Climate hazards: Lessons from recent events in the United States

Three recent cases of climate extremes are studied to identify human impacts and response strategies and to identify common characteristics that may help illuminate the nature of climate hazards. The 1980 heat wave in the central United States, 1981 cold wave in Boston, Massachusetts, and recent flooding and lake level rise in northern Utah, illustrate several important aspects of climate hazards that separate them from the more traditional set of catastrophic events (e.g. tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes) usually dealt with by hazards research and management. Among those characteristics are an emphasis on health impacts rather than physical damage, accumulative effects rather than short shocks, a tendency for impacts to accrue to certain socio-economic classes, and relatively slow onset. The management and research implications of these hazard characteristics are explored.     

发展理论与环境保护

从２０世纪发展研究的进展中，阐述了发展的含义，二战后发展理论学。分析了２０世纪５０掉代的发展观－经济增长论，不可持续发的经济畸增的生产与消费模式使生态环境和自然资源遭到严重破坏，人类生存与发展面临严峻挑战，重点阐明 了合理利用自然资源地球环境的发展观－可持续发展理诊及其对策思路，     

Human adaptation to climate change: a review of three historical cases and some general perspectives

To study mitigation and adaptation to climate change, social scientists have drawn on different approaches, particularly sociological approaches to the future and comparative history of past societies. These two approaches frame the social and temporal boundaries of decision-making collectivities in different ways. A consideration of the responses to climate variability in three historical cases, the Classic Maya of Mexico and Central America, the Viking settlements in Greenland, and the US Dust Bowl, shows the value of integrating these two approaches.     

Climate Convention Implementation: An Opportunity for the Pacific Island Nations to Move Toward Sustainable Energy Systems

This article does not focus on adaptation or mitigation policy directly but on an allied opportunity that exists for the Pacific Islands via the auspices of the Climate Convention, because the existing very costly energy systems used in the Pacific Island region are fossil-fuel dependent. It is argued here that efforts can be made towards the development of energy systems that are ecologically sustainable because Pacific Island nations are eligible to receive assistance to introduce renewable energy technology and pursue energy conservation via implementation mechanisms of the Climate Convention and, in particular, through transfer of technology and via joint implementation. It is contended that assistance in the form of finance, technology, and human resource development from developed countries and international organizations would provide sustainable benefits in improving the local Pacific Island environments. It is also emphasized that mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is not the responsibility of the Pacific Islands as they contribute very little on a per capita global scale and a tiny proportion of total global greenhouse gas emissions.     

渭河径流特性研究

由于工农业的快速发展,渭河径流逐年减少,污染加重,河道淤积不断发展,洪涝灾害时有发生,对中下游人民生产生活造成严重影响.为了减少洪害,减轻污染,必须保证渭河常年径流稳定.     

Significant developments in sustainable development law and governance: A proposal

This article develops a practical proposal for progress on sustainable development law. It examines the prospects for an international sustainable development law to provide a framework for more effective, coherent governance. Sustainable development law is briefly defined and an analytical framework is provided. Different degrees of integration between economic, social and environmental law are described. Certain principles of international law related to sustainable development are also highlighted. It is argued that these principles may serve to guide law‐makers and jurists where social, economic and environmental law and policy conflict or overlap. Continuing, underlying questions of sustainable development governance are addressed and its global frameworks analysed. The article also focuses on the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in August‐September 2002, and its specific mandate for the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) to take related legal developments into account. The article advances a proposal: that governments, economic, social and environmental intergovernmental organizations and other actors establish a ‘network of inquiry’ with members from relevant groups, including legal and academic organizations, and other expert groups, in order to follow, research, analyse and debate legal developments in a balanced way.     

美国环保超级基金制度及其实施

对美国环保超级基金制度的概念和内容作了简要的介绍,并指出了其实施过程中的成功与不足,以期为我国环境法制的完善提供有益的借鉴。     

The composition and environmental hazard of copper slags in the context of the Basel Convention

A recent comprehensive review of the characteristics and utilization of copper slags encourages (properly) several applications for this important pyrometallurgical byproduct. However, the review does not include possible environmental effects from these slags. The United Nations Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal characterizes copper compounds that exhibit specified hazard characteristics as hazardous wastes. In 1996, the Convention considered further characterization of these and other compounds and substances. The final characterization of copper slags is as non-hazardous, i.e., exempt from control. This decision was based in part (if not largely) on the data that are presented here. Literature reports were used to accumulate data describing the chemical composition and acid leaching of commercial copper slags from three countries. From these data, average values of chemical composition and their statistical confidence limits (95%) were calculated. The variability of the chemical analyses of three commercial slags produced over 19 or 20 months were statistically analyzed and shown to be small. The concentrations of toxic heavy metals in the slags are low and the frequency distributions of the values are narrow. Most of the data are normally distributed, validating the use of the statistics used and permitting predictions of likely values. The amounts of heavy metals extracted by an aggressive standard acid leach procedure are low and well below the United States. regulatory levels derived from drinking water standards. The results for total composition and leaching illustrate why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made a regulatory determination that such slags are not hazardous wastes. Later, in 1996, the Basel Convention Technical Working Group concurred and the Parties to the Convention adopted their recommendation.     

Untangling unexpected terrestrial conservation challenges arising from the historical human exploitation of marine mammals in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean

Intensive human exploitation of the Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella) in its primary population centre on sub-Antarctic South Georgia, as well as on other sub-Antarctic islands and parts of the South Shetland Islands, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rapidly brought populations to the brink of extinction. The species has now recovered throughout its original distribution. Non-breeding and yearling seals, almost entirely males, from the South Georgia population now disperse in the summer months far more widely and in higher numbers than there is evidence for taking place in the pre-exploitation era. Large numbers now haul out in coastal terrestrial habitats in the South Orkney Islands and also along the north-east and west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula to at least Marguerite Bay. In these previously less- or non-visited areas, the seals cause levels of damage likely never to have been experienced previously to fragile terrestrial habitats through trampling and over-fertilisation, as well as eutrophication of sensitive freshwater ecosystems. This increased area of summer impact is likely to have further synergies with aspects of regional climate change, including reduction in extent and duration of sea ice permitting seals access farther south, and changes in krill abundance and distribution. The extent and conservation value of terrestrial habitats and biodiversity now threatened by fur seal distribution expansion, and the multiple anthropogenic factors acting in synergy both historically and to the present day, present a new and as yet unaddressed challenge to the agencies charged with ensuring the protection and conservation of Antarctica’s unique ecosystems.     

黄河支流非点源污染物(N、P)排放量的估算

为了估算黄河支流域非点源污染物的排放量,为今后黄河流域的治理提供科学的依据,对黄河流域的6个子流域(渭河流域、泾河流域、洛河流域、无定河流域、窟野河流域、黄甫川流域)进行了水样、土样和泥沙样的采集分析;结合6个子流域的多年水文资料,利用已经被证明了的平均浓度法对黄河6个子流域的氮磷污染物进行了定量描述,估算出各个流域的氮磷排放量.结果表明,95%的全磷、大于53%的全氮来自于非点源污染,非点源污染是造成黄河污染的主要原因.各流域非点源污染的发生具有明显的地域分异特征.硝态氮主要来自于渭河,铵态氮主要来自于泾河,其次是渭河.从全氮看,绝大部分氮来自于渭河和泾河.全磷则主要来自于泾河,其次是渭河.泾河和渭河是6条河流中对黄河污染物排放量贡献最大的2条河流.