国际水法对长江流域立法的启示和意义

随着长江经济带建设的推进,长江流域治理亟待法治化。由于调整对象、事项和目标方面的相似性,国际水法的理论、原则、规则和实践对于长江流域立法具有重要且有益的参考价值。长江流域立法面临着利益主体多元、生态环境和资源保护任务艰巨以及治理体制机制很不合理三个方面的巨大挑战。国际水法关于生态整体性路径、公平合理利用原则以及流域治理体制机制三个基本方面的理论、法律和指南以及实践,对于长江流域立法有效应对这些挑战具有重要启示。其意义体现在：直接促进长江流域治理的法治化,间接推进中国流域立法与国际水法之间的兼容性;直接示范国内其他流域,间接助推实现我国成为全球生态文明建设重要参与者、贡献者和引领者的战略。     

加强环境部门治理的责任研究

伴随经济的发展,中国环境问题日益严重,环境部门的环境治理力度有待加强.长期以来,环境部门应改变传统的重微观层面环境治理职责的实施,改变轻宏观层面环境治理结构架构的做法,调整环境治理方式,充分发挥环境保护多元主体的积极性,突出环境部门在环境治理中的主导作用,明确环境责任.环境责任的关键在于转变环境治理结构中的角色定位,变管理为治理,充分调动多方面力量参与到环境治理,尤其应当重视企业和公众的力量,充分参与治理,实现环境善治.     

The gap report of global climate change mitigation,finance, and governance after the United States declared its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement

On 1 June 2017, the US President Donald Trump officially announced the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, thus the study on the reasons of withdrawal, the potential impacts, and coping strategies has become a focus among policy circles and of the international community. Based on the self-developed US Policy Assessment Model, this paper systematically evaluates the three potential “major deficits” in terms of mitigation, climate finance, and global climate governance, as a result of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and puts forward policy suggestions for coping with such transformations accordingly. The study shows that the United States ’withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will affect the existence and implementation of successive climate policies and result in an additional 8.8–13.4% increase in the global emissions reduction deficit. The United States’ withdrawal will also deteriorate the existing climate finance mechanism. The Green Climate Fund (GCF)’s funding gap will increase by US$2 billion, while the gap of long-term climate finance will increase by about US$5 billion a year. Either the China–EU or the “BASIC plus” mechanism could fill the governance deficit caused by the United States and the lack of political momentum may continue for a while in the future.     

The territorialization of transnational sustainability governance: production,power and globalization in Iceland’s fisheries

To contribute to the literature on transnational sustainability governance hybrids, a new fisheries certification program in Iceland that was originally developed as an alternative to the non-governmental Marine Stewardship Council is examined. While this new program appears on the surface to constitute a purely nationalistic reaction against external non-state authority, the new governance institution is also non-governmental and incorporates international norms and institutions. To explain this new governance hybrid, Robert Cox’s International Political Economy approach to production and power is engaged. This approach theorizes the co-constitution of the social forces of production, state–society complexes and global governance. It is argued that the Icelandic case is not entirely localized or unique; it is part of a broader movement in which social forces of production respond to new market-oriented transnational sustainability governance institutions by developing territorially embedded but transnationally legitimate alternatives.     

Application of the Anthropogenic Allee Effect Model to Trophy Hunting as a Conservation Tool

Trophy hunting can provide economic incentives to conserve wild species, but it can also involve risk when rare species are hunted. The anthropogenic Allee effect (AAE) is a conceptual model that seeks to explain how rarity may spread the seeds of further endangerment. The AAE model has increasingly been invoked in the context of trophy hunting, increasing concerns that such hunting may undermine rather than enhance conservation efforts. We question the appropriateness of uncritically applying the AAE model to trophy hunting for 4 reasons. First, the AAE assumes an open‐access resource, which is a poor characterization of most trophy‐hunting programs and obscures the potential for state, communal, or private‐property use rights to generate positive incentives for conservation. Second, study results that show the price of hunting increases as the rarity of the animal increases are insufficient to indicate the presence of AAE. Third, AAE ignores the existence of biological and behavioral factors operating in most trophy‐hunting contexts that tend to regulate the effect of hunting. We argue that site‐specific data, rather than aggregated hunting statistics, are required to demonstrate that patterns of unsustainable exploitation can be well explained by an AAE model. Instead, we suggest that conservation managers seeking to investigate and identify constraints that limit the potential conservation role of trophy hunting, should focus on the critical governance characteristics that shape the potential conservation role of trophy hunting, such as corruption, insecure property rights, and inadequate sharing of benefits with local people. Aplicación del Modelo Antropogénico del Efecto Allee sobre la Caza de Trofeos como una Herramienta de Conservación     

