美、日土壤污染防治法律度对中国土壤立法的启示

目前中国土壤污染问题日趋严重。尽管中国现行的法律体系存在一些有关土壤污染防治的规定,但仍存在一定的局限性,中国目前还没有专门的《土污染防治法》,从而不能为中国土壤污染的防治工作提供有力地法律支撑和法律保障。本文在分析美国、日本有关土壤污染防治立法的基础上,就中国土壤污染防治立法提出了几点建议。     

Impact of climatic shocks on child human capital: evidence from young lives data

This study attempts to assess the impact of two different climatic shocks, drought and excessive rainfall/flood, as perceived by households on child human capital across four countries: Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam – countries with diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Human capital, in this context, subsumes both child learning and health outcomes. The data source is the Young Lives Study and cross-sectional household data on the older cohort of children (between 14 and 16 years of age) are utilized, for the year 2009. The enrolment rate, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Cloze test and Math test scores are used as proxies for child learning outcomes. The health outcome variables being studied are the WHO-defined Body Mass Index z-scores and Height for Age z-scores. The overall objective is to study heterogeneity in responses to shock in terms of the development of human capital across the set of countries considered. Additionally, the study elaborates on the role of institutional help, during crisis, and the role of household characteristics in buffering these climatic shocks.     

Insurance and flood risk reduction in Ghana: do insurers penalise homeowners who take precautionary measures?

Today, many advocate insurance as a tool for coping with natural disasters. Beyond providing prompt financial relief to victims of disasters, insurance can also incentivise individuals to invest in preventive measures if insurers reward such efforts with reduced premiums. However, insurers might be unable to reward investments in precautionary measures with lower premiums if they are ill-informed about individual-level risks. Here, we explore how Ghanaian home insurers respond to investments in flood risk reduction by asking them to quote premiums for four identical buildings; two had investments in flood risk reduction, while the other two had none. We find that insurers did not reward investments in risk reduction, with some charging higher premiums for elevated buildings, suggesting they have interpreted such preventive measures as a sign of high flood risk. This failure to reward investments in precautionary measures may discourage insured homeowners from investing in risk reduction.     

基于人粮关系的“一带一路”沿线国家土地资源承载力时空格局研究

“一带一路”沿线国家是全球重要的人口集聚区。以人粮关系为主线,从全域到国别研究了1995—2017年沿线国家土地资源承载力时空格局。结果表明：研究期内,（1）沿线国家耕地总量与人均耕地量分别降至6.96×10⁸hm²和2.23亩/人,分别约为全球水平的50%和80%,约80%的国家人均耕地在下降;（2）承载力增至45.95亿人,近90%的国家在提高,但西亚及中东多数国家在下降;（3）地均承载力增至90人/km²水平,约为全球水平的1.5倍,孟加拉国、匈牙利、越南超300人/km²;（4）人粮关系从超载转向临界超载,粮食盈余国家增多,主要为耕地面积广的产粮大国。半数国家土地仍超载,多为气候干旱区与岛屿国家。研究有助于深化与沿线国家的粮食安全合作和提高项目建设布局的科学性。     

跨国公司对东道国的环境法律责任问题研究

随着经济全球化的发展,跨国公司的经济影响力剧增,成为众多发展中国家外资的主要来源,然而与之伴随的＂三高＂产业的转移给主要东道国的发展中国家造成了巨大的环境问题,再加上发展中国家地方政府政绩观的错位、公众环保意识的欠缺,这一问题更加凸显,而有限责任的原则使得各跨国公司母公司避开了责任的承担。对此,必须借助＂公司法人格否认＂制度,＂揭开公司面纱＂,将公司是否滥用控制权的举证责任赋予母公司,并考虑环境侵权的特殊性,以无过错责任原则和因果关系推定为基础完善对跨国公司环境法律责任的追究机制。     

Environmental regulation of exploration and mining operations in Asian countries

This paper offers a new perspective on the environmental laws in Asian nations affecting the exploration, mining, and reclamation activities of the mineral resource industry: the perspective of the senior government officials in those countries, whose job is to enforce these new environmental laws. The article presents the results of a 1998 survey of national environmental officials in Asia conducted by the Colorado School of Mines and the Metal Mining Agency of Japan. Officials in 10 diverse countries—Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam—responded to a detailed questionnaire covering applicable laws, agencies, protected areas, covered mineral activities, financial assurance, environmental impact assessment, public involvement, environmental standards, permit and reclamation requirements.
The survey confirms that Asian nations are part of the global trend towards national government regulatory structures that balance mineral development objectives with environmental considerations. The survey also shows developing regulatory systems (some embryonic, some more mature) utilizing a combination of mining and environmental acts, and often an 'insider' perspective of the national officials administering the laws. While that perspective is not without its biases (not least the rigor of enforcement), it may nevertheless be of use in company planning. The emerging regulatory picture contradicts the conventional notion that it is the 'lower' level of regulation in Asia that is attracting foreign direct investment in mining.     

