Small-scale mining in China: Assessing recent advances in the policy and regulatory framework

This paper explores the background of a proposed revision to the Mineral Resources Law of China, why and how the law was amended in the past, its salient features and objectives. Of equal importance is an analysis of how this national law, with its attendant regulations and policies, formed the basis for the growth and continued development of China's small-scale mining industry. The Xiaoqingling Gold Mountain case study is shown to justify the necessity and feasibility for formalizing and consolidating small-scale mines in China, and to some extent, the success of the nation-wide ASM resource consolidation policy at a local level.     

The miombo woodlands at the cross roads: Potential threats, sustainable livelihoods, policy gaps and challenges

The Miombo, the most extensive tropical woodland formation of Africa directly supports the livelihoods of over 100 million people through the provision of many tree products and ecosystem services essential to both the rural and urban communities. While the destruction of the Miombo has often been blamed on the rural communities dwelling near the forest resources, many urban dwellers depend heavily on the various products derived from the woodlands. This paper highlights the importance of the Miombo in the livelihoods of rural people, the potential threats to this ecosystem and opportunities for its sustainable management. About 70% of energy consumed in southern Africa is in the form of fuelwood or charcoal. The economic importance of the Miombo especially from non-timber forest products (NTFPs) is usually understated due to their perceived non-economic value yet they play an important role in sustaining livelihoods of forest dependent people in the miombo ecoregion. The Miombo also contributes to health services through the use of medicinal plant and products, in some cases, contributing up to 80% to rural health, including helping in coping with effects of HIV/AIDS, malaria and several diseases. The possibility of developing payment for environmental services schemes through public–private partnerships, and community-based sustainable management models are proposed. Through conservation and commercialization of some of the products and services, there is a potential to provide income and improve the livelihood of people involved in the trade along the value chain.     

The management of household hazardous waste in the United Kingdom

Waste legislation in the United Kingdom (UK) implements European Union (EU) Directives and Regulations. However, the term used to refer to hazardous waste generated in household or municipal situations, household hazardous waste (HHW), does not occur in UK, or EU, legislation. The EU's Hazardous Waste Directive and European Waste Catalogue are the principal legislation influencing HHW, although the waste categories described are difficult to interpret. Other legislation also have impacts on HHW definition and disposal, some of which will alter current HHW disposal practices, leading to a variety of potential consequences. This paper discusses the issues affecting the management of HHW in the UK, including the apparent absence of a HHW-specific regulatory structure. Policy and regulatory measures that influence HHW management before disposal and after disposal are considered, with particular emphasis placed on disposal to landfill.     

Water policy implementation in the state of São Paulo,Brazil: Key challenges and opportunities

Challenges in implementing water planning and management are common, and the effective implementation of integrated water policies is yet to occur. In Brazil, the state of São Paulo enacted a Water Act in 1991 to ensure water availability for current and future generations based on the principles of decentralization, participation and integration. This research addresses water policy implementation issues by conducting an exploratory case study in the state of São Paulo. Factors affecting the water policy implementation process were analyzed, together with some water resources management practices. The findings indicate four dimensions of key challenges: institutional and governance, political, financial and technical. The stakeholders believe the political and the institutional and governance challenges are more important than the technical and financial ones. Additionally, the results show different levels of involvement in the areas of water policy strategy, the planning and decision-making process, and implementation by the different stakeholders groups. Stakeholders external to the water sector and from local government were considered to be less involved in water-related issues, when compared with stakeholders from the water sector. The study recommends a change in current institutional and governance arrangements in order to influence decisions and investments in different levels and sectors.     

Transaction Costs Economics of Irreplaceability: <Emphasis Type="Italic">ex ante</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">ex post</Emphasis> Evaluation of Conservation Networks’ Vulnerability to Environmental Shocks

The theoretical concept, “asset specificity,” is applied to real data in the context of Danish nature conservation network planning in order to produce illustrative examples of an economic measure of the network’s vulnerability to exogenous shocks to the species composition. Three different measures of asset specificity are quantified from the shadow value of eliminating a key species from the individual grid cells. This represents a novel approach and a different interpretation of the term, as it is conventionally used as a qualitative indicator in the transaction cost economics literature. Apart from supplementing existing cost measures with an indicator of risk associated with investments in protected areas, this study demonstrates how the estimation and interpretation of various asset specificity measures for geographical areas may qualify policy makers’ choice of policy instrument in conservation planning. This differs from the more intuitive approach of basing policy instrument choice solely on the rarity of the species in a given area.     

