环境保护要依靠公众参与——关于环境保护主要依靠力量的市民调查

环境问题和环境保护已日益深入到社会政治、经济、文化、生活各个领域。在呼吁公众参与的条件下，依靠谁去搞好环境保护？公众是如何看待自己在环境保护中的作用的呢？对这些问题的回答将有助于了解公众关于环境保护的心态，有助于环境保护公众参与政策更具有针对性的实施。本文就这一话题进行了城市居民的抽样调查。调查表明，公众普遍认为，政府和公众参与是搞好环保的主要依靠力量；而公众对环境宣传教育和污染企业的治理以及技术进步的期望较低。本文进一步分析了不同年龄、文化程度、职业和人均月收入带来的影响，以期把握不同层次公众的心态。在此基础上本文就环境宣传教育如何促进公众参与提出了一些思考。     

浅论环境教育的实施原则

本文对环境教育的涵义与基本特征作了简要的分析，重点论述了实施环境教育应遵循的七条基本原则。     

The economics of tire remanufacturing

The world market for tires is described to identify the current material flow from raw materials to tires and the used tire disposal problem. Then, I describe the value-adding operations in the tire production process and in the tire retreading process. Once retreading is identified as the only recovery alternative that maximizes tire utilization, I explain why heat generation is the only recovery alternative, when retreading is not technically feasible. The economic values of heat generation in electric plants and in cement kilns are discussed. The paper culminates with the case of retreading, the tire remanufacturing process and the recommendation of a simple decision rule for selecting the number of times a tire should be retreaded to maximize its utilization.     

Evaluation of the california environmental quality act

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has evolved from a mini-NEPA, first enacted in 1970, into a procedural act that affects the approval process of all large developments in California. In 1990, California local governments produced over 1600 environmental impact reports and 30,000 initial studies under CEQA. Because of its widespread use, CEQA has periodically drawn the attention of the state legislature, most recently in 1993, when over 60 CEQA reform bills were introduced. This paper describes the CEQA process and evaluates its success at meeting its explicit and implicit goals. The research includes a statewide survey of CEQA practice, sent to the planning departments of all 513 local governments in California in 1991. Survey respondents agreed that CEQA helps in evaluating environmental impacts, reducing impacts, informing the public, and coordinating public agency review. It is effective in reducing the environmental impacts of individual projects, but is not as effective in improving environmental quality on an areawide scale. This research concludes that CEQA has led to positive outcomes and is not as deeply flawed as many of its critics claim. Still, CEQA as currently designed may not be the optimal vehicle for ensuring environmental quality.     

Impact of water control projects on fisheries resources in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a very flat delta built up by the Ganges—Brahmaputra—Meghna/Barak river systems. Because of its geographical location, floods cause huge destruction of lives and properties almost every year. Water control programs have been undertaken to enhance development through mitigating the threat of disasters. This structural approach to flood hazard has severely affected floodplain fisheries that supply the major share of protein to rural Bangladesh, as exemplified by the Chandpur Irrigation Project. Although the regulated environment of the Chandpur project has become favorable for closed-water cultured fish farming, the natural open-water fishery loss has been substantial. Results from research show that fish yields were better under preproject conditions. Under project conditions per capita fish consumption has dropped significantly, and the price of fish has risen beyond the means of the poor people, so that fish protein in the diet of poor people is gradually declining. Bangladesh is planning to expand water control facilities to the remaining flood-prone areas in the next 15–20 years. This will cause further loss of floodplain fisheries. If prices for closed-water fish remain beyond the buying power of the poor, alternative sources of cheap protein will be required.     

Wetland loss and substitution by the Section 404 permit program in southern California,USA

To test the effectiveness of the 404 permit program in preventing a net loss of wetland resources, 75 Section 404 projects permitted in the years 1987–1989 and located in a portion of southern California were evaluated. From this group of projects, 80.47 ha of wetlands were affected by Section 404 permits and the Army Corps of Engineers required 111.62 ha of wetland mitigation. To verify the successful completion of each mitigation project, all 75 project sites were visited and evaluated based on the amount of dead vegetation, growth and coverage, and the number of invasive species. Based on the field verification results, the actual amount of completed mitigation area was 77.33 ha, resulting in a net loss of 3.14 ha of wetland resources in the years 1987–1989. By comparing the types of wetlands lost to the types of wetlands mitigated, it is apparent that, in particular, freshwater wetlands are experiencing a disproportionately greater loss of area and that riparian woodland wetlands are most often used in mitigation efforts. The net result of these accumulated actions is an overall substitution of wetland types throughout the region. Results also indicate that, typically, large-scale mitigation projects are more successful compared to smaller projects and that successful compliance efforts are not evenly distributed throughout the region. We recommend that better monitoring, mitigation in-kind, mitigation banking, and planning on a regional or watershed scale could greatly improve the effectiveness of the Section 404 permitting program.     

