What motivates farmers to participate in sustainable agriculture? Evidence and policy implications

Sustained growth in agricultural productivity has become an ideal model and a political goal of agricultural development in China. Local participation is essential for the implementation of sustainable agriculture strategy. We conducted a case study in Hailun County, an important grain production base in China, to find ways to motivate farmers to participate in sustainable agriculture. We obtained data from semi-structured interviews of 98 households using participatory rural appraisal methods. Logistic regression models were used to explore factors that underlie farmers' attitudes towards agricultural production and their environmental awareness. Results indicated that low agricultural economic efficiency could result in less enthusiasm for agriculture among local farmers. This is a potential risk for China's food security and sustainable agricultural development. The backward development of the rural economy limited improvement of farmers' environmental awareness. Moreover, poor rural labour quality implied a lack of local participation in sustainable agriculture. Suggestions for sustainable agricultural development include establishment of a reasonable market and agricultural subsidy mechanisms, basic and vocational education for young adults, effective agricultural instruction and environmental education agencies and two-way communication mechanisms.     

新疆尉犁县西尼尔区生态环境建设初步研究

以新疆南部孔雀河流域中游地区的尉犁县西尼尔区为例 ,在分析了该区的主要生态环境问题、水资源现状和可用水量的基础上 ,对该区的生态环境建设做出规划。     

西部地区环境政策与环境管理能力建设刍议

为促进西部大开发战略的实施和西部地区可持续发展 ,就西部地区环境政策框架和环境管理能力建设两方面进行了初步研究 ,提出了一些建议     

An overview of the environmental finance policies in China: retrofitting an integrated mechanism for environmental management

Considering the significant roles of the policies in developing environmental finance, an overview is conducted on the environmental finance policies （EFPs） in China. This paper analyzed the definition, scope, evolution and main instruments of EFPs. The implementation progress of financial activities on each instrument are investigated respectively. Then the experiences learned from and failures discovered in the development of the EFPs are discussed well recommendations for further improvement of the EFPs and their implementation are provided. Our study found that the EFPs have been established in China after a four-phase evolution since the early 1980s. The policies have played a critical role in leading to a rapid development in environmental finance by involving more financial instruments to accomplish the objective-led environmental plans. Driven by the policies, the new green credit （GC）, green security （GS）, and green insurance （GI） instruments have been phased in as supplements to the conventional command and control approaches to improve the environmental governance of financial activities and pollution sources. However, the market mechanism of financial institution is limited due to their defensive and incapable performance on implementation some of EFP instruments. To further strengthen the effectiveness of EFPs in facilitating environmental man- agement, recommendations are made mainly on the aspects including developing more specific policy guidelines, enhancing information sharing and disclosure, providing sufficient economic incentives, establishing environmental liabilities with financial activities, and involving issues related to climate change, and biodiversity and ecosystem service.     

Twenty years of achievements in China’s implementation of the Stockholm Convention

● China’s implementation of the SC was systematically studied. ● Implementation process of the SC can be roughly divided into three stages. ● DDT and HCH concentrations in the air have been steadily decreasing. ● China has safely disposed of 6352.1 tons of pesticide POPs. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are extremely harmful to the environment and human health; the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants was therefore adopted by the international community in 2001 to eliminate or reduce the production, use, and emissions of POPs. China is the largest developing country that has signed the Stockholm Convention, and thus plays an important role in its implementation. This paper systematically studies the practice and achievements of China since it signed the Stockholm Convention 20 years ago. China has established an implementation guarantee system including institutions, implementation mechanisms, policies, law enforcement, and scientific and technological support. During the 20 years since the implementation of the Stockholm Convention, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) concentrations in the air have been steadily decreasing, and Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid/Perfluorooctane sulfonyl fluoride (PFOS/PFOSF) concentrations in water bodies have decreased. In the past 20 years, China has safely disposed of 6352.1 tons of pesticide persistent organic pollutants and 36998 sets of electrical equipment containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), with a disposal rate of 100%. In the future, China will further strengthen the construction of persistent organic pollutant monitoring networks, scientific research, publicity, education, and international cooperation to improve environmental quality, providing a reference for other countries to implement the Stockholm Convention.     