西部大开发政策效应评价

经过15年的西部大开发,西部各个省份的综合发展水平怎样?西部大开发是否显著缩小西部与东部地区在综合发展水平和经济增长的差异?哪些政策起到了关键作用?是本文将要探讨的问题。研究方法主要是通过模型与数据的实证研究方法对西部大开发的政策效应进行评价。内容包括:一是通过构建包含了社会、经济、科教与文化、对外开放和资源与环境五大类25个分项指标的综合发展水平评价体系,使用从1997到2013年31个省市的指标数据,并计算出综合评价值来考察西部大开发政策对西部地区各个省份整体发展的影响。从评价值排名上来看发现只有重庆、陕西、四川和内蒙古综合发展水平排名提升明显,而新疆、宁夏和青海发展差距还在拉大,其他省份排名变化不大。从分类指标来看,西部地区整体上社会发展和资源环境与生态提升较为明显,说明中央对于公共服务的转移支付和"退耕还林还草"等保护环境与生态的政策起到了一定的成效。二是选取了交通基础设施建设、中央转移支付和税收优惠这三个主要政策作为计量模型的政策变量,分别考察西部大开发整体和分项政策对于综合发展水平和经济增长率的影响。通过系统GMM方法估计整体西部大开发整体政策效应,以2000年前后对比,政策实施对GDP增长率的提升并不显著,综合发展水平也没有收敛。而以2008年为时间节点,综合发展水平和经济增长速度都得到了显著提升。通过DID估计分项政策,结果表明基础设施投入和转移支付能够有效提升综合发展水平和经济增长速度,税收优惠提升相对较弱。本文建议:在交通基础设施投入方面继续对西部地区予以倾斜,特别是建设西部地区通往东中部地区的交通大通道;培育和完善西部地区的市场经济体系,政府较少干预企业投资决策;加强对于西部落后地区、偏远地区的公共产品投入,加强扶贫工作。     

Ghana's salt industry: A neglected sector for economic development?

The case of poverty in the abundance of plenty mostly extant in resource rich countries is also evident along the coast of Ghana. Despite the huge salt production potential of the country’s coast, the renewable resource remains highly untapped as output levels are less than 10% of potential output. Meanwhile many of the indigenes of coastal communities wallow in poverty amidst high levels of unemployment. Findings of this study reveal that key obstacles inhibiting the growth of the sector relates to land acquisition, lack of investment, and low level of technology adoption. The study therefore recommends a mix of strategies aimed at rejuvenating the sector to achieve optimum harnessing of salt deposits. This would help diversify the export markets of Ghana and help her industrialization drive towards achieving an upper-middle income country status in the short-to-medium-term.     

Policy-makers perspectives on credibility,relevance and legitimacy (CRELE)

For more than a decade, a popular theory amongst scholars of science-policy interactions has been that research is most effective at informing policy and decision-making processes when it is credible, relevant and legitimate (CRELE) with multiple audiences simultaneously. In this paper, we argue that this triad reflects a primarily intra-scientific perspective, rather than the needs and considerations of policy-makers themselves. Using over seventy semi-structured interviews with policy-makers, we present alternative criteria for effective science-policy interactions based on experiences in the urban water sector. We find that applicability, comprehensiveness, timing and accessibility (ACTA) better summarises the most important aspects of scientific research when it comes to influencing decision-making, while finding that CRELE was a poor predictor of policy-maker concerns. Whilst the ACTA quartet effectively gives double-billing to the ‘relevance’ component of CRELE, credibility and legitimacy were much lower priorities for policy-makers interviewed. This article questions whether CRELE is a useful mindset for researchers interested in policy influence. These findings will be of interest to those engaged in debates related to effective science-policy interactions more broadly, and researchers that want to marshal policy influence more specifically.     

Public support for carrot,stick, and no-government water quality policies

Public support for environmental policy provides an important foundation for democratic governance. Numerous policy innovations may improve nonpoint source pollution, but little research has examined which types of individuals are likely to support various runoff reduction policies. We conducted a household mail survey of 1136 residents in southern Wisconsin. In general, residents were more likely to support water quality policies if they were communitarians, egalitarians, concerned about water pollution, and perceived water quality as poor. The majority of respondents somewhat to strongly supported all of the seven proposed water quality policies, but opposed relying on voluntary action without government involvement on farms. Residents had higher support for incentives and market-based approaches (carrot policies) than regulation and taxes (stick policies). A more complicated pattern emerged in within-subject comparisons of residents’ views of carrot and stick approaches. Stick approaches polarized respondents by decreasing support among people with individualistic worldviews, while slightly increasing support among people with communitarian worldviews. Residents with an agricultural occupation were more likely to support voluntary, non-governmental approaches for reducing agricultural runoff, and were also more likely to support regulation for reducing urban lawn runoff. This research highlights the dominant role of cultural worldviews and the secondary roles of water pollution concern, perceived water quality, and self-interest in explaining support for diverse policies to reduce nonpoint source pollution.     

Long-term water quality in the lower Seine: Lessons learned over 4 decades of monitoring

The Seine River is a highly artificialised catchment in Europe, comprising both productive agricultural areas and intense industrial and commercial activity. Due to its strategic importance, monitoring programs in the river started as early as the 1970s. The present study compiles and analyses this valuable data set (1970–2014), thoroughly describing the riverine section downstream of Paris and the estuary. We identify long-term trends and shifting patterns in nutrients and oxygen, and pay special attention to the river’s evolution after the year 2000, when the European Water Framework Directive came into force. The study has a manifest management perspective, and the results are discussed on the basis of the environmental quality standards proposed in current environmental regulations. The data show that water quality has improved remarkably over the past two decades, with sharp reductions of ammonium and phosphate and a progressive increase of dissolved oxygen levels. The amelioration is prominent in the estuary, where summer anoxic episodes have nearly disappeared. As a result, these three parameters are nowadays in good or very good condition throughout the year. The successful abatement of point sources contrasts, however, with the low effectiveness of the measures provided for the control of nutrients from diffuse sources. Nitrate concentration has increased by 150% since the early 1980s, and only very recently has the upward trend been reversed. Bold agri-environmental management measures are required if we are to prevent chronic pollution problems and truly restore the good ecological status of rivers.