What motivates farmers to participate in the Nova Scotia environmental farm plan program? Evidence and environmental policy implications

Program stakeholders are interested in better understanding farmers' experience, and factors that affect farmer participation in the relatively new Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) program, implemented in several provinces in Canada. To increase relevance of the research findings to EFP program administrators and policy makers, the research methods emphasised determining whether relationships exist among program-related variables, and how such relationships affect farmers' decision choices and behaviour. Traditional farmer and farm attributes that have contrasting effects in agricultural innovation adoption and conservation management (namely age, and formal education completed), were not associated with EFP program participation. Farm income, years of farming experience, and type of agribusiness managed were associated with participation in the Nova Scotia EFP program. Although program participants tended to have higher incomes, overall, non-financial considerations dominated monetary considerations in Nova Scotia farmers' reasons for participating in the Nova Scotia EFP. Helping to publicize positive farm stewardship practices was reported as the most important reason for participating in the EFP scheme, followed by its use to help improve relationships with non-farming neighbours, and to comply with government environmental regulations. In contrast, and somewhat a surprising finding, minimizing potential farm environmental risk, program administrators' raison d'être for promoting the NS EFP, was ranked the lowest, with no respondent rating that as a "very important" or "extremely important" reason for participating in the EFP program.     

Understanding and encouraging greater nature engagement in Australia: results from a national survey

Interaction with nature has a range of significant health, ecological and economic benefits and a number of governments are implementing policies to increase humans’ engagement with nature. Using a large nationally representative survey sample in Australia, this study provides a detailed comment on the feasibility of such a policy, as well as contributing to an understanding of the characteristics of individuals who engaged in one or more of five dimensions of nature interaction, namely: nature engagement; conservation participation; nature advocacy; environmentally friendly purchasing and future engagement with nature conservation. The results indicate that age, income, education, marital status and household structure are all important influences on various types of nature engagement. It is suggested that increasing opportunities for young people to interact with nature is important, as well as supporting older people's involvement in conservation, plus focusing on the need to target and direct various policies.     

Civic modes of greening the city? Urban natures in-between familiar engagement and green critique

ABSTRACT

In this article, we deploy the loosely bounded phenomenon of “urban green communities” – in the shape of urban gardening, beekeeping, food collectives, biodiversity enhancement, tree planting and kindred citizen-based group practices towards urban greening – in order to probe the wide variations in modes of civic engagement with urban sustainability politics. As such, we explore the conceptual gaps opened up in-between everyday lifestyle politics, green social movements and critiques of neoliberal urban political economies, by leveraging a novel and fine-grained conceptualization of civic and place-based material participation built from pragmatic sociology. The work of Laurent Thévenot on regimes of engagement, in particular, allow us to trace translations in-between the familiar attachments and the public critiques undertaken by urban green communities in ways that expand the frame on socio-material politics relative to current research conversations. Empirically, we leverage this re-conceptualization as part of a comprehensive digital mapping exercise set in Denmark, in which we trace core patterns and differences in modes of urban-green politics at the level of everyday citizen practices and group interaction styles across a diversity of urban green communities. Having identified six such civic modes of urban greening and specified their group styles of engagement, we end by discussing the implications of our findings for questions of care, justice and democracy in sustainable city-making.     

当前中国环境保护公众参与存在问题与对策研究

环境问题是个全球性问题,当前我国环境污染形势十分严峻,环境污染关系到每位公众的健康,解决环境污染离不开公众参与。通过对我国当前环境保护公众参与发展情况进行分析,既看到我国环境保护公众参与进步的一面,也看到由于我国特殊的国情,公众参与存在的不足一面,从中找出影响我国公众参与发展的主要因素,提出了解决我国环境保护公众参与滞后的措施,为我国环境保护公众参与的纵深发展提供参考。     

浅析环境信息公开的作用

环境信息公开能提高环境保护参与者的环境意识,改变他们的环境行为和行动,解决\"市场失灵\"、\"政治失灵\"的问题,教育环境保护各利益相关者,推进决策过程中的民主进程。要提高环境信息的作用,应公开公众所面临的环境风险,公开的环境信息必须可靠,有关的环境信息必须对公众有用且方便获得,政府机构应关注公众对环境信息的反馈。     

深圳市环境信息公开和公众参与管理实践与对策

环境信息公开和公众参与已经成为一种重要的环境管理辅助手段,深圳市立足城市之先,在立法和执法方面开展了一系列实践工作,并积累了一定的经验和教训。在研究深圳市环境信息公开和公众参与管理现状的基础上,结合实践中存在的焦点和难点问题,以提高公民环境知情权和参与权的落实水平为目标,从观念、立法、技术指引和参与形式等方面提出政策建议,为深圳市环境信息公开与公众参与管理实践提供了较好的理论和实践探索。     

Remotely engaged? Towards a framework for monitoring the success of stakeholder engagement in remote regions

The importance of stakeholder engagement for the success of natural resources management processes is widely acknowledged, yet evaluation frameworks employed by administrators of environmental programmes continue to provide limited recognition of or insistence upon engagement processes. This paper presents a framework for monitoring and evaluation of engagement that aims to better incorporate community engagement into mainstream environmental programmes, in particular in remote regions such as arid and desert regions of the world. It is argued that successful monitoring of engagement should not only comprise a generic set of indicators but rather, in addition to the principles of good monitoring practice, should take into account a variety of the stakeholder interests as well as key regional drivers, addressing them at right geographic, institutional and time scale.     

