Culture,Progress and the Media: The Shad as Synecdoche in Environmental News Coverage

This essay examined the use of synecdoche in newspaper coverage of a dispute over water rights between the Mattaponi Indians and the city of Newport News, Virginia. The Mattaponi used the shad as a rhetorical trope to explain the tribe's relationship to the river and their fears about the reservoir's impact. The reservoir proponents, however, treated the shad as a representation of the conflict surrounding the reservoir, and this construction was reflected in articles that appeared in The Daily Press, a local daily newspaper. This essay argued that, ultimately, the treatment of a single species as a synecdoche in environmental disputes undermined the Mattaponi's position. The media which are instrumental in defining environmental issues for the public, misinterpreted a rhetorical trope that was proffered as a representation for a complex set of values and instead focused attention on the species itself rather than the values that it represented.     

Nature,Crisis, Risk,Science, and Society: What is Our Ethical Responsibility?

In his keynote address, Robert Cox raised key questions, many of which force us to consider the larger question of the role of academics in society. The authors respond by suggesting that environmental communication, like other communication studies, is inherently normative and that environmental communication scholarship is closely aligned to risk as a centerpiece to crisis analysis. The authors discuss the productive connections among science, communication and sound public policy that make society more fully functional, including the formation of effective public policy through science that is normative while seeking objectivity, evaluating and symbolizing motives in discourse, acknowledging uncertainty and acceptable uncertainty, and that material and symbolic dimensions of the environment are interdependent. Thus, such studies focus on the ethics of environment and must balance sound science and cultural considerations.     

Culture as trigger for sustainability transition in the water domain: the case of the Spanish water policy and the Ebro river basin

There is a mounting body of literature dealing generally with the dynamics of transitions of human systems towards sustainability and specifically with the different stages and processes of transitions. However, the question of why transition processes occur in the first place remains largely unexplained. This paper explores the concept of transition triggers, such as culture or material resource scarcity, and provides a theoretical framework to explain the emergence of a transition and its relation to recent developments in Spanish water policy. We adapt the general framework provided by current transition theory and gather empirical evidence and insights from processes occurring within the Spanish policy context and the Ebro river basin in particular. Our results show that the sole existence of biophysical limits to water use or development cannot explain the start of a possible sustainability transition in this domain in Spain. Changes in the existing water policies in the direction of sustainability were not ignited by people directly affected by water scarcities but by a coalition of sensitive agents, mostly from academia, NGOs and local constituencies, who managed to articulate new identities, integrate multiple sources of policy relevant knowledge, and develop new values under the umbrella of the new water culture movement.

Coastal zone management from the social scientific perspective

‘Integration’ was one of the most frequently used words at the San Feliu Euroconference but the participants did not always use it in the same way. Integration is one of the key notions discussed in the subsequent papers bySalz, Green &; Penning-Rowsell, Köhn &; Gowdy andDavos. A short introduction to these papers is presented, where some of the views expressed by the authors are compared with related conceptions which can be found in social sciences literature.     

Comparison of three culture methods for Cladophora oligoclona北大核心CSCD

The growth of Cladophora spp. is vigorous in the field, but not good under indoor culture conditions. In order to promote the study on ecology, water environment treatment characteristics, and the development and utilization of Cladophora, the effects of three different culture methods (standing, ventilating, water flowing + ventilating) on biomass, morphology, and photosynthetic activity of C. oligoclona were compared in order to find a suitable method for its indoor culture. The results showed that the culture method of water flowing + ventilating could effectively promote C. oligoclona biomass accumulation; the morphologies in the three culture methods were different. C. oligoclona with increased single cell length and reduced cell diameter was found in the culture method involving water flowing + ventilating; in this method, the length of the main branch and branch of the cell, plant height, and branch length of C. oligoclona were significantly higher than that in the standing and ventilating culture methods (P < 0.05). C. oligoclona cultured in the water flowing + ventilating method also showed a higher photosynthetic activity. In conclusion, among the three culture methods, the water flowing + ventilating culture method is the most suitable for the indoor culturing of C. oligoclona; this method can also provide a technical reference for the further indoor mass culture of C. oligoclona. © 2018 Science Press. All rights reserved.     

Malnutrition among the Akamba of Kenya -Problem or response to a problem?

Two recent studies amongst the Kenyan Akamba are contrasted to illustrate how malnutrition can be regarded either as a response to a problem in the local environment, or as the problem itself, arising from general conditions of poverty and ignorance. Differences in methodology are compared and it is shown that nutrition studies often ignore local factors in reaching conclusions on nutritional status. Consequently, nutrition policy recommendations provide general solutions of limited value. It is suggested that factors in the local environment which may cause malnutrition be investigated by hypothesis testing, in order to provide specific information for community-based action.
The category of the poor is not merely inadequate for evaluative exercises and a nuisance for causal analysis, it can also have distorting effects on policy matters. On the causal side, the lack of discrimination between different circumstances leading to poverty gives rise to a lack of focus in policy choice.     

生态文化--生态城市建设的软件

阐述了生态文化的内涵以及其在生态城市建设中的软件作用。城市的生态文化建设应该从物态、行为、体制、心智四个层面进行,并且互相促进,形成一个循环的整体;城市生态文化建设的核心是利用教育和宣传积极培育生态意识,同时加强生态体制这一保障体系的建设。