积极推行ISO14000，促进中国商品的出口

介绍了国际贸易中的环境壁垒问题，提出了解决环境壁垒，促进中国商品出口的具体办法。     

Comment: Investor demand and spot commodity prices

Tilton et al. claim in their article “Investor demand and spot commodity prices” to show that “investor demand can be pushing up a commodity's price even when investor stocks are falling.” In the present comment, it is argued that in both the cases described by Tilton et al., investors are supplying the market, putting physical material into it, rather than adding to demand. Thus, the reasoning by Tilton et al. is not concerned with the phenomenon referred to in the traditional theory, where, in the absence of changes in demand and supply fundamentals, prices rise as a result of increased investor demand for futures contracts.     

地球化学元素记录的沂河中游16.9~4.7 ka BP气候变化

临沂商品城剖面记录了末次冰消期至中全新世沂河中游的气候环境变化,其地球化学元素的古环境意义显著。分析表明末次冰消期至中全新世沂河中游的古气候环境经历了5个阶段:(1)16866～13630cal a B.P.气候回暖但仍以冷湿为主;(2)13630～10440cal a B.P.气候变冷变干,并记录到了YD气候事件;(3)10440～8670cal a B.P.暖湿气候显著;(4)8670～6420cal a B.P.冷暖波动仍以暖湿为主;(5)6420～4698cal a B.P.稳定的暖干气候环境。     

Can oil prices help estimate commodity futures prices? The cases of copper and silver

There is an extensive literature on modeling the stochastic process of commodity futures. It has been shown that models with several risk factors are able to adequately fit both the level and the volatility structure of observed transactions with reasonable low errors.     

Evaluating Private Land Conservation in the Cape Lowlands,South Africa

Abstract: Evaluation is important for judiciously allocating limited conservation resources and for improving conservation success through learning and strategy adjustment. We evaluated the application of systematic conservation planning goals and conservation gains from incentive‐based stewardship interventions on private land in the Cape Lowlands and Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. We collected spatial and nonspatial data (2003–2007) to determine the number of hectares of vegetation protected through voluntary contractual and legally nonbinding (informal) agreements with landowners; resources spent on these interventions; contribution of the agreements to 5‐ and 20‐year conservation goals for representation and persistence in the Cape Lowlands of species and ecosystems; and time and staff required to meet these goals. Conservation gains on private lands across the Cape Floristic Region were relatively high. In 5 years, 22,078 ha (27,800 ha of land) and 46,526 ha (90,000 ha of land) of native vegetation were protected through contracts and informal agreements, respectively. Informal agreements often were opportunity driven and cheaper and faster to execute than contracts. All contractual agreements in the Cape Lowlands were within areas of high conservation priority (identified through systematic conservation planning), which demonstrated the conservation plan's practical application and a high level of overlap between resource investment (approximately R1.14 million/year in the lowlands) and priority conservation areas. Nevertheless, conservation agreements met only 11% of 5‐year and 9% of 20‐year conservation goals for Cape Lowlands and have made only a moderate contribution to regional persistence of flora to date. Meeting the plan's conservation goals will take three to five times longer and many more staff members to maintain agreements than initially envisaged.     

Optimal stabilization of the copper market: The problem of information

This paper investigates the scope for stabilizing commodity prices by buffer stock interventions. Optimal control is used, rather than simulation, to evaluate the scope for intervention at best. Applications to a world copper market model show that substantial but extensive gains to stabilization are possible. These gains cannot be realised by traditional bandwidth decision rules. An important difficulty is setting the level at which prices should be stabilized. The lack of this information severely reduces the achievable gains.     

A Paradigm of International Environmental Law: The Case for Controlling the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes

The production of large quantities of wastes globally has created a commercial activity involving the transfrontier shipments of hazardous wastes, intended to be managed at economically attractive waste-handling facilities located elsewhere. In fact, huge quantities of hazardous wastes apparently travel the world in search of “acceptable” waste management facilities. For instance, within the industrialized countries alone, millions of tonnes of potentially hazardous waste cross national frontiers each year on their way for recycling or to treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) because there is no local disposal capacity for these wastes, or because legal disposal or reuse in a foreign country may be more environmentally sound, or managing the wastes in the foreign country may be less expensive than at home. The cross-boundary traffic in hazardous wastes has lately been under close public scrutiny, however, resulting in the accession of several international agreements and laws to regulate such activities. This paper discusses and analyzes the most significant control measures and major agreements in this new commercial activity involving hazardous wastes. In particular, the discussion recognizes the difficulties with trying to implement the relevant international agreements among countries of vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds. Nonetheless, it is also noted that global environmental agreements will generally be a necessary component of ensuring adequate environmental protection for the world community—and thus a need for the careful implementation of such agreements and regulations.     

Illinois redesigns its ambient water quality monitoring network

Illinois has been operating an ambient water quality network of almost 600 stations for several years. In 1977 changes in program emphasis toward intensive monitoring, the need for improved procedures and quality control in monitoring operations, and the desire to create a single data base of all Illinois State monitoring data, resulted in a redesign of the ambient monitoring program.A unique cooperative program between the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the US Geological Survey provides for their monitoring a portion of the network. The Survey provides flow data at most network stations as well as extensive manpower training, equipment, data processing, and program quality control. Informal agreements with other agencies have permitted a great reduction in the monitoring effort required by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.     

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.     

Non-renewable resource prices: Deterministic or stochastic trends?

In this paper, we examine temporal properties of 11 natural resource real price series from 1870 to 1990. Recent studies by Ahrens and Sharma [Trends in natural resource commodity prices: deterministic or stochastic? J. Environ. Econom. Manage. 33(1997)59–74], Berck and Roberts [Natural resource prices: will they ever turn up? J. Environ. Econom. Manage. 31(1996)65–78], and Slade [Grade selection under uncertainty: least cost last and other anomalies, J. Environ. Econom. Manage. 15(1988)189–205], among others, find that many non-renewable resource prices have a stochastic trend. We revisit this issue by employing a Lagrangian multiplier unit root test that allows for two endogenously determined structural breaks with and without a quadratic trend. Contrary to previous research, we find evidence against the unit root hypothesis for all price series. Our findings support characterizing natural resource prices as stationary around deterministic trends with structural breaks. We additionally show that both pre-testing for unit roots with breaks and allowing for breaks in the forecast model can improve forecast accuracy. Overall, the results in this paper are important in both a positive and normative sense; without an appropriate understanding of the dynamics of a time series, empirical verification of theories, forecasting, and proper inference are potentially fruitless.