Metagovernance and policy forum outputs in Swiss environmental politics

Policy forums are lightly institutionalized and stable forms of governance networks that include administrative authorities, interest groups, and scientists. They are said to produce different types of outputs, from simple actor coordination to position papers and implementation documents, but their productivity has also been questioned. Metagovernance strategies can improve the capability of policy forums to produce outputs. To determine how different metagovernance strategies influence the capability of forums to produce joint position papers, 29 policy forums in the Swiss environmental sector are compared through a qualitative comparative analysis. Results indicate that metagovernance strategies such as state actors as forum members or majority decision rules need to be combined with small forum size or low actor heterogeneity. Furthermore, forum foundation by the state complicates the production of position papers.     

Cause,catalyst or conjunction? The influence of the Habitats Directive on policy instrument choice in Member States

In the process of implementing EU policy, Member States sometimes introduce new policy instruments in cases where this is not obligatory. To better understand this phenomenon, this paper reviews three cases in which new instruments emerged and develops a methodology to trace back the influence of EU Directives on instrument choice. The method is illustrated by a narrative of the emergence of new management planning instruments during the implementation of the EU Habitats Directive in three EU Member States: Finland, Hungary and the Netherlands. Three key features of a policy instrument are defined, namely, its authoritative force, action content and governance design. These are used to measure the contribution of the Habitats Directive compared to other potential explanatory causes for the emergence of the new policy instrument. In all three reviewed countries a nested causal relationship between the Habitats Directive and the introduction of the new policy instrument is identified. Based on the relative contribution of the Habitats Directive to the emergence of the new instrument a distinction is made whether the Directive acted as a cause, catalyst or if conjunction occurred.     

甘肃省第三产业对经济增长贡献的实证研究

第三产业的加快发展是生产力提高和社会进步的必然结果。大力发展第三产业有利于提高工农业生产的社会化和专业化水平,有利于优化生产结构,促进市场充分发育,缓解就业压力,从而促进整个经济持续、快速和健康发展。利用1991-2009年数据,以向量自回归模型为基础,采用单位根检验、协整分析和格兰杰因果检验等方法对甘肃省第三产业与经济增长之间的关系进行了实证研究。结果表明,1991-2009年甘肃省第三产业总值对GDP的长期弹性为0．35035,第三产业对经济增长具有积极的促进作用。     

Managing the Three-Rivers Headwater Region, China: From Ecological Engineering to Social Engineering

The three-rivers headwater region (THRHR) of Qinghai province, China plays a key role as source of fresh water and ecosystem services for central and eastern China. Global warming and human activities in the THRHR have threatened the ecosystem since the 1980s. Therefore, the Chinese government has included managing of the THRHR in the national strategy since 2003. The State Integrated Test and Demonstration Region of the THRHR highlights the connection with social engineering (focus on improving people’s livelihood and well-being) in managing nature reserves. Based on this program, this perspective attempts a holistic analysis of the strategic role of the THRHR, requirements for change, indices of change, and approaches to change. Long-term success of managing nature reserves requires effective combination of ecological conservation, economic development, and social progress. Thus, the philosophy of social engineering should be employed as a strategy to manage the THRHR.     

Public-Private Partnerships in China’s Urban Water Sector

During the past decades, the traditional state monopoly in urban water management has been debated heavily, resulting in different forms and degrees of private sector involvement across the globe. Since the 1990s, China has also started experiments with new modes of urban water service management and governance in which the private sector is involved. It is premature to conclude whether the various forms of private sector involvement will successfully overcome the major problems (capital shortage, inefficient operation, and service quality) in China’s water sector. But at the same time, private sector involvement in water provisioning and waste water treatments seems to have become mainstream in transitional China.     

