基于“可持续性”要素的比较优势理论拓展

比较优势是不同国家生产同种产品的机会成本差异。传统理论认为,形成比较优势的机会成本主要为生产成本,而"可持续性"是一种代际公共品,耗费"可持续性"要素的机会成本是代际成本,即现在使用某(些)要素所放弃的未来使用之可能带来的纯收益。因此,不同国家的可持续性差异体现为代际成本差异,"可持续性"是塑造一国比较优势的新要素。若中国对外贸易过度依靠当代所具有的劳动力价格低廉和环境规制政策宽松所塑造的劳动力比较优势和环境比较优势,从长期看是不可持续的。通过代际成本内在化,可逐步实现对外贸易发展的短期理性与长期理性的统一。进而言之,中国需要妥善处理贸易增长与各种稀缺要素消耗之间的关系,平衡贸易增长与可持续发展的关系,当今的贸易与未来的贸易需寻求某种总量和结构上的均衡。     

From Policy Document to Implementation: Organizational Routines as Possible Barriers to Mainstreaming Climate Adaptation

This paper aims to understand the role of organizational routines as possible barriers to the mainstreaming of climate adaptation at the implementation stage. While the mainstreaming of climate adaptation into policy documents is relatively easy, the implementation of these policies seems to be more problematic. Barriers to climate adaptation often occur during this stage as the implementation of the policies is generally undertaken by other actors than the policy-makers. These actors act based on organizational routines. As organizational routines aim to provide stability, they tend to be reaffirmative. Reorganizing the resources and practices of these actors to initiate mainstreaming then proves difficult. Consequently, the routines could prevent change that might be necessary to address new policy objectives such as climate adaptation. An analytical framework consisting of four self-reinforcing mechanisms is used to understand and explain why and how organizational routines can hamper the mainstreaming of climate adaptation during implementation. A case study is used to illustrate organizational routines as possible barriers. The paper concludes by stating that to optimize the possibilities of mainstreaming climate adaptation, a change in routines is necessary. In order to stimulate change in organizational routines, the focus should be on reflecting on existing routines, legitimacy building and learning.     

Public parks as an element of urban planning: a missing piece in Accra's growth and development

Public parks are important to urban environments, residents, and visitors. Among other functions, they provide environmental services, such as air and water purification, and they increase both recreational opportunities and the attractiveness of the urban environment. Because of their importance, urban parks serve as public spaces that provide visitors and urban residents with rights to the city. This paper identifies the dearth of urban public parks in Accra-Tema city-region as worrying. The Accra Plan 1958 underscored the significance of green spaces and designated the coastal strip for parks development but the areas have been lost to various urban uses. We argue that the continual neglect of public parks within urban planning and community development schemes in the Accra-Tema city-region is a major concern because it is depriving the citizens a right to the city and its public spaces. A number of factors have worked adversely against the provision of public parks and green spaces in the city-region. These include development pressures, undue political interference, a complex land delivery system, and ad hoc planning. The paper concludes by offering policy suggestions as to how to resolve the dearth of parks and green spaces in the city-region.     

Mapping divergent concepts of sustainability: lay knowledge,local practices and environmental governance

This paper examines local sustainability concepts in Connemara, a predominantly rural region in the West of Ireland (in this paper, the term “Ireland” refers to the Republic of Ireland), to show how they are (re-)constituted through people's interactions with social and biophysical environments. We argue that these interactions produce diverse forms of lay environmental knowledge and expertise that encompass cognitive and emotional aspects, a fact that is frequently ignored in environmental policy-making which prioritises rational arguments over reactions rooted in people's sense of place and community. Local people's responses to this dominance of “official” rational-technical sustainability concepts are central to recent cases of environmental controversy and lack of compliance to environmental policies that have characterised the study area but that show many parallels to conflicts and disputes elsewhere. Drawing on rich qualitative evidence from interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this paper demonstrates how communities' responses to environmental policies depend on how well (or poorly) sustainability concepts underpinning these policies match local people's social-ecological practices and related place-specific views of what should be sustained.     

Making environmental policy work with civic science: the intermediary role of expert citizens at the Japanese local level

The aim of the present article is to examine the importance of public participation in the production and use of environmental science, with special reference to “expert citizens” who can facilitate and mediate between expert knowledge and lay people. The study of expert citizens is largely unexplored in Japan's environmental policy. As uncertainty, inherent in the complexity of environmental science, increases, there are calls for refashioning expert knowledge into a more citizen–expert interactive governance. In the USA, the way that lay people can participate in scientific knowledge application and policy-making is organised through grassroots and national environmental organisations, such as the National Resources Defense Council. In Japan, such professional associations that build networks of interaction with scientific experts, policy-makers, interest groups and the media, have yet to emerge on a wider scale. Nonetheless, voluntary citizens individually or collectively have developed their expertise over many years and have begun to play an intermediary role at the local level. This article will analyse the potential roles of expert citizens by conducting the case studies of two Japanese localities, Shiki and Joyo cities.     

