Animal agency in wildlife conservation and management

Wildlife conservation and management (WCM) practices have been historically drawn from a wide variety of academic fields, yet practitioners have been slow to engage with emerging conversations about animals as complex beings, whose individuality and sociality influence their relationships with humans. We propose an explicit acknowledgement of wild, nonhuman animals as active participants in WCM. We examined 190 studies of WCM interventions and outcomes to highlight 3 common assumptions that underpin many present approaches to WCM: animal behaviors are rigid and homogeneous; wildlife exhibit idealized wild behavior and prefer pristine habitats; and human–wildlife relationships are of marginal or secondary importance relative to nonhuman interactions. We found that these management interventions insufficiently considered animal learning, decision-making, individuality, sociality, and relationships with humans and led to unanticipated detrimental outcomes. To address these shortcomings, we synthesized theoretical advances in animal behavioral sciences, animal geographies, and animal legal theory that may help conservation professionals reconceptualize animals and their relationships with humans. Based on advances in these fields, we constructed the concept of animal agency, which we define as the ability of animals to actively influence conservation and management outcomes through their adaptive, context-specific, and complex behaviors that are predicated on their sentience, individuality, lived experiences, cognition, sociality, and cultures in ways that shape and reshape shared human–wildlife cultures, spaces, and histories. Conservation practices, such as compassionate conservation, convivial conservation, and ecological justice, incorporate facets of animal agency. Animal agency can be incorporated in conservation problem-solving by assessing the ways in which agency contributes to species’ survival and by encouraging more adaptive and collaborative decision-making among human and nonhuman stakeholders.     

The place of nature in conservation conflicts

Conservation conflicts are gaining importance in contemporary conservation scholarship such that conservation may have entered a conflict hype. We attempted to uncover and deconstruct the normative assumptions behind such studies by raising several questions: what are conservation conflicts, what justifies the attention they receive, do conservation-conflict studies limit wildlife conservation, is scientific knowledge stacked against wildlife in conservation conflicts, do conservation-conflict studies adopt a specific view of democracy, can laws be used to force conservation outcomes, why is flexibility needed in managing conservation conflicts, can conservation conflicts be managed by promoting tolerance, and who needs to compromise in conservation conflicts? We suggest that many of the intellectual premises in the field may defang conservation and prevent it from truly addressing the current conservation crisis as it accelerates. By framing conservation conflicts as conflicts between people about wildlife or nature, the field insidiously transfers guilt, whereby human activities are no longer blamed for causing species decline and extinctions but conservation is instead blamed for causing social conflicts. When the focus is on mitigating social conflicts without limiting in any powerful way human activities damaging to nature, conservation-conflict studies risk keeping conservation within the limits of human activities, instead of keeping human activities within the limits of nature. For conservation to successfully stop the biodiversity crisis, we suggest the alternative goal of recognizing nature's right to existence to maintenance of ecological functions and evolutionary processes. Nature being a rights bearer or legal person would imply its needs must be explicitly taken into account in conflict adjudication. If, even in conservation, nature's interests come second to human interests, it may be no surprise that conservation cannot succeed.     

英国国防工业安全生产法制体系研究及对我国的启示

为建立健全我国国防工业安全生产法制体系，从构建历程、宏观设计和微观建设要点等方面对英国国防工业安全生产法制体系展开系统研究，并分析当前我国国防工业安全生产法制体系存在的主要问题以及英国国防工业安全生产法制体系建设对我国的启示。结果表明:在宏观设计方面，英国构建以国防安全局为监管主体的高度扁平化监管体系；在微观建设方面，其更加注重国防工业安全生产法律体系的层次性、内容完备性，法律的实操性、更新机制，以及监管职责界定的建设。借鉴英国经验，指出将国防工业安全生产法制体系建设提升至国家战略高度，实现国防工业安全生产专门立法、强化法律可操作性、完善法律制修订机制和科学界定监管职责是我国今后努力的重要方向。     

Locating Co-presence in Media Messages about Global Warming

This paper responds to recent calls for alternative approaches to the analysis of environmental communication that uncover overlooked voices in the discussion of environmental issues. Borrowing core principles from critical rhetoric, it suggests a way to categorize media messages according to how human–nature relationships are constructed in media discourse. The paper illustrates how, in presenting contrasting and often oppositional constructions of human–nature relationships, the media messages examined articulate three recurrent (but not equal) discourses on global warming. These discourses include (1) nature-as-out-of-reach discourse, (2) nature-as-antagonist discourse, and (3) nature-as-co-present discourse. By juxtaposing these discourses, the paper shows how environmental communication scholars can engage in critical realism and political advocacy to illuminate latent public discourse that holds the potential to champion marginalized voices of nature and accentuate the interconnectedness of humans and the environment.     

