Integrated Freshwater Solutions — A New Zealand Application of Mediated Modeling

Mediated Modeling (MM) refers to “model building with stakeholders,” enabling collaborative learning and decision support. This article presents results from the Integrated Freshwater Solutions (IFS — www.ifs.org.nz ) action research project in the Manawatū River watershed, New Zealand. Water quality in the watershed often rates poorly, with the key issues being sedimentation, eutrophication, and habitat destruction. IFS is to develop and test MM to support collaborative and adaptive freshwater management. The project team was presented with the opportunity to collaborate with the Manawatū River Leaders' Forum (MRLF), an initiative driven by the Regional Council to improve water quality. This article describes the process of MM and how it was adapted to meet the needs of MRLF stakeholders. This highlights some important conditions for collaborative and adaptive capacity building. The MM/MRLF stakeholders, represented: industry, farming, local and regional authorities, environmental groups, and indigenous Māori iwi/hapū (tribe/sub‐tribe). This article describes how MM assisted early in the collaborative process to develop the following: (1) a shared and more integrated understanding of causes and effects and (2) a sense of the order of magnitude of the problems and the impact proposed solutions might have. It also describes how the context of politics, time, and resource constraints played an important role reverting to a more traditional planning approach part way through the process.     

“禽流感”的生态安全与经济分析

连续几年的禽流感,给养殖业和国家经济发展带来很大成本和风险。从生态学的角度看,禽流感是一个生态安全问题;从经济学的角度看,是一个生态经济问题;禽流感实际上是在社会经济发展过程中,由生态和经济两大系统共同引发的安全问题。通过生态安全和生态经济的分析,禽流感要求人类在经济发展中考虑生态成本,改善养殖方式,提倡绿色产品,从生态投入和收益的角度来重新审视禽流感。符合生态安全的养殖方式才是最为经济的,对于人类来说,才是最为安全的。     

Intelligent Databases Assist Transparent and Sound Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services

Assessment and economic valuation of services provided by ecosystems to humans has become a crucial phase in environmental management and policy-making. As primary valuation studies are out of the reach of many institutions, secondary valuation or benefit transfer, where the results of previous studies are transferred to the geographical, environmental, social, and economic context of interest, is becoming increasingly common. This has brought to light the importance of environmental valuation databases, which provide reliable valuation data to inform secondary valuation with enough detail to enable the transfer of values across contexts. This paper describes the role of next-generation, intelligent databases (IDBs) in assisting the activity of valuation. Such databases employ artificial intelligence to inform the transfer of values across contexts, enforcing comparability of values and allowing users to generate custom valuation portfolios that synthesize previous studies and provide aggregated value estimates to use as a base for secondary valuation. After a general introduction, we introduce the Ecosystem Services Database, the first IDB for environmental valuation to be made available to the public, describe its functionalities and the lessons learned from its usage, and outline the remaining needs and expected future developments in the field.     

论资源经济学的研究对象

资源经济学至今没能成为一门成熟学科的首要原因在于学者们对其研究对象没有形成统一的认识,并主要存在两方面的问题:其一,在研究对象的外延和内涵上,没有划清资源经济学、环境经济学和生态经济学之间的界限;其二,把资源经济学变成自然资源有效配置或利用经济学。作者根据人口、自然资源、自然环境、自然灾害和生态系统之间的关系,以及它们分别与经济系统形成的7个交叉系统,把资源经济学与6种相关经济学的研究领域对象区分开来。进而根据科学研究对象所具有的特殊矛盾性,把资源经济学、环境经济学和生态经济学的研究内容划分开来。还根据经济学的研究对象是经济活动的概要界定,从总体上分别概要地界定了三种经济学的研究对象,并认为资源经济活动是资源经济本质、资源经济运行和资源经济发展的统一。     

生物质液化燃油的工业适用性及安全性探讨

简要介绍了中国石油安全面临的问题及其对国家经济可持续发展的可能影响;一般生物燃油的用途、物理性能指标、主要元素含量及其与石化轻油、重油同类指标的对比;论述了生物燃油的工业适用性、安全性和环保性;探讨了生物燃油的生产成本、市场销售预测、生产设备造价、产业化开发的经济收益以及农林剩余物资源潜力和产业化开发可能创造的就业机会等问题。     

EXTERNALITIES,WATER PRICES,AND WATER TRANSFERS1

Discussing, estimating or analyzing the value of water is a difficult task. In addressing the value of water as reflected in its price — either as charged by a water utility, as the price of a water transfer, or a water sale in some market — this paper will examine three propositions regarding water pricing. The paper will consider the marginal scarcity rent of water, estimates of externalities, the full cost pricing of water and the consequences of these considerations on water prices, transfers and the efficiency of water use.     

SOCIOECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON U.S. WATER SUPPLIES1

ABSTRACT: A greenhouse warming would have major effects on water supplies and demands. A framework for examining the socioeconomic impacts associated with changes in the long-term availability of water is developed and applied to the hydrologic implications of the Canadian and British Hadley2 general circulation models (GCMs) for the 18 water resource regions in the conterminous United States. The climate projections of these two GCMs have very different implications for future water supplies and costs. The Canadian model suggests most of the nation would be much drier in the year 2030. Under the least-cost management scenario the drier climate could add nearly $105 billion to the estimated costs of balancing supplies and demands relative to the costs without climate change. Measures to protect instream flows and irrigation could result in significantly higher costs. In contrast, projections based on the Hadley model suggest water supplies would increase throughout much of the nation, reducing the costs of balancing water supplies with demands relative to the no-climate-change case.     

Are there reasons against open-ended research into solar radiation management? A model of intergenerational decision-making under uncertainty

Solar radiation management (SRM) has been proposed as a means of last resort against dangerous climate change. We propose a stylized model of intergenerational decision making on SRM research, greenhouse-gas abatement and SRM deployment, under uncertainties about (a) the extent of future climate damage and (b) effectiveness and potential harmful side-effects of SRM. Open-ended research may reveal either that SRM effectively reduces climate damage, or that it would cause more harm than benefits. We find that SRM research increases the likelihood of deployment (“slippery slope”), and derive conditions that it decreases abatement effort in expectation (“moral hazard”). Neither of these provides a rationale against SRM research, though. The rational decision is to perform SRM research, unless (i) discounting is hyperbolic and (ii) the absolute prudence of expected climate damage is smaller than absolute risk aversion. These results generalize to the case where SRM research also provides information on climate sensitivity.     

A Review of the Elements of Human Well-Being with an Emphasis on the Contribution of Ecosystem Services

Natural ecosystems perform fundamental life-support services upon which human civilization depends. However, many people believe that nature provides these services for free and therefore, they are of little or no value. While we do not pay for them, we pay significantly for their loss in terms of wastewater treatment facilities, moratoriums on greenhouse gases, increased illnesses, reduced soil fertility and losses in those images of nature that contribute to our basic happiness. Little is understood about the well-being benefits of the natural environment and its ecosystem services. The interwoven relationship of ecosystems and human well-being is insufficiently acknowledged in the wider philosophical, social, and economic well-being literature. In this article, we discuss an approach to examine human well-being and the interactions of its four primary elements-basic human needs, economic needs, environmental needs, and subjective well-being-and ecosystem services.