From Environmental Campaigns to Advancing the Public Dialog: Environmental Communication for Civic Engagement

This essay examines the claims of environmental identity campaigns regarding the issue of climate change. Identity campaigns are based on the idea that more effective environmental messages developed through the application of cognitive science by professional communications experts can favorably influence public opinion, and thus support legislative action to remedy this issue. Based on a review of the sociological and psychological literature regarding social change and mobilization, I argue that while this approach may offer short term advantages, it is most likely incapable of developing the large scale mobilization necessary to enact the massive social and economic changes necessary to address global warming. Specifically, theoretical and empirical research on the role of the public sphere, civil society and social movements shows that democratic civic engagement is core to successful social change efforts. However, identity campaigns focus on a communications process that centers on elite led one way communications, which falls to allow for any form of civic engagement and public dialogue. This undermines the creation of a democratic process of change and reinforces the professionalization of political discourse, leading to a weakening of the mobilization capacity over this issue of global warming. The essay concludes with the outlines of an environmental communication process that aims at enhancing civic engagement and democratic decision making.     

Merging Duke Energy and Progress Energy: Online Public Discourse,Post-Fukushima Reactions,and the Absence of Environmental Communication

This article examines online discourse in 2011 surrounding the proposed Duke Energy and Progress Energy merger in the Carolinas. It explores how issues pertaining to the merger, including constructing new nuclear plants, are discussed in media coverage and by citizens using social media. Overall, we find that the merger discourse focuses on economic concerns rather than the environmental concerns we had anticipated. However, post-Fukushima discourse appears to have become more inclusive of environmental concerns. We conclude that environmental discussions and efforts are likely to be globally informed andlocally situated, discussing the implications for environmental communication research exploring online discourses, specifically through social media. Future research must address how to locate and delineate constellations of locally situated discourse to provide a clearer picture of environmentally focused social media communication.     

The Nature of Time: How the Covers of the World's Most Widely Read Weekly News Magazine Visualize Environmental Affairs

Scholars of environmental communication acknowledge the importance of visual representations in shaping perceptions and actions in relation to environmental affairs. Unlike with other media, including newspapers, television and film, research on the visualization of nature and environmental issues in magazines is rare. This study focuses on the covers of Time magazine, one of the world's most influential news weeklies. A dataset that includes all relevant covers from 1923 to 2011 is examined using a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis to analyze the visual representation of nature and environmental issues. The results show that the presence of environmental issues and nature on the covers has increased over the decades. Furthermore, Time takes an advocacy position on some environmental issues, but it is a shallow one that is weakly argued through less-than-engaging imagery and fails to offer much in the way of solutions or agency to the reader.     

On the Field of Environmental Communication: A Systematic Review of the Peer-Reviewed Literature

The field of environmental communication has reached several milestones since the 1990s, particularly the establishment of environmental communication-related divisions at professional associations and the founding of the journal Environmental Communication in 2007. This systematic review characterizes the peer-reviewed literature on environmental communication to date, examining methods, geography, top-cited articles, and analyzing keyword and titles. Drawing on the Web of Science Core Collection, which archives the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the review finds that attention to environmental communication has exploded in recent years and that the field is methodologically open-minded. Scholars have shifted focus from general environmental risk to specifically climate change in the last decade. Implications for the field are discussed.     

Tensions of Praxis: A New Taxonomy for Social Movements

This essay introduces and illustrates tensions of praxis that humans involved in activism face so that thought–action translation can occur more reflexively. Because social movements face unique challenges in effecting social change (Simons, 1970; Stewart, Smith, & Denton, 2007) the tensions of praxis are especially important for this type of social change agency. Therefore, this essay situates itself within discussions of environmental social movements and begins with a brief introduction of praxis as a theoretical and practical concern. Then, in order to illuminate the tensions of praxis, the following tensions are identified, explained, and illustrated: (1) this world or that world; (2) activity or inactivity; and (3) means and ends. Throughout the essay, primary data from a 2009 interview with Julia Butterfly Hill are used to illustrate these tensions. The essay concludes with theoretical and practical significance of the tensions of praxis and suggests directions for future research.     

