质疑：“红旗河”调水功能的可行性

据报道,“红旗河”方案确定的基本目标是由雅鲁藏布江、怒江、澜沧江、金沙江、雅砻江、大渡河调水600亿m³至新疆等干旱区,发展2亿亩农田（1亩=1/15 hm²）,建15万~20万km²绿带,以此彻底改善西北干旱区的生态与环境。“红旗河”通过上述河流的各调水点以上的年均径流量总和为1 444亿m³,占被调水河流总径流量的35%;“红旗河”计划年调水量约占可调水量1 444亿m³的42%。如果不考虑国际河流、调水口以下的水电站及工程的正常运行等因素,单纯就水资源而论,600亿m³总调水量是可行的。“红旗河”是跨流域调水的宏大设想,已经引起国内外的广泛关注,但这个宏大的设想也面临地质、技术、经济、社会、生态等领域的多重严峻挑战,存在极大的不确定性。特别是600亿m³的水能解决什么问题?在实施工程之前应该充分论证,采取有效措施防范和减轻这些风险带来的危害。从自然地理、资源环境和区域发展角度看,以下问题值得商榷：从主要受水区域新疆看,依据现有农田的净灌溉定额（大约600 m³/亩）,即使完全不考虑渠道（干渠及农田灌溉支渠）中途渗漏与水面蒸发,理论上最多发展1亿亩农田。同样,根据新疆为了维持塔里木河下游大海子水库以下的511 km²湿地所调用的水量估算,15万km²生态绿带建设每年至少需水1 100多亿 m³。600亿m³引水量既无法实现建造2亿亩农田的需要,也无法满足15万km²生态绿带的需要,二者同时实现更无可能。何况这600亿m³的水要经过6 000多km的长途跋涉,渗漏和蒸发非常大,最终能有多少水达到受水区?该项目计划建设期10 a、投资4万亿元,每亩农田（以2亿亩计算）2万元,每m³水费近66元。工程建成运行时,谁来为昂贵的水费买单?调水可能引起的环境影响和生态后果具有极大的不确定性,需要给予高度关注。如调入区是内流区,降水量小,蒸发量大,地形封闭,缺乏排水出路,环境条件特殊。大量引水,在灌溉不当的情况下,极易导致土壤次生盐渍化。跨流域调水工程不仅仅是一个复杂的水利工程,还是一个十分复杂的生态系统工程,更是一个十分复杂的社会经济工程。环境效应、生态后果和社会经济影响涉及复杂的地球物理、化学和生物过程,也涉及复杂的人地关系和谐平衡过程。“红旗河”同时涉及国际河流,潜在的地缘政治关系需要引起重视。在现有认识水平下,需要对这些问题进行深入系统研究,分析各系统之间的相互关系及影响规律,提出理性的评价系统和论证方案。此外,在“红旗河”的舆论造势中,还存在几个有悖科学认知的观点,如“改变中国气候格局”、“森林致水作用”、打破千百年来的“胡焕庸线”等。文章均进行了分析和澄清。     

Institutional quality effects on separate waste collection: some evidence from Italian provinces

Separate waste collection in Italy comes under the responsibility of local authorities, provinces, while national laws set quantitative targets to be achieved over time. Overall, just a few provinces have reached the thresholds set by the latest law (Legislative Decree 152/2006) and some territorial differentiation has been detected. The aim of this paper is twofold: to verify the effectiveness of Legislative Decree 152/2006 in promoting higher levels of separate collection and to test whether institutional quality (considering the following indicators: voice and accountability, regulatory quality, rule of law and corruption) affects provinces’ efficiency in the separate collection process. For this purpose, we implement the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Results suggest that the effectiveness of Legislative Decree 152/2006 has been affected by provinces’ institutional quality. In particular, the presence of institutional constraints did not allow the most virtuous provinces to achieve the targets set by law.     

Addressing Declining Appropriations for Bureau of Reclamation Infrastructure: Policies Needed for Enabling Private Finance

Western water infrastructure was funded in the early and mid‐20th Century through federal financing through the Bureau of Reclamation. Over the past 30 years, federal financing has been less forthcoming, which has been commensurate with an increase in the need for financing rehabilitation and replacement of western irrigation infrastructure. As federal appropriations have declined, there has been increased interest in alternative approaches to infrastructure including public–private partnerships (P3s), loan guarantees, or title transfer of federal infrastructure. However, two of these approaches — P3s and loan guarantees — are precluded by existing federal budgetary policies, particularly Office of Management and Budget (OMB) scoring practices. If the OMB changed its policies for P3s or loan guarantees, private capital could play an important role in recapitalizing aging Reclamation infrastructure.     

Cross-sectional study of road accidents and related law enforcement efficiency for 10 countries: A gap coherence analysis

Objective: Road crashes are considered as the eighth leading causes of death. There is a wide disparity in crash severity and law enforcement efficiency among low-, medium-, and high-income countries. It would be helpful to review the crash severity trends in these countries, identify the vulnerable road users, and understand the law enforcement effectiveness in devising efficient road safety improvement strategies.

