Mitigation of the Impact of Tropical Cyclones in Northern Australia through Community Capacity Enhancement

Community mitigation of hazard impact requires hazard knowledge and preparedness on the part of the members of diverse and complex communities. Longitudinal research in the tropical cyclone prone north of Australia has gathered extensive datasets on community awareness, preparedness and knowledge, in order to contribute to education campaigns and mitigation strategies. Data have been used to identify issues of vulnerability to cyclones and capacity to deal with the hazard. This has been developed as a community vulnerability and capacity model that may be applied to diverse communities in order to assess levels of capability to mitigate and deal with the cyclone hazard. The model is presented here in a simplified form as its development is evolving and ongoing.     

Food Security in Complex Emergencies: Enhancing Food System Resilience

This paper explores linkages between food security and crisis in different contexts, outlining the policy and institutional conditions needed to manage food security during a crisis and to rebuild the resilience of food systems in periods of relative peace. The paper reviews experiences over the past decade of countries in protracted crisis and draws lessons for national and international policy. It assesses the different alternatives on offer in fragile countries to address, for example, the disruption of institutional mechanisms and the decreasing level of support offered by international donors with respect to longer-term expectations. It proposes a Twin Track Approach to enhance food security resilience through specific policies for protracted crises that link immediate hunger relief interventions with a long-term strategy for sustainable growth. Finally, the article analyses policy options and the implications for both short- and longer-term responses vis-à-vis the three dimensions of food security: availability; access; and stability.     

面向工业污染源排放的城市大气环境系统韧性评价及其时空演化

关中城市群是西部地区两大城市群之一。在该区域内有较多重污染企业。为探索关中城市群各市大气环境系统的韧性水平,将韧性理念应用于城市大气环境系统,并以工业污染源排放为视角,建立基于风险矩阵理论 (RMA) 与PSR的韧性评价模型,利用基于博弈论的组合赋权法确定PSR权重,并采用Sobol方法对模型进行敏感性分析,实现对关中城市群2018—2020年城市大气环境系统韧性时序演化及空间分布的实证分析。结果表明：非甲烷总烃、甲醇、氟化物及硫化氢属于敏感参数,其中甲醇为高敏感参数;从时间维度看,2019年关中城市群各城市大气环境系统韧性水平普遍高于2018年和2020年;从空间维度看,关中城市群各城市大气环境系统韧性水平呈现出“非均衡不稳定性”,3年中仅有西安、渭南及平凉3市达到高度韧性水平,中低韧性区域占绝大部分。提出相应的区域大气污染控制策略,如加强城市间的经验交流和分工协作、发挥西安的辐射带动作用、实施韧性区分类管理等。本研究可为关中城市群城市大气环境系统韧性建设提供参考。     

生计多样性对农户参与农田生态补偿政策响应状态的影响——以上海闵行区、苏州张家港市发达地区为例

农田生态补偿政策是采用经济手段激励农户对农田生态系统服务功能进行保育和维护,解决因市场失灵造成生态效益外溢的一种有效方式,对于改善农田生态环境、提升农地开敞空间、增加农户收益具有积极作用。论文从发达地区农户生计多样性角度入手,利用结构方程模型分析农户生计多样性对农户参与补偿政策的支持意愿、政策实施效果响应的影响。结果表明:①农户基本特征、家庭特征、生计多样性特征、村庄发展特征在5%的水平下对农户在农田生态补偿政策上的支持意愿具有正向影响;②农户基本特征、家庭特征、生计多样性特征在5%的水平下对农户在补偿政策实施效果上的响应具有正向影响,农户村庄发展特征在5%的水平下对其具有负向影响;③农户生计多样性特征是影响农户补偿政策支持意愿最主要的因素,是影响补偿政策实施效果响应的次要因素。这表明补偿政策实施后,农户生计多样性特征对于提高农户对补偿政策支持意愿与政策实施效果响应方面具有积极的作用。把握三者之间的关系有利于政府制定和完善现有农田生态补偿政策,为引导农户生计多样性发展提供参考。     

加大对重点项目和民生项目建设的环境管理,充分发挥环评在产业结构调整、工业布局优化中的重要作用

加大对重点项目和民生项目建设的环境管理,充分发挥环评在产业结构调整、工业布局优化中的重要作用,是政府和环保部门当前必须认真对待的首要问题。     

The impact of the 2004 tsunami on coastal Thai communities: assessing adaptive capacity

