政府管制与企业排污的博弈分析

本文利用经济学原理解释了企业肆意排污的原因，介绍了我国环境管制制度的基本情况，建立了排污管制的分析模型，依据该模型对政府管制与企业排污进行了博弈分析，提出了加强环境保护的建议。     

节约型社会基本内涵的初步研究

从我国提出建设节约型社会的战略意义出发，对节约型社会的定义进行了界定；指出了节约型社会的实质和基础是指物质资源的节约使用；描述了节约型社会的形成与目标；分析了节约型社会的基本内涵、特征及其架构；论证了节约型社会与循环经济的关系，并提出了建设节约型社会的路径选择和对策。     

土地资源利用保护与农业生态建设

本文阐述了国内外土地后备资源现状及存在问题,解剖了土壤肥力演化机制和土壤资源保护的关系,介绍了我国生态农业建设的研究进展,指出了今后的主攻方向。     

人口压力评估及其应用研究

本文讨论了人口压力的概念,论述了人口压力与持续发展及人口迁移的内在联系,建立了城、乡两类区域人口压力评估的指标体系,构造了实用评价模型,并以山东省为例,实现了人口压力评估和制图。     

庄河循环经济园区循环经济指标体系研究

以庄河循环经济园区为研究对象,应用规划环境影响评价的指标对其循环经济发展水平进行了探索与研究,构建了该园区的循环经济指标体系,并对其指标体系进行了量化,确定了循环经济指标体系的目标值,对循环经济园区的指标体系进行了计算与评价,得到了本区域实施规划后循环经济发展的总分值。     

市场经济条件下粮价保护政策执行效果实证研究

选取稻谷和小麦,采用单因素方差分析法,多维度考察了2001—2014年省级粮食种植的相关指数据及其变化,定量分析了粮价保护政策的执行效果及其对区域的影响。研究发现:粮食最低收购价政策的实施扭转了执行区种植面积持续减少的趋势;促进了种植面积的增加,刺激了农民种粮积极性的提升,保障了粮食安全生产。     

长江流域可持续发展综合分析与评价

本文分析了长江流域经济社会发展的基本态势以及存在的问题 ,研究了流域可持续发展中的资源环境因素 ,并且提出了进行流域可持续发展评价的指标体系以及评价方法 ,对近年来长江流域各地区可持续发展状况分别进行了评价 ,并在此基础上 ,提出了促进长江流域可持续发展的主要对策措施     

可持续发展视角下自然资源的定量化动态分类研究

从可持续发展的基本思路出发 ,对资源的分类原理做了系统的分析 ,提出了基于自然资源动态分类的定量化定义公式 ,并做了分类对比。该方法为可持续发展由定性向定量化发展提供了依据 ,为利用信息高速公路技术对可持续发展的研究以及自然资源信息共享奠定了基础。     

流域跨界水污染纠纷对策研究

本文介绍了国内外广泛存在的严重流域跨界水污染纠纷问题，结合我国流域的实际情况，提出了污染物人工调控和污染物间接不影响等几个基本假定，构建了流域跨界水污染纠纷顺序决策模型，并用此模型解释了我国严重的流域跨界水污染纠纷问题；针对目前的状况，提出了改进污染物削减指令配额管理体制，建立合作协调管理体制的对策；通过对淮河流域跨界水污染纠纷的实证分析时比了两种管理体制的优劣，最后分析了影响合作协调管理体制的诸多因素。     

乌江流域县域社会经济发展的综合评价与分析

在简要阐述了县域社会经济发展综合评价原则的基础上,建立了悬域社会经济发展综合评价的指标体系,利用层次分析法确定了各评价因子的权重。接着以乌江流域为例,对流域内４０个县域的社会经济发展水平进行了定量评价,指出了流域内县域社会经济发展中存在的问题,并提出了相应的对策,旨在为促进乌江流域的县域社会经济协调发展提供某些科学依据。     

New Approaches to Exploitation and Conservation of Crayfish Populations

The historical analysis of shellfishing for crayfish in Belarus demonstrates the inefficiency of the existing measures for their protection. It is recommended to orient protective measures toward the maintenance of metapopulations within the same basin, rather than the maintenance of individual habitats (subpopulations). The proposed approaches to the conservation and propagation of crayfish are based on intensification of the shellfishery connected with the necessity of taking measures to promote crayfish dispersal. Specific measures aimed at the recovery of populations and the maintenance of their genetic diversity are formulated.     

