Global gains at local costs: Imposing protected areas: evidence from central India

With the ever-increasing understanding about the Earth as a living network of interdependent ecosystems, there seems to be a growing consensus that the whole planet is a global common. This feeling, however, is not bereft of severe complications arising from conflicting interests of different nations placed at varying levels of development. While developed countries are more concerned about environmental quality which is a global public good, less developed countries can hardly afford to make land use decisions that keep such wider futuristic concerns in mind while they are presently struggling with very basic problems of poverty and starvation. The actors at the global level prescribe, monitor, and enforce the global level collective choice through persuasive, and at times coercive, methods. At the national level, various legal provisions in the form of legislation reflect the collective choice at that level through creation of protected areas devoid of humans. A simple fact is overlooked, that it is impossible to achieve conservation goals without making local people equal participants in decisionmaking and benefit sharing.     

不同产权制度下青藏高原地区草地资源使用的效率与公平性分析

论文基于四川省若尔盖牧区两个村落的田野调查,通过草地资源使用的效率和公平性指标,比较草场使用权全村共有和牧户私有这两种产权制度下的经济与社会效益。研究表明,在青藏高原牧区,草场使用权全村共有较牧户私有在资源使用的效率与公平性两个方面均能获得更好的表现。这是因为全村共有的使用权制度更契合当地的自然与社会实情,这包括草地资源时空差异大的自然条件、藏传佛教浸润下的文化氛围以及较强的社区自组织管理能力的社会背景。因此,建议我国在制定与推行草场使用权制度时,应考虑制度实施地的自然环境与社会文化等各方面背景因素,不能简单地在所有牧区强行推进一种产权制度。     

Drivers and barriers to water transfer in a New Zealand irrigation scheme

Policy makers, economists and water researchers have advocated water transfer and trade as a key potential response to worldwide water scarcity and/or efficiency problems. This paper examines aspects of an operational irrigation scheme in New Zealand that enables transfer of water between shareholders, arguing that the set-up and processes involved with the scheme can provide a wider context for analysis and consideration of social and cultural issues involved with resource allocation. Analysis of the key drivers and barriers for water reveal that while there is potential for real benefits from transferring water for farmers and the community, an examination of some of the processes used, and barriers to transfer reveals important lessons for planning and regulatory perspectives, including the importance of looking at the issues from a procedural and distributive justice viewpoint.     

基于31省MRIO模型的中国省际碳转移及碳公平研究

基于MRIO模型方法自主编制了2012年中国区域间投入产出表,测算了中国31省在生产者责任和消费者责任视角下的碳排放量,以及省际贸易隐含碳转移量.在此基础上,分别从各省在省际贸易隐含碳净转移与隐含GDP净转移之间的关系、污染贸易条件值以及碳基尼系数三个方面分析了我国省际碳公平性问题.由于经济发展水平、资源禀赋、产业结构和能源结构的差异,各省在生产者和消费者视角下的碳排放量存在明显差异;隐含碳净转入省份多位于西部或属于欠发达省份,隐含碳净转出省份多为经济发达省份.中国31省在省际贸易中存在着明显的碳不公平现象,部分发达省份不仅让外省承担了自身的部分碳排放,而且获得了来自外省的GDP净输入,污染贸易条件值也小于1,在碳排放空间分配及经济效益上均处于绝对优势地位;而部分西部省份不仅为外省承接了部分碳排放还对外省净输出了GDP,污染贸易条件值也大于1,在碳排放空间分配和经济效益上均处于绝对劣势地位.2012年我国31省碳基尼系数在消费者责任视角下为0.24,在生产者责任视角下则达到了0.31,表明生产者责任视角下我国省际碳排放空间分配不公平性有所增强.     

Smart meter data and equitable energy transitions – can cities play a role?

ABSTRACT

The ability of smart cities to address multiple priorities is currently receiving a great deal of attention from governments, industry and academia; however, there are relatively few explorations of how smart cities will be enacted and the equity implications of various elements of the agenda. This paper aims to begin to address this by considering the case of smart meter data in Great Britain and reviewing the potential for public interest benefits to be realised at both a national and city-scale. In order to interrogate how societal benefits of smart metering might be enabled or constrained at different scales, both transition management approaches to understanding the intricacies of transforming socio-technical systems, and urban governance literatures which explore the problems in aligning “smart” and “sustainable” agendas, are engaged with. The case suggests that there is great potential for smart meter data to deliver public interest benefits and in doing so contribute to equity in energy transitions through promoting the accrual of benefits to collective rather than solely individual or commercial interests. Despite this, under the current smart metering framework city-scale actors are largely excluded from utilising smart metering data unless they partner with a large incumbent company. This suggests that the configuration of national smart metering arrangements could be further embedding a marketised approach to smart cities and demonstrates the complex interlinking of socio-political processes operating across multiple scales in energy transitions.     

