Using internet search behavior to assess public awareness of protected wetlands

Improving public awareness of protected wetlands facilitates sustainable wetland management, which depends on public participation. One way of gauging public interest is by tracking Internet search behavior (ISB). We assessed public awareness of issues related to protected wetland areas (PWAs) in South Korea by examining the frequencies of specific queries (PWAs, Ramsar, Upo wetland, Sunchon Bay, etc.) using relative search volumes (RSVs) obtained from an Internet search engine. RSV shows how many times a search term is used relative to a second search term during a specific period. Public awareness of PWAs changed from 2007 to 2013. Initially the majority of Internet searches were related to the most well‐known tidal and inland wetlands Sunchon Bay and Upo wetlands, which are the largest existing wetlands in Korea with the greatest historical exposure. Public awareness, as reflected in RSVs, of wetlands increased significantly following PWA designation for the wetlands in 2008, which followed the Ramsar 10th Conference of Contracting Parties to the Convention on Wetlands (COP10) meeting. Public interest was strongly correlated to the number of news articles in the popular media, as evidenced by the increase in Internet searches for specific wetlands and words associated with specific wetlands. Correspondingly, the number of visitors to specific wetlands increased. To increase public interest in wetlands, wetland aspects that enhance wetland conservation should be promoted by the government and enhanced via public education. Our approach can be used to gauge public awareness and participation in a wide range of conservation efforts.     

Toward a delineation of the circumstances in which cooperation can be sustained in environmental and resource problems

Play in standard laboratory Public Good games suggests that on average, humans are quite prone to cooperate. Yet cooperation is often absent in real world social dilemmas, including many environmental problems. We propose that this discrepancy arises because in the Public Good game, the worst freeriders can do is to not contribute to the public account, while in many real world environmental situations freeriders can even appropriate contributions made by others before the public good is produced. We introduce the Claim Game that modifies the Public Good game by allowing for appropriating the contributions of others before the public good is produced. The impact of such possible takings on public good production is dramatic. No public good is produced, not even in the initial stages of interaction. We link our findings to the relevance of common pool games for modeling environmental problems, and stress the need to experimentally test environmental institutions within harsher social dilemmas than the standard Public Good game.     

环境公民诉讼的程序规制

赋予公民和环境NGO环境公益诉权,目前已成为我国法学界的一个共识。但是,环境公民诉讼制度不能仅仅赋予人们一项权利了事,还应该有完善的程序规则来规制和保障权利的行使。具体来说,应当建立以下程序规则:一是合理界定"诉的利益";二是合理设置起诉的前置程序;三是建立公益诉讼和私益诉讼双轨制;四是建立有效的诉讼成本控制机制;五是建立诉讼时效保障机制。     

Performance assessment for municipal solid waste collection in Taiwan

Collecting municipal solid waste (MSW) is a major and expensive task for local waste management authorities, thus efficient MSW collection is a necessity. This study presents a procedure for developing an aggregate indicator (AI) to assess MSW collection efficiency based on multiple factors. The applicabilities of various key performance indicators (KPIs) are evaluated based on five selection criteria, and five KPIs are chosen to form the AI. The relative efficiencies of local MSW collection services are analyzed by the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. A set of common weights for all five KPIs is then generated based on DEA results and four selection rules by modifying a previous approach. Finally, the proposed AI is applied to assess the MSW collection services provided by 307 local governments in Taiwan, and associated results are compared and discussed.     

环境影响评价公众参与制度比较法研究

当前,环境影响评价的公众参与程序因其独特作用在世界各国日益受到重视.中国于二十世纪九十年代把环评引入了公众参与程序,但时至今日,该程序并未完全发挥预期作用.通过对比以美国为代表的主要发达国家与中国关于环境影响评价制度公众参与程序的立法现状,从公众参与的主体、阶段、对象、方式以及信息公开、司法救济等方面总结当前中国在该程序立法中存在的缺陷,并提出相应的完善建议,以期从法律层面完善中国公众参与环境影响评价机制,最终实现环境正义.     