Biodiversity laws: State experiences

The Western Governors' Association (WGA) includes both the public lands states with their issues and the plains states, which are 98% privately owned. WGA deals with most legislation affecting biodiversity, whether the effect is direct or tangential. It will probably not be possible, or desirable, for one entity to be in charge of biodiversity conservation. The Endangered Species Act, public lands laws, agricultural laws, water law, environmental laws, and funding legislation all affect biodiversity conservation and the responsibility for it. None of them on their own are enough, and most can cause harmful unintended consequences for biodiversity. The experience of western states in developing consensus principles for reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act provides an example of common-sense ways to improve management of biodiversity, notwithstanding the complexity and large stakes involved. The WGA's proposed changes call for increasing the role of states, streamlining the act, and increasing certainty for landowners and water users. To achieve sustainable conservation for biodiversity, the better question is not “Who is/should be in charge?”, it is “How do we get this done?” To answer this, we need goals, guidance, and bottom lines from federal laws, and management and oversight at the state level, but they all need to support local on-the-ground partnerships. Sustainable conservation requires the active participation of those who live there. WGA's experience in coordinating the Great Plains Partnership as well as its work with watershed efforts shed light on what to expect. Multilevel partnerships are not easy and require a different way of doing business. The ad hoc, sitespecific processes that result do not lend themselves to being legislated, fit into organizational boxes, or scored on a budget sheet. They do require common sense and a longterm perspective.     

Analysis of Lower Green Bay and Fox River,Collingwood Harbour,Spanish Harbour,and the Metro Toronto and Region remedial action plan (RAP) processes

This article presents a model of remedial action planning, which includes four key variables that determine progress in plan development and implementation and explain the differing level of achievement in individual sites. The model is illustrated by the characteristics and developments of four remedial action plan (RAP) processes (Lower Green Bay and Fox River, Collingwood Harbour, Spanish Harbour, and the Metro Toronto and Region RAPs). Differences in the local context of the plans have, to a significant degree, predisposed individual planning and implementation experiences. Local context includes three variables, namely geographical—technical and sociopolitical aspects and the previous history of water pollution management in the area. RAP precursors are a necessary precondition for progress in planning and substantive achievements. While there is a tendency that most geographically focused RAPs in administratively simple areas accomplish most, the motivation and political clout of RAP participants are strongly intervening factors. Resource input from upper levels of government, in particular financial commitment for plan implementation, is the fourth necessary ingredient for progress due to the RAPs' weak regulatory and institutional framework. Unfortunately, upper levels of government have shown widespread reluctance to lead in remedial action planning. This was only in part offset by local commitment and support for RAP and its cause.     

A framework to assess regional environmental impacts of dedicated energy crop production

Numerous studies have evaluated air quality and greenhouse gas mitigation benefits of biomass energy systems, but the potential environmental impacts associated with large-scale changes in land-use patterns needed to produce energy crops have not been quantified. This paper presents a framework to assess the potential soil, water, and biodiversity impacts that may result from the large-scale production of dedicated energy crops. The framework incorporates producer economic decision models with environmental models to assess changes in land use patterns and to quantify the consequent environmental impacts. Economic and policy issues that will affect decisions to produce energy crops are discussed. The framework is used to evaluate erosion and chemical runoff in two Tennessee regions. The analysis shows that production of dedicated energy crops in place of conventional crops will significantly reduce erosion and chemical runoff.     

Pressures,trends, and impacts in coastal zones: Interactions between socioeconomic and natural systems

This paper assesses the status of coastal zones in the context of expected climate change and its related impacts, as well as current and future socioeconomic pressures and impacts. It is argued that external stresses and shocks relating to sea-level rise and other changes will tend to exacerbate existing environmental pressures and damage in coastal zones. Coastal zones are under increasing stress because of an interrelated set of planning failures including information, economic market, and policy intervention failures. Moves towards integrated coastal zone management are urgently required to guide the coevolution of natural and human systems. Overtly technocentric claims that assessments of vulnerability undertaken to date are overestimates of likely future damages from global warming are premature. While it is the case that forecasts of sea-level rise have been scaled down, much uncertainty remains over, for example, combined storm, sea surge, and other events. In any case, within the socioeconomic analyses of the problem, resource valuations have been at best only partial and have failed to incorporate sensitivity analysis in terms of the discount rates utilized. This would indicate an underestimation of potential damage costs. Overall, a precautionary approach is justified based on the need to act ahead of adequate information acquisition, economically efficient resource pricing and proactive coastal planning.