Exploring the influence of outdoor recreation participation on pro-environmental behaviour in a demographically diverse population

This study used structural equation modelling to examine the effects of socio-demographic variables and outdoor recreation participation on pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) among an ethnically diverse population of adult state-park visitors near Atlanta, Georgia, USA (N?=?319). Data collected through intercept surveys at three state parks were used to examine interactions among potential predictors of PEB, including socio-demographics (ethnicity, gender, education, and income), outdoor recreation participation (during childhood and adulthood), and environmental value orientations (biocentric and anthropocentric). The best fitting model accounted for 40% of the variance in self-reported PEB and indicated the strongest positive relationship between adult outdoor recreation participation and PEB (β?=?0.54, t?=?5.70). Biocentric and anthropocentric value orientation scores were also significant antecedents of PEB (β?=?0.17, t?=?1.99, and β?=?0.19, t?=?2.56, respectively), and both were influenced by socio-demographic variables. Overall, results suggest that a diverse public's environmental ethos and propensity to engage in PEBs could be influenced by outdoor recreation opportunities.     

THE RELATIONSHIP OF ECOCENTRIC AND ANTHROPOCENTRIC MOTIVES TO ATTITUDES TOWARD LARGE CARNIVORES

Groups involved in the livestock vs large carnivore conflict hold widely divergent attitudes toward carnivores, yet they all endorse general ecocentric values. The hypothesis that contrasting motives for the endorsement of ecocentric values may mediate between the general values and attitudes toward carnivores was evaluated in a survey among sheep farmers, wildlife managers, and research biologists in Norway. Results showed positive associations between anthropocentrism and negative attitudes toward carnivores, and between ecocentrism and positive attitudes toward carnivores for all three groups. Farmers, relative to the other groups, scored lowest on the ecocentric and highest on the anthropocentric subscales, as operationalized by Thompson and Barton (1994). This result may be interpreted within a cognitive hierarchy model where environmental beliefs may transform general ecocentric values into negative or positive attitudes toward one specific environmental category.     

非物质文化遗产的旅游发展探索——以古徽州为例

古徽州非物质文化遗产丰富多彩、特色鲜明,是旅游开发的重要遗产。鉴于非物质文化遗产的特殊性,单纯的记录、保存和隔离的做法不能有效地保护。提出了发挥旅游促进非物质文化遗产传承的积极作用,文旅互动、统筹规划、强化管理,既利于古徽州地区非物质文化遗产的保护与传承,又有助于古徽州地区休闲旅游经济的快速发展,可实现古徽州非物质文化遗产的可持续发展。     

Examining the place of ecological integrity in environmental justice: A systematic review

Environmental justice research is predominately an anthropocentric endeavour, and it is unclear whether this research captures injustices to other species or the integrity of ecological systems that support all life on earth. The purpose of this article is three-fold. First, we systematically review the environmental justice literature to identify the epistemological perspectives from which environmental justice is conveyed. Second, we examine definitions of environmental justice to determine how the concept is operationalised across these paradigms. Third, we document under what conditions these definitions purposely acknowledge the interdependency of all species in order to elucidate the place (or absence) of ecological integrity in our understanding of environmental justice. We conclude with a discussion of the value of going beyond mainstream expressions of environmental justice that typically do not include ecological integrity as a way to begin addressing the problem in a more holistic way.     

Re-thinking relationships between environmental attitudes and values for effective coastal natural resource management in Ghana

The coastal zone of Ghana is home to about a quarter of the total population of the country and its importance has been well emphasised in policy documents, such as the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda, the National Climate Change Policy as well as the National Environmental Policy. However, environmental degradation remains a critical issue as dependence on coastal natural resources continues to increase, and its effect is being felt more strongly by certain groups than others. This paper identifies women as key stakeholders, and through an empirical assessment highlights the need to factor their environmental attitudes and values into efforts to manage the coast in an integrated manner. The results show that respondents generally had positive environmental attitudes, which did not translate to good environmental behaviour. Respondents placed the greatest importance on the coastal natural resources as sources of wealth creation and of food, values which are often described as being “anthropocentric”. Hence, initiatives that could win the support of the local people and also help manage coastal resources effectively are those that link the livelihoods and well-being to coastal natural resource management.     