环境NGO介入环境公益诉讼的必要性和复杂性研究

环境NGO在环保活动中已成为不可忽视的重要力量.随着2015年中国新环保法的颁布,环境NGO已经具备发起环境公益诉讼的主体资格,但由于中国环境NGO自身能力不足,完成诉讼仍存在困难.文章以环境NGO介入环境公益诉讼活动为研究对象,研究了现有环保NGO介入环境公益诉讼的现模式,并分析了环保NGO介入环境公益诉讼的必要性与复杂性,指出要提升NGO介入环境公益诉讼的能力,必须从培育环境公益诉讼意识、加强自身能力改造及破解资金难题等方面着手.     

Institutional design in transformation: A comparative study of local irrigation governance in Uzbekistan

The irrigation sector constitutes the backbone of Uzbekistan's economy, providing social and economic stability in the region. The sector collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union, due to worsening of infrastructure conditions causing tensions among resource users. Subsequent irrigation management reforms were implemented in a top-down manner. More than a decade after the initial reforms – which established local Water Consumers Association (WCA) and transferred operation and maintenance responsibilities for on-farm irrigation canals – the poor performance of these associations is still apparent, illustrating the heritage of the strong role of state agencies in Uzbek water management that still affects collective irrigation management today. This paper identifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for successfully managing common pool resources (CPRs) and, more specifically, irrigation canal maintenance in the rural Bukhara region of Uzbekistan. Fifteen WCAs were examined regarding conditions that may facilitate successful irrigation canal maintenance. Methods involved focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with the associations concerned. Data gathered was analyzed using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The results indicate that two paths of local factors can lead to well-maintained irrigation canals: (1) the combination of appropriate chairmanship skills with sustainable resource appropriation or (2) the combination of appropriate chairmanship skills with the presence of effective participatory governance. The results also illustrate the role of path-dependence and traditional co-production of irrigation management in Uzbekistan.     

检察机关提起环境公益诉讼理论及实践探索

在环境问题日益凸显的大背景下,环境公益诉讼备受关注。无论是新修订的《民事诉讼法》,还是2015年1月1日起正式实施的《环境保护法》,均首次将环境公益诉讼制度予以确认。党的十八届四中全会明确提出,应探索建立检察机关提起公益诉讼制度。2015年7月2日,经全国人大常委会授权,最高人民检察院对外公布了《检察机关提起公益诉讼试点方案》,环境公益诉讼迎来新的篇章。但是,检察机关提起环境公益诉讼虽优势明显,却任重道远,相关制度与机制仍在试点与完善之中。因此,本文就检察机关提起环境公益诉讼的理论与实践进行梳理,以对此问题做有益探索。     

生态足迹方法的理论解析

论文系统地解析了生态足迹概念，在简要介绍生态足迹账户框架建立的假设条件，计算方法的基础上，系统总结了生态足迹最近的国际研究进展。同时，重点介绍了生态足迹计算中容易引起误解和疏忽的两个问题：化石能源用地的处理，均衡因子和产量因子的计算。在此基础上，从生态足迹计算过程中化石能源的处理和“利息”的处理两个角度评价了生态足迹方法的局限性。同时从贸易的处理缺乏可持续性基础，忽视国家和区域尺度上空间地理情况的差异，忽视人类社会对自然资产“利息”流的积累和储存，忽视自然资产存量的状况四个角度，分析了生态足迹在不同尺度上应用中存在的问题，最后通过将生态足迹分析还原到IPAT等式，并从热力学和生态经济学的角度解释了现有生态足迹分析政策建议少并且雷同、及其政策建议缺乏可操作性的实质价值的原因。     

进一步保持和发扬我党的“真正优势”

本文在全面论述邓小平同志关于“共同的理想”和“铁的纪律”是我党“真正优势”光辉论断的基础上，指出目前我们在保持和发扬“真正优势”方面存在的不足，并认为中国共产党要顺利解决“两大历史性课题”，必须进一步保持和发扬自己的“真正优势”。