EU policy on the move – mobility and domestic translation of the European Union’s renewable energy policy

We discuss how the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive was designed to be mobile, and how it was moved to and implemented in Finland by translating it to enhance wood-based energy production through specific subsidies. We study policy-making as a mobile process, which approach has its original roots in political science and more recent basis in political geography. The article aims to develop conceptual understanding of how the mobility of a supranational policy is generated and how a policy is translated into complex and contentious geographical contexts. We aim to show that mobility of a directive is enabled by an empty governance space which is aimed to be ‘filled in’ in each spatial context, and that the filling in process makes each translation a contentious and path-dependent process. In Finland, the selected policy tools and practices continued the path-dependent ways of favouring forestry industry’s traditional position as the primary utiliser of forest resources.     

Willingness to pay to protect cold water corals

There is increasing pressure to use currently untapped resources in the deep sea, raising questions regarding ecosystem service trade-offs in these often unknown areas. We assessed the trade-offs between protection of cold-water coral reefs and economic activities, such as fisheries and petroleum extraction, through a survey of a representative sample of the populations of Norway and Ireland. Choice-experiment surveys were conducted in workshop settings and through the internet. Both survey approaches provided some similar results, such as preferences for protection. Our cross-country comparison showed the general public in Norway and Ireland was willing, despite possible conflict with extractive and consumptive economic activities in the deep sea, to protect cold-water corals as habitat for fish. On average, people were willing to pay NKr 341 and NKr 424 for a small and large increase in protected areas respectively, and NKr 880 if the area is important habitat for fish, all else held equal. However, there was large variation across individuals and countries. Norwegian respondents valued pure existence of cold-water corals more than the Irish respondents, and the latter were less willing to trade off industrial activities than the former. Nonetheless, the findings support conservation of cold-water corals and more generally of ocean environments that provide habitat for fish, which the current deep sea governance systems are not adequately designed or sufficiently well-structured to secure.     

Conservation needs exposed by variability in common-pool governance principles

Common-pool governance principles are becoming increasingly important tools for natural resource management with communities and comanagement arrangements. Effectiveness of these principles depends on variability in agreements, trust, and adherence to institutional norms. We evaluated heterogeneity in governance principles by asking 449 people in 30 fishing communities in 4 East African countries to rate their effectiveness. The influences of individuals, their membership and role in stakeholder community groups, leadership, community, and country were tested. The membership and role of people were not the main influence on their perceptions of the effectiveness of governance principles. Therefore, drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of specific principles would be difficult to make independent of the individuals asked. More critical were individuals’ nationalities and their associations with the shared perceptions of a response-group's effectiveness of each principle. Perceptions of effectiveness differed strongly by country, and respondents from poor nations (Madagascar and Mozambique) were more cohesiveness but had fewer and weaker between-community conflict-resolution mechanisms. Overall, group identity, group autonomy, decision-making process, and conflict resolution principles were perceived to be most effective and likely to be enforced by repeated low-cost intragroup activities. Graduated sanctions, cost–benefit sharing, and monitoring resource users, fisheries, and ecology were the least scaled principles and less affordable via local control. We suggest these 2 groups of principles form independently and, as economies develop and natural resources become limiting, sustainability increasingly depends on the later principles. Therefore, management effectiveness in resource-limited situations depends on distributing power, skills, and costs beyond fishing communities to insure conservation needs are met.     

Linguistic diversity and conservation opportunities at UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Africa

Africa contains much of Earth's biological and cultural–linguistic diversity, but conserving this diversity is enormously challenging amid widespread poverty, expanding development, social unrest, and rapidly growing human population. We examined UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Natural World Heritage Sites (WHSs) on continental Africa and nearby islands—48 protected areas containing globally important natural or combined natural and cultural resources—to gauge the potential for enlisting Indigenous peoples in their conservation. We used geographic information system technology to identify instances where Natural WHSs co-occur with Indigenous languages, a key indicator of cultural diversity. And, we compared the geographic ranges for 4 taxa and selected freshwater species with occurrence of all Indigenous languages within Natural WHSs and subsections of WHSs covered by the geographic extent of Indigenous languages to measure the correlation between linguistic and biological diversity. Results indicated that 147 languages shared at least part of their geographic extent with Natural WHSs. Instances of co-occurrence where a WHS, a language, or both were endangered marked localities particularly deserving conservation attention. We examined co-occurrence of all languages and all species, all languages and endangered species, and endangered languages and endangered species and found a correlation between linguistic and biological diversity that may indicate fundamental links between these very different measures of diversity. Considering only endangered species or endangered languages and species reduced that correlation, although considerable co-occurrence persisted. Shared governance of government-designated reserves is applicable for natural WHSs because it capitalizes on the apparent connection between culture and nature. Natural WHSs in Africa containing speakers of Indigenous languages present opportunities to conserve both nature and culture in highly visible settings where maintaining natural systems may rely on functioning Indigenous cultural systems and vice versa.     

