高职学生参加社区志愿活动的几点思考

高职院校大学生参加社区志愿活动具有重要的意义,有助于提高学生综合素质、增强学生社会责任感,但是其存在缺乏科学指导、缺乏持续性和学生及社区居民对其认识不足等问题。为了使高职院校学生顺利开展社区志愿服务活动,应该加强引导和管理,提高学生志愿服务意识,政府应该出台激励社区志愿活动政策,切实增强高职院校学生参加社区志愿活动的实效性。     

Developing a New Operations Plan for the Bow River Basin Using Collaborative Modeling for Decision Support

The Bow River Basin is a cornerstone of Alberta's development. In 2010, stakeholders representing interests from agriculture, municipalities, environment, and more formed the Bow River Project Research Consortium to help determine the potential for improving the operations in the basin. At present, upstream reservoirs are operated primarily for hydropower, whereas downstream reservoirs are operated for irrigation. Through Collaborative Modeling for Decision Support the stakeholders were able to develop a new method for operating the system that would dramatically improve environmental performance. The main components of the new operating strategy called for: purchase or setting aside of a small amount of storage volume in the power reservoirs; a set of rules for releases from that storage; an agreement by the major irrigation districts with the largest water licenses to utilize their ability to shift deliveries to and from their large offstream storage reservoirs to allow for increased instream flows, and to allow junior water license holders (mainly municipal and industrial supplies) an uninterrupted water supply; limitations of reservoir fluctuations to improve inreservoir habitat for fisheries; and increased minimum flows throughout the system leading to improved environmental outcomes. Costs of this strategy were minimal, impacts on power revenue were estimated at <US$2 million/yr on average. Compensatory arrangements should be possible.     

Smart Growth and Sustainable Development: Challenges,solutions and policy directions

In this paper, we focus on the issues related to development densities that emerged from our study of sprawl and development issues in three regions of British Columbia, Canada. We chose to focus on this aspect of the Smart Growth agenda because, while many of its other elements enjoy wide support across social interests, the goal of achieving a higher density urban fabric is highly controversial. We proceeded by collecting data on development densities and 13 indicators of community sustainability in 26 municipalities. The results suggest that the density of communities is associated with efficiencies in infrastructure and with reduced automobile dependence, with the ecological and economic implications which flow from that. However, it does not necessarily correlate with greater affordability of housing or more access to green space. In fact, if anything, we discovered a negative relationship between housing affordability and green space per capita and higher land-use densities. In a second stage of the research, we conducted a qualitative analysis of a subset of six municipalities and identified key policy issues for moving ahead with the Smart Growth agenda. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy issues that emerged from these case studies.     

Views of the City: Multiple pathways to sustainable transport futures

In this paper we look behind the notion of sustainable transport and highlight the tensions and contradictions between the different ways of achieving this. The paper examines transportation plans for a major UK city and describes how these develop the idea and practice of sustainable transport and demand management along three quite distinct trajectories. By focusing on both the technological and the institutional dimensions of three different routes to sustainable transport, the analysis explicates the different ways in which the urban transport problem is framed, the different socio-technical logics of demand management embodied in the plans and the differing ways in which institutional relationships are (re)constituted. A key finding is that technological and institutional innovations are inversely related so that radical technological innovation often serves to reinforce existing social relations of power and exclusion. The conclusion drawn is that the choice is not just between a sustainable and an unsustainable transport future, but also between different forms of sustainability.     

Local Environmental Investments and Sustainable Development: The evaluation of environmental projects in Scotland supported by the European Agriculture Guidance and Guarantee Fund

In the UK for the period 1994-99, a broad range of environmental projects were given financial support through the European Agriculture Guidance and Guarantee Fund under the Objective 1 and Objective 5b programmes. This paper is concerned with the ex-post evaluation of these projects set within a Sustainable Development framework. The aim was to identify project types or characteristics that offered the greatest return on investment. A classification of six broad project types was adopted. The evaluation revealed that there were significant differences between individual projects with respect to the type and scale, and temporal and social distribution of the benefits they delivered. In particular, as well as delivering environmental and economic benefits, many projects made a significant contribution to the development of human and social capital. The paper concludes that it is possible to improve the basis for future project selection in order to maximise the returns on environmental investments in the context of sustainable development.     

