The Role of Institutions and Policy in Enhancing Sustainable Development and Conserving Natural Capital

The use and management of natural capital is critical in all nations, but especially so in poor nations. The role of institutions – chiefly, property rights and pricing systems for natural resources – is pivotal in achieving growth and improved distribution of income and wealth, in understanding environmental degradation, and in seeking improved policy. Particularly useful criteria and indicators of sustainable development relate to `green' output and productivity measures in which the depreciation of natural capital is being considered. Special management problems exist for `critical' components of natural capital to which variants of the precautionary principle must be applied to ensure that our heirs receive an undiminished patrimony.     

Poverty and the Deterioration of Natural Soil Capital in the Peruvian Altiplano

The Peruvian altiplano is a marginal agricultural region with limited infrastructure, climate constraints, and high levels of poverty. Data were collected from 265 farms in four different agricultural regions, and data from three of those regions are analyzed here. Regressions were run with soil nutrient loss, soil depth loss, and yield loss over the past 20 years, as perceived by farmers. Location, topographical and management factors were considered. Additional regressions were run to examine the determinants of two agricultural management practices which were found to affect soil quality, namely fallowing and ploughing vertical furrows. Use of traditional fallowing (aynoca) was associated with helping to preserve soil quality, and was practiced by households with more education, with higher non-farm income, and in villages which had benefitted from natural resource development projects. Vertical furrowing similarly was associated with helping preserve soil quality, and was practiced by households with fewer unmet basic needs. These results have implications for the agricultural and development strategies to be followed in the region.     

Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development

The prominent place of the chapter on poverty in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPI) is totally in keeping with the priority given to poverty reduction in the development thinking of the international community of today. The Johannesburg process did not lead to any new insights or new commitments in the fight against poverty. Section one sets out a factual comparison of the poverty chapters in Rio's Agenda 21 (AG21) and in the JPI. Section two reviews the conceptual links between poverty reduction and sustainable development, since poverty is used both as a dependent and as an independent variable. This analysis shows a shift in the function of growth as related to environmental protection. Section three explores the naturalization of development thinking in its economic and social dimensions and shows how this affects the policy options for social protection. I also explain how social and environmental sustainability have become elements of risk management and how are both aimed at conflict prevention and enhanced growth. Finally, in section four three lines of action are suggested to enhance the emergence of a socially meaningful sustainable development agenda that, ideally, would make poverty reduction strategies redundant.     

The Green Economy: Reconceptualizing the Natural Commons as Natural Capital

The green economy is an emergent approach to sustainable development launched at Rio+20. Herein environmental decision-making is increasingly achieved through economistic processes and logic. The natural commons are quantified and managed as natural capital. This paper summarizes the trajectory of the project and its ideological framework. It examines various conceptualizations of economic approaches to the environment and considers philosophical, methodological, and political problems associated with the green economy project. In the face of very different definitions of what constitutes a green economy, environmental communicators face a situation characterized by discursive confusion as the complexity of natural capital accounting processes conceal new political configurations. Counter movements argue that the green economy program is performing ideological work that uses language of environmentalism to obscure an intensified agenda of neoliberal governance and capital accumulation. The concept now has contradictory meanings. Environmental communicators have an important role to play in exposing the contested nature of the project and in helping to define the emerging green economy.     

城市可持续发展的关键自然资本研究

城市是社会、经济与环境相互作用最为集中与深刻的区域，随着城市环境问题的日益严重，城市可持续发展成为共同关注的焦点。自然资本在可持续发展体系中起到关键的作用，因此，识别城市系统的关键自然资本是实现城市可持续发展的前提。通过分析城市绿色空间的生态服务功能，结果表明绿色空间是影响城市可持续发展的重要的自然资本。在此基础上，提出了通过保护与投资于绿色空间两种途径实现城市可持续发展的措施与建议。     

Institutions, Forest Management, and Sustainable Human Development – Experiences from India

New institutional economists have argued that there are many categories of institutions, including market and non-market institutions, which may prove economically efficient, specifically for public goods and common pool goods. The Government of India introduced a non-market community-based institution, known as Joint Forest Management (JFM), for forest management and protection in 1990. JFM is a sharing mechanism for forest planning and management based on sharing of rights and duties, control and decision-making authority over forestlands, between forest departments and local user groups. By 2001, 42 000 Village Forest Committees established under JFM were managing over 11.5 million ha forestland. These institutions have proved very useful, and have contributed to forest management as well as four aspects of sustainable human development (SHD) – ecological output, income generation, village infrastructure development, and community empowerment. In the long-term, community-based institutions will prove to be a foundation of SHD and participatory democracy.     