大气挥发性有机化合物环境基准研究进展与展望

挥发性有机化合物(VOCs)中的许多物种对人体具有危害性,同时,VOCs对大气环境产生着重要的影响。目前我国部分区域大气VOCs污染已经十分严重,控制大气VOCs污染对于改善环境空气质量,保护人体健康具有重要意义。国际上许多国家或国际组织制定了大气VOCs环境基准或者发布了大气VOCs环境基准指导值,这对于加强VOCs污染控制及环境管理可以起到重要作用。我国尚未制定大气VOCs环境基准,亟待开展系统的研究工作。在综述国际大气VOCs环境基准研究进展,介绍当前我国大气VOCs环境基准研究情况的基础上,分析了我国大气VOCs环境基准的研究需求,并对今后的系统研究提出了建议。     

Capacity estimation and preliminary strategy for reducing the release of dioxins in China

As a party of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, China must submit its national implementation plan (NIP) for this convention. The strategy and action plan for reducing the release of dioxins in China are the most important components of the NIP. Three problems are key points for developing such strategy and action plan—what are the key sources for applying the best available technology/best environmental practice (BAT/BEP) to reduce the release of dioxins? How about the capacity for reducing the dioxins release from the key sources? Where are the areas of priority for applying BAT/BEP? This paper shows the efforts towards the solution of these problems. The list of key sources covering about half of the total dioxins release was determined considering four criteria. The capacity of key sources were estimated based on the difference between the emission factor corresponding to the actual situation in 2004 and that corresponding to the scenario that all key sources have been applied BAT/BEP to reduce the dioxins release. The priority analysis using the geographical information system (GIS) tool has revealed that castern provinces should be of high priority in the future reduction activities of dioxins release in China.     

Effects of payments for ecosystem services on wildlife habitat recovery

Conflicts between local people's livelihoods and conservation have led to many unsuccessful conservation efforts and have stimulated debates on policies that might simultaneously promote sustainable management of protected areas and improve the living conditions of local people. Many government‐sponsored payments‐for‐ecosystem‐services (PES) schemes have been implemented around the world. However, few empirical assessments of their effectiveness have been conducted, and even fewer assessments have directly measured their effects on ecosystem services. We conducted an empirical and spatially explicit assessment of the conservation effectiveness of one of the world's largest PES programs through the use of a long‐term empirical data set, a satellite‐based habitat model, and spatial autoregressive analyses on direct measures of change in an ecosystem service (i.e., the provision of wildlife species habitat). Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) habitat improved in Wolong Nature Reserve of China after the implementation of the Natural Forest Conservation Program. The improvement was more pronounced in areas monitored by local residents than those monitored by the local government, but only when a higher payment was provided. Our results suggest that the effectiveness of a PES program depends on who receives the payment and on whether the payment provides sufficient incentives. As engagement of local residents has not been incorporated in many conservation strategies elsewhere in China or around the world, our results also suggest that using an incentive‐based strategy as a complement to command‐and‐control, community‐ and norm‐based strategies may help achieve greater conservation effectiveness and provide a potential solution for the park versus people conflict.     

Landsenses pattern design to mitigate gale conditions in the coastal city – a case study of Pingtan,China

ABSTRACT

Due to the special geographic locations and multiple typhoons a year, the frequent strong winds bring great discomfort and danger to the daily lives of the urban residents in southeast coast of China. The strategic design of landsenses pattern on different scales can help reduce gale days in urban areas while delivering diverse additional benefits such as pollution control and biodiversity habitat protection. Although the greatest gale days are observed in cold and damp winters, there is comparatively little information available for land managers to determine an appropriate strategy for landsenses pattern design under these climatic conditions. We present a framework for prioritization and selection of landsenses pattern for gale day reductions. The framework is supported by examining the relationships between urban landsenses pattern evolution and gale day mitigation in the past, with which we used to develop implementation guidelines that maximize reductions of urban surface gale days. We focus particularly on quantifying the benefits of four types of landsenses: land-use patterns, urban road network, architectural patterns, and vertical greening systems (green walls and facades) and demonstrate how to apply the framework with a case study from Pingtan Island, China.     