Everyday Epiphanies: Environmental Networks in Eco-Makeover Lifestyle Television

This article offers an analysis of the New Zealand eco-makeover program, WA$TED! It outlines how eco-makeover programs are an emerging sub-genre of the makeover phenomenon of lifestyle television where people and homes are subject to transformation by lifestyle experts, culminating in the revelation of the transformation at the end of the program. The article argues that the featured families in WA$TED! experience “everyday epiphanies” where they learn about their implication in existing environmental networks and they are ushered into new, more environmentally friendly networks. Drawing on actor-network theory, the article deconstructs the featured environmental networks, examining the roles of the program hosts, the transformations in the subjectivities of family members, and the functions of everyday household technologies and objects. The article argues that the significance of the program resides in the way the revelations make visible previously concealed linkages between families, everyday objects and practices, and the broader social and environmental domain.     

Geographic Variation in the Seasonal Reproductive Strategy of the Mite Varroa jacobsoni in the Honeybee Nest

Variation in the reproduction of Varroa jacobsoni mite was studied in relation to the expansion of the range of its parasitism on the honeybee. Geographic differences in the seasonal dynamics of mite reproduction in the nests of bee families were revealed. Variation in the sex ratio of mites and the factors inhibiting their reproduction at the northern boundary of the honeybee range are considered. The forms of parthenogenetic reproduction in V. jacobsoni are discussed.     

Household water in rural asia: a case study of the construction of a piped water system in Bangui,Ilocos Norte,Philippines

In early 1980 an extension agent was assigned to the rural municipality of Bangui, Ilocos Norte, Philippines to work on development projects – in particular the improvement of the supply of safe water for drinking and sanitation. After many months of visiting spring sites and meeting with community leaders, a small part of the municipality was selected to build a gravity fed piped water system. Although the system took many months to plan, identify funding and construct, the 600 community members were ultimately rewarded with house to house connections that enabled them to achieve per capita water consumption levels above the minimum levels recommended by the World Health Organization. Of course, money was critical to ensure the project’s success, but many other factors played an equally critical role. For instance, without the active participation of the community and the unwavering support of the community leadership the project would not have survived the initial planning stage. Also, the extension agent played a critical role by acting as a conduit between funding agencies, the Bureau of Public Works and the community. The primary lesson to be learned from this experience is that the success of rural development projects is largely driven by the synergy between the community, technical support, financial support, and agents of change such as extension agents. If any of these ingredients had been lacking, the project result would likely have been far different.     

WSSD 2002, Latin America and Brazil: Biodiversity and Indigenous People

Latin America comprehends notable variations in terms of natural environment, availability of natural resources, living standards, and demographic patterns. Latin America is a mosaic of cultures, post- and pre-Columbian. The rich variety of life forms discovered and described by chroniclers and traveling naturalists in the Neotropics contributed to the proposal, in mid-XVIIIth century, of a new system of classification and a scientific code of nomenclature for all organisms. Biodiversity was, for many centuries, a source of resources to be exploited in natura. In scientific circles, its inventory became the domain of taxonomists. But modern technology showed how important the miriad of life forms really are as sources of chemical molecules to be engineered as drugs and reassembled as novel manufactured products. We are on the brink of a new agricultural and medical revolution, thanks to the techniques of genetic engineering, which will lead eventually to the elimination of hunger and malnutrition.In this essay, the Brazilian environmental and social heterogeneity will serve as an example to illustrate some key points, which have influenced sustainability policies. The Amazon deforestation and indigenous knowledge (IK), subjects often associated with areas of high biodiversity, are usually the focus of environmental debates. The importance of IK in integrating development, reducing poverty and sustainability are considered together with the intellectual property rights of native populations.In the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) Implementation Plan, a few paragraphs were dedicated to Latin America, because of the pre-existing Action Platform on the Road to Johannesburg 2002, approved in Rio de Janeiro in October 2001. This paper calls attention to the need to draw up specific environmental policies for a region which shows an extremely high cultural and biological diversity, associated with a high availability of forests and water, among other resources.     

Urbanisation Without Development: Environmental and Health Implications in African Cities

Sustainable development advocates for a balance between socio-economic development and the environment in the pursuit of human advancement. In Africa, high population growth and inadequate infrastructure in urban areas exert pressure on the environment and this threatens the health and wellbeing of urban residents. The population of the African continent until the 1960s was predominantly rural. This scenario has taken a swift turn and some of the major shifts in the global urbanisation process are taking place on the continent. Factors including natural increase in the population, rural–urban migration, strife and hunger leading to the internal displacement of populations have exacerbated the urbanisation process in Africa. The situation has been worsened by the imposition of Western development policies, including structural adjustment programmes on African nations, which has eroded the subsistence base of rural agricultural communities and further ignited rural urban migration. The failure of industry to absorb the increasing labour force has created massive unemployment and deepening poverty crisis in urban centres. Inadequate provision of infrastructure and services to meet the growth in urban populations has resulted in inefficient spatial development of urban centres, the proliferation of squatter settlements, inadequate basic amenities including potable water, sanitation and waste disposal. Poor environmental sanitation has resulted in the upsurge of infectious diseases and deteriorating urban health. Urban populations in Africa are also the worst affected by newly emerging diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS. The poor bear a disproportionately large share of the problems due to their particular vulnerability to environmental and health risks. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Radioactive impact in sediments from an estuarine system affected by industrial wastes releases

