Bourdieu,environmental NGOs,and Australian climate politics

Environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Australia have struggled to generate and sustain public concern about climate change. If debates about climate policy can be viewed as sites of contestation between competing actors, Australia’s environmental NGOs have found it difficult to compete against countervailing forces that have sought to shape public attitudes to climate action and the contours of policy responses. While to a significant degree this reflects the power of those forces and the sentiments of the government of the day, there is also a case to be made that some of Australia’s most prominent environmental NGOs have appeared wedded to strategies inconsistent with building or sustaining public support for action or guiding policy responses. How have Australia’s largest environmental NGOs engaged climate politics, and why has this engagement taken that form? Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology provides unique insight for coming to terms with the multifaceted nature of the constraints, opportunities, and drivers of political action, from the context of climate politics to the forces behind Australian NGOs’ engagement with that politics, and the limits of that engagement. Bourdieu’s work also suggests possible avenues for more effective forms of political communication on climate change in the Australian context.     

Why does the United States lack a global warming policy? The corporate inner circle versus public interest sector elites

Why has the United States not adopted global warming policies? Because the inner circle of the corporate elite has opposed these policies despite some corporate support for cap-and-trade and other policies. Pro- and anti-positions taken by think tanks that have led the policy debate in the post-Kyoto period are analyzed in order to demonstrate this. The corporate and upper class social ties of the directors of these pro- and anti-think tanks are examined, revealing a corporate elite split between the inner circle opposing these policies, and a ‘public interest sector’ of corporate law and media corporations along with top executives from higher education and other nonprofits that is supportive of policies addressing global warming. To enable adoption of major global warming policies, the corporate inner circle will need to become supportive and forge a class-wide corporate consensus on the need to address global warming.     

公众生态文明素养及其科普教育研究

本文对国家文明城市芜湖市进行实地问卷调查发现:公众具有一定生态意识,但生态文明素养整体状况不佳。公众对生态文明概念比较了解和很了解的只占17.7%;各类人群对周围环境关注度较高,均在65%左右;有相关生态知识或行为的公众占92%;有76.7%的人表示没有破坏环境的行为;64.8%的受访者表示他们有保护环境的行为。通过生态科普教育现状调查发现:受访者对目前生态科普教育满意度只有25.9%,政府在生态科普教育方面还存在活动流于形式、创新性不强、投入不足、制度不完善、不能及时回应公众关切热点、专项科普匮乏、媒体不给力、内容不接地气、无区域特色、平台手段落后等问题。提出了提升公众生态文明素养需构建四个相互联动的科普教育体系:高度重视生态科普教育的思想体系、支撑生态科普教育的技术能力体系、生态科普教育的长效机制体系和具有区域特色生态科普教育内容体系。     

The role of digital data entry in participatory environmental monitoring

Many argue that monitoring conducted exclusively by scientists is insufficient to address ongoing environmental challenges. One solution entails the use of mobile digital devices in participatory monitoring (PM) programs. But how digital data entry affects programs with varying levels of stakeholder participation, from nonscientists collecting field data to nonscientists administering every step of a monitoring program, remains unclear. We reviewed the successes, in terms of management interventions and sustainability, of 107 monitoring programs described in the literature (hereafter programs) and compared these with case studies from our PM experiences in Australia, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greenland, and Vietnam (hereafter cases). Our literature review showed that participatory programs were less likely to use digital devices, and 2 of our 3 more participatory cases were also slow to adopt digital data entry. Programs that were participatory and used digital devices were more likely to report management actions, which was consistent with cases in Ethiopia, Greenland, and Australia. Programs engaging volunteers were more frequently reported as ongoing, but those involving digital data entry were less often sustained when data collectors were volunteers. For the Vietnamese and Canadian cases, sustainability was undermined by a mismatch in stakeholder objectives. In the Ghanaian case, complex field protocols diminished monitoring sustainability. Innovative technologies attract interest, but the foundation of effective participatory adaptive monitoring depends more on collaboratively defined questions, objectives, conceptual models, and monitoring approaches. When this foundation is built through effective partnerships, digital data entry can enable the collection of more data of higher quality. Without this foundation, or when implemented ineffectively or unnecessarily, digital data entry can be an additional expense that distracts from core monitoring objectives and undermines project sustainability. The appropriate role of digital data entry in PM likely depends more on the context in which it is used and less on the technology itself.     

完善公众参与环境决策机制的法制探讨

公众参与环境决策是一项重要的公众民主权利。我国已经将环境公众参与作为一项重要的环境保护法律制度,但是由于目前我国环保法律制度的不完善,在实施公众参与环境决策机制上存在着诸多问题,本文从法制的角度探讨了公众参与环境决策的理论依据,分析和论证建立适合我国国情的公众参与环境决策制度的主要方式,并提出完善公众参与环境决策制度的建议。     

Paying for International Environmental Public Goods

Supply of international environmental public goods must meet certain conditions to be socially efficient, and several reasons explain why they are currently undersupplied. Diagnosis of the public goods failure associated with particular ecosystem services is critical to the development of the appropriate international response. There are two categories of international environmental public goods that are most likely to be undersupplied. One has an additive supply technology and the other has a weakest link supply technology. The degree to which the collective response should be targeted depends on the importance of supply from any one country. In principle, the solution for the undersupply lies in payments designed to compensate local providers for the additional costs they incur in meeting global demand. Targeted support may take the form of direct investment in supply (the Global Environment Facility model) or of payments for the benefits of supply (the Payments for Ecosystem Services model).     

兰州市公共交通的生态足迹测算研究

以兰州市公共交通(分为公交车和出租车两种)为研究对象,运用生态足迹法,测算2010年-2014年兰州市客运交通生态足迹,并计算兰州市公共交通的生态效率和生态足迹强度.结果表明:公共交通生态足迹年均占比为7.41%;公共交通生态足迹和客运量呈同步增长态势,公共交通生态足迹年均增长1.71%;在影响公共交通生态足迹的因素中,公交车和出租车的化石能源足迹年均占比分别为76.06%和62.32%;就生态效率而言,公交车生态效率是出租车生态效率的6.24倍.     

基于微信公众平台的空气质量显示系统的设计与实现研究

空气质量的好坏直接影响着人类的出行和健康,创建便于查询的空气质量显示系统,可以使人们简单直观的了解当日的空气质量指数(AQI).随着互联网的迅猛发展,"微信"逐渐成了人们日常通信的重要工具.本系统利用物联网技术与微信公众平台相结合,提出了空气质量显示系统的设计与实现方案,来建设空气质量显示系统.该系统可从各个区内监测点得到空气质量指数数据,进而将每日各个时段的空气质量指数(AQI)以动态图的方式直观清晰的展示给用户,为人们的出行带来了方便.     

环境影响评价公众意见调查的真实性评价探讨

公众参与在环境影响评价中扮演着重要的角色,认真做好公众意见调查工作,可以促进环境影响评价工作公正、公开、公平地发展。虽然在建设项目环境影响评价工作中,公众参与起到了一定的积极作用,但是在公众参与的实际过程中,还是遇到了许多具体问题,本文对环境影响评价工作中公众意见调查的结果应如何评估,提出意见和建议。     

环境保护与公众参与

从公众言语的起源和内涵出发,分析了我国公众参与在环境保护中存在的主要问题,提出了健全和完善环保法律、法规等相对应的对策建议。