Adaptive cluster double sampling with post stratification with application to an epiphytic lichen community

The implementation of an adaptive cluster sampling design often becomes logistically challenging because variation in the final sampling effort introduces uncertainty in survey planning. To overcome this drawback, an inexpensive and easy to measure auxiliary variable could be used in a two-phase survey strategy, called adaptive cluster double sampling (Félix-Medina and Thompson in Biometrika 91:877–891, 2004). In this paper, a two-phase sampling strategy is proposed which combines the idea of adaptive cluster double sampling with the principle of post-stratification. In the first-phase an adaptive cluster sample is selected by means of an inexpensive auxiliary variable. Networks from the first phase sampling are then post-stratified according to their size. In the second-phase, the network structure is used to select a subsample of units by means of stratified random sampling. The proposed sampling strategy employs stratification without requiring an a priori delineation of the strata. Indeed, the strata sizes are estimated in the course of the two-phase sampling process. Therefore, it is suitable for situations where stratification is suspected to be efficient but strata cannot be easily delineated in advance. In this framework, a new type of estimator for the population mean which mimics the stratified sampling mean estimator and an estimator of the sampling variance are proposed. The results of a simulation study confirm, as expected, that the use of post-stratification leads to gain in precision for the estimator. The proposed sampling strategy is applied for targeting an epiphytic lichen community Lobarion pulmonariae in a forest area of the Northern Apennines (N-Italy), characterized by several species of conservation concern.     

Bewertung von diffusen Stoffeinträgen im Rahmen der nationalen Biodiversitätsstrategie

Background, aim and scope In 2007, the German government approved a national strategy on biological diversity. The strategy requires the integration of its quality targets and action targets into other policies. In addition to other pressure factors, area-wide diffuse substance discharges contribute considerably to the loss of biological diversity. Reducing these diffuse substance discharges to long-term ecologically compatible levels is one of the main action targets. This paper aims to provide an overview of preconditions for implementing this objective in terms of content as well as organization and to point out important deficits. Main focus To achieve this, the paper will discuss environmental monitoring and its implementation in Germany drawing on the targets of the national strategy on biological diversity. It will discuss the opportunities for the evaluation of the German and European biodiversity strategies using monitoring required in the execution of environmental laws and regulations as well as international substance-related indicators. Results Environmental monitoring in Germany and in Europe is characterized by a plurality of monitoring networks operated under different administrative competences and environmental sectors. Only a small part of the collected data is evaluated in a cross-media and cross-sectoral perspective even though the linking of the different data sets is technically possible. Discussion A key problem is that harmonized minimum requirements to monitor the reduction of diffuse substance discharges are missing. Without the implementation of a cooperative and harmonized monitoring approach and organizational guidelines, the reduction of diffuse substance discharges will not be verifiable. Environmental data as well as indicators are essential to evaluate the success of the national biodiversity strategy. Suitable monitoring concepts are available in the German Federal Republic and its Federal States, nevertheless, a political impulse for their implementation is missing. Recommendations and perspectives The national biodiversity strategy may reopen the discussion on the necessity of an integrated monitoring. A coordinated approach that refers both to the international indicator-discussion and to institutional obstacles and aims to develop a proposal for integrated monitoring data is necessary.     

Determination of the potential implementation impact of 2016 ministry of environmental protection generic assessment criteria for potentially contaminated sites in China

The Ministry of Environmental Protection of China issued a 3rd draft edition of risk-based Generic Assessment Criteria (the MEP-GAC) in March 2016. Since these will be the first authoritative GAC in China, their implementation is likely to have a significant impact on China’s growing contaminated land management sector. This study aims to determine the potential implementation impact of the MEP-GAC through an in-depth analysis of the management context, land use scenarios, health criteria values adopted and exposure pathways considered. The MEP-GAC have been proposed for two broad categories of land use scenarios for contaminated land risk assessment, and these two categories of land use scenarios need to be further delved, and a MEP-GAC for Chinese cultivated land scenario ought to be developed, to ensure human health protection of Chinese farmers. The MEP-GAC have adopted 10^?6 as the acceptable lifetime cancer risk, given the widespread extent and severe level of land contamination in China, consideration should be given to the decision on excess lifetime cancer risk of 10^?5. During risk assessment process in practice, it is better to review the 20% TDI against local circumstances to determine their suitability before adopting it. The MEP-GAC are based on a SOM value of 1%, for regions with particularly high SOM, it might be necessary to develop regional GAC, due to SOM’s significant impact on the GAC developed. An authoritative risk assessment model developed based on HJ25.3-2014 would help facilitate the DQRA process in practice. The MEP-GAC could better reflect the likely exposures of China’s citizens due to vapour inhalation by using characteristics of Chinese exposure scenarios, including China-generic building stock, as inputs into the Johnson and Ettinger model as opposed to adoption of the US EPA parameters. The MEP-GAC once implemented will set the trajectory for the development of the investigation, assessment and remediation of land contamination for years.     

