基于区域梯度式学习情景的长江经济带环境治理研究

长江经济带作为国家重大战略,面临开发与保护的巨大挑战,构建科学、高效的生态环境保护机制为其保驾护航成为重中之重。作为一个流域式生态共同体,区域统筹协调下的生态环境保护和治理是根本关键。本研究导入区域协同治理理念,提出构建梯度式渐进学习环境协同治理框架,并采用数据进行长江经济带环境污染治理的多情景测度与评价实证检验了梯度间以及梯度内部的环境保护与污染治理协调机制的潜在影响。最终,从中央、区域和地方三个层面提出梯度式学习视野下长江经济带环境治理策略。     

Making the sustainable more sustainable: public transport and the collaborative spaces of policy translation

This paper investigates where and how sustainable transport goals are translated into public transport planning and operations. The case where this is explored is the Regional Public Transport Authority (RPTA) in Stockholm, Sweden. By drawing upon recent discussions on policy translation and political–administrative relationships, sustainable transport is found to be translated in two different collaborative spaces in the RTPA. In the market side of the authority, which is mainly preoccupied with procurement of traffic and compliance issues, sustainable transport is translated into quantitative goals (including biofuels, emissions, noise, etc.) and mechanically reproduced from the politicians via the civil servants to the private operators. In the planning side of the authority, sustainability measurements have been hard to quantify and the challenge to integrate land-use and transport planning is resolved in an organic manner, in specific projects, between the strategic transport planners in the RPTA and the land-use planners in the municipalities, at a distance from the politicians’ involvement. Throughout the RPTA, sustainable transport has broadened to also include social sustainability, although this has been difficult to translate into quantitative measurements, which is the desired mode of governance by the politicians.     

Achieving SDG 6: water resources sustainability in Caribbean Small Island Developing States through improved water governance

Scientific findings confirm that Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Caribbean are experiencing droughts and sea level rises that are contributing to saline intrusion of underground aquifers and surface water sources. This paper, using Trinidad as a case study, analyses water governance challenges in meeting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which addresses the sustainability of water resources. Interviews were conducted with professionals from multi‐disciplinary backgrounds. Also, data provided by the water agency were analysed to evaluate water governance practices. The main contribution of this paper is the generation of a blend of policies, good practices and tools to confront growing threats to water security and to attain sustainable development in Caribbean SIDS in an era of climate change and increasing non‐climatic stressors. The paper concludes that economic, environmental and human resources, reformed administrative and legislative systems, and technological tools are fundamental to achieving good water governance. Moreover, an array of complementary policies and technologies is needed to resolve water governance issues. However, political will to implement sustainable water resources management is the greatest challenge in attaining SDG 6.     

The use of regulatory taxation as a policy instrument for sustainability transitions: old wine in new bottles or unexplored potential?

The burgeoning literature on sustainable transitions links persistent environmental problems to the functioning of socio-technical systems. Conventional policy instruments, such as environmental taxation, are often rejected by transition scholars but in-depth studies on their potential are scarce. This paper explores the potential of the instrument of environmental taxation for influencing sustainability transitions. The multi-level perspective and the multi-phase perspective from transition thinking and the social practices approach are combined with the environmental economics theories of Pigou and Coase. Our analysis shows that the highest impact of regulatory taxation will be realised at the end of the take-off phase and in the acceleration phase of a transition. Although important barriers exist and many conditions apply, regulatory environmental taxation, especially as part of a smart policy mix, has more potential for contributing to sustainability transitions than hitherto assumed.     

Transforming conservation science and practice for a postnormal world

We examine issues to consider when reframing conservation science and practice in the context of global change. New framings of the links between ecosystems and society are emerging that are changing peoples’ values and expectations of nature, resulting in plural perspectives on conservation. Reframing conservation for global change can thus be regarded as a stage in the evolving relationship between people and nature rather than some recent trend. New models of how conservation links with transformative adaptation include how decision contexts for conservation can be reframed and integrated with an adaptation pathways approach to create new options for global‐change‐ready conservation. New relationships for conservation science and governance include coproduction of knowledge that supports social learning. New processes for implementing adaptation for conservation outcomes include deliberate practices used to develop new strategies, shift world views, work with conflict, address power and intergenerational equity in decisions, and build consciousness and creativity that empower agents to act. We argue that reframing conservation for global change requires scientists and practitioners to implement approaches unconstrained by discipline and sectoral boundaries, geopolitical polarities, or technical problematization. We consider a stronger focus on inclusive creation of knowledge and the interaction of this knowledge with societal values and rules is likely to result in conservation science and practice that meets the challenges of a postnormal world.     