Compensation for “Meaningful Participation” in Climate Change Control: A Modest Proposal and Empirical Analysis

The debate over an international climate change regime has thus far focused primarily on efficiency concerns in developed countries. This paper suggests a means by which equity concerns may be addressed in the ongoing negotiations. A system of transfers is developed that is motivated by the difference between the damage caused by a country and the damage suffered by that country as a result of climate change. Illustrative calculations of the magnitude and direction of these transfers are made. We find that in general transfers flow from temperate to tropical countries but that the degree of uncertainty associated with these calculations is very large.     

Bayes methods for combining disease and exposure data in assessing environmental justice

Environmental justice reflects the equitable distribution of the burden of environmental hazards across various sociodemographic groups. The issue is important in environmental regulation, siting of hazardous waste repositories and prioritizing remediation of existing sources of exposure. We propose a statistical framework for assessing environmental justice. The framework includes a quantitative assessment of environmental equity based on the cumulative distribution of exposure within population subgroups linked to disease incidence through a dose-response function. This approach avoids arbitrary binary classifications of individuals solely as 'exposed' or 'unexposed'. We present a Bayesian inferential approach, implemented using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, that accounts for uncertainty in both exposure and response. We illustrate our method using data on leukaemia deaths and exposure to toxic chemical releases in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.     

Equity and nuclear waste disposal

Following the recommendations of the US National Academy of Sciences and the mandates of the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, the US Department of Energy has proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the site of the world's first permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. The main justification for permanent disposal (as opposed to above-ground storage) is that it guarantees safety by means of waste isolation. This essay argues, however, that considerations of equity (safer for whom?) undercut the safety rationale. The article surveys some prima facie arguments for equity in the distribution of radwaste risks and then evaluates four objections that are based, respectively, on practicality, compensation for risks, scepticism about duties to future generations, and the uranium criterion. The conclusion is that, at least under existing regulations and policies, permanent waste disposal is highly questionable, in part, because it fails to distribute risk equitably or to compensate, in full, for this inequity.     

More than just linking the nodes: civil society actors as intermediaries in the design and implementation of payments for ecosystem services–the case of a blue carbon project in Costa Rica

While in many cases the benefits of ecosystem services (ES) can be enjoyed on different scales, the provision of ES requires engagement and commitment at the local scale. Therefore, the local level becomes important when thinking about compensation schemes or payments for ecosystem services (PES) as an approach to managing ES. The difficult task of bringing together different actors and institutions at different scales for specific conservation projects at the local level often remains in the hands of intermediaries. In this paper, we investigate the role of a civil society organisation (CSO) as an intermediary organisation in a PES scheme, the Community Blue Carbon Project (CBCP) in Costa Rica. To assess the role of intermediaries in a PES scheme, we rely on social network analysis and examine the position and role of the intermediary organisation. Based on Net-Map interviews, which is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualise, discuss and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes, we find that the intermediary organisation in the CBCP is composed of several institutional and individual intermediaries who create both formal networks for connecting the international to the local level and informal networks for creating trusting relationships among the actors. Different spatial levels are reflected within the CSO’s organisational structure, and the CSO mitigates the distributional, procedural, recognition and contextual aspects of environmental justice.     

Facilitating (?) urban agriculture in Philadelphia: sustainability narratives in the inequitable city

In 2008, the city of Philadelphia made increasing healthy food access a priority for sustainable development. Recognising that almost 25% of the population are considered food insecure, government agencies, non-governmental organisations and community leaders sought to increase food access through increasing food production and access to land in the city. Urban agriculture has gradually been incorporated in sustainability narratives in the past decade, both providing a platform for advocates to inform on policymaking, and potentially stripping away the political and activist origins of gaining access to food, land and green spaces in the city. In this paper, we argue that the depoliticising of urban agriculture advocacy through its incorporation in sustainability planning may serve to increase existing inequities in the city. Focusing on the policy-making scale, we examine measures enacted under the Philadelphia Greenworks Sustainability Plan to facilitate urban agriculture in the city. Our preliminary findings suggest that the processes by which urban agriculture gains acceptance demonstrate a disconnect in urban agriculture advocacy and policymaking and further work is needed to understand the impacts of the formalising of urban agriculture in Philadelphia.