From Trust to Trustworthiness: Why Information is not Enough in the Food Sector

The many well-publicized food scandals in recent years have resulted in a general state of vulnerable trust. As a result, building consumer trust has become an important goal in agri-food policy. In their efforts to protect trust in the agricultural and food sector, governments and industries have tended to consider the problem of trust as merely a matter of informing consumers on risks. In this article, we argue that the food sector better addresses the problem of trust from the perspective of the trustworthiness of the food sector itself. This broad idea for changing the focus of trust is the assumption that if you want to be trusted, you should be trustworthy. To provide a clear understanding of what being trustworthy means within the food sector, we elaborate on both the concept of trust and of responsibility. In this way we show that policy focused on enhancing transparency and providing information to consumers is crucial, but not sufficient for dealing with the problem of consumer trust in the current agri-food context.     

Adapting to climate variability: Pumpkins, people and policy

Understanding of how best to support those most vulnerable to climate stress is imperative given expected changes in climate variability. This paper investigates local adaptation strategies to climate variability, focusing on agricultural decision‐making in a communal irrigation scheme in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Research done through interviews, surveys and participatory methods demonstrates that adaptation strategies within a community are socially differentiated and present differing objectives and priorities. These results highlight the need for intervention and policy that support a heterogeneous response to a wide range of stresses. Evidence for climate change is clear and the need for adaptation is urgent. However, adaptation measures have to be sensitively integrated with ongoing development pathways to ensure they are sustainable and relevant to local priorities.     

National minerals policies and stakeholder participation for broad-based development in the southern African development community (SADC)

This paper explains how the well-accepted concept of improved stakeholder participation during mineral policy development leads to a national mineral policy that accommodates the diverging views and interests that allows wide acceptance of decisions, enhancing the success of implementation and, ultimately, national benefits. This process is based on lessons learnt during the South African experience and has been successfully applied in the development of the Namibian and Malawian national minerals policies. An effective policy in the SADC will engineer the delicate balance between poverty reduction and an internationally competitive minerals sector. This balance enhances the possibility of long-term economic growth and development in the SADC region. The overriding advantage of this strategy is that it generates ‘home-grown’ policy instruments and implementation of mineral law with which stakeholders can identify. This process presents a new challenge to traditional policy formulation strategies in emerging economies and the bottom-up approach, linked to wide political support, allows the potential realisation of national objectives.     

江西木材供求经验模型与林业经济和环境政策分析

本文通过已有的研究所得到的局部均衡的木材供求经验模型，用于分析江西的森林资源的环境与经济政策。研究结果表明：市场充分时采用市场价格机制的经济手段调节资源配置要比税费和采伐限额的政府干预手段的效率高。但在目前的条件下，即使集约经营森林资源，适当的税费和采伐限额的措施还是一种合理的选择。     

A CASE STUDY IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FEDERAL WATER POLLUTION CONTROL ACT AMENDMENTS1

ABSTRACT: A general model of the policy implementation process is utilized to facilitate a discussion of the way Section 208 of PL 92-500 is being carried out on an areawide basis. A study of four “208 areas” in the “New York-Philadelphia corridor” highlights the operation of several variables used in the model. The varying political and socioeconomic conditions in geographic areas which have similar water quality problems are leading to the evolution of vastly different implementing structures, or institutional arrangements. The analysis suggests that these differences may have important implications for the success of the program in each of these areas. A major underlying theme is that such problems are characteristic of the 208 process nationwide and reflect general difficulties associated with managing water quality in a federal system.     

The Wild Kangaroo Industry: Developing the Potential for Sustainability

Wildlife resources the world over have long been subject to harvest and management. As wildlife uses have grown, so too have the need and desire to ensure their sustainability. This new context of sustainability presents opportunities to merge ecological, economic and social elements to foster development. This paper presents the management and harvesting of wild kangaroos as an example of the potentially sustainable use of a natural resource. Some comparisons are drawn between the use of other wild living resources, deer in Europe and crayfish in Western Australia. However, sustainability of kangaroo species and the industry is not just a matter of market economics and ecology, it must also be socially sustainable. The public policy instrument of a statutory advisory board with a marketing function is proposed in order to integrate the cultural and social aspects of kangaroo management with the economic and ecological aspects. Through such integration, full sustainability of a wild resource then might be achieved.     