Plan C： China＇s Development under the Scarcity of Natural Capital

The critical issue of China＇s modernization is whether it can free itself from the traditional modernization plan based on the relatively abundant natural capital, and innovatively create a developmental model of a large country under the scarcity of natural capital. This is why China is so keen on circular economy and economical use of resources. Focused on this issue, this paper summarizes the theoretical elements of the development under the scarcity of natural capital, points out that Plan C is the strategic choice for China＇s future development, emphasizes that China needs to enhance the new industrialization, new urbanization and new modernization based on the restriction of natural capital, and discusses the technological and mechanistic support required to realize the development under the scarcity of natural capital.     

Water Resource Management in Botswana: Balancing Sustainability and Economic Development*

Botswana is a rapidly developing country in southern Africa. Over the last three decades, diamond mining and tourism have provided double-digit rates of economic growth. Yet most of Botswana’s land is in the Kalahari desert where the climate is subject to sustained periods of severe drought. In this environment, water resources are the most crucial of all environmental resources. Water use directly affects economic development because water utilization impacts all the major national economic sectors. A sustainable water use resource management plan must stretch several decades into the future to assure the availability of adequate supplies of water to future generations while not compromising the ability of the current generation to reasonable rates of economic development. Yet thinking about sustainability is present in Botswana water policy mostly only in rhetoric. A series of cultural traditions and political constraints, coupled with bureaucratic managerial weaknesses, serve to maintain a system of water allocation that is unsustainable in the long run and inefficient in the short-term. Unless sustainable water use patterns are adopted, the results for the short-term, as well as the long-term, will be devastating. Drawing on data obtained through a series of interviews with government officials, leaders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and water resource researchers, this paper explores water policy in Botswana within the larger context of sustainable natural resource management practice and the pressures of economic development. This research was partially funded under U.S. Department of State, College and University Affiliations Grant # ASCS-1095.     

农业自然灾害与农村贫困之间的关系——基于安徽省面板数据的实证分析

自然灾害的发生对农业生产会造成巨大的负面影响。特别是经济落后的不发达地区由于本身的抗灾救灾能力弱．受到的自然灾害影响也更加严重。甚至会导致贫困的发生。目前虽然已经有学者定性地研究过农业自然灾害对农村贫困的影响．但是缺乏定量的分析。本文旨在弥补以前定量研究的空白，选择安徽省的59个县（市）面板数据为研究样本，建立模型实证分析。发现农业自然灾害受灾面积占总播种面积的比重与农村贫困发生率量负相关关系．这与已有的研究结果不同。文章的最后．依据实证结果对正确认识农业自然灾害与农村贫困之间的关系．构建农村自然灾害舫御体系．增强贫困地区农民的抗灾能力提出了政策建议。     

环境资源配置低效率及自然资本"富聚"现象剖析

根据技术效率、经济效率、自然效率、社会效率之间的关系，探讨了四个效率背离所导致的资源配置效率丧失以及由此引发的社会福利损失问题。在分析价格信号在资源配置过程中的作用的基础上，探讨了市场失效和价格背离现象。进一步指出了中国经济转型时期存在着自然资本富聚现象，并进一步分析其根源。包括：政府有效干预不足、现行经济增长方式和经济效率实现以对自然资本的低成本占用、机会导向型的资源配置方式、资本的价值取向、对经济财富以及单一行为人的效率追逐、产权缺位等。强调需要强化环境管理的公共管理属性，并对环境资源的权益主体的权利、责任和利益进行有效的界定和实施，通过制度和政策变革，干预和规范市场运作，促进资源的高效和公平配置。     

Tracing operational conditions for the Ecologically Sustainable Economic Development: the Pareto optimality and the preservation of the biological crucial levels

