Economic and equity implications of land-use zoning in suburban agriculture

A cash-flow viability model is used to evaluate the impacts of land-use zoning on farm households in New Jersey. Findings suggest that zoning results in increased production expenses, lower efficiency and profitability, and the devaluation of land assets. Cash flow and economic viability are, thus, reduced. Impacts of zoning on farm incomes, off-farm incomes, revenues from land sales, indebtedness, and farm sizes were not statistically significant. The results suggest that the use of land-use zoning statutes to guarantee the existence of agriculture may not be equitable unless transferable development rights or other methods of compensating farmers for their losses are simultaneously implemented.     

Assessing equity and sustainability of water allocation in Colombia

Based on the national database of 28,104 water rights (concessions) granted in Colombia, this paper presents an analysis of how the principles of equity and sustainability are reflected in water allocation. Concessions appear to be an exclusionary mechanism since only a minority of small water users have concessions and the distribution of water volumes among those who have them is extremely inequitable. The 2009 Gini coefficient calculated for water concessions granted for agriculture was 0.90 compared with the rural land Gini of 0.88 (both indicators grouping holdings under the same entity). More than half of the Colombian departments have a higher Gini coefficient for water than for land, suggesting that water rights are at least as unequally distributed as land, in one of the most inequitable countries in Latin America. Water allocated to domestic, agriculture and hydropower use indicates a lack of consistency of water allocation criteria across regions. The volumetric and administrative attributes of water allocation in Colombia do not account for environmental flows or the concerns of marginalised groups of society that have limited access to the mechanism. Water allocation as a technical task, with limited transparency and secluded from public scrutiny, does not contribute to the solution of increasing water-related conflicts.     

Climate justice and energy: applying international principles to UK residential energy policy

This paper draws on climate justice principles developed in the context of international negotiations between national governments to assess the distribution of carbon reduction roles between different actors involved in residential energy use within the UK. In so doing, it aims to provide a new understanding of equity aspects of current residential policy and to highlight opportunities for more effective and equitable policy. The paper uses three criteria: rights and corresponding duties; mitigation responsibilities and capabilities. It applies them systematically to assess the roles of five key actors involved in residential energy use in the UK. The assessment finds a suboptimal distribution of actors’ duties, responsibilities and capabilities and roles and discusses whether and how a more effective and fair allocation of outcomes, in terms of carbon reduction and fuel poverty, could be achieved. In particular, it raises questions about whether the right actors are being legally obliged or incentivised to deliver energy efficiency improvements, and suggests that particular actors – local authorities and community groups – are under-used and require greater government support with capability. The paper represents the first use of international climate justice frameworks to investigate residential energy policy within a country.     

Equity and sustainability over the next fifty years: An exercise in economic visioning

A simplistic aggregate model of global economic activity supports a 50-year visioning exercise with targets defined in terms of aggregate measures of global equity (convergence) and sustainability (contraction). Some ambitious combinations of these targets turn out to be infeasible even under the most favorable modeling assumptions. No contraction target (no reduction in fossil fuel consumption relative to the present) was possible, for example, if international capital transfers pushed per capita incomes in low-income countries above 33% of levels achieved in high-income countries. Lower prices for renewable alternatives to exhaustible resources generally made sustainability targets easier to achieve, but lower prices for renewable resources also made equity targets more difficult to achieve. Improved substitution between capital and labor made equity targets easier to achieve in relative terms, but improved substitution between capital and labor could make any given sustainability target more or less difficult to achieve. All the results suggest that it is possible to overstate the purported conflict between achieving sustainability and equity targets. The very transfers of international capital that would promote relative equity between high-income and low-income countries could also work to spread the incidence of achieving any sustainability target more evenly across their boundaries.Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

试论可持续发展的地域公平性

以对“人地关系”、“发展内涵”和“人的位置”等的系统认识为理性基础．所提出来的可持续发展观．非常强调公平性。经典的可持续发展概念对“公平性”的理解，主要是强调时间维度上的代际公平。我们从地理学的研究核心“人地关系地域系统协调共生理论。和区域可持续发展实证研究的理论和实践的双重角度．认为公平性不仅是时间维度上的代际公平．而且是空间维度上的地域公平和群际公平。就地域公平而言．我们认为．它不仅包括相关地域的公平性而且包括次级地域的公平性和背景地域的公平性。地域公平性的这样的理论认识。在指导区域可持续发展的实践中将具有重要意义。     