Bridging the gap between ecosystem service assessments and land-use planning through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA)

Land-use planning is an important determinant for green space policy in cities. It defines land covers and hence the structure and function of urban ecosystems and the benefits these provide to humans, such as air purification, urban cooling, runoff mitigation, and recreation. The ecosystem service approach has helped to attract policy attention to these benefits but the concept remains poorly implemented in urban policy and governance. To address this gap, we advance a framework to bridge ecosystem services into policy processes through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) as decision support tool. The paper is organized in three main parts. First, we conduct a systematic literature review to assess state-of-the-art knowledge on ecosystem service assessments through MCDA. Next, we build on insights from the literature review to develop the ‘ecosystem services policy-cycle’, a conceptual framework that merges the ‘ecosystem service cascade’ and ‘policy cycle’ models to reinforce the link between ecosystem service assessments and practical applications in urban policy and governance. Next, we illustrate the applicability of the proposed framework along an example about conflicting interests on land use and green space planning following the closure of the Airport Tempelhof in Berlin, Germany. Our results highlight the scope of MCDA as a decision support tool for integrating ecosystem service assessments in green space governance. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of different methodological choices in the use of MCDA in ecosystem service assessments and note that a key strength of this tool in informing green space policies lies in its capacity to accommodate conflicting stakeholder perspectives and to address trade-offs between ecological, social and economic values.     

Coping with changing water resources: The case of the Syr Darya river basin in Central Asia

This paper discusses how climatic-hydrological and socio-political developments will affect water allocation in the Syr Darya river basin and which adaptation measures will be needed to cope with changing water resources. In view of the geo-political complexity, climate-driven changes in water availability are of particular importance in this region. Water shortages during summer will become more frequent as precipitation is expected to further decrease and glacial meltwater releases will decrease in the long-term due to reduced glacier volume. Being the main valve to the entire Syr Darya river system, the Toktogul reservoir in Kyrgyzstan could take over, at least partly, the role of glaciers as seasonal water redistributors, thus allowing the generation of energy in winter – benefiting upstream countries – and irrigation for large-scale agriculture in summer – benefiting downstream countries. To date, however, there is no regional consensus on a balanced reservoir management, which currently favours irrigation according to past Soviet priorities. Moreover, the perception of water as a ‘national concern’ in Central Asia discourages efforts towards cooperation between states at the regional level. So far, climate change adaptation has focused on technical rather than institutional solutions. We suggest that policy-relevant adaptation measures should include consistent data collection and dissemination, cross-sectoral collaboration, promotion of national responsibility and initiative, and agreeing on a regional strategy.     

Advancing adaptive governance of social-ecological systems through theoretical multiplicity

In recent years there has been rising scientific and policy interest in the adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. A systematic literature review of adaptive governance research during the period 2005–2014, demonstrates a vibrant debate taking place that spans a variety of empirical and theoretical approaches. The particular strength of adaptive governance is that it provides a theoretical lens for research that combines the analyses of novel governance capacities such as adaptive capacity, collaboration, scaling, knowledge and learning. As a way to give greater depth and analytical rigour to future studies over the next decade and beyond, we highlight the added value of theoretical multiplicity (i.e., focusing on the combination of theories to address complex problems). We argue that theoretical multiplicity can encourage stronger synergies between adaptive governance and other theoretical approaches and can help address epistemologically grey areas in adaptive governance scholarship, such as power and politics, inclusion and equity, short term and long term change, the relationship between public policy and adaptive governance.     

Drinking water quality governance: A comparative case study of Brazil,Ecuador, and Malawi

Human health is greatly affected by inadequate access to sufficient and safe drinking water, especially in low and middle-income countries. Drinking water governance improvements may be one way to better drinking water quality. Over the past decade, many projects and international organizations have been dedicated to water governance; however, water governance in the drinking water sector is understudied and how to improve water governance remains unclear. We analyze drinking water governance challenges in three countries – Brazil, Ecuador, and Malawi – as perceived by government, service providers, and civil society organizations. A mixed methods approach was used: a clustering model was used for country selection and qualitative semi-structured interviews were used with direct observation in data collection. The clustering model integrated political, economic, social and environmental variables that impact water sector performance, to group countries. Brazil, Ecuador and Malawi were selected with the model so as to represent the diversity of the clusters. This comparative case study is important because similar challenges are identified in the drinking water sectors of each country; while, the countries represent diverse socio-economic and political contexts, and the case selection process provides generalizability to our results. We find that access to safe water could be improved if certain water governance challenges were addressed: coordination and data sharing between ministries that deal with drinking water services; monitoring and enforcement of water quality laws; and sufficient technical capacity to improve administrative and technical management of water services at the local level. From an analysis of our field research, we also developed a conceptual framework that identifies policy levers that could be used to influence governance of drinking water quality on national and sub-national levels, and the relationships between these levers.