我国碳排放权交易试点现状及问题分析

分析了碳排放权交易试点市场的政策环境,从准入规则、配额分配、排放核查、交易量与交易价格4个方面介绍了各试点地区碳排放权交易市场的现状,归纳出了我国碳排放交易试点的主要特点;并通过与碳排放交易欧盟体系(EU-ETS)进行对比,提出了我国在碳排放权交易试点工作中存在的主要问题及国际差距,并提出了完善我国碳排放权交易市场的建议。     

保护层开采工作面采空区瓦斯分层治理

为实现保护层开采工作面生产过程中瓦斯不超限,在分析工作面瓦斯来源的基础上,提出了保护层开采工作面竖向分层治理瓦斯的思路。根据相似模拟结果,分析了采空区瓦斯流动范围和流动范围内孔隙率、风阻分布特征。采用数值模拟分析了Y型通风、Y型通风+采空区埋管及Y型通风+采空区埋管+高抽巷+高位钻场3种瓦斯治理方式下采空区瓦斯体积分数场,结果表明:采空区瓦斯体积分数在竖直方向和水平方向均具有典型的递变特征,距工作面越远,距煤层越高,瓦斯体积分数越大;合适位置的煤层顶板高抽巷对抽采来自上邻近层的瓦斯具有较好的效果,试验条件下高抽巷抽采瓦斯量达到了总量的36.4%~63.6%;沿充填墙的采空区埋管不能完全拦截下层采空区进入沿空巷的采空区瓦斯,随沿空巷长度增加,瓦斯体积分数增大,建议沿空巷长度控制在250 m范围内。     

Water policy implementation in the state of São Paulo,Brazil: Key challenges and opportunities

Challenges in implementing water planning and management are common, and the effective implementation of integrated water policies is yet to occur. In Brazil, the state of São Paulo enacted a Water Act in 1991 to ensure water availability for current and future generations based on the principles of decentralization, participation and integration. This research addresses water policy implementation issues by conducting an exploratory case study in the state of São Paulo. Factors affecting the water policy implementation process were analyzed, together with some water resources management practices. The findings indicate four dimensions of key challenges: institutional and governance, political, financial and technical. The stakeholders believe the political and the institutional and governance challenges are more important than the technical and financial ones. Additionally, the results show different levels of involvement in the areas of water policy strategy, the planning and decision-making process, and implementation by the different stakeholders groups. Stakeholders external to the water sector and from local government were considered to be less involved in water-related issues, when compared with stakeholders from the water sector. The study recommends a change in current institutional and governance arrangements in order to influence decisions and investments in different levels and sectors.     

Ghana's salt industry: A neglected sector for economic development?

The case of poverty in the abundance of plenty mostly extant in resource rich countries is also evident along the coast of Ghana. Despite the huge salt production potential of the country’s coast, the renewable resource remains highly untapped as output levels are less than 10% of potential output. Meanwhile many of the indigenes of coastal communities wallow in poverty amidst high levels of unemployment. Findings of this study reveal that key obstacles inhibiting the growth of the sector relates to land acquisition, lack of investment, and low level of technology adoption. The study therefore recommends a mix of strategies aimed at rejuvenating the sector to achieve optimum harnessing of salt deposits. This would help diversify the export markets of Ghana and help her industrialization drive towards achieving an upper-middle income country status in the short-to-medium-term.     

Policy-makers perspectives on credibility,relevance and legitimacy (CRELE)

For more than a decade, a popular theory amongst scholars of science-policy interactions has been that research is most effective at informing policy and decision-making processes when it is credible, relevant and legitimate (CRELE) with multiple audiences simultaneously. In this paper, we argue that this triad reflects a primarily intra-scientific perspective, rather than the needs and considerations of policy-makers themselves. Using over seventy semi-structured interviews with policy-makers, we present alternative criteria for effective science-policy interactions based on experiences in the urban water sector. We find that applicability, comprehensiveness, timing and accessibility (ACTA) better summarises the most important aspects of scientific research when it comes to influencing decision-making, while finding that CRELE was a poor predictor of policy-maker concerns. Whilst the ACTA quartet effectively gives double-billing to the ‘relevance’ component of CRELE, credibility and legitimacy were much lower priorities for policy-makers interviewed. This article questions whether CRELE is a useful mindset for researchers interested in policy influence. These findings will be of interest to those engaged in debates related to effective science-policy interactions more broadly, and researchers that want to marshal policy influence more specifically.     