大都市群的环境问题及其环境保护战略

从实现新时期统筹发展的国家战略需求出发,剖析了大都市群跨区域交叉污染、复合污染、累计污染的特点,指出这些区域已成为环境资源“漏斗区”和突发性环境危机的风险区。认为只有采取主动引导发展的国家环境战略才能有效地解决大都市群和环境的协调可持续发展问题。阐述了主动环保战略的重大措施包括引导调整发展布局、转变经济增长方式、转变生活方式、创新国家环境管理体制、创新环境科技体系和系统、人工提高环境承载能力等。     

Cloacal erection promotes vent apposition during forced copulation in the New Zealand stitchbird (hihi): implications for copulation efficiency in other species

Cloacal protuberances (CP) in male birds result from spermatic engorgement of storage tubules around the cloaca during the breeding season. We examined seasonal changes in the volume and orientation of the CP in the New Zealand stitchbird Notiomystis cincta. The male stitchbird has one of the largest recorded CPs for any species (max = 1,570 mm³), with CP volume increasing by almost 400% between the non-breeding and breeding seasons. While sperm competition has been positively correlated with the magnitude of CP storage in other species, no evidence previously existed for the CP improving copulation efficiency. By measuring the relative orientation of the CP throughout the year, we show that not only does the CP increase in size as males become sexually active, it also changes its orientation by approximately 60°. This results in it shifting from facing posteriorly to becoming almost perpendicular to the abdomen. This cloacal erection improves the apposition of the male and female cloacal openings during face-to-face forced copulation in this species. This provides the first reported evidence supporting the copulation efficiency hypothesis of the avian CP. While the magnitude of seasonal changes in female cloacal volume was similar to males, female cloacal orientation remained virtually unchanged across seasons. This difference between the sexes is likely to reflect differing selection pressures for optimizing sperm transfer. In females, a posterior-facing cloaca is ideal for both waste evacuation and sperm reception, whereas, for the male, a posterior-facing cloaca is well suited for waste evacuation, but possibly hinders sperm delivery. Changes in male cloacal orientation from the non-breeding to the breeding season are a likely reflection of conflict in this dual function. Evidence of changes in CP orientation in another passerine species suggests this phenomenon is widespread and also important for understanding related fields such as sperm competition, forced copulation and constraints on the evolution of the avian intromittent organ.     

Analysis of the current situation of environmental policy of China and establishment of distributed environmental policy framework

In this study, China’s current macro-environmental policies as well as their implementation and management tools are analyzed. By using the basic economic methodology, detailed studies are conducted focusing on the implementation effect of contemporary China’s typical environmental policy of the total pollutant discharge quantity control type, and also the two types of environmental management tools are compared from the perspective of implementation costs and policy uncertainty. By introduction of distributed management tools into the implementation of environmental policies, market-oriented means and the methods of economic analysis are introduced into environmental policy decision-making mechanisms, which could afford a new method for changing the current relatively low efficiency of environmental policy, solving the problem of “government failure” in environmental policy implementation, and providing a new way to make environmental policy system more flexible and more efficient. It is of great practical significance to solve China's current structural, complex and accumulative environmental problems.     

江汉平原农田渍害与土壤潜育化发展现状及治理对策

江汉平原不同类型的渍害低产田面积已达2.9×105 hm2;综合治理农田渍害、改良利用涝渍低产田,长期以来一直是该区农业发展中的首要任务。文章从区域水文地质、地貌条件、恳殖和耕作的影响等方面,分析了江汉平原农田渍害与土壤潜育化形成的原因,并提出了综合治理农田渍害和改良涝渍低产田的对策。根据对现有资料的分析,认为在目前的社会经济条件下还难以从根本上阻止江汉平原农田渍害和土壤潜育化的发展。     

Challenge, dialogue, action… Recent developments in the protection of coastal zones in Italy

In Italy, the incapability of the State to implement a national strategy for the sustainable development of coastal areas lead the regional authorities to adopt integrated coastal zone management plans. These initiatives are often relevant, correcting the defiency of the national legislation, but do not assure the implementation of a coherent littoral policy. Thereby, it is to be hoped that the recent developments in international law—and particularly the Mediterranean protocol on integrated coastal zone management recently adopted—will compel the Italian State to make a positive commitment to coastal protection.     

