How Do Groups Solve Local Commons Dilemmas? Lessons from Experimental Economics in the Field

The use of experimental settings to observe human behaviour in a controlled environment of incentives, rules and institutions, has been widely used by the behavioural sciences for sometime now, particularly by psychology and economics. In most cases the subjects are college students recruited for one to two hour decision making exercises in which, depending on their choices, they earn cash averaging US$ 20. In such exercises players face a set of feasible actions, rules and incentives (payoffs) involving different forms of social exchange with other people, and that in most cases involve some kind of externalities with incomplete contracts, such as in the case of common-pool resources situations. Depending on the ecological and institutional settings, the resource users face a set of feasible levels of extraction, a set of rules regarding the control or monitoring of individual use, and sometimes ways of imposing material or non-material costs or rewards to those breaking or following the rules. We brought the experimental lab to the field and invited about two hundred users of natural resources in three Colombian rural villages to participate in such decision making exercises and through these and other research instruments we learned about the ways they solve - or fail to - tragedies of the commons with different social institutions. Further, bringing the lab to the field allowed us to explore some of the limitations of existing models about human behaviour and its consequences for designing policies for conserving ecosystems and improving social welfare.     

抓住机遇 迎接挑战 协同发展 "天人合一"

论述了中国入世对长江流域可持续发展所带来的影响、机遇和挑战，讨论了可持续发展思想的内涵及影响长江流域可持续发展的重要问题。认为可持续发展思想应包含：当代人要重视发展和持续性，不断提高人群生活质量和资源环境的承载能力，满足当代人的需求又不损害后代人的需求，满足一个地区、国家的需求又不损害别的地区、国家的需求，并努力补救上代人所留下的资源、环境创伤。我们应认识七种要素：人口、资源、环境、经济、社会、知识和文化之间的内在关系，必须协同处理。自然资源是发展的基础。中国开展环境保护工作已有20多年，特别是改革开放以来取得很多进展，目前需对严重环境问题采取更有力的措施。讨论了中国入世后面临的企业、农业、人才资源、高新技术产业、政府管理体制的创新和法制建设等问题，并着重研究了可持续发展文明观、加强绿色管理和绿色产品开发、知识经济和环保产业等关键问题。     

湿地服务价值评估的复杂性及研究进展

湿地服务价值评估具有重要的理论意义和应用价值。由于湿地具有类型多样、分布广泛和过程复杂等特点,湿地服务价值评估极具复杂性。主要表现为:湿地科学是一门年轻的科学,其过程与功能研究有待深入;对生态系统服务及其价值认识上还存在分歧;湿地服务价值研究具有多学科交叉的特点等。近年来,国内外湿地服务价值评估发展很快,取得了丰硕的研究成果,但也存在着一些问题与不足,如对湿地研究成果的利用不够充分;评估理论和方法有待完善;评估标准和评估结果差异较大等。因此,今后湿地服务价值评估研究应该将重点放在理论探索和方法完善方面,对应用研究加强引导和规范。从湿地生态系统过程与功能的机理入手,认真研究和改进湿地服务价值评估的手段、方法和技术,使湿地服务价值评估结果更具说服力、可比性和实用性,为湿地的科学管理,生态补偿机制的制定以及社会经济可持续发展提供有力支持。     

A tool for building community resilience? A case study of the Lewes Pound

In the last decade, “resilience” has gained increasing recognition as a theoretical framework for understanding and managing change in complex social–ecological systems. Resilience assessments are increasingly used to inform sustainability initiatives, strategies, and policies. The Lewes Pound represents a new complementary currency model in the UK, aiming to build community resilience. However, there have been no empirical studies to date assessing the socio-economic impacts of this model. This article addresses the need to understand how such currencies function by measuring whether the Lewes Pound is capable of building resilience. This is done by developing a novel framework for estimating economic, social, and environmental outcomes, which uses a mixed-methods approach. Findings suggest that complementary currencies can enhance social-ecological resilience through awareness-raising and changes in consumption. Although economic localisation – a key indicator – is lacking, there is evidence that the Lewes Pound has developed social interactions and changed consumption patterns of its users.     

Benefit‐Cost Analysis of Integrated Water Resource Management: Accounting for Interdependence in the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan

Integrated water resource management (IWRM) requires accounting for many interrelated facets of water systems, water uses and stakeholders, and water management activities. The consequence is that project analysis must account for the nonseparability among the component parts of IWRM plans. This article presents a benefit‐cost (B‐C) analysis of a set of projects included in the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan proposed for the Yakima Basin in south‐central Washington State. The analysis accounts for interdependence among proposed water storage projects and between water storage and water market development in the context of historical and more adverse projected future climate scenarios. Focusing on irrigation benefits from storage, we show that the value of a given proposed storage project is lower when other proposed storage projects in the basin are implemented, and when water markets are functioning effectively. We find that none of the water storage projects satisfy a B‐C criterion, and that assuring proposed instream flow augmentation is less expensive by purchasing senior diversion rights than relying on new storage to provide it.     

