Typologies of crop-drought vulnerability: an empirical analysis of the socio-economic factors that influence the sensitivity and resilience to drought of three major food crops in China (1961–2001)

Why is it that sometimes small droughts trigger serious crop losses while in other cases even large droughts do not have such a major effect? In this paper, we identify socio-economic indicators associated with sensitivity and resilience to drought for each of China's main grain crops (rice, wheat and corn). Provincial harvest and rainfall data (1961–2001) are used to calculate an annual “crop-drought vulnerability index”. We separate “sensitive cases” (where significant harvest losses occurred in years with only minor droughts) and “resilient cases” (where harvest losses were minimal despite there being a major drought) and explore the socio-economic characteristics of these different situations. Results show that sensitive cases were particularly common in economically poor landlocked provinces and in wealthy coastal areas that have a limited land base. In such “sensitive cases”, the size of the rural population and the quantity of agricultural inputs were negatively correlated with drought vulnerability, while for resilient cases, vulnerability was negatively correlated with the abundance of land. This leads us to propose a series of drought-vulnerability typologies based on the extent to which land, labour, capital, agricultural technology, and infrastructure buffer or exacerbate the effect of a drought event.     

Marginalization by collaboration: Environmental justice as a third party in and beyond CALFED

Governance and planning of ecosystem and water management within the California Bay-Delta, a critical component of California's water economy, have been characterized by a range of innovations in collaboration and conflict resolution. Despite legal mandates to incorporate environmental justice, the California Bay-Delta Authority's (CBDA) policy-development process and the subsequent Delta Vision process have systematically marginalized the role of environmental justice in California's water policy. We suggest that environmental justice in Bay-Delta planning can be understood as a “third party” with a tenuous seat at the CALFED water management table. As such environmental justice is a useful lens through which to assess the state's broader commitments and capacities relative to equity as a planning principal and outcome. We interpret the fate of environmental justice within Bay-Delta planning as indicative of the inherent tensions between systems based on increasing market dominance and state legitimation and the values of environmental justice based on distributive, procedural, and cognitive justice. We construct a model of marginalization and environmental injustice in collaborative planning to illustrate these tensions. We draw upon experiences of members of the Environmental Justice Sub-Committee of CBDA's Bay Delta Public Advisory Committee, as well as interviews with other key environmental justice interests, and a comprehensive review of internal and public CBDA documents relating to the environmental justice program including budgets and program plans, and ethnographic field work. We conclude that by learning from the mistakes of Bay-Delta planning, a positive model of collaborative, environmental justice-based planning for water and ecosystem management is possible.     

Realizing an effectiveness revolution in environmental management

The environmental movement of the 20(th) century has evolved into a large, diverse and well-financed global community that is increasingly required to prove its worth. Though the environmental sector collects and uses data to determine the status of ecological and social systems, the effectiveness of the programs and policies it uses to affect this status remains largely untested. As governments and donor institutions insist on greater transparency, accountability and evidence of what works and what does not, much is being learned from other fields (e.g. health services, education, international development) and increasingly sophisticated approaches are emerging to manage effectiveness. For example, program evaluation, adaptive management, and systematic review provide frameworks and methods to collect and use information to measure and improve performance. However, the critical data and collaborations necessary for an effectiveness revolution are marginalized by technical, cultural and political obstacles. Learning from other fields, the environmental sector must exploit key leverage points, such as flows of information and self-organization, to overcome impediments and create incentives to initiate and realize an era of effectiveness in environmental management.     

Repetitive flood victims and acceptance of FEMA mitigation offers: an analysis with community-system policy implications

Of all natural disasters, flooding causes the greatest amount of economic and social damage. The United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) uses a number of hazard mitigation grant programmes for flood victims, including mitigation offers to relocate permanently repetitive flood loss victims. This study examines factors that help to explain the degree of difficulty repetitive flood loss victims experience when they make decisions about relocating permanently after multiple flood losses. Data are drawn from interviews with FEMA officials and a survey of flood victims from eight repetitive flooding sites. The qualitative and quantitative results show the importance of rational choices by flood victims in their mitigation decisions, as they relate to financial variables, perceptions of future risk, attachments to home and community, and the relationships between repetitive flood loss victims and the local flood management officials who help them. The results offer evidence to suggest the value of a more community-system approach to FEMA relocation practices.     

