Modeling of air quality with a modified two-dimensional Eulerian model： A case study in the Pearl River Delta （PRD） region of China

A modified two-dimensional Eulerian air quality model was used to simulate both the gaseous and particulate pollutant concentrations during October 21-24, 2004 in the Pearl River Delta （PRD） region, China. The most significant improvement to the model is the added capability to predict the secondary organic aerosols （SOA） concentrations because of the inclusion of the SOA formation chemistry. The meteorological input data were prepared using the CALMET meteorological model. The concentrations of aerosol-bound species such as NO3^-, NH4^＋, SO4^2-, and SOA were calculated in the fine particle size range （〈2.5 μm）. The results of the two-dimensional model were compared to the measurements at the ground level during the PRD Intensive Monitoring Campaign （IMC）. Overall, there were good agreements between the measured and modeled concentrations of inorganic aerosol components and O3. Both the measured and the modeled results indicated that the maximum hourly O3 concentrations exceeded the China National Air Quality Standard. The predicted 24-h average SOA concentrations were in reasonable agreement with those predicted by the method of minimum OC/EC ratio.     

Re-emphasizing sustainable development — The concept of ‘Evolutionability’ On living chances, equity, and good heritage

The principle of sustainable development is now 15-year-old. There are a lot of definitions and models for its explanation — ranging from triangles and prisms to eggs — but still its sense is diffuse. Moreover, important aspects like equity are not sufficiently taken into account.The following article takes a critical look on sustainable development. It shows logical, systemic, philosophic and ethic reasons for the re-development of substantial parts of the principle of sustainability. Based on the proposed Principle of Good Heritage it provides a rough outline of a future Concept of Evolutionability, comprising a first tentative for a definition of evolutionable development, aiming at achieving a more appropriate and more workable mainstream view of sustainability.Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

The Orthodoxy And Sustainable Development A Potential For Broader Involvement Of The Orthodox Churches In Ethiopia And Russia

In recent years, churches across the world have become involved in dialogue on the theory and practice of sustainable development. A number of Western churches have expressed their concern about climate change and destructive living patterns, stressing the need for human beings to exercise the care for all creation based on a life of sharing and sacrifice. Some Orthodox churches, however, quite recently included the environmental issues in their agendas. While the Bases of Social Concept, a major doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted in 2000, for the first time emphasises the Churchs position in overcoming environmental crisis and presents a solid basis on which to build the future environmental strategy of the Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has not yet drawn up a programme document that might serve as a framework for the Churchs current extensive activities in the field of biodiversity conservation and sustainable forestry practices. Hence, despite certain closeness of both institutions, there is the potential for strengthening their roles in promoting sustainable development, based on the Biblical concept that the Earth belongs to the Lord and humans are responsible stewards assigned the duty to work for creation and care for it. This paper seeks to demonstrate by means of comparable analysis between the two Churches, Orthodox in nature but different in rites and religious practices, that traditional, highly conservative faiths may serve as powerful instruments of spreading out the ideas of sustainable development as the basis of spiritual revival in the situation of the two concurrent and interrelated crises – spiritual and ecological.Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Imagining Postscience: Heidegger and Development Communication

Modernization, the dominant contemporary model of development, has technoscientific rationality as its base. Alternatively, development can be understood as the ascent of individuals and communities toward their own conceptions of the good life. Such an understanding of development, it is argued, cannot be communicated under technoscientific assumptions. Instead, under the light of Heidegger's critique of technoscience and his philosophy of communication, a postscientific perspective is invoked for communicating development as good life, less violent to human communities and the environment, and less monolithic in design. Postscience evokes the multiplicity of ways in which we seek credibility for our projects in opposition to the monistic conception of truth and meaning in the technoscientific paradigm. Exploiting Heidegger's understanding of the world-disclosive power of language, development communication is understood as disclosing the genuine possibilities for the good life, concealed in a people's world, in an authentic act of engagement between the people and the communicator of development.     

三生共赢:可持续发展的根本目标与行为准则

明确可持续发展的行为目标。制定相应的评价准则，是可持续发展思想从理念探讨向实践操作延伸的必由之路，也是进行社会行为选择的依据。在系统分析生活、生产与生态之间的关系后，提出应将“生活水平不断提高，生产能力不断增长和生态环境不断改善”(简称“三生共赢”)作为可持续发展的行为目标和评价准则，并从理论上对这一命题进行了阐述。     

The case for free market environmentalism

Environmental Ethics is the ethics of how we humans are to relate to each other about the environment we live in. The best way to adjust inevitable differences among us in this respect is by private property. Each person takes the best care of what he owns, and ownership entails the free market, which enables people to make mutually advantageous trades with those who might use it even better. Public regulation, by contrast, becomes management in the interests of the regulators, or of special interests, such as lovers of rare species-not the people they're supposed to be serving.     

The community vs. the market and the state: Forest use inUttarakhand in the Indian Himalayas

Most writers on resource management presume that local populations, if they act in their self-interest, seldom conserve or protect natural resources without external intervention or privatization. Using the example of forest management by villagers in the Indian Himalayas, this paper argues that rural populations can often use resources sustainably and successfully, even under assumptions of self-interested rationality. Under a set of specified social and environmental conditions, conditions that prevail in large areas of the Himalayas and may also exist in other mountain regions, community institutions are more efficient in managing resources than either private individuals or the central government. In advancing this argument, the paper undermines the often dogmatic belief in the universal superiority of private forms of ownership and management.     

江汉平原粮食开发必须走优质高产高效的道路

分析江汉平原粮食生产的优势与问题,运用商品经济的观念,提出改革开放新形势下加快江汉平原粮食开发的设想,即依托市场,按照价值规律,科学地调整种植业比例和粮食种类结构,发展优质品种,扩大优化模式及采用高新技术等,通过优质、高产、高效,促进江汉平原粮食生产的发展。     

Past and future sustainability of water policies in Europe

The article contributes to a discussion on two global issues on water: water resources management, and water supply and sanitation. Focusing on Europe, it traces the legal roots of current systems in history: as a resource, water is considered as a common property, rather than a market good; while as a public service it is usually a commodity. Public water supply and sanitation technologies and engineering have developed under three main paradigms: quantitative and civil engineering; qualitative and chemical/sanitary engineering (both on the supply side); and the most recent one, environmental engineering and integrated management (on the demand side). The cost of public drinking water is due to rise sharply in view of the two‐fold financial challenge of replacing an ageing infrastructure and keeping up with ever‐rising environmental and sanitary quality standards. Who will pay? Government subsidies, or water users? The author suggests that apparent successes with privatisation may have relied heavily on hidden government subsidies and/or the healthy state of previously installed water infrastructure: past government subsidies are still felt for as long as the lifetime of the infrastructure. The article stresses the importance of public participation and decentralized local management of water and sanitation services. Informing and involving users in water management decisions is seen as an integral part of the ‘ethics’ side of the crucial three E's (economics, environment, ethics). The article strongly argues for municipal provision of water services, and hopes that lessons learnt and solutions found in the European experience may serve water services management efforts in other regions of the world.