唐山市大气环境治理措施的效果及分析

为揭示河北省唐山市大气环境治理的措施效果,分析了“十一五”期间唐山市的减排措施、污染物排放量和空气污染物浓度的变化. 结果表明:“十一五”期间(2005—2010年),烟尘、工业粉尘、SO₂排放量分别减少35%、57%、20%,ρ(PM₁₀)、ρ(SO₂)、ρ(NO₂)年均值分别下降12%、33%、33%. 与GB 3095—2012《环境空气质量标准》相比,2005年ρ(PM₁₀)、ρ(SO₂)、ρ(NO₂)分别超标36%、42%、7%,而到2010年ρ(SO₂)、ρ(NO₂)已达标,但ρ(PM₁₀)仍然超标20%. 2008年北京奥运会期间的减排措施使得唐山市ρ(PM₁₀)、ρ(SO₂)、ρ(NO₂)年均值均显著下降,分别比2007年下降13%、20%、28%. 2008—2009年的全球经济危机使得2009年地方生产总值增速较其他年均值降低13%,2009年烟尘和SO₂排放量也呈显著下降趋势,二者比2008年分别下降14%和10%,但工业粉尘排放量反而增加8%. 经济危机使ρ(PM₁₀)、ρ(SO₂)、ρ(NO₂)下降速率分别提升了20%、2%、2%. 研究结果表明,“十一五”总量减排、2008年北京奥运会期间的治理措施和全球经济危机对唐山市的空气质量产生了明显的影响.      

人口、资源与环境经济学教材比较研究

人口、资源与环境经济学是理论经济学下设立的一个二级学科。自1997年设立以来,很多学者对其学科体系进行了探索。出版了一些著作和教材。本文以现代课程与教学论的观点为指导．采用文献研究、比较分析、统计分析的方法．从教材现状、体系结构、内容、表现形式和手段等方面对国内外人口、资源与环境经济学教材进行了详细的比较研究,并在此基础上为新教材建设提出了建议。以期为国内相关教材的改进和完善提供参考依据。这些建议是：统一并完善教材体系;理论要联系实际．培养学生学习兴趣和解决实际问题能力;注重学科领域最新成果的运用。增强教材的时代性和科学性;注重表现形式和手段多样性,帮助读者理解抽象的经济理论。     

Trust via disasters: the case of Chile's 2010 earthquake

Chile has a long‐standing history of natural disasters and, in particular, earthquakes. The latest big earthquake hit Chile on 27 February 2010 with a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale. As an event that had a profound impact on significant portions of the population, the earthquake could theoretically have served to build trust by promoting new trust networks through the enhancement of distant family ties and the interaction between affected neighbours. This study offers an empirical analysis of this theory in the Chilean case. It finds that if initial social capital is very low (thus allowing for post‐disaster looting and violence), then the impact of the trust‐increasing effect is smaller. It also shows that the effect of the disaster was not transitory, but that it persisted and actually increased over time.     

Economics and Land-Use Change in Prioritizing Private Land Conservation

Abstract:  Incentive-based strategies such as conservation easements and short-term management agreements are popular tools for conserving biodiversity on private lands. Billions of dollars are spent by government and private conservation organizations to support land conservation. Although much of conservation biology focuses on reserve design, these methods are often ineffective at optimizing the protection of biological benefits for conservation programs. Our review of the recent literature on protected-area planning identifies some of the reasons why. We analyzed the site-selection process according to three important components: biological benefits, land costs, and likelihood of land-use change. We compared our benefit-loss-cost targeting approach with more conventional strategies that omit or inadequately address either land costs or likelihood of land-use change. Our proposed strategy aims to minimize the expected loss in biological benefit due to future land-use conversion while considering the full or partial costs of land acquisition. The implicit positive correlation between the likelihood of land-use conversion and cost of land protection means high-vulnerability sites with suitable land quality are typically more expensive than low-vulnerability sites with poor land quality. Therefore, land-use change and land costs need to be addressed jointly to improve spatial targeting strategies for land conservation. This approach can be extended effectively to land trusts and other institutions implementing conservation programs.     

A combined ecosystem and value chain modeling approach for evaluating societal cost and benefit of fishing

We describe a combined ecological and economic approach aimed at giving more equal emphasis to both disciplines, while being integrated so that design, analysis, data entry and storage, and result capabilities are developed with emphasis on deriving a user-friendly, easily accessible tool. We have thus developed the approach as an integrated module of the freely available Ecopath with Ecosim scientific software; the world's most widely applied ecological modeling tool. We link the trophic ecosystem model to a value-chain approach where we explicitly and in considerable detail keep track of the flow (amounts, revenue, and costs) of fish products from sea through to the end consumer. We also describe the social aspects of the fish production and trade, by evaluating employment and income diagnostics. This is done with emphasis on distribution income while accounting for social aspects of the fishing sector. From a management perspective, one of the interesting aspects of the approach we introduce here, is that it opens for direct evaluation of what impact management interventions, e.g., quota settings, effort regulation, or area closures, may have on the ecosystem, the economy and the social setting, as well as on food availability for the consumer.