软约束机制下的生态预算理论的问题及对策

在分权体制框架下,约束机制软化导致地方政府放大其自利性偏好,在一定程度上成为可持续发展的减项。表现为：在当前政府绩效考核的经济指标压力下扩大自然资源的投入;与资源消耗主体博弈的经济人行为导致不规范的环境资源分配,使环境目标和环境管理目标的实现呈现高成本特征;与中央政府相较的信息优势导致全局性的非理性资源的浪费等。生态预算是ICLEI参照财政预算的程序创建的促进环境资源有效配置和可持续管理的政府工具,其以强可持续发展为目标,采用实物指标度量环境资源在社会经济活动中的实际流量,强调约束支出控制,以保持环境资源全部价值在代内和代际间的平衡。我国在引进生态预算监督制约机制的路径选择及模式设计上,可能会出现因现实文化的惯性、双重代理机制、体制内监督等问题导致的生态预算约束软化,改进方向在于重视环境-经济-社会一体化考核的作用、确定合理的激励方式、由社会审计评价和监督生态预算执行,从而逐步走向制度完善的进程。     

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.     

Aktuelle Entwicklungen bei Umweltindikatorensystemen

The current monitoring of the status of the environment and natural resources is a substantial basis for the implementation of a sustainable development as a model of the environmental policy in the terms of Agenda 21. For the 90s, in particular by the mandate of Rio 1992, both the international institutions (international level), e.g. the OECD, the United Nation Commission of Sustainable Development and the European Environmental Agency, and the environmental protection authorities of the different countries (national level) e.g. Germany, and of the federal states of Germany (regional level) are developing environmental indicator systems. In the context of the Local Agenda 21, indicators for the ecological, economic, social and institutional categories are set up on a communal level. In the environmental indicator systems different issues, e.g. climate change, ozone layer depletion, water quality and water resources, waste, toxic contamination, biodiversity, landscape protection, soil resources, forest resources, etc., are described. Concepts with driving forces, pressure, state, impact and/or response indicators are applied. The German Council of Environmental Advisors (SRU) requires that the selection and aggregation of indicators must be transparent and comprehensibly documented and that the chosen indicators must be oriented at political targets. The following article gives an overview of relevant actual environmental indicator systems, their concepts and structuring, and points to the further research and developmental requirements within this area.     

Diagnosis and recommendations for transjurisdictional water pollution management in China

Large-scale water environmental deterioration is one of the most prominent environmental issues in current China. Transjurisdictional water pollution is an important reason for water environmental deterioration of river basins, and currently there are some major defects that exist in China's management system related to transjurisdictional water pollution. With seven major river basins in China as an object of study, this paper is designed to perform a diagnosis of major problems about the transjurisdictional water pollution management in China from three aspects, i.e. institution, mechanism, and legislation. On the basis of this, it gives an overall train of thoughts on the reform of transjurisdictional water pollution management in China, and proposes specific recommendations from the aforesaid three aspects.     

Making central-local relations work: Comparing America and China environmental governance systems

The challenge of making central requirements work at local levels is a common problem for environmental governance throughout the world. Countries can learn from one another's approaches, but must understand the local context in which they are set. This paper compares the features of the China and US environmental governance systems that need be understood by those working between the systems. Key features include: (1) common values which shape the environmental governance choices in both countries, but which may have different practical meanings in each country; (2) America's common law-based environmental governance system, and China's civil law system, which involves plan(s) as well as law; (3) America's Federal central-local system, and China's unitary central local system. This paper concludes by suggesting areas in which further comparative understanding may be of value, including: (1) better understanding of the role of plan and law in China's governance system; (2) comparing the American Federal-state agreement system for implementation of environmental law with the China central-local system of target responsibility agreements for plan implementation; (3) improving understanding of nongovernmental resources needed to assure compliance with environmental laws and plans; (4) identifying institutions that can coordinate central-local and cross-border environmental governance.     