The challenge of validating vulnerability estimates: the option of media content analysis for identifying drought-related crises

For an integrated assessment of the vulnerability of societies to drought it is necessary to set the benchmark at a level where the impacts of droughts lead to a state of affairs that departs from normal conditions, i.e. a crisis event. This article aims to improve the understanding of drought-related crisis events on the basis of a twofold media content analysis. This approach enables us to test when increased vulnerability in fact leads to a crisis situation and offers an improved understanding of the intensity and the extent of crisis events. To this end, we first outline our perspective on crisis and give an overview on existing approaches to identify crisis events. We then outline our two-step approach of media content analysis aimed at developing a crisis data set for the case study regions Andhra Pradesh (India), Southern Portugal and the Volga region (Russia). Using the Factiva news database and information by regional newspapers, a crisis data set is generated enabling us to define the occurrence and extent of drought-related crisis events in the case study regions. Moreover, based on attributes of drought impacts reported by news sources, we categorize the extensiveness of a specific drought. As a key result, our findings suggest that Southern Portugal, the case study region which is expected to be less susceptible to drought events than the other case study regions, faced the most extended crisis events.     

基于综合模拟法的区域旅游投资预警研究——以河南省为例

旅游投资是推动旅游发展的重要力量,但旅游投资方向、投资规模等要和旅游发展阶段及旅游市场需求相吻合,为避免旅游投资"潮涌现象"的发生,需对旅游投资进行预警研究.本文采用综合模拟法,从旅游投资发展速度、旅游供求平衡、旅游投资内部均衡、旅游投资与区域经济协调性等4个指标类别出发,构建了旅游投资预警模型.运用该模型对河南旅游投资进行了实证研究,结果表明,河南旅游投资虽然基本上还处于健康区域内,但河南旅游投资已经初步显现出投资微热、投资增速过快、度假产品投资过热、旅游投资正逐步出现和区域经济不协调的现象.基于河南旅游投资现实,为避免投资泡沫,河南旅游急需制定合理的旅游产业投资引导和控制性政策,规范盲目的投资行为,避免旅游产品结构性过剩,从而实现河南旅游平稳可持续发展.     

长江经济带矿产资源开发环境保护政策研究——基于SWOT-AHP和模糊TOPSIS法

适宜的战略决策是促进矿产资源开发和生态环境保护协调发展的重要支撑.为评价长江经济带矿业绿色发展战略的政策优先性,基于优势,劣势,机会,威胁分析确定政策的影响因素并确定10种替代方案,再通过AHP法得出权重,最后通过模糊TOPSIS法得出替代方案的最优排序.结果 表明:10种替代方案中,保证生态保护红线内矿业权有序退出的优先度最高,其次为严格落实矿山生态环境损害赔偿制度和优先开采清洁与新兴矿产资源,而提高矿业产业集中度相较于其他方案的优先度最低,同时通过敏感性分析验证了模糊TOPSIS法的可靠性.为短期内重塑矿产资源开发利用布局,提高矿产资源开发的保障能力与现代化治理能力,以及中长期构建矿产资源开发与生态环境协调发展,建议将保证生态保护红线内矿业权有序退出作为目前长江经济带矿产资源开发生态环境保护战略的主导方向.     

Muting the Voice of the Local in the Age of the Global: How Communication Practices Compromised Public Participation in India's Allain Dunhangan Environmental Impact Assessment

Public participation is widely lauded as a way to make environmental decisions more democratic, to improve their quality, and to enhance their legitimacy. Scholars and citizens around the world repeatedly complain, however, that public participation frequently serves primarily as a pro forma exercise to defend predetermined decisions rather than as a meaningful opportunity for the affected public to influence decision-making. These critiques persist despite considerable research suggesting ways to improve the quality of public participation. This essay explores this problem by analyzing citizen involvement in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes for the Allain Duhangan hydropower project in northern India. It describes how meaningful public involvement was compromised—despite repeated objections by citizens and independent consultants—by four communication practices: (1) failing to provide adequate access to information; (2) predetermining EIA outcomes by controlling the definition of issues (“definitional hegemony”); (3) privileging scientific/technical discourse; (4) utilizing “consultative” forms of communication that promote one-way flows of information rather than more interactive forms that encourage the joint construction of information and values. This study further argues that these practices persist because they serve as acts of power that privilege dominant actors and interests in the larger socio-political context. This analysis thus suggests that altering communication practices that compromise the quality of public participation may require attending to the interaction between communication practices, relations of power, and the larger socio-political context in which public participation takes place.     

