加拿大最佳管理措施流域评价项目评述

可持续农业的目的是在保持良好环境质量的同时获得较高的农业生产率。最佳管理措施(BMPs)在世界范围内已得到广泛应用,以减少农业污染物对水环境的影响。自2004年以来,加拿大农业部实施了最佳管理措施流域评价(WEBs)项目,在全国各地选择了有代表性的9个小流域,对BMPs的环境和经济效益进行评价。笔者对过去几年来WEBs项目的进展、研究方法及主要成果进行简要的回顾,并对在中国开展类似项目的必要性和启示进行了探讨。     

Evaluating Rapid Participatory Rural Appraisal as an Assessment of Ethnoecological Knowledge and Local Biodiversity Patterns

Abstract:  There is a pressing need to find both locally and globally relevant tools to measure and compare biodiversity patterns. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is important to biodiversity monitoring, but has a contested role in preliminary biodiversity assessments. We examined rapid participatory rural appraisal (rPRA) (a tool commonly used for local needs assessments) as an alternative to surveys of vascular plants conducted by people with local knowledge. We used rPRA to determine the local-knowledge consensus on the average richness, diversity, and height of local grasses and trees in three habitats surrounding Boumba, Niger, bordering Park-W. We then conducted our own vascular plant surveys to collect information on plant richness, abundance, and structure. Using a qualitative ranking, we compared TEK-based assessments of diversity patterns with our survey-based assessments. The TEK-based assessments matched survey-based assessments on measures of height and density for grasses and trees and tree richness. The two assessments correlated poorly on herb richness and Simpson's D value for both trees and grasses. Plant life form and gender of the participant affected the way diversity patterns were described, which highlights the usefulness of TEK in explaining local realities and indicates limitations of using TEK as a large-scale assessment tool. Our results demonstrate that rPRA can serve to combine local-knowledge inquiry with scientific study at a cost lower than vascular plant surveys and demonstrates a useful blunt tool for preliminary biodiversity assessment.     

The design of decision-making: participatory budgeting and the production of localism

This paper examines participatory budgeting (PB) as an instrument of localism – the devolution of political governance with the aim to produce sustainable democratic communities. This will be achieved through a detailed exploration of the decision-making mechanisms for creating local governance through PB schemes designed and organised by the Cornwall Council (UK). First introduced in the UK by the previous Labour administration in 2008, PB has become a tool of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and is central to the neoliberal ethos of Big Society and localism. In a time of rapid political change, we respond to Eaton's [2008. From feeding the locals to selling the locale: adapting local sustainable food projects in Niagara to neocommunitarianism and neoliberalism. Geoforum, 39, 994–1006, 996] suggestion that greater attention be paid to “the specificities of particular neoliberal projects” by focusing on the micro-politics of PB. We draw upon empirical evidence from PB pilot schemes run in rural Cornwall in 2008, examining the effect of “nudging” decision-making. Grounding this inquiry in the existing literature on neoliberal statecraft, this paper investigates the role of government technologies which seek to frame local governance using mechanisms of libertarian paternalism [Painter, J., 2008. European citizenship and the regions. European Urban and Regional Studies, 15, 5–19; Painter, J., 2010. Rethinking territory. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 42, 1090–1118; MacLeavy, J., 2008. Neoliberlising subjects: the legacy of new labour's construction of social exclusion in local governance. Geoforum, 39, 1657–1666]. We argue in this paper that neoliberal ideology has integrated the epistemology of behavioural economics. We draw conclusions commensurate with the outcomes of PB projects conducted in Latin America, namely that citizens can be steered towards making certain decisions. We assert that in order to direct decision-making successfully, governmental “top-down” frameworks and goals need to be married with local geographies and “bottom-up” local desires and aspirations, thereby enabling a “countervailing power” [Sintomer, Y., Herzberg, C. and Rocke, A., 2008. Participatory budgeting in Europe: potentials and challenges. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32, 164–178] to develop. This power is exercised by a participating and scrutinising citizen that contribute towards, and balance, governmental practices of PB. With a wider governmental emphasis on designing or “architecting” choice in opportunities for local governing, there is now an even greater necessity to recognise the context of geography in local government community-orientated initiatives.     

Clean Water State Revolving Fund Loans and Landowner Investments in Agricultural Best Management Practices in Iowa1

Arbuckle, Jr., J. Gordon, 2012. Clean Water State Revolving Fund Loans and Landowner Investments in Agricultural Best Management Practices in Iowa. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 1‐9. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2012.00688.x Abstract: Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) loan programs for water quality have traditionally funded infrastructure projects at the community, municipality, or state level. They are increasingly being used to support individual landowner adoption of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) for nonpoint source pollution abatement. In 2005, the Iowa CWSRF initiated the Local Water Protection Program (LWPP) to increase the scope, scale, and rate of agricultural BMP establishment. This research examines the effectiveness of that program through a comparison of survey data from LWPP participants and state cost‐share recipients who were eligible for loans, but did not take them. Loan recipients’ assessments of the program were overwhelmingly positive, with near‐universal satisfaction with both the loan product and process. Results of statistical analyses indicate that loan recipients invested substantially more in conservation than nonrecipients. Evidence suggests that by helping program participants to overcome financial constraints, loans are facilitating larger and accelerated investments in conservation. Although findings indicate that conservation loans can play an important role in funding conservation, loan recipients also still depend on cost‐share. Loans are not necessarily a substitute for traditional forms of conservation funding, but rather another tool that landowners and conservation professionals can employ to facilitate investments in BMPs.     