行政正当程序视角下环境公众参与制度的规范与完善

行政正当程序理论是环境公众参与制度的理论基础。2014年修订的《中华人民共和国环境保护法》中已经确立以环境公众参与权为核心的环境公众参与制度,但是对于公众参与的规范特别是参与权的规范过于笼统。面对实践中参与主体类型界分不明、多项权利内容规范缺失、法律责任规范效力存疑及环境行政管理规范不足等问题,本文建议应以行政正当程序理论为指导,实现参与主体的类型化界分,细化公众参与权利内容,增加公众参与法律责任条款,并完善环境行政管理公众参与规范。     

环评中的公众环境意识及社会心理分析

近年来由大型化工、环保项目引发的环境争议风波,已经成为中国的热门话题。本文结合近年发生的环保公众事件,从环评公众参与的角度对公众的心理因素进行了初步分析,并对如何面对公众质疑、完善公众参与和培育公众环境意识提出了建议。     

环保社会组织依法参与生物多样性保护的困难检视与路径优化

环保社会组织作为政府与公民之间的桥梁成为生物多样性保护多元参与机制的重要一环,生物多样性的内在特性与时代法治特征也推动着环保社会组织的参与。但当前环保社会组织参与生物多样性保护面临着规范体系不健全、规范运行机制不稳固、参与保护效果稳定性不足的困境,主要源于公私主体意识对立、自然资源法律体制机制未完善、环保社会组织持续能力建设有待加强三个因素,其根源在于我国对于生物多样性保护与利用的认识程度以及反映到规范政策与法律运行的适应程度。应将基于自然的解决方案作为生物多样性保护指导思路,综合包容多样利益方,优化生物多样性保护整体规制运行。具体来说,通过优化整合生物多样性保护规范体制中环保社会组织规范结构、参与运行机制、持续性功能发展机制,逐步规范环保社会组织在生物多样性规范机制中的位置与路径,从而实质推进我国生物多样性保护多元参与体制的构建与完善。     

公众参与对环境治理效果的影响——基于阶梯理论的实证研究

近年来,公众已经成为中国环境治理中不可或缺的力量,公众参与的方式和渠道也在不断拓展和丰富。为考察不同类型公众参与方式对环境治理效果的影响差异,本文基于公众参与阶梯理论,选取四类公众参与方式和四类污染物,结合我国2008—2017年30个省份数据,利用面板数据回归模型进行了实证检验。结果表明,横向比较不同类型的公众参与方式,公众环境来访对环境治理的促进效果优于环境信息公开和环保网络舆论,而政协提案、人大议案的积极效应尚不显著。纵向比较不同类型的污染物治理效果,公众参与能显著促进大气污染物的减排,对噪声和固体废物污染效果的影响次之,而在水污染治理中的作用较不理想。建议政府进一步优化健全环境信息公开机制,并重视公众层面的环境诉求,建立公众与地方生态环境部门的良好互动机制,同时鼓励公众通过新媒体渠道参与环境治理。     

Public engagement in neighbourhood level wildfire mitigation and preparedness: case studies from Canada, the US and Australia

This study examined neighbourhood level wildfire mitigation programs being implemented in neighbourhoods in Canada (FireSmart-ForestWise), Australia (Community Fireguard) and the US (Firewise Communities). Semi-structured interviews were completed with 19 residents participating in the programs. A wide range of activities were completed as part of the three programs. Despite differences between the three programs, participants appeared to participate in the programs for three main reasons: Fire experience, agency involvement, and personal and family protection. A fire therefore provides a window of opportunity to engage residents in neighbourhood level wildfire mitigation programs. The neighbourhood level wildfire mitigation programs helped to reduce the wildfire risk, but also enhanced both community resilience and relationships between residents and government agencies.     

Assessing Public Participation Techniques for Comfort, Convenience, Satisfaction, and Deliberation

Public participatory techniques have been the focus of a large and growing body of environmental literature. There is some consensus among those who study these techniques that there is a need to develop and implement new techniques that meet certain criteria. These include that the techniques be comfortable, convenient, and satisfying to participants. Authors have also frequently called for the use of deliberative techniques, which allow participants to express and listen to a variety of perspectives regarding the issue at hand. However, the literature on public participation lacks a set of widely applicable evaluation methods to determine whether participants in techniques find them comfortable, convenient, satisfying, or deliberative. This paper reports on the implementation of two different techniques that participants scored fairly high on all of these factors, as well as the scale-based survey questions developed to measure these factors.     

环境影响评价中的公众参与机制研究

通过梳理分析环境影响评价相关法中公众参与的规定,对照UNEP有效的公众参与五要素,剖析环境影响评价中公众参与机制的不足,并提出完善环境影响评价中公众参与机制的对策。     

论环境风险规制的有效运行--从环境群体性事件说起

社会风险的增加促成了风险规制的生成,其要求政府运用行政手段消除或减轻风险,以此干预经济发展项目的开展。当前政府在处理群体性事件存在公众参与先天不足、专家权威遭质疑、政府立场不坚定等主要问题。为保障风险规制的运行,需要运用\"重复\"手段来培养公众环境风险意识;构建政府与公众之间的桥梁纽带;使风险规制与责任制度相结合,提高审批标准,落实责任制度。     

云南省昆明市居民生态环保意识调查研究

本文主要是对云南省昆明市居民环保意识进行调查研究,通过分析得到文化水平与环保意识存在正相关的关系;居民的环保意识与环保行动脱节;政府、企业的环保力度不够大等结论。最后给出了相应的建议和措施。