortage, affecting communities of farmers and fishermen that mobilize against the adverse impacts. Those with power to appropriate the natural resources are mostly the state together with international finance institutions and international actors who are able to implement the construction of infrastructures, plantations, and mass tourism. Mobilizations are mostly geared to the protection of livelihoods threatened by loss of access to land, pollution, deforestation, diseases, water scarcity, and new uncertain risks. The protection of the environment demanded by the mobilized groups in Sri Lanka does not aim just to protect nature itself but belongs to a wider movement of an “environmentalism of the poor”.     

Land Community Participation: A New “Public” Participation Model

This essay presents a new “public” participation model that responds to contemporary participation problems. The author extends criticism of a false nature/culture dualism and responds to calls for pragmatic ways to expand participation to an expressive land community. The essay draws on existing scholarship that treats a range of direct to indirect forms of participation in environmental decision-making to argue for and explicate the land community participation model (LCP). The model features participation, power, and chronemics along three distinct and intersecting continua that bind and constitute participatory communication in environmental decision-making. Combining professional field experiences with rhetorical criticism, the author pilots the LCP model in a wilderness dispute resolution case study and suggests additional ways for using LCP as an interpretive guide and design tool in pursuit of environmental democracy.     

Armed conflict distribution in global drylands through the lens of a typology of socio-ecological vulnerability

Motivated by an inconclusive debate over implications of resource scarcity for violent conflict, and common reliance on national data and linear models, we investigate the relationship between socio-ecological vulnerability and armed conflict in global drylands on a subnational level. Our study emanates from a global typology of smallholder farmers’ vulnerability to environmental and socioeconomic stresses in drylands. This typology is composed of eight typical value combinations of variables indicating environmental scarcities, resource overuse, and poverty-related factors in a widely subnational spatial resolution. We investigate the relationships between the spatial distribution of these combinations, or vulnerability profiles, and geocoded armed conflicts, and find that conflicts are heterogeneously distributed according to these profiles. Four profiles distributed across low- and middle-income countries comprise all drylands conflicts. Comparing models for conflict incidence using logit regression and receiver operator characteristic analysis based on (1) the set of all seven indicators as independent variables and (2) a single, only vulnerability profile-based variable proves that the nonlinear typology-based variable is the better explanans for conflict incidence. Inspection of the profiles’ value combinations makes this understandable: A systematic explanation of conflict incidence and absence across all degrees of natural resource endowments is only reached through varying importance of poverty and resource overuse depending on the level of endowment. These are nonlinear interactions between the explaining variables. Conflict does not generally increase with resource scarcity or overuse. Comparison with conflict case studies showed both good agreement with our results and promise in expanding the set of indicators. Based on our findings and supporting literature, we argue that part of the debate over implications of resource scarcity for violent conflict in drylands may be resolved by acknowledging and accounting for nonlinear processes.     

Global Environmental Change and National Security of China

The concept of security has been redefined since the 1990s. As one of the important factors threatening human security, global environmental change has become a new challenge to the national security and social development. The national security problems caused by global environmental change, on one hand, are closely related to the global environmental problems, and, on the other hand, are manifested in the conflicts of international affairs. The global environmental change severely challenges the future de...     

The map of conflicts related to environmental injustice and health in Brazil

This article discusses the experience of the map of conflicts related to environmental injustices and health in Brazil and its potential contribution to international movements for environmental justice. Inventories and maps of environmental injustices are important instruments of struggle against injustice and racism, since they increase the visibility of populations, whose lives are threatened. The Brazilian map is published online since 2010 and was an initiative of FIOCRUZ, a public health and academic institution, and the NGO FASE, in cooperation with the Brazilian Network of Environmental Injustice (RBJA), created in 2001. Environmental justice arised in Brazil as a field of reflection and mobilization, and as a rallying point to identify the struggle of several groups and entities, such as rural and urban grassroots movements, indigenous peoples, traditional populations, and peasants affected by different hazards and risks, as well as environmentalists, trade unions, and scientists. Currently, the map has 570 emblematic environmental conflicts in all regions of Brazil. Many economic activities are causing the conflicts such as mining expansion, oil and gas extractions, infrastructure (roads, mega-dams), agribusiness, and pesticide pollution, often with the support of governmental institutions.     