Method: The crash severity, fatality rate among various age groups, and law enforcement strategies of 10 countries representing low-income (i.e., India and Morocco), medium-income (i.e. Argentina, South Korea, and Greece), and high-income (i.e., Australia, Canada, France, the UK, and the United States) are studied and compared for a period of 5 years (i.e., 2008 to 2012). The critical parameters affecting road safety are identified and correlated with education, culture, and basic compliance with traffic safety laws. In the process, possible road safety improvement strategies are identified for low-income countries.

Results: The number of registered vehicles shows an increasing trend for low-income countries as do the crash rate and crash severity. Compliance related to seat belt and helmet laws is high in high-income countries. In addition, recent seat belt– and helmet-related safety programs in middle-income countries helped to curb fatalities. Noncompliance with safety laws in low-income countries is attributed to education, culture, and inefficient law enforcement.

Conclusion: Efficient law enforcement and effective safety education taking into account cultural diversity are the key aspects to reduce traffic-related injuries and fatalities in low-income countries like India.     

黑龙江省环境保护“十三五”时期面临的形势研究

“十三五”是全面实现小康社会的关键时期,黑龙江省环境保护面临经济发展进入新常态、“龙江丝路带”战略实施、能源结构调整优化等带来的机遇,同时也面临着经济欠发达且下行,污染治理更加艰巨;环境短板突出,化解难度大;社会关注度增强,改善环境质量的压力增大等方面的挑战.“十三五”时期,全省应把握好新形势下黑龙江省环境保护面临的机遇与挑战,以改善环境质量为核心,补齐环境短板,编制好环境保护“十三五”规划,为黑龙江省全面实现小康社会奠定良好的环境基础.     

论我国保护森林资源刑事立法的完善

目前我国破坏森林资源的犯罪仍处于高发阶段,且形式多样.虽然我国刑法确立了非法采伐、毁坏正规林木罪等罪名,但不足以遏制此类犯罪的发展势头,因此,进一步完善此类犯罪的刑罚体系及其相关制度应成为刑事立法的重点.     

市政公用特许经营法律属性的探讨

本文通过分析市政公用特许经营行政许可和民事行为的特点，得出市政公用特许经营具有行政许可和民事经济行为的双重法律属性的结论，并尝试提出了在项目实际操作中如何正确处理这种特殊性的方法。     

非人类存在物法律主体资格初探

现代生态伦理观将彻底改变传统人类中心主义伦理观,人类道德共同体的范围不断得到扩展。这是历史的必然,具有革命性和科学性,是对法学理论的创新和超越,也是对传统民法的突破,它以新的法哲学理念为坚实基础,是现代环境保护的必然要求,是现代环境法发展的必然趋势。     

The need for flexibility in freshwater treaty regimes

Shrinking freshwater supplies pose particular threats in international drainage basins, which serve some 40% of the global population and account for around 60% of the world's river flows. The use and management of these basins are increasingly governed by treaties between the riparian states. While the rules of international law, properly understood, are sufficiently flexible to permit adaptation to changing conditions such as development, population growth and climate change, treaties are essentially rigid instruments that are modifiable only under certain limited conditions. Countries should take this fact into account in designing the regimes to govern their shared freshwater resources, including joint management institutions.     

Investigations on an evacuated tube solar water heater using hybrid-nano based organic phase change material

ABSTRACT

This work explores the opportunities to address the setback in thermal energy storage of solar-based water heaters by uniting it with a suitable hybrid-nano composite phase change material (HNCPCM) in a static mode of operation. The experiments were conducted on a natural circulation all-glass evacuated solar water heating system (AGSWH). The investigation was steered in five cases such that the first case without any phase change material (PCM), the second with pure paraffin as PCM, and remaining three cases with three different mass percentage of HNCPCMs (0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.0% mass fraction of hybrid nanoparticles within PCM) in real-time solar exposure. The system was analyzed based on the first and second law of thermodynamics to assess the performance in all the five cases. Erstwhile, the hybrid nanoparticles were prepared by blending equal mass of SiO₂ and CeO₂ nanoparticles and characterized to gauge its thermal storage properties. The achieved results substantiated that the thermal conductivity had boosted with the accumulation of hybrid nanoparticles within the paraffin matrix, and maximum enhancement of 65.56% was attained with 2.0% mass fraction. The first law and second law investigations revealed that the incorporation of hybrid-nano composites improved the energy and exergy content of the system, distinctly. Among the experimented cases, HNCPCM with 1.0 mass% of hybrid nanoparticles remarkably yielded a better result of 19.4% and 1.28% improvement in energy and exergy efficiencies, respectively. Besides, it evidenced the necessity of choosing the right quantity of nanoparticles for achieving better overall results.