The operational designing of Environmentally Sustainable Economic Development (ESED) emerges as an urgent and demanding task. Even though ESED has paved the way for thought-provoking and constructive scientific dialogue, appeal for designing an operational ESED is still lagging behind the needs of contemporary societies, leaving much to be desired. With this in mind, the present paper will aim at delineating principles for the operational application of ESED. First, the preservation of crucial properties of environmental functions and ecosystems, emerges as a prime condition of ESED. The second condition concerns the provision of the economic process with sufficient natural inputs; in this context, the paper intends to trace certain operational tenets governing the use of natural resources. Finally, the appropriate institutional settings for the operational design of ESED are traced. Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue     

旅游需求波动、风险管理与非线性减贫效应研究

旅游发展能够有效匹配贫困人口的资源禀赋,是产业扶贫的重要支撑。为更好地发挥旅游的减贫效用,本文基于旅游波动和风险管理视角对旅游发展与贫困减缓的多样化关联进行了逻辑统一,在使用HP滤波方法测度旅游需求波动的基础上,使用门限面板模型对2000-2013年中国旅游发展的非线性减贫效应进行了实证检验。实证结果显示:旅游波动是影响旅游发展减贫效应的重要因素,但国内旅游波动和入境旅游波动的减贫效应存在异质性。国内旅游波动主要体现为上行波动,能够在增长的稳定预期下,有助于旅游企业和包括贫困人口在内的旅游从业者进行专业化供给,从而有助于减贫。旅游发展的减贫效应体现出双门限的非线性特征,在旅游发展的初始阶段,并未能体现出显著的减贫效果,越过第一个门限值后,旅游减贫效应开始凸显,但在第二门限值之后,处于第三阶段旅游发展减贫弹性递减。因此,旅游产业具备成为阶段性重要减贫动力来源的潜力,但在旅游扶贫政策的制定和实施中,应秉持辩证和动态视角,当意识到旅游减贫效应已经步入递减区间时,要进行主动、系统、综合的风险管理。理解外部环境变化对旅游发展冲击的潜在结果,通过旅游需求结构和产业结构的调整提升贫困人口应对风险冲击的韧性,并通过互助、保险等风险应对手段,促进资源在不同风险状态之间的转移,提升旅游减贫绩效。     

生态资本运营机制:基于绿色发展的分析

生态资本是一种重要的资本形态,要实现经济社会的绿色发展,必须重视生态资源节约利用和生态环境建设,建立健全生态资本运营机制,促进生态资本的良性运营,以维持生态资本存量的非减性。本研究在全球绿色转型与绿色发展背景下,采用生态经济学和系统分析方法,探讨如何突破我国经济社会发展面临的资源约束和环境压力,提出建立健全生态资本运营机制的基本构想和分析框架。本研究认为,生态资本运营的内核和目标与绿色发展的要求是完全一致的,完善的生态资本运营机制框架体系应包括生态资本运营的积累机制、转换机制、补偿机制和激励机制。"积累机制"是一般资本运营所具备的步骤,"转换机制"是生态资本运营特有的步骤和内在过程,正是生态资本运营的特殊性,同时需要建立健全"补偿机制"和"激励机制",这是生态资本运营的外在保障措施。因此,要充分调动政府、市场和社会力量参与生态资本运营的积极性,促进生态资本的可持续利用,最终实现经济社会的绿色发展。     

HDPI: A Framework for Pollution-Sensitive Human Development Indicators

The aim of this study is to draw up a framework for pollution-sensitive human development indicators, which we refer to as HDPI. The method used to determine HDPI is based on that used for human development index (HDI) drawn up annually since 1990 by the UNDP. The novelty lies in the incorporation into 'HDI of an environmental factor, measured in terms of CO₂ emissions from industrial processes per capita. HDPI penalises those countries which have obtained growth in income at the expense of damaging the environment. A particular case for these indicators is used to draw up a pollution sensitive human development index for 165 countries for which data are available, for the period from 1993 to 1998. The results obtained in this case are analysed.     

Sustainable Development and the Basic Value of Natural Environment

Contrast with artificial environment, the multi-level self-organizational system of nature has great gain. Sustainable material environment should respect nature： non-rubbish and super-cycle quality of natural ecosystem offers the material source of human development, fractal structure of nature offers new field of space and information source to this high-density and information-based society, dissipative structure of nature links the new system of energy with whole ecosystem organically, and life-chain regulation is the base of sustainable life environment. Nature guarantees the physical healthy environ- ment by its all-dimension healthy factor, constructs the mental healthy environment by its quality of co-ordinate and chaos, so that guarantees the whole emergence of sustainable development on the ＇super-science＇ level In the view of sustainable development, construction, green economy and human health are basic fields. With the concept of ecosystem regulation, we can relate these fields organically and fulfill the task of human health, welfare and sustainable development. Ecosystem regulation is the base of sustainable development＇s new paradigm.     