Comparison on End-of-Life strategies of WEEE in China based on LCA

As the Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) are upgraded more frequently in China, a large quantity of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) was and will be generated. It becomes an urgent issue to develop and adopt an effective End-of-Life (EoL) strategy for EEE in order to balance the resource recovery and environmental impacts. In an EoL strategy hierarchy for EEE, reuse strategy is usually deemed to be prior to materials recovery and other strategies. But in practice, the advantages and disadvantages of different strategies are always context-dependent. Therefore, main EoL strategies for EEE in China need to be evaluated in environment and resources aspects from the life cycle perspective. In this study, the obsolete refrigerator and Power Supply Unit (PSU) of desktop PC are both taken as the target products. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to assess the environmental impacts of different EoL scenarios in China: Unit Reuse Scenario (URS), Component Reuse Scenario (CRS) and Materials Recovery Scenario (MRS). The LCA results show that the EoL strategies hierarchy is reasonable for the part of computer, but not necessarily suitable for obsolete refrigerators. When the policy makers promote or demote one EoL strategy especially reuse, it is necessary to take subsequent impacts into consideration.

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Post-evaluation of a water pollution control plan: methodology and case study

China has developed more than 20 water pollution control plans for river basins (RBWPs) since 1996. However, the implementation has generally lagged. This paper proposes a three-step, post-evaluation methodology to analyze the implementation result of a RBWP and its influential factors. First, a multi-attribute evaluation method based on an index system is established to score the enforcement results of a RBWP. Indicators measure how well a RBWP has achieved its objectives, which include water quality compliance, pollution load control, project construction, financial inputs, and related management requirements. Second, an interpretive structural model is used to detect the significant factors that affect RBWP implementation. This model can effectively analyze the cause-effect chain and hierarchical relationship among variables. Five groups of factors were identified, namely, plan preparation, water resource endowment, policy, institution, and management. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed in the third step to evaluate the extent to which these factors have influenced the execution result of a RBWP, including pre-post contrast, scenario analysis, and correlation analysis. This research then post-evaluated the implementation of the Huai River Basin water pollution control plans (H-RBWPs) over a period of 10 years as a case study. Results showed that the implementation of the H-RBWPs was unsatisfactory during 2001–2005, although it improved during 2006–2010. The poor execution of these plans was partially caused by the underestimation of regional economic development in combination with ineffective industrial structure adjustment policies. Therefore, this case study demonstrates the feasibility and flexibility of the proposed post-evaluation methodology.     

Central place foraging in wheatears (Oenanthe oenanthe L.): foraging itineraries when feeding nestlings

Summary Parent wheatears (Oenanthe oenanthe L.), foraging to meet their own needs and to provide food for a central place (CP, i.e. the nest), have to make decisions with respect to the configuration of foraging itineraries during round trips in the territory and to the directionality of their movements. These problems were studied in two pairs breeding in an agricultural area in central Swecen. All birds started a round trip by hunting from perches close to the CP and then moving to perches progressively further away in a roughly straight line until the first prey item was loaded. Loaded prey were either delivered singly (single prey loading: SPL) or with other prey (multiple prey loading: MPL). When the bird decided to return with several items to the CP, it abruptly changed the direction of its movements by making a left, right or backward turn and started to visit perches progressively nearer the CP, again following a roughly straight line. The decision to return continue loading was affected by the size of the prey as shown by the fact that prey carried singly was significantly larger than the first item in an MPL for all individuals. The distance to the CP also seemed to affect this decision as prey provisioned singly on average were collected significantly closer to the nest than the first item in an MPL by one pair. Both the size of prey loaded singly and load size of MPL increased with distance from the CP in one pair. The concentrated use of the territory in the other pair made any effect of distance difficult to detect. Great flexibility in foraging decisions was observed in cases when an individual, because of the size of the last prey captured, altered its decision to deliver an MPL and transported an SPL to the nest instead. On the basis of these results we propose a set of rules followed by predators such as wheatears when making decisions about delivering prey to a CP (Fig. 4).