Sustainable agriculture: Competing visions and policy avenues

Since the publication of Agenda 21 agricultural sustainability has become an internationally important goal. Whereas in the past issues of food security and sustainability centred on the developing world only, where large sections of the population are undernourished, it is today increasingly recognised that the developed world also has a 'food problem'. Indeed, with rising levels of obesity and environmental damage, goals of sustainable agriculture are now as pertinent in the developed world as the developing. This paper seeks to explore the policies of two competing visions for food and agricultural sustainability. One vision seeks to break the productionist hegemony with policies to promote, inter alia, organic and local food. The other vision seeks to continue the productionist hegemony in only a slightly modified fashion; emphasising biotechnology and technological panaceas. This paper contends that the modified productionist vision is flawed and political will is now required to promulgate radical agricultural policies that break the productionist hegemony.     

Industrial solid waste flow analysis of eco-industrial parks: implications for sustainable waste management in China

Sustainable waste management in the industrial ecology perspective brings enormous challenges to the existing methodology of waste analysis at the industrial park (IP) scale. In this study, a four-step method was proposed for industrial solid waste (ISW) flow analysis of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) and applied to two IPs in eastern China. According to a park-wide census of 619 industrial enterprises and 105 questionnaires by a survey from 2006 to 2008, the results indicated that: 1) at the enterprise scale, more than 60% of enterprises were small-ISW-generation enterprises which encountered great difficulties on effective waste management; 2) at the IP scale, though the two IPs have set up their own environmental management systems and passed the ISO 14001 certification, the efficiencies of the ISW management systems have yet to be improved in the industrial ecology perspective; and 3) at the regional scale, more than 97% of ISW flowed within the provincial region, indicating that the provincial governments prevented the wastes from flowing into their own “back yard”. Effective waste management should be placed in a broader perspective. Approaches to sustainable waste management may include wastes exchange, efficient waste and information flow, virtual EIP, waste minimization clubs and regionalization of waste management.     

Assessing sustainability: An assessment framework to evaluate Agenda 21 actions at the local level

In Switzerland, communities are encouraged to define and to report on local Agenda 21. This paper presents an analysis framework to help local communities set sustainable development priorities and to follow through with appropriate actions. Four Swiss communities, from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, actively follow the project: Lausanne (114 304 citizens), Vevey (15 364 citizens), Mannens-Grandsivaz (505 citizens) and Essertines/Yverdon (666 citizens). The analysis framework developed is constituted of four interdependent fields: the societal characteristics, the individual or collective behaviours, the end objectives or sustainability impacts and the inhabitant's perception of these three fields. The link between society and behaviour can be studied through sociological analyses. The link between behaviour and environmental impact can be established thanks to Life Cycle analysis and Input/Output analyses. At each level, sustainable development indicators can be defined. As an application of the framework, the citizen energy consumption has been studied and expressed in energy slaves (= 3150 MJ/Year). A Swiss citizen needs altogether 69 slaves, 20 for his private consumption of goods and services, 19 for housing, 11 for transport, I1 for food and 8 for his consumption of public goods. If one fifth of the inhabitants of Lausanne, wanting to live closer to nature, actually moved out of town, the region would need 10 436 more slaves for 3500 persons happily living in the countryside.     

China's dairy crisis: impacts,causes and policy implications for a sustainable dairy industry

The dairy industry is an important part of the global economy, and the rapidly developing dairy enterprises in China have become increasingly important to the rest of the world. Due to increasing demand for dairy products and support from the government, China's dairy industry has thrived in recent decades. But rapid growth has been accompanied by a suite of industry/structural problems associated with raw milk supply, processing enterprises, product retailing and profit allocation. Thus, a major dairy crisis took place in 2008, triggered by a notorious melamine-contaminated milk event. The dairy crisis has had devastating impacts on China's dairy industry, negatively affecting farmers, consumers, processing enterprises and even government agencies. The Chinese government has developed rigorous measures to prevent future incidents of this sort, including the enactment of the Food Safety Law and reinstatement of the no-exemption quality inspection of food products. In this paper, we analyse the wide-ranging impacts and root causes of the recent dairy crisis in China. We also examine how the crisis has been handled and what measures have been put in place in its aftermath. Then we discuss policy implications for promoting the sustainability of China's dairy industry. Lessons learned from this crisis, as well as implications for policy improvements, should be valuable for the development of a sustainable dairy industry in other regions of the world.     