Sustainable Development and the Basic Value of Natural Environment

Abstract

Contrast with artificial environment, the multi-level self-organizational system of nature has great gain. Sustainable material environment should respect nature: non-rubbish and super-cycle quality of natural ecosystem offers the material source of human development, fractal structure of nature offers new field of space and information source to this high-density and information-based society, dissipative structure of nature links the new system of energy with whole ecosystem organically, and life-chain regulation is the base of sustainable life environment. Nature guarantees the physical healthy environment by its all-dimension healthy factor, constructs the mental healthy environment by its quality of co-ordinate and chaos, so that guarantees the whole emergence of sustainable development on the ‘super-science’ level. In the view of sustainable development, construction, green economy and human health are basic fields. With the concept of ecosystem regulation, we can relate these fields organically and fulfill the task of human health, welfare and sustainable development. Ecosystem regulation is the base of sustainable development’s new paradigm.     

Overcoming Contradictions Between Growth and Sustainability:Institutional Innovation in the BRICS

The recent accelerated growth rates or efforts to emulate countries that have achieved a rapid pace of economic growth are widely acclaimed as means to uplift millions from poverty. In so doing, however, this rapid economic growth is most likely to coincide with unsustainable levels of consumption, place excessive pressure on life support systems and terrestrial sinks and foreshorten options for the future. Rather than pursuing the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis that higher income will bring with it the means to reduce the impacts of greater consumption, ecological economists assert that buying our way out of future scarcity with fast growth is indeed contradictory with sustainability. To better understand these contradictions and explore potential institutional innovations that may enable developing nations to better confront them (in effect, tunneling under the EKC), this article refers to recent experience in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Beginning with a brief comparative summary of major development and environmental indicators, pressures on resources and society in each of the BRICS are discussed, followed by identification of institutional and policy frameworks each country has evolved to confront the challenges of growth and sustainability. The article closes with general conclusions for further research and information sharing among developing nations.     

Longevity, Capital Formation and Economic Development

Many researchers have concluded that longer life expectancies prompt increased investment in education,as a prolonged labor supply raises the rate of return on education.Besides explaining the empirical evidence behind this conclusion(at an absolute level),there is another issue to be discussed:does time spent studying and working increase proportionally with higher longevity? Building on an extended life-cycle model,this paper shows that prolonged life expectancy will cause individuals to increase their time in education but may not warrant rises in labor input.Later we show that higher improvement rate of longevity rather than initial life expectancy will promote economic growth,even we exclude the mechanism of human capital formation,and only consider growth effects of higher improvement rate of life expectancy from physical capital investment.     

Water, Workfare and Poverty: The Impact of the Working for Water Programme on Rural Poverty Reduction

In 1995, the government of the Republic of South Africa launched the Working for Water (WfW) programme that links environmental and developmental goals through the removal of high water-consuming alien plants with pro-poor rural employment opportunities. Whilst bio-physical evaluations have widely reported on the hydrological, ecological and conservation components of the programme, there exists growing uncertainty over the programme’s role as a poverty reduction mechanism. This paper evaluates three projects in the Luvuvhu catchment, Limpopo Province, against five socio-economic workfare criteria and the underlying biophysical rationale. Results show that asset creation from incremental streamflow is economically efficient and is likely to improve significantly if biodiversity benefits, community harvesting of riparian goods and services, ecological non-use values and seasonal water demand values are incorporated into the analysis. However, socio-economic benefits are more questionable: poverty targeting is weak with wage rates failing to self-select the poor; a minor proportion (0.5%) of catchment households benefit from the highly-valued employment opportunities; high variability in monthly employment causes financial difficulties for labourers; labourers are not ‘empowered’ as is evidenced by the failure of the 2-year exit strategy; and programme efficiency is high in proportional allocation of cash-flow to non-management wage labour. It is concluded that the Working for Programme is a potentially replicable model in other semi-arid contexts in developing countries if based on its core biophysical remit but is a transitory and limited poverty reduction mechanism for improving rural livelihoods.