Integration of Visual Quality Considerations in Development of Israeli Vegetation Management Policy

This article deals with the visual quality of Mediterranean vegetation groups in northern Israel, the public's preference of these groups as a visual resource, and the policy options for their management. The study is based on a sample of 44 Mediterranean vegetation groups and three population groups of local residents, who were interviewed using a questionnaire and photographs of the vegetation groups. The results of the research showed that plant classification methods based on flora composition, habitat, and external appearance were found to be suitable for visual plant classification and for the evaluation of visual preference of vegetation groups by the interviewed public. The vegetation groups of planted pine forests and olive groves, characterizing a cultured vegetation landscape, were preferred over typical Mediterranean landscapes such as scrub and grassed scrub. The researchers noted a marked difference between the two products of vegetation management policy, one that proposes the conservation and restoration of the variety of native Mediterranean vegetation landscape, and a second that advanced the development of the cultured landscape of planted olive groves and pines forests, which were highly preferred by the public. The authors suggested the development of an integrated vegetation management policy that would combine both needs and thus reduce the gap between the policy proposed by planners and the local population's visual preference.     

Environmental Policy Implementation in Rural China: A Case Study of Yuhang, Zhejiang

The rapid growth of rural enterprises has transformed the Chinese countryside. Although rural industrialisation has resulted in increased financial well-being, it has also contributed to decreased environmental quality. While China has strong environmental protection laws, this paper will demonstrate that they are not being effectively implemented in a rural region in Zhejiang Province. This is due to a number of social, political, and economic barriers that prevent agencies from effectively enforcing environmental policies and regulatory mechanisms. This paper investigates the implementation of China's environmental policies through a case study in Yuhang County, Zhejiang Province. It demonstrates that the implementation of environmental impact assessment, discharge fees, and limited time treatment is limited by inadequate technology, low finances, limited human resources, poor public environmental awareness, faulty data, inferior agency reports, organizational conflict, relations based on guanxi, and low discharge fee prices.     

安全科学与社会可持续发展

笔者介绍了安全科学的兴起和内涵 ;认为安全科学的定义应是保护人类安全健康的、促进社会可持续发展的、跨门类综合性的交叉科学 ;论述了安全生产是我国的一项基本国策及全国安全生产现状 ,说明了伤亡事故的严重性和重大损失对我国社会发展的负面影响。还对安全科学促进社会可持续发展提出了 1 0项建议 ,其中包括 2 1世纪初期 2 0年内的重大科技问题的攻关内容的建议 ,可供国家有关部门战略决策的参考。     

GIS-based assessment of the threat to world forests by patterns of non-sustainable civilisation nature interaction

The paper presents a novel transdisciplinary approach to investigate non-sustainable civilisation–nature interactions in the context of global change. The approach rests on the decomposition of intricate dynamics of Global Change into problematic patterns civilisation nature interactions (‘syndromes’) this is done by an iterative process of observations, data and theoretical system analysis and GIS-based modelling attempts. These syndromes of global change characterise endangering and risky developments of civilisation nature interaction and represent a baseline for measuring and indicating ‘non-sustainability’; in order to have a sustainable development it is necessary to have a far-reaching absence of syndromes. They encompass the core problems of global change, e.g. soil degradation, climate change, threats to biodiversity or global deforestation. Patterns are defined as characteristic constellations of global change trends (‘symptoms’). Cause–effect schemes of symptoms and their interrelations are constituted as complex phenomena resulting from interactions over the different spheres of the Earth system (biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, population, pedosphere, economy, psychosocial sphere, social organisation, science and technology). The approach is illustrated by an analysis of civilisation–nature interaction patterns relevant for global deforestation. Global forest ecosystems have been chosen for this investigation because of their important role in the global carbon cycle and their importance for biological diversity. The resulting geographical patchwork of the combined dispositions and intensities of the different syndromes describes current and future regional threats to forests by their underlying global cause–effect patterns of civilisation–nature interaction.