The suddenness and scale of the 26 December 2004 tsunami and the challenges posed to affected communities highlighted the benefits of their members having a capacity to confront and adapt to the consequences of such a disaster. Research into adaptive capacity or resilience has been conducted almost exclusively with Western populations. This paper describes an exploratory study of the potential of a measure of collective efficacy developed for Western populations to predict the capacity of members of a collective society, Thai citizens affected by the 2004 tsunami, to confront effectively the recovery demands associated with this disaster. Following a demonstration that this measure could predict adaptive capacity, the role of religious affiliation, ethnicity and place of residence in sustaining collective efficacy is discussed. The implications of the findings for future research on, and intervention to develop, adaptive capacity among Thai citizens in particular and collectivist societies in general are discussed.     

Resilience as Discourse

Resilience as a frame is increasingly appearing in grant funding, news stories, academic journals, and organization missions. Across these sites, resilience is positioned as an ability to cope, characterized by bouncing back, regaining control, and reducing vulnerability to change. How did resilience come to be understood in these terms? What are the problems with resilience's frames and the practices that produce them? How might we become resilient differently? Using a Foucaultian archaeology, I examine sites and practices that produce resilience as discourse. I analyze resilience's origins in biophysical sciences, systems perspectives that define ways of knowing, visual models that constrain the emergence of new ideas, and persistent dialectics that narrowly order relationships within the world. I propose changes in the discourse for more affective and ecological modes of becoming resilient.     

Forest resources and household welfare: Empirical evidence from North Central Vietnam

Using secondary data from a socio-economic quantitative household survey of the North Central region of Vietnam, the main aim of our study is to analyze the causal effect of forest resources on household income and poverty. Based on the observed characteristics of a forest-based livelihood and forest-related activities, we use a propensity score matching (PSM) method to control for potential bias arising from self-selection. The PSM results indicate that households with a forest-based livelihood had a higher level of income and lower poverty rates than did those without. Interestingly, our findings confirm that a forest-based livelihood offers much higher income than any other type of livelihood adopted by local households. Also, the poverty rate among households with a forest-based livelihood is lower than those earning non-labor income or engaged in wage/crop and crop livelihoods. Among households and provinces, we find varying opportunities deriving from forest resources, suggesting that there are potential barriers hindering local households from pursuing a forest livelihood or participating in some forest activities. Therefore, government policy and regulations on forest management should focus on improving the access of households to forest resources, while enhancing the sustainability of these resources.     

The dual discourse of urban resilience: robust city and self-organised neighbourhoods

Resilience has become a dominant disaster governance discourse. It has been criticised for insufficiently addressing systemic vulnerabilities while urging the vulnerable to self-organise. The urban resilience discourse involves a particular disconnect: it evokes ‘robustness’ and unaffectedness at the city scale on the one hand, and self-organisation of disaster-affected people and neighbourhoods on the other. This paper explains and illustrates the dual discourse through a case study on the reconstruction of informal and low-income settlements in the aftermath of the fire in Valparaíso, Chile, in 2014, focusing on the communication contents of two non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These NGOs deployed the discourse differently, yet both called for affected neighbourhoods to build a more robust city through self-organisation, and both suggested their work as the missing link between self-organisation and robustness. A danger in deploying the dual discourse is that it requires people who live in informal and low-income settlements to earn their right to the robust city through ‘better’ self-organisation based on fragmented visions.     

Indonesia’s Accidental Island: Composing the Environment in the Echo of Disaster

By presenting stakeholders’ competing representations of an extraordinary geological formation, an island with a surface that is comprised of runoff from an infamous mud volcano in East Java, this article explores the communicative openings and closures that arise during an environmental disaster. A particular concern is attuning communicative practices to the diverse human and nonhuman actors that not only produce disasters but also shape our understandings and responses to disasters. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour, this article suggests that non-anthropocentric modes of inquiry present new communicative and political possibilities for pursuing both social justice and safe environments. While this article focuses on a specific set of incidents in Indonesia, this project develops tools and perspectives that can be applied to environmental conflicts at other places.