Adapting cities to climate change – exploring the flood risk management role of green infrastructure landscapes

There is now an emerging sense of the scope and nature of response that can be implemented at building and neighbourhood scales to help adapt cities and urban areas to the changing climate. In comparison, the role of larger natural and semi-natural landscapes that surround and permeate cities is less well understood. Addressing this knowledge gap, this paper outlines two case studies that describe and map the flood risk management functions offered by green infrastructure landscapes situated within the Urban Mersey Basin in North West England. The case studies establish that areas potentially exposed to flooding can be located at some distance, and within different jurisdictions, from upstream areas where the flood hazard may be generated and could be moderated via functions provided by green infrastructure landscapes. This raises planning and governance challenges connected to supporting and enhancing flood risk management functions provided by green infrastructure landscapes.     

跨省流域生态补偿机制的创新——基于区域治理的视角

在传统行政区行政理念的主导下,流域政府皆以追求本地利益最大化为基本目标,甚少关注甚至漠视流域公共利益,流域政府间利益冲突严重,因此,难以对跨省流域生态补偿达成一致意见.跨省流域生态补偿的实施有赖于政府行政管理理念向区域治理理念的转变和相应的机制创新,包括建立流域政府间的民主协商机制、多元主体联合供给机制和中央对流域政府的选择性激励机制.     

Institutional networks and adaptive water governance in the Klamath River Basin,USA

Polycentric networks of formal organizations and informal stakeholder groups, as opposed to centralized institutional hierarchies, can be critically important for strengthening the capacity of governance systems to adapt to unexpected social and biophysical change. Adaptive governance is one type of environmental governance characterized by the emergence of networks that stimulate adaptive capacity through increases in social-learning, communication, trust, public participation and adaptive management. However, detecting and analyzing adaptive governance networks remains elusive, especially given contexts of highly contested resource governance such as large-scale negotiations over water use. Research methods such as social network analysis (SNA) are often infeasible as they necessitate collecting in-depth and politically sensitive personal data from a near-complete set of actors or organizations in a network. Here we present a method for resolving this problem by describing the results of an institutional SNA aimed at characterizing the changing governance network in the Klamath River Basin, USA during a period of contested negotiations over water. Through this research, we forward a method of institutional SNA useful when an individual or egocentric approach to SNA is problematic for political, logistical or financial reasons. We focus our analysis on publically available data signaling changes in formal relationships (statutory, regulatory, contractual) between organizations and stakeholder groups. We find that employing this type of SNA is useful for describing potential and actual transitions in governance that yield increases in adaptive capacity to respond to social and biophysical surprises such as increasing water scarcity and changes in water distribution.     

The green state and industrial decarbonisation

ABSTRACT

The large share of carbon emitted by energy-intensive industries in the extraction and processing of basic materials must be limited to decarbonise society and the economy. Ways in which the state can govern industrial decarbonisation and contributes to green state theory are explored by addressing a largely ignored issue: the green state’s industrial relations and its role in industrial governance. With insights from a Swedish case study, the tension between the state’s economic imperative and ecological concerns in greening industry are shown to persist. However, as the energy-intensive industry’s previously privileged position in the economy is weakening, industry is opened to decarbonisation strategies. While the case exposes a number of governance challenges, it also suggests potential areas where the state can pursue decarbonisation in energy-intensive industry and points the way to an active role of the green state in governing industrial decarbonisation and greening industry.     

Water, sanitation and sustainability: lessons from a community project

This paper captures the lessons learned from the implementation of water supply and sanitation interventions in Mayiwane community in the rural northeastern region of the Kingdom of Swaziland, relating to water system rehabilitation, water quantity and quality improvements, and the promotion of latrine construction. The issues examined include both the dimensions of implementation efficiency and project effectiveness: first identifying the inputs, activities and final outputs and, then, tracking the entire project cycle, from design to implementation and monitoring. To draw meaningful lessons for the sustainability of similar interventions, project evaluation involved extensive fieldwork, water sampling and testing, review of documentation, and interviews with community members and officials of governmental, civil society and collaborating external agencies. Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.