Environmental justice and the expanding geography of wind power conflicts

Wind power is expanding globally. Simultaneously, a growing number of conflicts against large-scale wind farms are emerging in multiple locations around the world. As these processes occur, new questions arise on how electricity from wind is being generated, how such energy is flowing within societies, and how these production-flows are being shaped by specific power structures. The present paper explores the expanding geography of wind energy conflicts by analyzing 20 case studies from across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. Based on the Environmental Justice Atlas database, it reflects on how land pressures and patterns of uneven development emerge as two features of the current expansion of wind farms. Following a relational analysis, these patterns are examined to interpret the plural instances of opposition emerging throughout the rural spaces of the world. The article argues that previously unexplored forms of collective action are expanding the scope and content of the “wind energy debate”. In addition to the claims of “landscape” and “wildlife protection” addressed by the existing literature, this study sheds light on the rural/peripheral contexts where opposition emerges through the defense of indigenous territories, local livelihoods and communal development projects. The study contends that these “emerging storylines” embrace an environmental justice perspective when challenging the socially unequal and geographically uneven patterns reproduced by the ecological modernization paradigm. From this lens, cases of local opposition are not interpreted as selfish forces blocking a low-carbon transition, but instead, are understood as political instances that enable a wider discussion about the ways such transition should take place.     

个人规范对农户亲环境行为的影响分析——基于拓展的规范激活理论框架

农户的亲环境行为可在一定程度上缓解农业环境污染,为改善农业环境,探寻农户实施亲环境行为的原因所在,将农户环境污染感知、环境关心和社会规范加入规范激活理论框架对其进行拓展,在此基础上,通过构建结构方程模型和层次回归模型,利用陕西、山西、甘肃、安徽和江苏5省的实地调查数据,对农户的亲环境行为进行分析。结果表明:农户的亲环境个人规范、环境污染感知和环境关心均可对其亲环境行为产生直接的正向影响,且个人规范对行为的影响程度最大;结果意识、责任归属、农户的环境污染感知和环境关心均可对其亲环境的个人规范产生直接的正向影响,且其影响程度从高到低依次为:结果意识、责任归属、环境污染感知和环境关心;农户的环境污染感知和环境关心可同时对其亲环境行为产生直接和间接影响作用,而结果意识和责任归属仅可对其亲环境行为产生间接影响作用;社会规范可正向调节个人规范对农户亲环境行为的影响。     

财政分权对环境污染的空间效应

利用2006—2017年我国30个省级行政单位的面板数据,采用空间计量模型对财政分权与环境污染之间的关系进行实证分析,并通过效应分解分别计算出财政收入分权和财政支出分权对环境污染的直接效应、空间溢出效应和总效应。模型估计的结果表明:①财政收入分权与财政支出分权通过直接效应和空间溢出效应两种途径对环境污染产生显著影响,但收入分权与支出分权对环境污染的空间效应具有异质性。②财政收入分权对环境污染具有显著的负向直接效应和负向空间溢出效应,影响系数分别为-5.429和-17.572。提高财政收入分权度不仅有利于减轻本省份环境污染,也对邻近省份的环境污染起到抑制作用。而财政支出分权对环境污染具有显著的负向直接效应和正向的空间溢出效应,影响程度分别为-3.345和1.173。提高财政支出分权虽然有利于减少本省份污染的排放,但在一定程度上引起省际的污染外溢效应,提高邻近省份的污染程度。③从总效应来看,财政收入分权和财政支出分权对环境污染均呈现出显著的负向相关性,影响程度分别为-23.001和-2.172。提高财政分权可降低环境污染水平,有利于环境质量提升。④通过构建不同空间权重矩阵,检验模型的稳健性,结果表明模型估计是稳健可靠的。根据分析结论,可能的启示与建议有:①合理划分中央政府和地方政府之间的财政事权和支出责任,在提高财政支出分权度的同时提高地方政府财政收入分权度,充分发挥地方政府环境治理的积极性和主动性。②继续加大生态环境保护力度,完善绿色经济考核机制,引导地方政府加大对污染治理和环境改善的支出水平及效率。     