中国自然保护区经费政策探讨

通过资料调研和问卷调查 ,分析了我国自然保护区的投资和创收现状及其存在的问题 ,认为保护区的投资远不能满足保护区的需要 ,而保护区的创收极其有限 ,因此增加国家和地方政府的投资是解决保护区经费短缺矛盾的根本措施。国家财政应设立经常性科目用于国家级自然保护区的建设与管理。同时应积极拓展自然保护区建设的资金渠道 ,发展保护区产业 ,完善和实施生态环境补偿费政策 ,制定有利的税收政策 ,实行优惠扶贫政策 ,并加强自然保护区经费的监督与管理     

Moving towards sustainable development: rhetoric,policy and reality of ecological agriculture in China

Past decades have witnessed the rise of sustainable agriculture movements throughout the world. In parallel with this international trend, ecological agriculture (with essential goals of food security, rural employment, poverty alleviation, natural resource management and environmental protection) has been advocated as a workable approach for the realization of sustainable agriculture in China. Two decades of ecological agricultural development have shown that it not only gained legitimacy at the senior policy level but also became a focus of scientific research in fields such as ecological economics, ecology, and agricultural and environmental sciences. However, this endeavour is hardly known in the West and little attention has been paid so far to examining the broader politico-economic and sociocultural contexts within which it has evolved. This paper attempts to provide a general review of the emerging background, development history, policy initiatives and recent tendencies of ecological agriculture. In addition, the extant problems and potential contributions of this alternative practice to China's sustainable agricultural development are discussed. The purpose of this study is to identify the gap between the policy rhetoric and practical implementation of Chinese ecological agriculture and therefore to facilitate its moving towards sustainable development.     

Historical survey and the cultivation of a new culture regarding the ecology in China's Western Provinces

The Chinese leadership in recent years has clearly indicated that priority will be given to the development of the western provinces. In view of its under-developed economy, the relative poor education of the population and the extensive mode of development, environmental pollution and ecological damage in western China are more serious than in the east. In China's industrialization process in the modern era, the blind imitation of the initial stage of industrialization in the advanced countries and the total rejection of traditional Chinese cultural values have been particularly striking. Hence, the western provinces should adopt a mode of sustainable development based on establishment of an ecological culture. Environmentalists in China would like to concentrate on reforming the modes of production and the people's lifestyles through changing their views and values. They perceive this as the major commitment for building an ecological culture and promoting sustainable development. But large-scale and concentrated damage to the environment are very often the result of neglect and mistakes by government authorities and corporations. Pessimists worry that this millennium will signal the terminal stage for natural values; but there may be an alternative: a millennium of coordinated development, respecting the environment and based on adoption of a new ecological culture.     

宁波市公众环境意识调查与分析

公众环境意识是一个国家和民族文明程度的重要标志,它从各个方面反映出所调查地区的环境现状、公众对环境问题的认知、环保素质和环保行为,能够为政府的宏观决策提供依据。文章在数据分析的基础上,阐述了宁波市公众在地区环境问题、公民环境责任、环保支付意愿、绿色消费和固体废物收集处理等方面的调查结果,并给出了结论和建议。     

Changing legislative thinking in China to better protect wild animals and human health

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacy of China's legal protection of wildlife. Long-standing illegal wildlife trade in China and worldwide increases the risk of zoonotic infectious diseases. We sought to improve the understanding of China’ legal system for the protection of wildlife, which has at its core the wildlife protection law, by systematically evaluating the laws and regulations of China's Wildlife Protection Framework. We examined how existing legal documents (e.g., the Wildlife Protection Law 2018) are directly or indirectly related to wildlife conservation. The inherent defects of wildlife protection legislation include a narrow scope of protection, insufficient public participation, and inconsistent enforcement among responsible agencies. Solutions to improve China's Wildlife Protection Law include expanding the legal protection of wildlife, and improving monitoring of wildlife protection. Strengthening legislation will be the basis for effective regulation of the use of wild animals. We advocate the establishment of a sound wildlife protection legal system for resolving conflicts between humans and wild animals and preventing zoonotic disease, such a system will have a profound impact on the sustainable development of China's wildlife resources.     