Carbon capture and storage-desirability from a risk management point of view

Environmental and safety risks related to carbon capture and storage concern leakages and accidental releases during transport and geological storage. Based on principles widely accepted in the EU and beyond in the discussion about the where’s and why’s of nuclear waste repositories, this paper discusses the desirability of carbon capture and storage from a risk management point of view, focusing on environmental risks on the global level (climate change). On this basis it is concluded that, if the key energy issue of coming generations, not just in Europe but all around the world, is not the abundance of fossil resources but rather an unacceptably high probability of global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, then the solution should not include any massive hiding of the emissions but entirely focus on the avoidance based on improved technology in power plants and other industrial installations.     

Hybrid governance tensions fuelling self-reflexivity in Alternative Food Networks: the case of the Brussels GASAP (solidarity purchasing groups for peasant agriculture)

This paper applies the concept of Hybrid Governance to the analysis of the GASAP (Groupe d’Achats Solidaires de l’Agriculture Paysanne), a solidarity-based producers–consumers network established in Brussels in 2006. The Hybrid Governance concept allows to capture the role of key governance tensions in driving the self-organisation, scaling out and self-reflexive dynamics of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). The approach provides a multifaceted and sound socio-political account of the ways AFNs arise, self-organise, associate and build networks in the pursuit of their food allocation objectives, often facing a contradictory socio-institutional environment. Three types of governance tensions, i.e. organisational, resource, and institutional, as well as the interactions among them, are analysed throughout the life-course of the GASAP network. The analysis identifies three phases in the GASAP’s life-course, showing how governance tensions and their interrelations arise and play a critical role in conditioning the overall development of the organisation through time. The paper concludes with highlighting prospective values of the hybrid governance approach for the analysis of AFNs in general. These values relate to: the role of the hybrid approach in illuminating on key drivers behind the scaling out of AFNs; the hybrid governance as a tool to conceptualise and sustain the self-reflexive capacity of local food initiatives and the ways by which this approach unravels challenges to build cooperative alliances and networks among a diversity of agents in the food arena.     

Governing the Borderlands: Decoding the Power of Aid

This article examines aid practice, that is, the public-private contractual networks that link donor governments, UN agencies, military establishments, NGOs, private companies and others, as a relation of global liberal governance. In order to fulfil this function, such networks embody what could be called the 'securitisation' of international assistance. Based upon ideas of human security and ameliorating the effects of poverty and vulnerability reduction, aid is now seen as playing a direct security role. Rather than being concerned with relations between states, the primary aim of this security paradigm is to modulate and change the behaviour of populations within them. In doing so, it is able to exploit the opportunities afforded by privatisation. At the same time, however, aid as security is confronted by its own particular problem of 'governing at a distance'; how can calculations made by leading states be transformed into actions at the global edge when a multitude of private and non-government implementors now intervene? The article concludes by examining the contribution of risk analysis to solving this problem and, especially, the development of new contractual regimes based around technical standardisation, benchmarking and performance auditing. Through such technologies, metropolitan states are learning how to manage the public-private networks of aid practice and, as a result, to govern the borderlands in new ways.     

环境监测任务可信度评估在第三方检测机构管理中的作用浅析

环境监测任务可信度评估是对整个监测任务实施的全过程进行跟踪考核并给出考核结果值的一种质量管理模式,可以在资质管理、任务招标、价格评分、合同付款等方面对第三方检测机构的管理提供量化依据。用好可信度评估可以在加强行业监管的同时,规范行业竞争。     

自动监测站第三方运维管理的思考

随着自动监测技术的不断发展,其连续、稳定的监测优势正在逐步代替手工监测,各地监测部门投入了大量的资源和精力建成了大量的空气、水质自动站,在灰霾监测、河道水质监管、大环境预警方面等都起到了积极作用。由于自动站数量多,工作任务复杂繁重,因此大部分地区都采用第三方托管模式进行自动站日常运维管理。如何有效的进行权责分配、提高工作效率、减少管理摩擦等成为业主方不可回避和亟待解决的问题。根据实际管理实践,结合一些实用的管理经验,提出了一系列相关措施。