Dynamics of Policy Networks. The Case of Organic Farming Policy in the Czech Republic

To better understand the potential for successful and long-term establishment of environmental policy, the aim of this paper is to explore the network dynamics of a policy field that has become well established in the EU: organic farming. We look at the dynamics of the organic farming policy network in the Czech Republic over a period of 10 years by applying a comparative formal network analysis. We focused in particular on the distribution of power between actors and how capacities of policy actors have evolved between 2004 (its year of accession to the EU) and 2014. We conclude that the organic farming policy network in the Czech Republic has been highly dynamic and has changed from one that was decidedly influenced by organic sector organizations to a network centralized around the Ministry of Agriculture. However, the organic farming organization managed to maintain its good reputation for competence in organic farming policy, which creates opportunities for the organization to remain active in the policy debate.     

Aligning Climate Policy with National Interest: Disengagements with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions in South Africa

Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) were proposed as a policy framework that could provide middle ground for meeting both the development and mitigation objectives in developing countries. While South Africa engaged actively with the NAMA terminology in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations, its engagement at the domestic level has been rather lacklustre. This presents an interesting paradox. The paper studies the interplay of international norms embodied in NAMAs with South Africa's domestic policy process. Disengagement and contestation around NAMAs in South Africa is played out at three stages: decision-making stage where the symptoms surrounding this contestation first emerge; policy formulation stage where NAMAs have to not only align with the National Development Plan but also compete with a predilection for domestically familiar terminology of flagships under the national climate policy; and finally the broader agenda-setting stage of policy process, where NAMAs have to prove useful in not only pursuing the developmental state agenda but also in tackling the underlying material factors that represent country's economic dependency on fossil fuels. NAMAs faced combined resistance from ideas and interests in various degrees at all these stages resulting in their disengagement.     

Interactions between energy consumption,international trade,and real income in Canada: An empirical investigation from a new version of the Solow growth model

This study investigates the empirical relationship between energy consumption, international trade, and real income in Canada which has an important role in global energy and trade. It employs bound tests to level relationships and conditional error correction models through ARDL specification to a new version of the Solow Growth model. Using annual data of the 1960–2010 period, results reveal a long-term relationship between energy consumption, international trade, and real income in Canada. It is also found that energy exporting activity is the determinant (driver) of energy consumption through the channel of real income and energy consumption is the determinant (driver) of exports through the channel of real income in the long term of the Canadian economy. Exports and energy use are the determinants (drivers) of real income in the long term of the Canadian economy; therefore, as conditional Granger causality tests suggest there is feedback relationship between energy consumption, international trade, and real income in the long term of the Canadian economy. The present study suggests that any energy conservation policies are likely to have negative influence on output and international trade in Canada.     

铅酸电池行业环保专项行动的环境与经济影响研究

"十五"以来,我国涉重行业高速发展,造成了严重的重金属污染和多起群体性污染事故。从2009年起,环保部等九部委连续四年对重金属排放企业违法排污行为进行环保专项行动。本文以2011年铅蓄电池行业环保专项行动为例,分析重金属污染治理的环境影响、经济影响和社会影响。专项行动对行业短期赢利能力和中小企业就业有一定负面影响,但是显著改善了行业产能利用率,提升了行业整体技术水平,提高了产业集中度,促进了空间布局向工业园区、向东部地区集中。总体来看,铅蓄电池行业环保专项行动达到了预期的环境和经济目标,行业发展从高增长、高代价的"非常态"模式进入相对可持续的中高速、低代价的"新常态"。"十三五"期间,要实现经济中高速增长和环境质量总体改善的双重目标,必须加强对高污染行业的环境管理。将行政执法与刑事执法紧密衔接,通过提高企业违法成本从源头遏制违法排污行为;根据污染企业的空间布局建设相应的环保机构,加强农村地区的环保能力;在欠发达地区要保持经济规划、城镇规划和环境规划的一致性,在区域协调发展过程中实现绿色发展。     

我国土壤环境管理政策制度分析及发展趋势

我国土壤环境修复属于政策驱动型产业,完善政策制度和标准体系对推动我国土壤修复健康发展、保障土壤环境安全具有重要意义。本文从国家和地方两个层面,系统分析了我国当前已经发布的土壤污染防治相关环境管理政策法规和技术标准现状、内容特点及其在推进土壤环境管理过程中发挥的作用,总结归纳出国家层面环境管理文件和地方层面制度建设的不同特点。针对国家层面和地方层面环境管理文件的不同特点,结合"十三五"国家土壤污染防治行动计划体现的土壤环境管理总体思路和任务要求,借鉴国际土壤污染防治制度建设经验,提出"十三五"时期我国土壤污染防治政策制度和标准体系建设的主要方向,即"一中心、三方向",包括基于风险管理的分级分类核心思想,重点提高政策制度操作性、提高技术标准的精细化和针对性、提高关键环境管理的有效性三个主要方向。