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.     

我国强制性清洁生产审核法律政策形成过程的研究与分析

在资源短缺和环境容量不足的双重约束下。清洁生产成为我国工业可持续发展的必然选择，而清洁生产制度的制定和完善一是促进我国清洁生产向纵深发展的关键。本文回顾了我国清洁生产领域相关政策法规的制定和实施情况，对存在的问题进行了总结分析。并对2005年12月13日国家环保总局出台的《重点企业清洁生产审核程序的规定》做了重点说明,提出了目前面临的主要任务。     

Modelling individual preferences for environmental policy drivers: Empirical evidence of Italian lifestyle changes using a latent class approach

Degraded air quality severely affects the health of citizens worldwide. The design of effective policies requires exploring public preferences for environmental and air quality policy instruments. Within the EC-FP7 SEFIRA project, using a choice experiment that stresses the trade-offs between attributes, this study investigates public preferences for environmental policy drivers in Italy. The main objective is to investigate the role played by selected policy drivers in determining policy preferences, complemented by elasticity and willingness to pay estimations. Preference heterogeneity and the role of socio-economic and attitudinal variables are explored with a latent class model over 2400 respondents sampled across Italy. The results allow identifying the different role played by the policy drivers across the classes. It emerged that most of the respondents (43%) are particularly sensitive to the cost components (cost sensitive respondents). The remaining respondents instead show an important sensitivity towards personal engagement in term of changes in the mobility and eating habits (lifestyle-change sensitive respondents). However, while 29% of them perceive these habits’ changes as negatively impacting on the personal utility, the other 28% of respondents translate the potential changes in the habitual behaviour of driving and eating as environmental and health benefits. Based on the modelling results, potential policies are simulated reporting respondents’ reaction to selected scenarios. It shows the crucial role played by reduction of premature deaths due to atmospheric pollution and measure cost.     

中国城镇化态势分析和可持续城镇化政策建议

在阐述今后15年中国城镇化面临的就业和收入差距、资源和环境、区域发展、政府管治等四大挑战之后，分析了到2020年中国城镇化水平年均增长0．6、0.8、1．0和1．2个百分点的4种态势。如按1978—2002年城镇年均提供636万人就业考虑，到2020年中国城镇化水平年均增长不宜超过0．7个百分点；如果考虑到2005年上半年城镇安排595万人就业，则城镇化水平年均增长1．2个百分点也是可行的。但是，对于所有4种态势，土地短缺都是一个棘手的问题。最后就可持续城镇化提出的政策建议包括：①引导农村富余劳动力向城镇有序转移；②贯彻落实大中小城市和小城镇协调发展的方针；③高效利用和节约资源，保护生态环境；④统筹城乡规划，加强对经济区发展的引导；⑤贯彻落实工业反哺农业，城市支持农村的方针；⑥建立多元化的城镇基础设施投资体制，大力吸引民间和国际资本；⑦全面推进城镇管理体制创新，制定公众参与政策；⑧坚持按城镇化的客观规律办事，控制地方政府的城镇化热情。     

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.     

地方政府推进循环经济发展的局限性及对策研究——以山东省日照市为例

在分析日照市发展循环经济的路径、措施和难题的基础上，研究了地方政府的自利性、选择性偏差、调控手段和行政分割等方面的局限性，提出了规范中央政府和地方政府关系、构建科学的政绩考核体系、加强区域分类指导、加快立法与强化执法、制定相应的经济制度与政策等发展循环经济的建议。     

Why the IPCC should evolve in response to the UNFCCC bottom-up strategy adopted in Paris? An opinion from the French Association for Disaster Risk Reduction

The levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere keep increasing every year, and despite the adoption of the Paris agreement, one cannot expect any significant dip in the trend in the near future. We may therefore legitimately question the efficiency of the current governance system, notably concerning the interplay between science and policy. The strategy adopted by the UNFCCC in Paris contrasts with the strategy adopted in Kyoto, as it endorses a dynamic that is more bottom-up. Its success will depend greatly on the ability of the actors to mobilise on climate issues and to find ways to work together. Scientific expertise has a key role to play to this respect. This paper is a reflection led by the French Association for Disaster Risk Reduction on how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could evolve in order to usefully accompany that strategy. Introducing more reflexivity in the assessment process and widening aspects of the expertise to a more diverse and transdisciplinary range of actors could improve the treatment of uncertainties, multi-scale interactions and the appropriation of expertise, as well as the integration of adaptation and mitigation policies. In practical terms, this could involve more working groups, which could become more focused, drawing up shorter but more frequent reports, and taking account of the “grey” expert literature. The implementation of such an approach merits further investigation, because these improvements could help address the governance challenges in climate change.     

Review of water-energy-food Nexus tools to improve the Nexus modelling approach for integrated policy making

The synergies and trade-offs between the water, energy, and food sectors are represented by the Water-Energy-Food Nexus. The Nexus Approach is an integrated decision making practice that can be used by policy makers to optimize these synergies and manage trade-offs. In this paper, the direction of the Nexus Approach regarding the development of modelling tools is explored. The objective of this paper is to review the existing Nexus modelling tools used for integrated policy making to determine and to help policy makers, practitioners, and agencies trying to implement the Nexus Approach to identify a tool that is most suited to their modelling needs. The predominant capabilities of the current tools lie in the understanding of Nexus complexity, consideration of financial elements in the tools, recognition of the importance of multiple Nexus Approach directions, incorporation of different time scales, and enhanced tool accessibility. The main limitations are the extensive data requirements of current tools, and the poor synergy between tools assessing individual Nexus areas. This enhanced overview of the existing tools allows policy makers to maximize the synergies between the Nexus areas, to avoid consumption dilemmas, and to facilitate sustainable development.     

Exploring public perceptions of solutions to tree diseases in the UK: Implications for policy-makers

Tree diseases are on the increase in many countries and the implications of their appearance can be political, as well as ecological and economic. Preventative policy approaches to tree diseases are difficult to formulate because dispersal pathways for pest and pathogens are numerous, poorly known and likely to be beyond human management control. Genomic techniques could offer the quickest and most predictable approach to developing a disease tolerant native ash.The population of European Ash (Fraxinus Excelsior) has suffered major losses in the last decade, due to the onset of Hymenoscyphus fraxineus (previously called Chalara Fraxinea) commonly known in the UK as ash dieback. This study presents evidence on the public acceptability of tree-breed solutions to the spread of Chalara, with the main aim to provide science and policy with an up-stream ‘steer’ on the likely public acceptability of different tree breeding solutions. The findings showed that whilst there was a firm anti-GM and ‘we shouldn’t tamper with nature’ attitude among UK publics, there was an equally firm and perhaps slightly larger pragmatic attitude that GM (science and technology) should be used if there is a good reason to do so, for example if it can help protect trees from disease and help feed the world. The latter view was significantly stronger among younger age groups (Millennials), those living in urban areas and when the (GM)modified trees were destined for urban and plantation, rather than countryside settings. Overall, our findings suggest that the UK government could consider genomic solutions to tree breeding with more confidence in the future, as large and influential publics appear to be relaxed about the use of genomic techniques to increase tolerance of trees to disease.     

论长江流域生态危机与生态建设的对策

揭示了长江流域大面积山丘、水系生态系统普遍恶化,特别是中上游地区水土流失严重,以及因此而带来的一系列严重后果。根据史料、统计资料及实测成果等,分析了生态环境恶化的原因,着重研究了水土流失等生态失调现象与森林植被的紧密关系及其演变规律,探讨了进行绿色生态建设的必要性、可能性与可行性。最后提出了建设长江流域防护林体系的宏观战略和微观措施。