海洋油气开发工程环评中公众参与探讨

根据我国环境影响评价公众参与现状和海洋油气开发工程公众参与实践,对海洋油气开发工程环评中公众参与进行初步探讨。目前海洋油气开发工程公众参与存在的问题主要有:相关公众界定较难、公众主要是在环评机构主导下的被动参与、信息不对称使公众难以正确表达意见、相关公众中个人的环境素养和法制意识不高。根据存在的问题,建议通过以下方法提高海洋油气开发工程环评公众参与水平:研究制定海洋工程公众参与技术方法规范;掌握好公众参与时机,尽早启动,调动公众主动参与;科学确定公众范围,选择好公众参与对象;结合实际选择公众参与方式。     

Dimensions and models of contemporary public space management in England

This article discusses the concept of public space management and its evolution in a context of wider changes to urban governance. Public space management is taken as a sphere of urban governance in which conflicting societal demands on, and aspirations for, public space are interpreted through a set of processes and practices. Four interlinked dimensions for public space management are proposed: the co-ordination of interventions; the regulation of uses and conflicts between uses; the definition and deployment of maintenance routines; and investment in public spaces and their services. Within this conceptual framework, the paper looks at recent changes in public space management in England to suggest the emergence of alternative models of management. These are based on the roles ascribed to the state, to private agents and to user organisations, and on different approaches to dealing with the four management dimensions. Although the discussion shows that these models are more than just abstract formulations, and have been used to deal with a variety of public space problems, an important purpose for the paper is to provide an analytical framework through which to examine emergent practices in the management of public space and their potential consequences.     

我国突发公共事件应急管理现状

介绍了突发公共事件的分类和突发公共事件给我国经济带来的巨大损失。叙述了应急管理的概念,阐述了应急管理在我国的发展现状,以及应对突发公共事件所起的作用。通过以往发生的典型突发公共事件案例,深入分析了现阶段我国应急管理在应对突发公共事件过程中的不足。     

试论城市公共安全

城市公共安全是一个涉及内容广泛的系统工程,保障城市公共安全,要首先从立法上给予保证,要充分发挥政府的主导作用,建立完善的城市安全体系和应急机制,用先进的科学技术装备城市的安全系统,动员全社会的力量,齐心协力,确保城市公共安全.     

Can Science Writing Collectives Overcome Barriers to More Democratic Communication and Collaboration? Lessons from Environmental Communication Praxis in Southern Appalachia

Despite compelling reasons to involve nonscientists in the production of ecological knowledge, cultural and institutional factors often dis-incentivize engagement between scientists and nonscientists. This paper details our efforts to develop a biweekly newspaper column to increase communication between ecological scientists, social scientists, and the communities within which they work. Addressing community-generated topics and written by a collective of social and natural scientists, the column is meant to foster public dialog about socio-environmental issues and to lay the groundwork for the coproduction of environmental knowledge. Our collective approach to writing addresses some major barriers to public engagement by scientists, but the need to insert ourselves as intermediaries limits these gains. Overall, our efforts at environmental communication praxis have not generated significant public debate, but they have supported future coproduction by making scientists a more visible presence in the community and providing easy pathways for them to begin engaging the public. Finally, this research highlights an underappreciated barrier to public engagement: scientists are not merely disconnected from the public, but also connected in ways that may be functional for their research. Many field scientists, for example, seek out neutral and narrowly defined connections that permit research access but are largely incompatible with efforts to address controversial issues of environmental governance.     