Landscape multifunctionality: a powerful concept to identify effects of environmental change

The interdisciplinary concept of landscape multifunctionality provides a suitable platform to combine or disentangle effects of multiple environmental stressors acting on the landscape. The concept allows mapping of trade-offs, synergies, and priority conflicts between individual landscape functions, thus providing easily accessible, hands-on means to communicate findings of environmental research to decision makers and society. This rapid communication provides an overview of current developments and potential future research avenues in landscape multifunctionality.     

公平性感知、信任与农业环境保护 ——不确定情形下农户行为选择

为深入理解农业环境政策从制定到落实的内在逻辑，从农户的公平性感知和信任出发，在农业环境保护的不确定情形下，探索性地构建农户农业环境保护行为响应理论分析框架，并基于山东、山西和陕西3省微观农户调查数据，采用路径分析、贝叶斯非线性结构方程模型和斜率分析等方法进行验证。结果表明：（1）农户农业环境保护的公平性感知对农业环境保护行为有直接和间接影响。直接影响为公平性感知越高，越能显著促进农户农业环境保护行为；间接影响为公平性感知通过提高信任进而作用于行为。（2）农业环境保护的不确定性显著阻碍了农户农业环境保护行为，且显著干扰了公平性感知向行为的转化。据此提出，农业环境保护政策的制定应考虑农户公平性感知和信任，传统命令型农业环境政策应逐步向农户参与型政策让渡；对农业环境定期检测并给予农户反馈，在降低政府长期监管成本的同时，也减少了农户农业环境保护的不确定性，从而推进农业环境保护政策的有效落实。     

协调贸易与环境的最佳途径——环境成本内部化

面对经济发展带来人类福利增加的同时所产生的日益严重的环境污染问题。国际贸易被指责为环境质量下降的原因之一．甚至连国际贸易自由化的原则也受到质疑。围绕贸易与环境可否协调以及如何协调的问题．由环境保护与贸易自由化在理论和实践中的冲突引出贸易与环境之间存在着复杂的相互作用；并通过进一步的经济学分析得出结论：环境问题的根源并不是国际贸易。而是环境成本的外部性造成的市场失灵，而国际贸易只是加重了这种市场失灵。二者可以协调发展。环境成本内部化是解决这一问题的最佳手段。通过环境成本内部化可以达到环境资源的合理配置并最终实现可持续发展。     

宁夏盐池县生态保护政策对农户的影响

生态保护政策能否真正起到作用。在很大程度上取决于能否被农户在经济利益上所接受。盐池县的草原退化和沙漠化问题严重，主要是由于人类不合理经济活动造成的。近年来盐池县采取了一系列的生态保护政策，并开始实行草原禁牧的政策，以保护和恢复草原生态环境。农户调查的研究结果表明。目前的生态保护政策并不成功。90％以上的农户仍然在草原上偷牧，禁牧使农户收入减少是导致该政策失败的根本原因。虽然农户的生态意识较为理性，但是目前的生态保护政策与农户经营行为之间至少存在两大矛盾：一是，生态效益长期性与农户追求短期效益的矛盾；二是，生态环境外部性与农户小农意识之间的矛盾。     

Climate and conflicts: the security risks of global warming

Since the publication of the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, the securitization of global warming has reached a new level. Numerous public statements and a growing research literature have discussed the potential security risks and conflicts associated with climate change. This article provides an overview of this debate and introduces an assessment framework of climate stress, human security and societal impacts. Key fields of conflict will be addressed, including water stress, land use and food security, natural disasters and environmental migration. A few regional hot spots of climate security will be discussed, such as land-use conflicts in Northern Africa; floods, sea-level rise and human security in Southern Asia; glacier melting and water insecurity in Central Asia and Latin America; water conflicts in the Middle East; climate security in the Mediterranean; and the potential impact on rich countries. Finally, concepts and strategies will be considered to minimize the security risks and move from conflict to cooperation in climate policy.