Environmental Values and Popular Conflict over Environmental Management: A Comparative Analysis of Public Comments on the Clinton Forest Plan

/ Public participation in environmental management decisions has frequently led to conflict. This paper examines the role of environmental values in fueling these conflicts, based on a data base and sample content analysis of written public comments solicited in 1994 regarding the highly contentious Clinton Forest Plan (also known as Option 9) proposed for management of federal forests in the US Pacific Northwest. The analysis considered whether those respondents favoring more versus less environmental protection than was offered in Option 9 held entirely different values, identifying which antagonistic values appeared to be most fundamental and where (if at all) values consensus occurred. It also compared values emanating from respondents within and outside the affected region, although few major differences were detected in this regard. Results suggest that strong values differences did exist among those preferring greater versus less environmental protection, in particular as concerned the extent, form, and spatial and temporal scope of justification of their positions, their ideas of forests, and the appropriate role of people in forest management. Disagreement concerned far more than purely environmental values: a major point of difference involved human benefits and harms of the proposed forest plan. Indeed, both sides' positions were overridingly anthropocentric and consequentialist-a values orientation that almost inevitably spells conflict in light of the commonly differentiated social impacts of environmental management decisions. Although public involvement in environmental management thus cannot be expected to lead to a clear and consensual social directive, the Pacific Northwest case suggests that viable environmental management solutions that take this range of values into account can still be crafted.KEY WORDS: Environmental values; Public participation; Clinton Forest Plan; Pacific Northwest     

通过加强高校学报建设提升秦皇岛市文化软实力的研究

《邯郸学院学报》、《衡水学院学报》、《惠州学院学报》在提升地方文化软实力方面作出的杰出贡献,为通过加强高校学报建设提升区域文化软实力提供了不争的现实依据,也证明了通过加强高校学报建设提升秦皇岛市文化软实力具有一定的可行性和科学性。秦皇岛市可以充分发挥高校学报的导向作用和推动作用,挖掘秦皇岛市文化资源,创办特色栏目,提高居民综合素质,宣扬环境保护理念,为秦皇岛市建设园林式、生态型、现代化海滨城市和国家环境保护模范城市贡献力量。     

Measuring landscape integrity (LI): development of a hybrid methodology for planning applications

Landscape integrity data-sets represent a measure of a landscape's naturalness, or its inverse, the level of human modification. Generally referred to as human footprint modeling, a hybrid approach was developed here by incorporating distance, density, and spatially explicit fuzzy logic methods for quantifying the impacts of anthropocentric infrastructure on the landscape. Integrity scores varied markedly across this large and heterogeneous landscape. A comparative analysis among peer data products revealed that this model exhibited the highest level of correlation when compared to an independently derived expert survey of expected scores. Moreover, differences in correlation were found to be statistically significant in two cases indicating robust model performance. Data products such as these may be leveraged to quantify the nature and extent of human modifications on the landscape, identify highly natural areas for conservation purposes, and may serve as an overarching umbrella for guiding and coordinating large and local-scale planning efforts.     

Narrating place,negotiating history: the politics of place in Land Between the Rivers

Conservation discourses in the last decade have witnessed a radical shift in the conceptualisation of nature. The imagery of a pristine nature has been replaced by a growing recognition of culture and place-based attachments as emerging frontiers of conservation. Yet, the complexities of place and culture call for a greater reflection on cultural approaches to natural resource management. In this paper, I argue that the cultural discourses in conservation policies are largely global in nature and conflict with a community's understanding of a local cultural tradition. The notion of the global closely relates to a global framing of an environmental problem that glosses over cultural specificities. On the other hand, local is defined here in materially specific terms that highlight the role of history in shaping environmental traditions. I examine these contradictory framings through a narrative of conservation, displacement, and cultural loss in a US rural community known as Land Between the Rivers.     

Positive psychology in education for sustainable development at a primary-education institution

The present global environmental crisis is demanding serious rather than superficial changes within the cultural assumptions of human-to-human and human-to-nature relationships. In this sense, education is one of the strongest tools to model our future and a key factor of cultural change. One of the principal aims of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is to develop cognitive and affective skills that affect people's values, such as empathy and critical thinking. Together with compromise and responsibility towards a group, it is possible to build new values and ways to interact with both people and the environment. In the present study we used positive psychology principles in creating teaching interventions to empower empathy and critical thinking through an ESD programme at a Chilean primary school. The results show that an intervention of this kind helps to harmoniously build reflective thinking and empathy within students. This enables them to achieve important changes in their disposition to make sound personal and environmental decisions, and prepares them to positively meet imposing present and future challenges.     