基于产业链的区域环境污染物排放的产业贡献

区域经济增长与环境质量之间的关系研究是目前学者们探讨的重要学术议题之一.其中较多的是对EKC曲线的验证,近几年部分学者从国民经济各部门中的产业自身特征、产业结构、技术进步、FDI效应等方面考察产业发展对污染物排放的影响.然而以上研究议题中学者均没有讨论污染物的发生主体-各产业部门与排污的直接关系.故本文将从宏观尺度下的综合水平测度区域经济发展与环境质量关系、中观尺度下的产业属性特征与排污关系的研究视角转移至分析具体产业部门的污染物排放效应,同时将产业置于产业链的结构形式中,研究产业链上产业发展与污染物排放的关系.发现:第一,通过借助复杂网络思想的社区划分方法,将山东省39个产业部门分为3个社团.其中社团I主要由制造业部门组成,共有18个产业部门,社团II包括了15个部门,主要是第三产业,杜团III由6个产业部门组成且内部异质性高.第二,选择其中以制造业为主的社团I,并在社团I内识别出一条彼此间联系最为紧密的产业链,包括农林牧渔业、食品制造及烟草加工业、化学工业、纺织工业、服装皮革羽绒及其制品业、通用/专用设备制造业和交通运输设备制造业.以一种定量的方法获取了通过价值流传递而串在一起的产业链条.该产业链的经济规模、污染物规模在山东省均有重要地位.第三,采用岭回归分析方法,构建了6个制造业与产业链工业废水、固体废弃物排放的关系模型,6个制造业中对工业废水、固体废弃物排放相对贡献度最大的部门分别为服装皮革羽绒及其制品业、食品制造及烟草加工业.这是由于上游产业排污的链式传递效应与产业自身污染物排放效应的共同叠加作用.     

省级政府环境政策制定过程的特征分析——以陕西和云南水土保持生态补偿政策为例

近年来,省级政府制定的环境政策逐渐增多。在数量繁多的各类问题中,省级政府的决策者如何能够充分认识到某个环境问题的重要性和紧迫性,将其置于优先考虑的位置,进而出台一项环境政策?与经济发展政策相比,省级政府制定环境政策的过程有何特征?本文通过研究两个案例来探讨这些问题的答案,一个案例是陕西省制定的水土保持生态补偿政策,另一个案例是云南省正在制定的类似政策。研究表明,在省级政府制定环境政策的过程中,政策倡导者往往不是省级政府决策者,而是省级政府中行政主管部门的领导。政策倡导者建立政策的途径是说服作为决策者的省级政府相关领导,进而使之批准政策出台。其说服方法是建立由相关部门和其他利益相关者组成的支持联盟,通过科学研究阐明问题的重要性、紧迫性以及和政府职能的相关性,并提出具有科学基础和立法基础的政策方案。这一过程既区别于中央政府制定环境政策的过程,又与省级政府制定经济政策的过程不同。     

A Review of Environmental Sociology and the Sociology of Natural Resources： Insights for the Development of Environmental Sociology in China

Environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources are two key subdisciplines of the sociological study on the interactions between nature and human society. Previous discussion on the relationships of these two fields has largely focused on their distinctions and synthesis in western （particularly American） academia. Environmental sociology emerged as an important sociological subdiscipline in China in the early 1990s and is under vigorous disciplinary construction at present. By contrast, the sociology of natural resources is still a novel term for most Chinese researchers. This article provides a systematic review of recent literature on the relationships between environmental and natural resource sociologies, which should provide important implications for the further development of environmental sociology in China.     

市场转型对中国环境治理结构的影响——国家污染物减排指标的分配机制研究

国家统计局数据显示,2006年我国节能减排任务均远未实现国家十一五规划开局之年的目标,特别是主要污染物排放总量不降反升.本文在分析了中国环境治理体系和国家十一五规划主要污染物减排指标分配机制的基础上,研究了市场转型对中国环境治理结构的影响.中国的市场转型可以抽象为以分权让利、市场化和工业化为主要特征的结构演进过程.文中提出,中国市场转型过程对环境治理结构造成了重大影响,而环境治理的各项措施反过来也应与市场转型相适应.当前中国主要污染物减排指标没有实现达标的重要原因是国家污染物减排指标的分配机制无法适应我国市场转型的要求.为此,本文提出一系列国家主要污染物减排指标分配机制的政策建议.     

A Method for Forecasting the Dates of Mass Calving and Some Characteristics of the Rut and Calving in the Kalmyk Population of Saiga (Saiga tatarica L.)

A method for forecasting the dates of calving in the saiga population on the basis of average fetal body weight is proposed. The method is based on the relationship between the number of days before calving and the average weight of fetuses, which obviates the necessity of determining fetal age and exact gestation period in this species. The average length of gestation, the dates of the rut in the years studied, and the age of females that have mated immediately upon the onset of the rut and before its cessation have been determined. It is shown that the duration of mass calving depends on the proportion of mature males in the population.