Sustainable local land use policy: rhetoric and reality

Abstract

This study examined trends in population redistribution and residential land use changes in northeast Scotland during 1988 to 2003. We utilised a geographical information system (GIS) tool to bring together data from interrelated sources and to analyse population settlement and land use changes at detailed spatial scale. This analysis revealed that substantial land conversion had taken place in the region; particularly conversion of agricultural lands to built-up and residential areas. It also drew attention to policy conflicts, discrepancies between policy rhetoric and policy implementations. More specifically, it was shown that substantial farm land conversion had taken place in suburban areas and rural Aberdeenshire with little change in the size of derelict land in Aberdeen City. The reason given for this was that it was costly to rehabilitate and reuse derelict lands and this conflicted with the objective of providing affordable housing in the City region. The implication of this study is that if the declared policy objectives of integrated and sustainable land use and transport policies are to be achieved, then local authorities may need to cooperate to minimise conflicts between economic and environmental objectives.     

Attitudes of Canadian Pig Producers Toward Animal Welfare

As part of a larger study eliciting Canadian producer and non-producer views about animal welfare, open-ended, semi-structured interviews were used to explore opinions about animal welfare of 20 Canadian pig producers, most of whom were involved in confinement-based systems. With the exception of the one organic producer, who emphasized the importance of a “natural” life, participants attached overriding importance to biological health and functioning. They saw their efforts as providing pigs with dry, thermally regulated, indoor environments where animals received abundant feed, careful monitoring and where prospective disease outbreaks could be minimized and controlled. Emphasis was also placed on low-stress handling and agreeable working conditions which were believed to promote good animal care. The fact that pigs tend to respond to such conditions with steady growth reinforced the belief that good welfare was provided. Participants supported the use of sow gestation stalls, but with some reservations, and expressed concern about welfare problems that could occur if sows were grouped. Invasive procedures (castration, tail-docking, teeth clipping) were recognized as painful but were accepted because they were seen as: (1) necessary for sales or management; (2) satisfactory trade-offs to prevent worse welfare problems such as injury or infection; or (3) sufficiently short-term to be relatively unimportant. Participants were adamantly opposed to animal neglect and some welcomed actions of animal protectionists that expose poor care. Producers also welcomed natural-science-based approaches to improving animal welfare. The findings contribute to a broader effort to identify overlapping values among different stakeholder groups as a basis for formulating mutually agreeable, farm animal care and handling polices.     

Relationships between water quality, habitat quality, and macroinvertebrate assemblages in Illinois streams

The influence of specific stressors, such as nutrient enrichment and physical habitat degradation, on biotic integrity requires further attention in Midwestern streams. We sampled 53 streams throughout Illinois and examined relationships between macroinvertebrate community structure and numerous physicochemical parameters. Streams were clustered into four major groups based on taxa dissimilarity. Habitat quality and dissolved nutrients were responsible for separating the major groups in a nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination. Furthermore, the alignment of environmental factors in the ordination suggested there was a habitat quality-nutrient concentration gradient such that streams with high-quality habitats usually had low concentrations of nutrients. Discrimination by community measures further validated the major stream groups and indicated that forested streams had generally higher biological integrity than agricultural streams, which in turn had greater integrity than urban streams. Our results demonstrate that physical habitat degradation and nutrient pollution are important and often confounded determinants of biotic integrity in Illinois streams. In addition, we suggest that management of Midwestern streams could benefit from further implementation of multivariate data exploration and stream classification techniques.     

An overview of the gulf coast aerosol research and characterization study: the Houston fine particulate matter supersite

The Gulf Coast Aerosol Research and Characterization Study ([GC-ARCH], also known as the Houston Fine Particulate Matter [PM] Supersite) examined the spatial and temporal variability in fine PM source contributions and composition and the physical and chemical processes that govern PM formation and transformation in southeastern Texas. This was accomplished through the analysis of data collected in a 16-month field sampling program (August 2000 through November 2001). Three core sites and approximately 15 peripheral sites, jointly operated by the study team and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), were used. Key scientific findings related to spatial and temporal variability in fine PM concentrations, sizes and composition of the fine PM, the strength of primary emission sources and causes of secondary fine PM formation are reported.     

重型机动车实际排放特性与影响因素的实测研究

利用美国Sensors公司生产的SEMTECHD车载排放测试仪在上海随机选择了7辆重型柴油车开展实际道路的排放测试,该实验累积测试道路长度为186km,共取得29090个逐秒的有效工况点数据,其中城市主干道12979个,次干道12368个,快速干道3743个.给出了车辆在不同道路上的工况点分布,分析了速度、加速度对燃油消耗、尾气排放的影响.测试结果表明,在选定的城市道路上,车流的平均怠速工况比为17%,加速工况比23.6%,等速工况比为31.0%,减速工况比为28.5%.被测车辆的CO、THC、NOx平均排放因子分别为(4.41±2.46)g·km-1、(1.77±1.17)g·km-1和(6.96±1.93)g·km-1,车辆排放状况因车速、加速度等因素而不同.测试结果基本反映了目前上海道路的交通状况和柴油卡车的排放现状,同时也说明过低的车速和频繁加减速是加重机动车污染的重要原因.