Biomimicry: How the environment serves as a guide for technological advancements

Multiple ecological tactics, like the ones described here, can be imitated to strongly affect these two components in the construction sector. This article provides an in-depth examination of the literature on biomimicry-based strategies intended to enhance building designs. This analysis is motivated by the rising need for energy legislation to achieve future local goals and provide a framework for use in Panama. These biomimicry-based methods have undergone more review and evaluation, and the incorporation of organism-based design for three of Panama's climate types has been proposed. Therefore, a SWOT analysis assisted in realizing the full potential that biomimicry-based techniques might have in raising the likelihood of satisfying local and international regulatory standards. In order to design constructions using biomimicry, multidisciplinary collaboration is required. This gives a competitive edge for better-trained human resources and expands horizons in the conventional construction industry. Finally, the analysis provided here might act as the preliminary step for the additional technical assessment using numerical and experimental procedures.     

燃煤、燃气锅炉综合效益模糊评价及分析结果——以乌鲁木齐市集中供热锅炉为例

以乌鲁木齐市某集中供热站锅炉节能减排方案为例,通过建立供热锅炉实施方案综合评价指标体系,运用层次分析法确定方案各项指标权重,利用模糊综合评判法分别从锅炉燃煤、燃气情况下的环境效益、经济效益以及设施能耗、物耗等指标着手,进行综合评价,并对集中供热锅炉燃煤与燃气方案综合评判结果进行分析,最终评选出较优实施方案。评选结果表明:燃气方案综合效益较好,可有效实现节能减排,为今后燃气锅炉建设提供一定的参考作用。     

湖北省自然保护区建设现状及空缺分析

建立自然保护区是保护生物多样性以及重要自然与文化遗产的主要措施,是保护生态环境和自然资源的基本方式,具有重大的经济、生态、文化、科学以及美学和娱乐价值。根据实地调查和资料汇总,截至2007年12月,湖北省共建立自然保护区58个,总面积108.01万hm2,占湖北省国土面积的5.79%。文章在分析已建自然保护区基础上,研究了自然保护区类型、物种多样性、区域体系布局等方面存在的空缺,提出了调整现有自然保护区(主要方式为合并、升级、扩区)和新建自然保护区(小区、点)的建议,包括合并堵河源和十八里长峡自然保护区、麋鹿自然保护区的扩区,新建三峡库区湿地自然保护区、火烧坪草地生态系统自然保护区等一批自然保护区的规划建议,为湖北省自然保护区管理和规划提供依据。     

环保型CO_2跨临界带膨胀机制冷循环性能研究

由于CFCs和HCFCs人工合成制冷剂破坏大气臭氧层,并产生温室效应,因此用自然工质替代合成工质越来越受到国内外制冷界的重视。文章对环保型CO2制冷工质进行了综合评价,并利用热力学原理建立模型,分析了CO2跨临界带膨胀机制冷循环的性能。结果表明:与CO2跨临界带节流阀制冷循环相比,CO2跨临界带膨胀机制冷循环明显提高了系统的性能系数(COP)。同时在保持压缩机排气压力和膨胀机等熵效率一定时,CO2跨临界带膨胀机制冷循环系统COP随着气体冷却器出口温度的增加而逐渐降低,但随着蒸发温度的增加而快速增加。在实际系统设计过程中,应综合考虑以上影响因素,以使系统设计最优化。     

哈尔滨磨盘山水源保护区生态补偿机制的研究

磨盘山水库已成为哈尔滨市人民重要的饮用水源地。解决保护区农药和化肥等造成的面源污染问题的重要措施就是要在这一地区发展建设无任何污染的有机食品基地,这对农民在一定时期内可能会造成局部和暂时的利益损失,因此,必须要有生态补偿机制,才能使保护区发展有机食品成为可行。本文为此疑出了建立磨盘山水源地保护区生态补偿机制的方法及相关措施。     

西双版纳自然保护区与周边社区的共管研究

自然保护区社区共管的实施,缓解了保护区与社区的矛盾,在促进生物多样性保护与社区经济发展方面取得了显著的效果。然而,由于管理目标冲突、经费不足、宣传教育力度不足等问题,限制了共管的实施范围及可持续性。通过采取构建科学的共管运行机制、激励机制,生态教育等措施,突破共管的制约因素,促进了自然保护区及其社区的可持续发展。