Persistence and Microbial Source Tracking of Escherichia coli at a Swimming Beach at Lake of the Ozarks State Park,Missouri

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) has closed or posted advisories at public beaches at Lake of the Ozarks State Park in Missouri because of Escherichia coli (E. coli) concentration exceedances in recent years. Spatial and temporal patterns of E. coli concentrations, microbial source tracking, novel sampling techniques, and beach‐use patterns were studied during the 2012 recreational season to identify possible sources, origins, and occurrence of E. coli contamination at Grand Glaize Beach (GGB). Results indicate an important source of E. coli contamination at GGB was E. coli released into the water column by bathers resuspending avian‐contaminated sediments, especially during high‐use days early in the recreational season. Escherichia coli concentrations in water, sediment, and resuspended sediment samples all decreased throughout the recreational season likely because of decreasing lake levels resulting in sampling locations receding away from the initial spring shoreline as well as natural decay and physical transport out of the cove. Weekly MDNR beach monitoring, based solely on E. coli concentrations, at GGB during this study inaccurately predicted E. coli exceedances, especially on weekends and holidays. Interestingly, E. coli of human origin were measured at concentrations indicative of raw sewage in runoff from an excavation of a nearby abandoned septic tank that had not been used for nearly two years.     

Parsing participation: models of engagement for outcomes monitoring in urban stewardship

Few urban environmental stewardship, or civic ecology, practices monitor their impacts on local communities and ecosystems. This lack of monitoring prevents lay stewards from adapting their practices based on outcomes. For those that do collect data on their practices, we see different forms of practitioner engagement in outcomes monitoring. We categorise these different forms of engagement according to five published models of public participation in scientific research, revealing different strategies for collecting and analysing data towards adaptive co-management in urban ecosystems. We propose two broad strategies for expanding outcomes monitoring in these contexts: creating openly accessible tools and protocols for do-it-yourself inquiry and supporting more resource-intensive partnerships between practitioners and scientists for more complex forms of outcomes monitoring.     

An analysis of the effect of public policy on community garden organisations in Edinburgh

Several community gardens have been developed in Edinburgh over the past five years, which reflects renewed interest in “grow your own” projects, and the recognition of the associated environmental and social health benefits they provide. Community gardens have been included in a range of policy documents at national and local levels, acknowledging their contribution to sustainable food systems, health and well-being and environment and biodiversity. This research explores how public policy influences community garden practice and, reflexively, how organisations running community gardens in the third sector are represented in public policy frameworks. A mixed methodology of desk-based research of policy documents, associated reports and academic literature; and informal interviews with community gardens staff and organisers was utilised. It was found that while community gardens are represented in policy, at a national level the framing of community gardens and related food growing projects as “alternative” hinders their full potential. Community gardens fulfil a wide range of policy goals, particularly in the health, social capital and well-being sectors which can minimise their capacity to contribute to local food production in a substantial way. It is proposed that community gardens could be normalised by promoting gardens in visible locations in neighbourhoods and within local plans; and through reflexive strategic and community action utilising a reasoning backwards approach to planning and funding.     

Infrastructure in informal settlements: co-production of public services for inclusive governance

Recent studies on urban governance have advanced our understanding of how governance could become inclusive through community-based participation in urban development. However, a concrete process by which participatory public service provision in informal settlements consolidates inclusive governance has not been sufficiently evident in the context of the dynamic urban development witnessed in Africa. Drawing on a case study of the informal sanitation infrastructure known as a bio-centre, which has been introduced by a participatory upgrading programme in Nairobi, Kenya, this article proposes to pay attention to ways that informal settlers experience infrastructure, embed it into their everyday context of place-making and use it in unplanned manners. Inclusive governance that is effective in providing public services in informal settlements requires every development actor to be engaged in deliberating how to deal with such unplanned outcomes and eventually to co-produce services. This article argues that, rather than participation, communities’ capacity to enrol the state actors in the space of deliberation is crucial to make governance genuinely inclusive.     

The states of public opinion on the environment

State-level public opinion on the environment within the US is examined, using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) from 2000 to 2010. A Multilevel Regression and Post-Stratification (MRP) approach is taken to estimate three different survey items on environmental issues at the US state level. This allows for a comparable understanding of state-level public opinion on environmental issues, which is then connected to economic, environmental, and political conditions, and representation in policy making. The findings indicate the MRP technique is a sophisticated way to make accurate estimations of state-level public opinion, and those estimates provide further insight into the shaping of public opinion and public policy.