安全社区建设与基层安全风险治理

社会结构转型和快速发展要求基层作为风险应对主体完善风险治理体系。本文介绍了安全社区运行机制及建设绩效与经验,从“四个转变”阐述了安全社区建设对完善基层安全风险治理体系的促进作用。安全社区蕴含的风险治理理念和机制模式,对我国基层安全风险治理机制建设具有借鉴意义。     

Does collaboration affect the duration of environmental permitting processes?

While collaborative governance has many benefits for environmental planning and management, those benefits are not politically feasible if they impact on process efficiency. This study assesses collaboration's effect on the duration of water permitting processes, specifically the United States’ Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's hydropower relicensing process. Collaboration was measured using a survey of participants in 24 recent hydropower relicensing processes. A Cox proportional hazards model with mixed effects assessed the relationship between collaboration, regulatory framework, hydropower facility characteristics, and relicensing process duration. Collaboration was not associated with time to license. Instead, process duration depended on the regulatory framework (especially the switch to the Integrated Licensing Process and presence of endangered species) and facility characteristics (generating capacity and facility type). The results suggest that agencies should consider engaging collaboratively during planning and permitting, given that collaboration's benefits to decision quality do not incur a cost on overall process time.     

The environment as seen through the life of a journal: Ambio 1972–2022

Emerging after World War II “the environment” as a modern concept turned in the years around 1970 into a phase of institutionalization in science, civic society, and politics. Part of this was the foundation of journals. The majority became “environmental specialist journals”, typically based in established disciplines. Some became “environmental generalist journals”, covering broad knowledge areas and often with an ambition to be policy relevant. A significant and early member of the latter category was Ambio, founded 1972. This article presents an overview of the journal’s first 50 years, with a focus on main changes in scientific content, political context, and editorial directions. A key finding is that the journal reflects an increasing pluralization of “the environment” with concepts such as global change, climate change, Earth system science, Anthropocene, resilience, and environmental governance. Another finding is that the journal has also itself influenced developments through publishing work on new concepts and ideas.     

Surrender or resistance to the implementation of Local Agenda 21 in Portugal: the challenges of local governance for sustainable development

The aim of this paper is to understand how Local Agenda 21 (LA21) is contributing to update local policy and decision making towards sustainable development in Portugal. Departing from a theoretical view of governance for sustainable development – its core values and challenges – and the role of LA21 in its endorsement, the paper presents the main results of a questionnaire survey submitted to Portuguese municipalities, with the purpose of understanding how far LA21 is being incorporated into planning and management. The paper then tries to expose some of the main potential, limitations and challenges in the local Portuguese case for the short-term sustainable future.     

五论灾害系统研究的理论与实践

作者曾分别于1991、1996、2002和2005年发表了关于灾害研究理论与实践的4篇文章,对灾害系统的性质、动力学机制、综合减灾范式,以及灾害科学体系等进行了探讨.在前4篇文章的基础上,就当前国际上灾害风险综合研究的趋势、应对巨灾行动,以及防范巨灾风险和加强综合减灾学科建设等方面进行了综合分析,阐述了对"区域灾害系统"作为"社会-生态系统"、"人地关系地域系统"和"可划分类型与多级区划体系"本质的认识;区分了"多灾种叠加"与"灾害链"损失评估的差异;论证了"综合灾害风险防范的结构、功能,及结构与功能优化模式";构建了由灾害科学、应急技术和风险管理共同组成的"灾害风险科学"学科体系.研究结果表明,通过综合减灾,防范巨灾风险已成为区域和全球可持续发展的重要措施,这一措施与资源节约型与环境友好型社会的建设,循环经济模式的发展,以及低碳经济模式的建立,共同构成了可持续发展战略实施的支撑体系.     

多源信息融合的埋地管道健康评价方法

埋地管道长期受多种复杂因素作用而出现腐蚀、裂纹等多种损伤,很难由管道内检测数据以解析模型描述和评价管道健康状况问题,笔者提出了一种基于Vague集的多源信息多级融合方法,充分利用层次间信息特征的冗余性和互补性进行管道健康状况评价。建立了多信息源多级融合模型,定义了基于Vague集的多源信息数学描述,给出了该方法的数据组织形式和算法实现过程,并将其应用于埋地供水管道健康评价体系,验证了该方法的有效性、合理性。