Transformative climate change adaptation: bridging existing approaches with post-foundational insights on justice

ABSTRACT

Climate adaptation is a complex policy domain, spanning multiple sectors, scales and actors, and wherein those most at risk have the least power. The influence of linear positivist models of science uptake are proving ineffective in a world with increasingly concentrated wealth and power, institutional barriers, and rapidly growing risks facing the many. A plurality of approaches is needed to better examine those dynamics of climate adaptation which are often invisible in models of science uptake – equity, the value of contestation, path dependency – and to consider how to empower communities to find solutions. In this conceptual paper, we argue that bridging existing positivist and interpretivist methods with insights from post-foundational theory so as to underpin pluralism and re-orient ethical principles of justice, strengthens the capacity of social research to support transformative climate adaptation. Principles are proposed to facilitate such bridging.     

Integrating waste,manufacturing and industrial symbiosis: an analysis of recycling,remanufacturing and waste treatment firms in Texas

The continually increasing volume of the waste stream has led to numerous calls for strategies to close the loop on material use through industrial symbiosis strategies which direct used material and products (wastes) back to production processes. By use of a survey of recycling, remanufacturing and waste treatment firms in Texas, this paper asks if these firms can operate as a bridge between production and consumption/waste to efficiently increase the flow of used materials and products back to production processes at the local level. The results suggest that while most materials and used products are collected locally, only some can be re(consumed) locally. Moreover, the firms face negative perceptions about their activities from industry and the public at large that likely slow both the rate of entry of new firms into these markets and the expansion possibilities of existing firms. In addition, the types of conventions that characterize the interactions of more successful firms are not well developed in this sector(s). It is unlikely that recycling, remanufacturing and waste treatment firms can become central players in the production, consumption and waste cycle loop until society develops production design, marketing and consumption philosophies that include recycling and remanufacturing at a fundamental level.     

New consumer roles in waste water management

Network‐bound systems such as water and energy systems are increasingly confronted with environmental problems that cannot be solved without changing their modes of provision. More than any other flow provided through a network‐bound system, the waste water flow comes very close to intimate personal and social life, complicating the introduction of environmental innovations in this sector. Using the concepts of trust and identity, questions concerning changing consumer roles in two cases of Decentralised Sanitation and Reuse Systems in the Netherlands are addressed. In both cases the building of trust within provider networks and between consumers and providers, as well as the possibility for consumers and providers to identify themselves with the aims of the project were key factors determining the success or failure of environmental innovations in waste water flows.     

Sustainable development and participatory practices in community forestry: the case of FUNDECOR in Costa Rica

This paper studies the emergence of one particular ‘new’ environmental policy instrument: disclosure of emission and pollution data. Disclosure is part of a relatively new sub‐set of regulatory measures, based on monitoring, transparency, citizen‐empowerment and accountability. It originated in the United States but has recently attracted international attention. The attractiveness of disclosure is obvious; it promises environmental improvement combined with strengthened environmental democracy and community empowerment. By analysing the experiences in the US, and the developments in the Netherlands, this paper seeks to assess the functioning and effectiveness of disclosure. The available empirical evidence suggests that disclosure has a positive impact on the environmental performance of industrial facilities as well as a democratising effect. It is argued that Dutch policy makers wrongfully assume that disclosure cannot work in the Netherlands. The consequence is that citizens are provided with little specific information that cannot be used to put pressure on polluters.     

Learning sustainable water practices through participatory irrigation management in Thailand

Participatory irrigation management (PIM) was adopted in Thailand in 2004 to encourage the sustainable use of water in the agricultural sector. The research presented in this paper sought to understand the relationships between public participation, learning, and the implementation of more sustainable water practices through PIM in Thailand. Data was collected through document reviews, observation, informal meetings, and a total of 55 semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews of local irrigators from two case study regions around the Krasiew Reservoir. Results showed that participating in PIM activities facilitated both instrumental (e.g., water supply and demand data, benefits of on‐time water delivery) and communicative (e.g., reasons for past PIM failure, expectations of fellow farmers) learning among PIM participants. Findings also revealed that social action is fostered through the recognition of human dignity and compassionate communication that instils a sense of ownership and solidarity among irrigators. Sustainable water practices among local farmers were spurred further through learning that the reservoir is a finite water source.