Review, development and monitoring of national sustainable development strategies in Ghana

Agenda 21 requires that countries adopt ‘national sustainable development strategies’ (NSDS), and this has been emphasized in several international commitments. Ghana has contributed to the methodology for peer review of such national strategies, as well as to guidelines designed by OECD and the United Nations for the NSDS process. Ghana has also adopted mechanisms to manage its own development planning in a sustainable manner. This article highlights various types of frameworks for sustainable development currently operating in Ghana, and considers to what extent they conform to NSDS principles. The article concludes that Ghana has made progress in several ways, but faces some of the same challenges as other countries in adhering to sustainability principles. The article offers recommendations as to how Ghana can achieve sustainable development. The article is an independent assessment by the author, who has also formulated most of the recommendations, except where otherwise indicated.     

温室气体减排问题中的公平性与效率问题

《联合国气候变化框架公约》的最终目的是减少人为温室气体排放,稳定大气温室气体浓度,避免气候系统受到人为的危险干扰。本文指出,在承担温室气体减排义务时,公平性与时间效率,以及公平性与空间效率都是相互冲突的,并提出了兼顾公平性和效率的方案。     

基于公平性的水污染物总量分配基尼系数分析

基尼系数是经济学中对贫富差距量化评价的重要工具.从基尼系数的经济学内涵出发,将基尼系数的概念和意义应用于环境分析中.以全国2006年各地区的水污染物总量分配为例,应用基尼系数法分析了人口、国内生产总值、水资源量指标对水污染物总量分配的影响.根据计算出的中国2006年的水污染物总量分配基尼系数,对水污染物总量分配公平性进行量化分析并提出削减方案,最后得出合理的结论.     

Efficient and equitable design of marine protected areas in Fiji through inclusion of stakeholder‐specific objectives in conservation planning

The efficacy of protected areas varies, partly because socioeconomic factors are not sufficiently considered in planning and management. Although integrating socioeconomic factors into systematic conservation planning is increasingly advocated, research is needed to progress from recognition of these factors to incorporating them effectively in spatial prioritization of protected areas. We evaluated 2 key aspects of incorporating socioeconomic factors into spatial prioritization: treatment of socioeconomic factors as costs or objectives and treatment of stakeholders as a single group or multiple groups. Using as a case study the design of a system of no‐take marine protected areas (MPAs) in Kubulau, Fiji, we assessed how these aspects affected the configuration of no‐take MPAs in terms of trade‐offs between biodiversity objectives, fisheries objectives, and equity in catch losses among fisher stakeholder groups. The achievement of fisheries objectives and equity tended to trade‐off concavely with increasing biodiversity objectives, indicating that it is possible to achieve low to mid‐range biodiversity objectives with relatively small losses to fisheries and equity. Importantly, the extent of trade‐offs depended on the method used to incorporate socioeconomic data and was least severe when objectives were set for each fisher stakeholder group explicitly. We found that using different methods to incorporate socioeconomic factors that require similar data and expertise can result in plans with very different impacts on local stakeholders.     

Urban sustainability and environmental justice: evaluating the linkages in public planning/policy discourse

Many cities' municipal governments have made some version of “sustainability” an explicit policy goal over the past two decades. Previous research has documented how the operationalisation and conceptualisation of sustainability in urban sustainability plans vary greatly among cities, particularly with respect to environmental justice. This article reports on whether and how large American cities incorporate environmental justice into their urban sustainability indicator projects. Our findings suggest that while there has been an increase in the number of cities incorporating environmental justice elements into sustainability plans since the early 2000s, their conceptualizations and implementations of sustainability remain highly constrained. The paucity of evaluative tools suggests that environmental justice efforts are potentially losing traction in public debate over macro-scale sustainability concerns (e.g. climate change) or the need for regionally competitive environmental amenities (e.g. parks). This paper concludes with suggestions for revising existing sustainability plans to better reflect environmental justice concerns.