Environmental Damage,Abandoned Treaties,and Fossil-Fuel Dependence: The Coming Costs of Oil-and-Gas Exploration in the “1002 Area” of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Contrary to claims from American politicians, lobbyists, and oil and gas executives, allowing energy development in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will harm the environment, compromise international law, erode the social significance of wilderness protection, and ultimately fail to␣increase the energy security of the United States. After exploring a brief history of the ANWR controversy, this piece argues that the operation of oil and gas refineries in ANWR will release discharged solids, drilling waste, and dirty diesel fuel into the ecosystem’s food-chain, as they have from oil operations in Prudhoe Bay. Less obvious but equally important, oil and gas exploration in ANWR will violate a number of international treaties on biodiversity protection. In the end, development in ANWR will threaten the concept of wilderness protection, and will do little to end US dependence on foreign sources of energy. About the Author: Benjamin K. Sovacool is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. He works as a research analyst for the Consortium on Energy Restructuring and is a Senior Research Fellow for the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research. He also just completed a Graduate Fellowship in Energy Policy at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Sustainable development and the water–energy–food nexus: A perspective on livelihoods

The water–energy–food nexus is being promoted as a conceptual tool for achieving sustainable development. Frameworks for implementing nexus thinking, however, have failed to explicitly or adequately incorporate sustainable livelihoods perspectives. This is counterintuitive given that livelihoods are key to achieving sustainable development. In this paper we present a critical review of nexus approaches and identify potential linkages with sustainable livelihoods theory and practice, to deepen our understanding of the interrelated dynamics between human populations and the natural environment. Building upon this review, we explore the concept of ‘environmental livelihood security’ – which encompasses a balance between natural resource supply and human demand on the environment to promote sustainability – and develop an integrated nexus-livelihoods framework for examining the environmental livelihood security of a system. The outcome is an integrated framework with the capacity to measure and monitor environmental livelihood security of whole systems by accounting for the water, energy and food requisites for livelihoods at multiple spatial scales and institutional levels. We anticipate this holistic approach will not only provide a significant contribution to achieving national and regional sustainable development targets, but will also be effective for promoting equity amongst individuals and communities in local and global development agendas.     

构建农民工的社会保障体系

农民工对城市和农村的发展功不可没。但是，由于制度不健全，遭遇市场风险的农民工缺乏基本的社会保障，处境艰难。本文分析了农民工缺乏社会保障的历史和现实原因，提出了构建农民工社会保障体系的设想，即以健康保障、失业保障和养老保障为主体的过渡性农民工社会保障体系，来衔接城乡社会保障。以适应城乡一体化的需要。     

中国资源安全法律保障与现行关联法律配合协调的现实性

资源安全法律保障关联法律具有基础性、发散性、综合性、社会性等特征，成为资源安全法律保障体系建立的基础。资源安全法律保障与关联法律的配合协调是经济、社会、环境可持续发展的需要．是中国法律实现现代转型的需要．是法律体系建设的需要。同时．这种配合协调具有科学的可行性。     

Domestic or imported? An assessment of carbon footprints and sustainability of seafood consumed in Australia

The distance between where food is produced and consumed is increasing, and is often taken as evidence of an unsustainable global food system. Seafood is a highly traded commodity yet seafood sustainability assessments do not typically consider the impacts of the movement of products beyond the fishery or farm. Here we use life cycle assessment to examine the carbon footprint of the production and distribution of select seafood products that are consumed in Australia and determine differences in the sustainability of imports and their domestically produced counterparts. We found that the distance food is transported is not the main determinant of food sustainability. Despite the increased distance between production and consumption, carbon footprints of meals from imported seafood are similar to meals consisting of domestically produced seafood, and sometimes lower, depending on the seafood consumed. In combining LCA with existing seafood sustainability criteria the trade-offs between sustainability targets become more apparent. Carbon ‘footprinting’ is one metric that can be incorporated in assessments of sustainability, thereby demonstrating a broader perspective of the environmental cost of food production and consumption.     