Improving road transport-related air quality in England through joint working between Environmental Health Officers and Transport Planners

In this paper the necessity for effective joint working arrangements between Environmental Health Officers and Transport Planners is demonstrated as a fundamental prerequisite for successful management of traffic-related air quality in English local government areas. Current approach to joint working and collaboration between the officers was examined based on the evidence from a three-year study which involved questionnaire surveys and case study interviews. The findings show that despite good administrative devolution and policy integration, the chance of improving specific local air quality situations through the Local Transport Planning process is dependent on other overriding factors which influence the capabilities of the authorities to integrate policies across departments and tiers of governments. Implicit in these findings is the need for a shared paradigm of continuous engagement by all the policy actors and stakeholders if proper integration and the possibility of tangible results in future policy development are to be achieved. The paper proposes a new framework through which such collaborations can be developed and within which solutions to the issues identified can be evaluated.     

Risk and vulnerability analysis: A feasible process for local climate adaptation in Sweden?

Climate change is an important new challenge for local authorities. This study analyses the potential for using the Swedish mandatory process for risk and vulnerability analysis (RVA) as a vehicle to improve local climate adaptation work. An advantage with RVA is its comprehensive approach in dealing with all relevant threats and all vital functions of society. In order to test the applicability of incorporating climate adaptation into RVA, we studied practical experiences from three Swedish municipalities. In all municipalities, a pre-study to identify relevant climate-induced events was performed. In one municipality, this was followed by a more detailed analysis of the potential impacts of these events on the functions of the various administrations and companies within the local authority. Problems identified in successful integration of climate change into the municipal RVA process were lack of sufficient knowledge to identify the impacts of climate change on the level of the respective specialist or district administration and lack of resources to perform the analysis. There were also some difficulties in including a long-term perspective relevant for climate adaptation into RVA, which usually focuses on current threats. A positive outcome was that work on extreme climate events in RVA provided a traceable method to identify events with a potentially great impact on the function of local society and results that could be fed into other ongoing processes, such as spatial planning and housing plans.     

Cui bono: the Scottish Climate Challenge Fund and community benefits

This study adopted an open-ended exploratory approach to elicit the perspectives of a selection of six Climate Challenge Fund projects. This central idea is that communities' perspective on attempted carbon reduction initiative in their areas has use in other contexts and could enable better design of such interventions in future. The main finding was that emphasising local benefits was conducive to their achieving local involvement in the project. The results of this research should be tested in other contexts. Three broad implications for the design of community carbon reduction initiatives are raised in assuming these outcomes are correct. First, the community hosting such initiatives should be perceived to hold a degree of power over the project. Second, central authorities should not be overly prohibitive about the motivations of those participating in such projects. Finally, the use of non-environmental messaging has value in shifting people to more pro-environmental behaviours.     

Constraints to managing urban and housing land in the context of poverty: a case of Epworth settlement in Zimbabwe

This paper makes a proposition that Epworth's current housing management policies, regulations and practices do not promote easy access to formal standard housing and secure tenure in peri-urban and urban areas for low-income groups. In constructing this paper, both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used. The qualitative methods adopted include key informant interviews, observations of the environmental aspects of the study area and documentary analysis of secondary data housed in the local board (Epworth Local Board) offices. The major findings demonstrate the reasons for high levels of squatting in Epworth, the local board's housing and development control policy, the relationship between poverty and informal settlements, the informal settlers' capacity to meet the costs of planned and serviced stands and policy options for both the central government and the local board which can be adopted to alleviate poverty in informal settlements. Evidence on the ground points to the fact that perpetuated animosity among groups in a settlement hinders the growth and development of that place. Epworth is a victim of disharmony of the groups residing there. It is the group dynamics that are very influential in making or breaking development in a place. The government official position on Epworth in this study stands unconvincing regarding the jeopardy of bad stewardship by the so-called responsible authority.