Towards a sustainable future: a holistic inquiry of waste management behaviors of Singapore households

ABSTRACT

In 2018, Singapore produced a 7.7 million tonnes of waste, which is a significant amount of waste for a small nation-state. In line with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) targets 11.6 and 12.5 of the 2030 Agenda, which addresses cities’ waste generation and management impacts, we ask the question of why Singapore households are not more proactively engaged in waste minimization, despite the presence of local waste minimization public campaigns. This study is the first known study to comparatively apply and test three major theories – social psychological, social-structural, and sociocultural theories, to explain household waste management behavior in Singapore. A national survey followed by regression analysis of 303 households was conducted. In our findings, we firstly describe current trends in household waste management behaviors. Secondly, we compared each applied theory’s ability to predict households’: (1) reuse and (2) recycling of a variety of household items; and (3) recycling frequency. We obtained partial evidence supporting the role of future-orientedness and environmental identity on householders’ variety reuse and recycling. Social-structural (age cohort x income, education) and situational variables (the convenience thesis), also predicted various waste minimization behaviors. Finally, householders’ knowledge of what is recyclable affected all forms of waste minimization behaviors. In view of the study’s findings, we propose a need for targeted planning and policy interventions for different segments of the Singapore population, and different short- and longer-term measures to initiate and achieve sustained household waste minimization.     

The responses and prospects of sustainable development for Guangzhou and Hong Kong

The ability to achieve urban sustainability has become an indication of the competence of a municipal government aiming to gain world class status for the city. While both Guangzhou and Hong Kong are Chinese cities having their own formulation of urban sustainability, the implementation details and the actual sustainability blueprints are very different. As a result, the outcomes and prospects for urban sustainability are also different.

Hong Kong has adopted a less integrative and more institutionally-oriented approach for urban sustainability. Guangzhou has used the conventional approach to formulate an integrated sustainability programme for its local Agenda 21. Hong Kong's action plan emphasizes improving coordination, making objective assessments and achieving consistency in policy-making. Guangzhou, on the other hand, emphasizes the meeting of concrete environmental targets. Unfortunately, the new institutional arrangement and monitoring tools adopted by Hong Kong have not been able to achieve the original intent and neither is there the intention to go too far beyond the weak sustainability approach. On the contrary, Guangzhou has planned and attempted to incorporate industrial ecology in its development regime while heavily investing into pollution control programmes and pushing forward a green community programme at the grass-roots level.     

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.     

Genuine saving rate: An integrated indicator to measure urban sustainable development towards an ecocity

The construction of an ecocity is gradually gaining attention as an indicator of sustainable development. Genuine saving rate (GSR), which takes account of various impacts of economic activities including depletion of natural resources, costs of environmental pollution and long-term environmental damage, can be used as an integrated indicator to measure the status quo and potential of sustainability for an ecocity. This paper discusses the concept of an ecocity; and analyses the time-series of GSR in Suzhou between 1991–2001 as a case study used to develop a standard method of measuring sustainability. The status quo and trends in urban sustainability in six case study cities in China are then evaluated and compared. The results show the current status: Suzhou (23.6%), Guangzhou(18.9%), Ningbo (14.7%), Yantai (13.1%), Yangzhou (11.7%) and Sanming (7.9%). The study demonstrates that GSR provides not only a linkage by which local governmental departments for resources management, environmental protection, finance and planning can be connected directly, but also an effective analytical tool for the planning and construction of an ecocity as well as decision-making support for local governments.     

美国政府对私立高等学校的资助及启示

本文首先分析了美国联邦和地方政府以私立高等教育机构资助的方式和途径,论证了政府资助私立(民办)高校的必要性;并就我国如何资助民办高等教育机构给出了一系列建议.     

中国的太阳能资源及应用潜力

太阳能资源被认为是21世纪最引人注目的可再生能源和洁净能源，为了经济的可持续发展，应该把环境保护和长期利益作为研究目标，文章估算了中国14个城市的太阳能资源，分析了太阳能热水系统和PIVP系统的经济性，研究结果表明，中国的太阳能利用潜力很大，政府应该对其发展发挥重要作用。