How local environmental stewardship diversifies democracy

Although recent studies have suggested that environmental participation may be a countertrend to decreasing civic engagement in the United States, there are very few empirical studies that examine these claims. This paper studies participation in local environmental stewardship as such a countertrend. Using data collected from participants in the Watershed Stewards Academies (WSAs) of Maryland, we assess how these organisations are successful in mobilising individuals to be environmentally and civically engaged in their communities. We argue that hybrid organisations like the WSAs represent a countertrend to diminishing rates of civic engagement by offering citizens what a “paper-membership” cannot: the chance to lead their own environmental restoration projects, create tangible change in their communities, and network with other like-minded individuals. These environmental programmes serve to diversify democracy at the local level, providing a unique form of civic engagement and enriching the connections between individual citizens and their civic communities.     

Challenges and Opportunities for Creating Intelligent Hazard Alerts: The “FloodHippo” Prototype

Disasters evolving from hazards are a persistent and deadly occurrence in the United States. Despite this, hazard alerts have remained spatially vague, temporally imprecise, and lack actionable information. These deficiencies indicate a divide between the status quo and what is possible given modern environmental models, geographic information systems (GIS), and smartphone capabilities. This work describes an alternative, prototype system, “FloodHippo,” which integrates operational model outputs, cloud‐based GIS, and expanded communication channels to provide personal and interactive disaster alerts for floods. The precepts and methods underpinning FloodHippo apply equally to other disasters that evolve over space and time, presenting the opportunity for a more intelligent disaster response system. The development of such a system would not only minimize current shortcomings in disaster alerts but also improve resilience through individual action, along with community, academic, and federal cooperation.     

A tale of ‘fat cats’ and ‘stupid activists’: contested values,governance and reflexivity in the brno railway station controversy

ABSTRACT

The article explores one of the biggest controversies over sustainability in modern Czech history, a protracted conflict over whether the Brno railway station should be re-built in a new location. By examining the language of the interaction between a ‘modernizing discourse’ and a ‘sustainability discourse’, the article highlights reflexivity as analytic enterprise that bares the governance dimension of policy conflicts. The reflexive analysis focuses on how actors justify their positions, how they distinguish themselves from their opponents and how they express trust in their own group. It reveals that both discourses are not only related to the re-location issue per se, but that they entail contested notions of legitimate knowledge and modes of governance. Since such power contest is common in sustainability controversies, the reflexive analysis suggests a novel analytical agenda for addressing policy conflicts in sustainability issues.     

浅议中国环境影响评价的公众参与制度

公众参与制度在环境影响评价中起着重要作用,环境影响评价制度中公众参与制度的产生和发展可以总结为三个阶段.通过环境信息公开、扩大参与范围、加强监督管理、细化程序、提高环境意识等方面提出完善环境影响评价中的公众参与制度的一些建议.     

公众参与环评听证法律问题研究

对于比较敏感或涉及面较广建设项目的环境影响评价公众参与的表达途径,一般采用听证会。在中国,公众参与环评听证会,在听证公告、代表遴选、政府回应方面都面临困境,需要分别找寻出路:对于听证公告,要明确适用范围、确立合理期限、完善内容规定、采用合理方式来应对;对于代表遴选,建立一整套行之有效的制度势在必行;对于政府回应,建立一个合理的评估系统、启动司法审查不失为良策。     

珠海市民及高校学生对垃圾分类和减废的认识和参与调查比较研究

珠海市在垃圾分类和减废相关政策的执行过程中,市民的意识和参与起着至关重要的作用。本研究对珠海市民及高校学生有关垃圾分类和减废的观念和行为进行问卷调查,对垃圾分类和减废的现状和困难进行了分析、比较和探讨,并对问题的解决提出了建议。     

环境信息公开——一项新的环境管理手段

环境信息公开是继指令性控制手段和经济手段后一项新的环境管理方法。该手段通过对环境信息的公开来加强环境管理的公众参与和监督,从而促使污染者重视环境保护,加强污染治理。文中对环境信息公开的作用和类型作了简要的阐述,并重点介绍了企业环境信息公开的设计原则、方法和步骤。同时以呼和浩特市为例,对企业环境信息公开的方案进行了初步的设计。      

Public participation in NGO-oriented communities for disaster prevention and mitigation (N-CDPM) in the Longmen Shan fault area during the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquake periods

ABSTRACT

The Longmen Shan fault area in southwest China is one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. The epicenters of the two most recent earthquakes, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (8.0?Ms) and the 2013 Lushan earthquake (7.0?Ms), both of which caused serious losses, were only 85?km apart. Community-based disaster risk reduction is the foundation of the disaster management system pyramid and is critical to the success of ‘sustainable hazard mitigation’. Based on multiple collaborative stakeholder perspectives, this paper examines public participation in an NGO-oriented Community for Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (N-CDPM) in the period between the two earthquakes as a multi-stage problem; N-CDPM establishment, normal operations, disaster testing, and continuous improvement. Multi-stage field research was conducted in the affected areas in the Longmen Shan fault area to examine the collaboration in each stage, after which the differences were compared across the four stages based on eight key indices; scales, core stakeholders, core network stability, mean number of lines, mean collaborative level, governments, and individual and public organization participation. The government participation, individual participation, and public organization participation are then discussed. This paper provides a novel research approach to CDPM in multiple earthquake regions and gives rich insights into the collaboration between the government and the public for N-CDPM.     

关于在环境影响评价过程中开展公众参与的思考

通过对不同形式公众参与优缺点的分析,提出今后有效开展公众参与的建议,旨在探讨《中华人民共和国环境影响评价法》实施后,中国应如何开展环境影响评价中的公众参与。     

Climate pioneership and leadership in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities

ABSTRACT

Innovative climate governance in small-to-medium-sized structurally disadvantaged cities (SDCs) are assessed. Considering their deeply ingrained severe economic and social problems it would be reasonable to assume that SDCs act primarily as climate laggards or at best as followers. However, novel empirical findings show that SDCs are capable of acting as climate pioneers. Different types and styles of climate leadership and pioneership and how they operate within multi-level and polycentric governance structures are identified and assessed. SDCs seem relatively readily willing to adopt transformational climate pioneership styles to create ‘green’ jobs, for example, in the offshore wind energy sector and with the aim of improving their poor external image. However, in order to sustain transformational climate pioneership they often have to rely on support from ‘higher’ levels of governance. For SDCs, there is a tension between learning from each other’s best practice and fierce economic competition in climate innovation.