Learning sustainable water practices through participatory irrigation management in Thailand

Participatory irrigation management (PIM) was adopted in Thailand in 2004 to encourage the sustainable use of water in the agricultural sector. The research presented in this paper sought to understand the relationships between public participation, learning, and the implementation of more sustainable water practices through PIM in Thailand. Data was collected through document reviews, observation, informal meetings, and a total of 55 semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews of local irrigators from two case study regions around the Krasiew Reservoir. Results showed that participating in PIM activities facilitated both instrumental (e.g., water supply and demand data, benefits of on‐time water delivery) and communicative (e.g., reasons for past PIM failure, expectations of fellow farmers) learning among PIM participants. Findings also revealed that social action is fostered through the recognition of human dignity and compassionate communication that instils a sense of ownership and solidarity among irrigators. Sustainable water practices among local farmers were spurred further through learning that the reservoir is a finite water source.     

Advocates for environmental justice: the role of the champion in public participation implementation

That segment of the community I would say is just in general pretty disenfranchised. We found that if you want participation you have to go to them. I mean there are days when you just need to go knock on the door.

Brownfields developer in a poor urban neighbourhood

This article considers the role that champions play as advocates for socioeconomically disadvantaged community member involvement in environmental management decision-making. Six case studies of brownfields redevelopment projects located in poor urban neighbourhoods are examined. Analysis of these case studies reveals how champion behaviour, which has typically been studied only in the context of technological innovation, is enacted in public participation efforts in the service of environmental justice. The study finds that champions who emerge in these settings lead the development and implementation of non-standard public participation process innovations.     

环境影响评价中的公众参与机制研究

通过梳理分析环境影响评价相关法中公众参与的规定,对照UNEP有效的公众参与五要素,剖析环境影响评价中公众参与机制的不足,并提出完善环境影响评价中公众参与机制的对策。     

公众参与环境执法角色关系探析

环境是公共的,环境利益具有公众性。在环境执法中积极吸纳公众意见,是国家民主管理社会的体现。公众参与环境执法的角色定位即：政府在环境执法中处于核心地位,拥有最终裁量权;企业是环境执法的对象;公众是环境执法的最终受益者。政府、企业与公众的沟通协调是公众参与环境执法的有效机制。     

Seeking,Thinking, Acting: Understanding Suburban Resident Perceptions and Behaviors Related to Stream Quality

Theories in risk, psychology, and communication suggest aiming to inform the public about basic ecological facts may not be enough to influence knowledge of risks or behaviors to mitigate water quality risks. The risk information‐seeking and processing model and the theory of planned behavior suggest several additional variables that are likely to influence risk‐mitigating behaviors. We used data from a survey of watershed residents in Ohio to explore a model of behavioral intentions to positively impact stream health. Residents' informational norms, or the perceived pressure to know about local stream health, strongly predicted their information‐seeking behaviors. Active‐seeking behaviors predicted positive attitudes toward behaviors impacting stream health, which predicted intentions to positively impact stream health. Implications for outreach include couching communication in terms of risk found important to the local community, here wildlife were seen as negatively influenced by water quality, as opposed to plain reports typically provided by utility companies. Increasing social pressure to feel informed by emphasizing the existing knowledge of stream ecology among residents could change the norm for the less informed. A low response rate limits the generalizability of findings here, but leveraging these findings in outreach efforts could prove more successful in engaging the public to improve stream health and support policies to improve stream health.     

Climate pioneership and leadership in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities

ABSTRACT

Innovative climate governance in small-to-medium-sized structurally disadvantaged cities (SDCs) are assessed. Considering their deeply ingrained severe economic and social problems it would be reasonable to assume that SDCs act primarily as climate laggards or at best as followers. However, novel empirical findings show that SDCs are capable of acting as climate pioneers. Different types and styles of climate leadership and pioneership and how they operate within multi-level and polycentric governance structures are identified and assessed. SDCs seem relatively readily willing to adopt transformational climate pioneership styles to create ‘green’ jobs, for example, in the offshore wind energy sector and with the aim of improving their poor external image. However, in order to sustain transformational climate pioneership they often have to rely on support from ‘higher’ levels of governance. For SDCs, there is a tension between learning from each other’s best practice and fierce economic competition in climate innovation.     

应对挑战的中国环境政策

中国的发展正处在机遇和挑战并存的时代．要在发展中实现人与自然的和谐．必须要以科学的环境政策作为保障。该文探讨了环境工作面临的巨大挑战和需要研究的问题．并对应对挑战的中国环境政策进行了总结。     

Voluntary participation for sustainability transition: experiences from the ‘Commitment to Sustainable Development 2050’

Voluntary and active participation by a wide variety of actors is a prerequisite for successful societal transitions towards sustainability. The ‘Commitment to Sustainable Development 2050’ is a national-level initiative in Finland, aiming to mobilise a large-scale transition involving various societal actors through openly communicated commitments to concrete actions. Each commitment should focus on at least one of the eight nationally defined sustainability objectives connected to the global Sustainable Development Goals. This article assesses the implementation and the development needs of the commitment process based on a range of materials. The results highlight the importance of securing adequate resources for long-term coordination and continuous development of the commitment process, trust creation through long-term and open communication, and flexibility allowing for experimentation aimed at finding new modes of interaction between the public and private sectors.     

Negotiating environmental agreements under ratification constraints

We analyze the impact of ratification constraints on the optimal terms of international environmental agreements (IEAs). For this, we combine the literature on IEAs with the public choice literature on two-level games. By also incorporating uncertain preferences of the pivotal voter in the ratification stage, we make several important contributions: (i) we contribute to a more realistic modeling of the temporal structure of international agreements, (ii) we show a surprising, yet intuitive non-monotonic relationship between the optimal commitment level and the variance of ratification decisions, (iii) we identify reasons to expect a larger number of countries to join international negotiations than predicted by most of the coalition formation literature based on a representative agent model. Ratification constraints thereby can improve the welfare gains from stable international agreements.