IMPROVING URBAN WATERWAYS IN EMERGING COUNTRIES: AN ACTION PLAN FOR MADRAS1

ABSTRACT: Typically, infrastructure agencies build massive water projects to serve expanding populations in emerging country cities, but collect and treat only a fraction of the resulting wastewater. This effluent often overwhelms existing sewerage systems and fouls waterways. Cleaning urban waterways requires large investments over long terms and the political will to make and sustain them. This challenge - difficult in advanced countries - becomes daunting with the scarce resources and weak institutions typical of emerging countries. This paper presents a framework to structure such a strategy, and applies it to Madras, India. It consists of three parts: (1) setting a vision through a participatory process; (2) macro investments mainly in wastewater treatment that use least-cost methods; and (3) micro investments in small projects that involve local people and galvanize public support. The macro investment, $350 million for Madras, appears very large, but averages out to $66 per capita, far below the $1,000-$2,000 typical of advanced country cities. Micro projects to be undertaken by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) included an independent wastewater monitoring program, sanitary upgrading of slums along waterways banks, a cattle waste demonstration project, and an industrial pollution survey. Together, a macro/micro strategy promises the funding and political will to achieve a balanced vision of waterways quality.     

Oil-Induced environmental Kuznets curve in organization of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC)

This study investigates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in 10 of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). To realize the study’s aims a time series model is built based on the period 1977–2008, utilizing the ecological footprint as an environmental indicator and income, labour, capital, oil consumption and oil price as economic indicators. Employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, by comparing the short and long-run income elasticities, the EKC hypothesis is present in six OPEC countries namely Algeria, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Qatar and Kuwait. Moreover, the Toda–Yamamoto–Dolado–Lütkepohl (TYDL) causality tests outcome show that, after oil consumption, the most significant factors in increasing ecological footprint are labor and capital. This implies the relocation of pollution intensive industries to almost all of the OPEC countries. However, oil prices reduce environmental damage by its negative effect on the ecological footprint. From the outcome of this study it is important for the investigated countries to reduce their consumption of fossil fuel energy since it represents an important source of pollution. This can be achieved by allocating more labor and capital in projects and investments on renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy saving.     

以他国为例兼论数据促进我国环境部门资源整合与开发

文章介绍并论述了欧美及俄罗斯、日本等国家环境及其相关部门的职责及其工作。其部分工作体现了其综合性、前端性、支撑性、服务性。国情不同,相关事务自然不能一概而论。但他国以环境为资源,用数据科学的思想、方法对环境资源进行统筹、分析、挖掘,其实践思路和实践也许有借鉴的可能。并指出,我国在借鉴之中,或可加强政府部门之间、社会盈利与非盈利组织之间、政府部门与社会组织之间、以及个人之间的合作,通过数据公开、数据共享,从而降低成本,进行数据挖掘、利用,协力解决环境与人和谐共生问题,同时激发新的经济增长点。真正体现数据来源于自然、来源于人;同时形成数据资源这一新资源,保护并服务于自然与人。     

The relationship among biodiversity,governance, wealth,and scientific capacity at a country level: Disaggregation and prioritization

At a global level, the relationship between biodiversity importance and capacity to manage it is often assumed to be negative, without much differentiation among the more than 200 countries and territories of the world. We examine this relationship using a database including terrestrial biodiversity, wealth and governance indicators for most countries. From these, principal components analysis was used to construct aggregated indicators at global and regional scales. Wealth, governance, and scientific capacity represent different skills and abilities in relation to biodiversity importance. Our results show that the relationship between biodiversity and the different factors is not simple: in most regions wealth and capacity varies positively with biodiversity, while governance vary negatively with biodiversity. However, these trends, to a certain extent, are concentrated in certain groups of nations and outlier countries. We discuss our results in the context of collaboration and joint efforts among biodiversity-rich countries and foreign agencies.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-014-0581-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.