Public support for carrot,stick, and no-government water quality policies

Public support for environmental policy provides an important foundation for democratic governance. Numerous policy innovations may improve nonpoint source pollution, but little research has examined which types of individuals are likely to support various runoff reduction policies. We conducted a household mail survey of 1136 residents in southern Wisconsin. In general, residents were more likely to support water quality policies if they were communitarians, egalitarians, concerned about water pollution, and perceived water quality as poor. The majority of respondents somewhat to strongly supported all of the seven proposed water quality policies, but opposed relying on voluntary action without government involvement on farms. Residents had higher support for incentives and market-based approaches (carrot policies) than regulation and taxes (stick policies). A more complicated pattern emerged in within-subject comparisons of residents’ views of carrot and stick approaches. Stick approaches polarized respondents by decreasing support among people with individualistic worldviews, while slightly increasing support among people with communitarian worldviews. Residents with an agricultural occupation were more likely to support voluntary, non-governmental approaches for reducing agricultural runoff, and were also more likely to support regulation for reducing urban lawn runoff. This research highlights the dominant role of cultural worldviews and the secondary roles of water pollution concern, perceived water quality, and self-interest in explaining support for diverse policies to reduce nonpoint source pollution.     

Long-term water quality in the lower Seine: Lessons learned over 4 decades of monitoring

The Seine River is a highly artificialised catchment in Europe, comprising both productive agricultural areas and intense industrial and commercial activity. Due to its strategic importance, monitoring programs in the river started as early as the 1970s. The present study compiles and analyses this valuable data set (1970–2014), thoroughly describing the riverine section downstream of Paris and the estuary. We identify long-term trends and shifting patterns in nutrients and oxygen, and pay special attention to the river’s evolution after the year 2000, when the European Water Framework Directive came into force. The study has a manifest management perspective, and the results are discussed on the basis of the environmental quality standards proposed in current environmental regulations. The data show that water quality has improved remarkably over the past two decades, with sharp reductions of ammonium and phosphate and a progressive increase of dissolved oxygen levels. The amelioration is prominent in the estuary, where summer anoxic episodes have nearly disappeared. As a result, these three parameters are nowadays in good or very good condition throughout the year. The successful abatement of point sources contrasts, however, with the low effectiveness of the measures provided for the control of nutrients from diffuse sources. Nitrate concentration has increased by 150% since the early 1980s, and only very recently has the upward trend been reversed. Bold agri-environmental management measures are required if we are to prevent chronic pollution problems and truly restore the good ecological status of rivers.     

Agricultural landscapes as multi-scale public good and the role of the Common Agricultural Policy

During the last 50 years, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has impacted the evolution of European agricultural landscapes by driving changes in land use and farming practices. We propose a typology characterising the scales relevant for agricultural landscapes management and argue that action is required on three scales: (1) a landscape oriented management at the farm level; (2) the coordination of land managers’ actions at the landscape level; and (3) the conservation of the diversity of agricultural landscapes in the EU. We provide evidence that until now the CAP has mainly focused on the first scale. We also illustrate how agricultural policy could encourage coordinated actions at the landscape- and EU-scales. In particular, we propose policy instruments to coordinate actions of individual land owners (e.g. collective bonus in agro-environmental contracts or support to environmental cooperatives (scale 2)). We also analyse how the recognition and transposition of the European Landscape Convention could promote trans-frontier landscape cooperation in order, not only to conserve high-quality rural landscapes, but also to ensure the conservation of the diversity of EU landscapes (scale 3). This paper provides a knowledge base to support an integrated CAP design in the direction of improved landscape management, as an important component of the EU project towards more sustainable agriculture.     

Development and case study of a science-based software platform to support policy making on air quality

This article describes the development and implementations of a novel software platform that supports real-time, science-based policy making on air quality through a user-friendly interface. The software, RSM-VAT, uses a response surface modeling (RSM) methodology and serves as a visualization and analysis tool (VAT) for three-dimensional air quality data obtained by atmospheric models. The software features a number of powerful and intuitive data visualization functions for illustrating the complex nonlinear relationship between emission reductions and air quality benefits. The case study of contiguous U.S. demonstrates that the enhanced RSM-VAT is capable of reproducing the air quality model results with Normalized Mean Bias < 2% and assisting in air quality policy making in near real time.     

关于加强我国大气污染物减排政策建议

大气污染物总量控制是从总体上来控制大气污染的一种方法,是改善区域大气环境质量的有效途径。通过回顾我国大气污染物减排现状,分析和比较了现有政策存在的问题与不足,剖析总量控制在我国环境保护中的实施现状和所起的作用,进而从技术强化、制度协调的角度提出相应对策建议,以实现环境容量资源的合理配置。