珠江上游少数民族县域经济活动的累积环境效应研究--以贵州三都水族自治县为例

为了探索珠江上游少数民族区域经济活动的累积环境效应与生态安全，我们选择三都水族自治县作为定位研究基地．对建国以来区域内经济活动变迁进行历史、现状研究和综合评估，揭示历史时期发展政策、发展模式、重大经济活动等人为扰动因素在区域生态环境系统退化过程中的作用．评估少数民族经济活动的累积环境效应与生态安全。     

基于生态安全的快速城市化地区空间冲突测度 ——以长株潭城市群为例

空间冲突是城市化过程中各种矛盾形成与激化的直接原因,是影响区域可持续发展的关键因素,合理测度快速城市化地区的空间冲突水平,对于优化区域发展模式、 避免区域生态风险具有重要意义。在利用遥感与GIS技术分析长株潭近年来空间格局变化的基础上,量化影响区域生态安全的空间外部压力值、 生态风险暴露值、 生态风险效应值3个因子,构建基于生态安全的空间冲突测度模型,对长株潭地区的空间冲突水平进行评估。研究表明:近年来长株潭地区的空间冲突作用强度总体呈现上升趋势,1993—2008年其冲突指数均值由0.264增长到0.323,且严重失控级别空间冲突的区域面积比例增幅最大,达1.07倍;不同空间类型的空间冲突强度不同,林地、 耕地的空间冲突水平相对较低,建设用地的空间冲突水平较高;城乡过渡地带是空间格局变化最为频繁、 空间冲突最为激烈的区域,其次是城市内部,农村地区的空间冲突强度远远低于城市。     

水资源安全评价模型构建与应用——以福建省泉州市为例

作为东南沿海的重要城市之一,泉州市在经济社会迅速发展的形势下,水资源可持续利用面临前所未有的压力。论文采用改进的层次分析法及基于因子分析的聚类分析法,对泉州市各县(区、市)2008年的水资源安全状况进行评价与分析,并评价了2000-2008年泉州市的水资源安全变化趋势,对2015及2020年的水资源安全进行预测。主要研究结论为:水资源处于安全状况的地区为德化县、永春县、安溪县;基本安全的地区为南安市、洛江区及泉港区;处于不安全的为鲤城区、丰泽区、惠安县;处于严重不安全的地区为晋江市和石狮市。评价年份内,2000年水资源安全保障程度最高,2004年水资源安全程度最低。在P=75%和P=90%的情况下,2015和2020年泉州市面临的水资源压力很大。针对泉州市经济社会发展、水资源特点及开发利用特征,提出了提高水资源安全保障程度的措施。     

Using many-objective trade-off analysis to help dams promote economic development,protect the poor and enhance ecological health

Allocating water to different uses implies trading off the benefits perceived by different sectors. This paper demonstrates how visualising the trade-offs implied by the best performing water management options helps balance water use benefits and find sustainable solutions. The approach consists of linking a water resources model that can simulate many management policies and track diverse measures of system performance, to a many-objective evolutionary optimisation algorithm. This generates the set of Pareto-optimal management alternatives for several simultaneous objectives. The relative performance of these efficient management alternatives is then visualised as trade-off curves or surfaces using visual analytic plots. Visually assessing trade-offs between benefits helps select policies that achieve a decision-maker-selected balance between different metrics of system performance. We apply this approach to a multi-reservoir water resource system in Brazil's semi-arid Jaguaribe basin where current water allocation procedures favour sectors with greater political power and technical knowledge. The case study identifies promising reservoir operating policies by exploring trade-offs between economic, ecological and livelihood benefits as well as traditional hydropower generation, irrigation and water supply. Results show optimised policies can increase allocations to downstream uses while increasing median land availability for the poorest farmers by 25%.     

国家生态安全:加入WTO背景下环境保护对策探析

本文从国家安全的战略高度，充分阐述了加强国家生态安全的重要性，系统界定了国家生态安全的内涵和基本特点，分析了损害国家生态安全将带来的巨大危害性，提出了保障国家生态安全的主要对策。