A Yin‐Yang approach to education policy regarding health and the environment: early‐careerists' image of the future and priority programmes

Since the inception of sustainable development (SD), there has been a somewhat ignored contradiction between paradigms that are ecosystem‐based and paradigms that are human‐based or purely economic. We suggest that this contradiction can be unified through a balance of the two. The Chinese Yin‐Yang philosophy is applied as a tool or approach to seeking balance between these ecocentric and anthropocentric paradigms. Priority education policy design for the merging of ecology and health are projected through an Ecohealth lens in response to increasing SD challenges and the intention of the international Ecohealth organization to contribute to SD goals. Meeting SD goals along the nexus of health and environment is further considered through early‐careerist cultural assessments and projections. The groups considered for their professional image of the future are: members of the Ecohealth Association Student Section and Chinese early‐careerists participating in a related conference. In response to SD goals, a problem‐based learning design is suggested as an education policy priority. Rather than approaching SD as a boolean concept, for example, by either focusing on ecosystem sustainability or economic development, we suggest education policy for programmes and curriculums that will help emerging professionals balance these paradigms, so as to best address national and global challenges.     

Environmental Ethics and Biomimetic Ethics: Nature as Object of Ethics and Nature as Source of Ethics

While the contemporary biomimicry movement is associated primarily with the idea of taking Nature as model for technological innovation, it also contains a normative or ethical principle—Nature as measure—that may be treated in relative isolation from the better known principle of Nature as model. Drawing on discussions of the principle of Nature as measure put forward by Benyus (Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature, Harper Perennial, New York, 1997) and Jackson (Consulting the genius of place: an ecological approach to a new agriculture, Counterpoint, Berkeley, 2010, Nature as measure: the selected essays of Wes Jackson, Counterpoint, Berkeley, 2011), while at the same time situating these discussions in relation to contemporary debates in the philosophy of biomimicry (Mathews in Organ Environ 24(4): 364–387, 2011; Dicks in Philos Technol, doi: 10.1007/s13347-015-0210-2, 2015; Blok and Gremmen in J Agric Environ Ethics 29(2):203–217, 2016), the aim of this paper is to explore the relation between the principle of Nature as measure and environmental ethics. This leads to the argument that mainstream formulations of environmental ethics share the common trait of seeing our ethical relation to Nature as primarily involving duties to protect, preserve, or conserve various values in Nature, and that, in doing so, they problematically either overlook or dismiss as anthropocentric the possibility that Nature may provide measures, understood in terms of ecological standards, against which our own practices, or at least some of them, may be judged—a way of thinking I call “biomimetic ethics”. The practical consequences of this argument are significant. Whereas mainstream environmental ethics has been applied above all to such issues as wilderness preservation, natural resource management, and animal rights and welfare, biomimetic ethics is applicable rather to the question of how we produce, use, and consume things, and, as such, may potentially provide the basic ethical framework required to underpin the transition to a circular, bio-based, solar economy.     

Social Capital and Sustainability in a Community under Threat

Abstract

Engaging with dialogue concerning the relevance and applicability of social capital to a model of sustainable community development, we illustrate an in-depth case of a community experiencing an ideological clash with the dominant politico-societal structures. We argue that while the exclusivity of bonding social capital has been described as the ‘dark side’, it may be essential for progressive sustainable community development (PSCD). When faced with a development threat, such bonds are essential for building links, bridges and solidarity, enabling cultural reproduction and promoting environmental protection for sustainability.     

Speaking of fire: reflexive governance in landscapes of social change and shifting local identities

ABSTRACT

The concept of reflexive governance has to a large extent emerged from an increasing recognition of the need to consider different meanings of nature in the environmental policy-making process. Yet, so far, little attention has been paid to creating conditions for reflexive governance among different actors in intercultural settings, particularly in the context of environmental conflict and strong cultural change among indigenous peoples. This paper reviews three participatory research projects carried out in the Gran Sabana in Canaima National Park, Venezuela, which facilitated dialogue among indigenous people regarding their conflicting views of fire, in part by developing community-wide critical reflections on processes of cultural change and identity formations. These experiences suggest that once marginalized environmental knowledge is publicly acknowledged within the context of endogenous cultural processes, indigenous people feel more confident to engage in dialogue with other actors, thus allowing the emergence of reflexive environmental governance.     