A big fertilizer industrial complex and a vast extension of phosphogypsum piles (12 km2), sited in the estuary formed by the Odiel and Tinto river mouths (southwest of Spain), are producing an unambiguous radioactive impact in their surrounding aquatic environment through radionuclides from the U-series. The levels and distribution of radionuclides in sediments from this estuarine system have been determined. The analyses of radionuclide concentrations and activity ratios have provided us with an interesting information to evaluate the extension, degree and routes of the radioactive impact, as well as for the knowledge of the different pathways followed for the radioactive contamination to disturb this natural system. The obtained results indicate that the main pathway of radioactive contamination of the estuary is through the dissolution in its waters of the radionuclides released by the industrial activities and their later fixation on the particulate materials. Tidal activity also plays an important role in the transport and homogenization along the estuary of the radioactivity released from the fertilizer plants.     

Variability in background levels of surface soil radionuclides in the vicinity of the US DOE waste isolation pilot plant

Concentrations of radionuclides were measured in soils from a grid of locations surrounding the US Department of Energy Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico and from a grid on a reference site approximately 20 km southeast of the WIPP site. Each of the two grids has 16 sampling locations (grid nodes) systematically distributed within an area of 16.580 ha. Sampling was conducted prior to the arrival of the first waste shipment at WIPP. Thus, the 137Cs and 23,240Pu in the soil are expected to have been deposited as global fallout, although the Gnome Site, 8.8 km southwest of the WIPP, is also a potential source of 239,240Pu and fission products. The reference grid has significantly higher concentrations of fallout and natural radionuclides than the WIPP grid. Up to 80% of the total variability in radionuclide concentrations across the two grids is attributable to differences between grid nodes. Differences between replicates within a location account for 44-50% of the variability in concentrations of the uranium isotopes, but only 11-17% of the variability in the concentrations of the other radionuclides. Samples having similar abundance of radionuclides were spatially aggregated across the terrain. The activity concentrations of the radionuclides were strongly correlated with the concentrations of Al and Pb, and with the percentages of sand, silt and clay in the soil. Normalizing radionuclide concentrations to the concentration of Al or percent fine particles can help adjust for differences in soil textures among samples and facilitate the detection of gradients or temporal changes in soil concentrations.     

Natural Recovery of Technogenic Landscapes in Open Larch Forests in Northeastern Russia

Studies on the vegetation and soil complexes in areas of the Kolyma River basin disturbed by mining, in the northeast of the Chukchi Peninsula, have been performed to reveal trends in natural restorative processes in posttechnogenic landscapes. Data on the flora, phytomass stock, chemical composition of plants pioneering in the overgrowing of disturbed areas, and physicochemical properties of soils and technogenic eluvia have been obtained. The results have shown that plant cover restoration in disturbed areas depends primarily on the type (genesis) of technogenic substrates, the content of fine earth in the surface layer, and the distance from natural plant complexes that serve as a source of seeds coming to the disturbed area.     

Biomonitoring of environmental pollution by thorium and uranium in selected regions of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Two former uranium mines and a uranium reprocessing factory in the city of Aktau, Kazakhstan, may represent a risk of contaminating the surrounding areas by uranium and its daughter elements. One of the possible fingerprinting tools for studying the environmental contamination is using plant samples, collected in the surroundings of this city in 2007 and 2008. The distribution pattern of environmental pollution by uranium and thorium was evaluated by determining the thorium and uranium concentrations in plant samples (Artemisia austriaca) from the city of Aktau and comparing these results with those obtained for the same species of plants from an unpolluted area (town of Kurchatov). The determination of the uranium and thorium concentrations in different parts of A. austriaca plants collected from the analyzed areas demonstrated that the main contamination of the flora in areas surrounding the city of Aktau was due to dust transported by the wind from the uranium mines. The results obtained demonstrate that all the areas surrounding Aktau have a higher pollution level due to thorium and uranium than the control area (Kurchatov). A few “hot points” with high concentrations of uranium and thorium were found near the uranium reprocessing factory and the uranium mines.