Assessing Tourists' Preferences for Recreational and Environmental Management Programs Central to the Sustainable Development of a Tourism Area in the Dominican Republic

The main goals of this paper are to (1) highlight the need for sustainable development as a means to conserve natural resources and the environment, which often represent the basis for tourism development, (2) illustrate the importance of assessing tourists' preferences when designing programs and policies central to the sustainable development of a tourism area, and (3) study tourists' interests in sustainable development. With these goals in mind, 180 tourists from Europe, Latin America, and North America were interviewed as they were leaving the resort region of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. The main factors that they considered when deciding where to go on a beach vacation were evaluated, as well as their preferences regarding four programs designed to improve recreational and environmental management of the area. Preferences by tourists were elicited both in monetary and non-monetary terms. This paper reports the non-monetary analysis of the data. The results indicate that clean ocean water and beaches, quality of services, and price are the most important factors considered by the respondents before deciding to come to Punta Cana. It was not possible to obtain reliable responses on how tourists perceived the four programs contributing to the sustainable development of Punta Cana. Nevertheless, they expressed high interest and willingness to pay for two of these programs: the outdoor aquarium and the Water Management Program. The results reported in this paper show how important it is to elicit tourists' preferences of programs central to the sustainable development of tourism areas since these preferences can drive managers' development decisions in more sustainable directions.     

Vietnamese Uplands: Environmental and Socio-Economic Perspective of Forest Land Allocation and Deforestation Process

Vietnam, in the ongoing transition to market economies, has to cope with high rural poverty and a dramatic process of forest loss and environment degradation, particularly in the mountainous regions. The government considers rural poverty as the main cause of environment degradation, associated with slash-and-burn cultivation and to an unclear definition of property rights on forest land. In 1993, the government launched a Forest Land Allocation programme aiming to lease forest lands to individual households and, on this basis, to solve food security problems, halt the increasing environment degradation and preserve the remaining forests.To evaluate the results of this land reform policy, two upland pilot communes have been intensively monitored. The environmental and economic impacts of the forest land reform allocation in the two study areas are presented, after providing a background on the Vietnamese situation of mountain zones. On the basis of these findings, it is discussed as to whether the current forest land allocation process may actually promote local development and natural resources conservation, and under what conditions. Deforestation problems must be tackled also with new macroeconomic policies (e.g. credit programmes to support sustainable agriculture practices) and social policy (e.g. reduction of demographic pressure), together with the reform of the State institutions (e.g. State Forest Enterprises) involved in management of the forest areas.     

湖泊型水源地管理研究——以苏州市太湖水源地为例

饮用水安全是最大的民生工程,也是自然资源管理研究的热点。基于实地调研、部门访谈和制度条文的梳理与分析,以苏州市太湖水源地为例研究湖泊型水源地管理体制。研究表明：我国水源地管理由国家、省、市、县的法律法规、规章和规范性文件构成相对完善的制度体系,具有水资源和水环境分割管理、流域管理和行政区管理交错的制度特征,初步具备了综合管理的架构;水源保护缺乏流域管治的思维,农村面源污染治理制度支撑不足;在管理手段上以命令控制型手段为主,经济激励与公众参与不足。建立水源地综合管理协调机制,完善经济激励手段,推进公众参与,实施水源地管理共同责任机制将有利于提高水源地管理效率     

Efficient energy management strategies for hybrid electric vehicles using shuffled frog-leaping algorithm

This paper proposes two novel approaches for the problem of energy management in hybrid electric vehicles. Shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA) is a recently proposed population-based optimization algorithm. This paper first formulates energy management as an optimization problem and optimizes the problem using SFLA. Then the paper makes use of SFLA as a training algorithm to train artificial neural network (ANN) and this SFLA-trained ANN is used for energy management. Interestingly, the proposed approaches of this paper are found to be robust and more efficient than contemporary approaches.     

炼铁工序减污降碳协同增效技术评估方法研究

为推广减污降碳协同控制技术,以炼铁工序为研究对象,从协同度、成本收益和环境影响 3 个维度评价炼铁工序源头、过程节能技术、末端治理技术和低碳技术的协同控制效益.从污染物和碳排放协同度分析来看,源头、过程节能技术能有效推动炼铁工序污染物和碳排放的协同减排,而末端控制技术对污染物和温室气体的减排不具有协同性.绿氢冶炼技术和熔剂性球团制备技术污碳减排协同度较高,此外高炉喷吹焦炉煤气技术、高炉煤气回收技术和高炉热风炉双预热能协同减少VOCs和碳排放.在当前我国碳交易价格条件下,从成本收益分析来看节能技术和污染物末端治理技术具有可推广性.随着碳交易价格的上涨,绿氢冶炼和碳捕集(CCS)技术减排成本呈下降趋势.绿氢冶炼技术、污染物末端治理技术最能有效地减少环境影响,其他节能技术也能相应减少环境影响,而现有条件下CCS技术的实施会增加对环境的影响.综合污染物和温室气体协同减排的协同度、经济效益和环境效益评估,炼铁工序中源头防治和节能技术可作为我国现阶段减污降碳协同增效技术进行推广,随着未来碳交易价格的增长和能源的转型,绿氢冶炼技术和CCS技术具有较大应用前景.     

VOLUNTARY AGREEMENTS IN WATERSHED PROTECTION EXPERIENCES FROM COSTA RICA

This article analyses the application of voluntary environmental agreements (VEAs) in watershed protection in Costa Rica. Next to an involvement of private energy firms, the Costa Rican state, and farmers, the participation of NGOs is a remarkable feature. From an analysis of these multi-stakeholder arrangements, it is concluded that these arrangements bring benefits to all actors involved. VEAs have been able to grow as powerful policy instruments, generating positive environmental effects. Essential is their embedded ness in a broader set of environmental policies, especially related to forest management Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

基于二分图理论的产业环境资源竞争网络模型研究——以广州开发区为例

采用二分图理论来研究区域内不同产业部门或排污企业之间对于环境容量的竞争关系,建立产业环境资源竞争网络模型,并从点权分布和加权集聚系数等方面加以分析,依据强关联矩阵来确定排污企业对于区域环境容量需求强度的聚类情况.在此基础上,进一步依据2010年广州开发区的排污企业数据进行了实证研究,分析了开发区产业现状,并对未来生态工业园区建设中产业的发展提出了指导性建议.采用复杂网络模型来分析企业环境外部性的方法,不仅较传统的经济度量方式有理论上创新,而且根据区域不同情况来构建模型,从复杂系统视角对环境管理体系进行分析,有利于改进环境管理方式.     

基于制度与技术情境的企业绿色管理战略研究

企业绿色管理已有研究将制度和技术在两个不同的领域进行分析,忽视了绿色管理是对制度和技术压力的反应,两种压力同时并存甚至相互影响.技术创新的"正外部性"和环境问题的"负外部性"要求在分析企业绿色管理行为时,整合制度和环境技术创新以及二者的相互关系.已有文献普遍强调作为强制性制度的环境规制对技术创新的驱动效果,而较少关注制度压力与技术创新的交互作用.通过对企业面临的制度压力和技术压力相互关系的分析,本文构建了基于制度与技术情境的企业绿色管理战略选择模型.企业绿色管理战略是制度压力和环境技术等因素相互作用的结果,对制度压力的反应有助于技术效率的提高,而企业所处的制度情境也影响到其对技术压力的响应方式.针对我国目前的环境监管现状,本文为制定有助于清洁技术采纳和扩散的环境政策提出相应建议.