“Just Another Hoop to Jump Through?” Using Environmental Laws and Processes to Protect Indigenous Rights

Protection of culturally important indigenous landscapes has become an increasingly important component of environmental management processes, for both companies and individuals striving to comply with environmental regulations, and for indigenous groups seeking stronger laws to support site protection and cultural/human rights. Given that indigenous stewardship of culturally important sites, species, and practices continues to be threatened or prohibited on lands out of indigenous ownership, this paper examines whether or not indigenous people can meaningfully apply mainstream environmental management laws and processes to achieve protection of traditional sites and associated stewardship activities. While environmental laws can provide a “back door” to protect traditional sites and practices, they are not made for this purpose, and, as such, require specific amendments to become more useful for indigenous practitioners. Acknowledging thoughtful critiques of the cultural incommensurability of environmental law with indigenous environmental stewardship of sacred sites, I interrogate the ability of four specific environmental laws and processes—the Uniform Conservation Easement Act; the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Quality Act; the Pacific Stewardship Council land divestiture process; and Senate Bill 18 (CA-2004)—to protect culturally important landscapes and practices. I offer suggestions for improving these laws and processes to make them more applicable to indigenous stewardship of traditional landscapes.     

Participants and non-participants of place-based groups: an assessment of attitudes and implications for public participation in water resource management

Policy-makers and public participation analysts face the question of who should be involved in environmental decision-making. Participants are often representatives of organized groups who share similar demographic and other characteristics. This raises concerns about the degree to which the interests and opinions of others are represented. The research presented here investigates the nature and degree of differences in environmental attitudes, specifically those toward water resource management efforts, among people who do and do not participate in place-based groups in metropolitan Portland, Oregon. Neighborhood associations and a watershed council were the focus of this research due to their involvement in land-use planning and resource activities. Thirty-four individual attitudinal judgments were evaluated, along with four indices representing attitudes toward resource protection goals, government, regulations, and economic measures. Survey findings revealed watershed council participants were more supportive of resource protection compared to others on all attitudinal dimensions except anthropocentric goals. In contrast, neighborhood association participants are relatively representative of non-participants except for heightened support for economic strategies. Participants in both groups exhibited higher socioeconomic status than non-participants. Written survey comments highlighted the perceived value of on-the-ground projects incorporating local input and feedback while interviews provided insights on how to expand participation in place-based groups and resource protection efforts.     

Green reconstruction of the tsunami-affected areas in India using the integrated coastal zone management concept

A tsunami, triggered by a massive undersea earthquake off Sumatra in Indonesia, greatly devastated the lives, property and infrastructure of coastal communities in the coastal states of India, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand. This event attracted the attention of environmental managers at all levels, local, national, regional and global. It also shifted the focus from the impact of human activities on the environment to the impacts of natural hazards. Recovery/reconstruction of these areas is highly challenging. A clear understanding of the complex dynamics of the coast and the types of challenges faced by the several stakeholders of the coast is required. Issues such as sustainability, equity and community participation assume importance. The concept of ICZM (integrated coastal zone management) has been effectively used in most parts of the world. This concept emphasizes the holistic assessment of the coast and a multidisciplinary analysis using participatory processes. It integrates anthropocentric and eco-centric approaches. This paper documents several issues involved in the recovery of tsunami-affected areas and recommends the application of the ICZM concept to the reconstruction efforts.     

On the Ethics of Anthropogenic Changes and Challenges: “Animals in Our Midst: The Challenges of Co-existing with Animals in the Anthropocene” edited by Bernice Bovenkerk and Josef Keulartz

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - The importance of the collective management of immaterial resources is a key variable in the valorisation of products in a post-industrial...     

A rights foundation for ecological democracy

ABSTRACT

What would it mean to conceptualize some environmental relationships as bundles of rights, rather than as a good as generally defined by liberalism? Environmental rights are a category of human rights necessarily central to both democracy and global environmental protection and governance (ecological democracy). The world of democratic politics and governance since mid-twentieth century has been transformed by a rights revolution in which recognized rights have come to constitute a ‘global normative order.’ There are several policy spaces in which persuasive environmental rights discourses have been emerging from existing or foreseeable congruences of elite and popular environmental norms, including (1) rights involving access to information and decision-making processes; (2) rights ensuring access to food and water; and (3) rights providing environmental security to all. We analyze these three rights discourses and assess their current and necessary future trajectories. We identify next steps in achieving better understanding and more meaningful establishment of environmental rights and their integration into our thinking about human rights, with attention to how they can be reconciled with the social and cultural diversity of democratic environmental governance in coming turbulent times.     

Vegetational designs for insect-habitat management

Insect habitats in anthropocentric ecosystems consist of crop plants or forest trees and the coexisting non-crop vegetation. The manipulation of the spatial and temporal arrangement of these plant communities can trigger direct or indirect effects on insect pest populations and their associated natural enemy complexes. In this article habitat management is viewed as a technique to design plant associations that support populations of natural enemies or that exert deterrent effects on herbivorous insects.