EU vision of sustainable agriculture,land use,forestry and management of natural resources – level of the Slovak state administration convergence to the EU requirements

The EU vision of sustainable agriculture, land use, forestry and management of natural resources contributes to the balanced exploitation of the environment, taking into account rural development strategy. Whilst the EU directs activities through legislative tools, national systems of public administration are responsible for the implementation of the respective laws. Despite there not being acquis communautaire in public administration, non-formal cooperation has nevertheless emerged and systems of national public administration have to meet EU criteria and ensure the effective implementation of legislation. The paper presents an analysis of how Slovak state administration has converged with EU requirements in the field of sustainable agriculture, land use, forestry and natural resources. Administrative convergence is considered through the internal convergence represented by capacities without legal subjectivity, and through external convergence represented by legal and administrative subjectivity. Both approaches are observed at the central level within specialized public authorities. Local state administration is characterized by the creation of internal administrative capacities with the challenging delimitation of which competences are affected by the process of administrative convergence.     

The Syrian refugee crisis: how local governments and NGOs manage their image via social media

This study, based on situational crisis communication theory and set in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, seeks first to conduct a comparative analysis of the management of online citizen engagement by local governments and non‐governmental organisations (NGOs). Second, it aims to examine the relationship between certain factors pertaining to the types of responses submitted by citizens via the social media of the aforementioned actors. The sample is composed of several Spanish local governments and NGOs belonging to Red de Municipios de Acogida de Refugiados (Local Government Network for Refugee Allocation). The main findings are that NGOs' online engagement with citizens is more than that of local governments. Notably, NGOs are much more active on their Facebook pages than are local governments. The two actors converge, though, in terms of disseminating instructive information and paying less attention to ‘basic crisis response options’. Moreover, the factors ‘content type’, ‘reputation’, and ‘woman’ affect the type of response messages sent by citizens.     

Analysis of Sydney’s recycled water schemes

Recycled water provides a viable opportunity to partially supplement fresh water supplies as well as substantially alleviate environmental loads. Currently, thousands of recycled water schemes have been successfully conducted in a number of countries and Sydney is one of the leading cities, which has made massive effort to apply water reclamation, recycling and reuse. This study aims to make a comprehensive analysis of recycled water schemes in Sydney for a wide range of end uses such as landscape irrigation, industrial process uses and residential uses (e.g., golf course irrigation, industrial cooling water reuse, toilet flushing and clothes washing etc.). For each representative recycled water scheme, this study investigates the involved wastewater treatment technologies, the effluent quality compared with specified guideline values and public attitudes toward different end uses. Based on these obtained data, multi criteria analysis (MCA) in terms of risk, cost-benefit, environmental and social aspects can be performed. Consequently, from the analytical results, the good prospects of further expansion and exploration of current and new end uses were identified toward the integrated water planning and management. The analyses could also help decision makers in making a sound judgment for future recycled water projects.     

Urban design for sustainability: A study on the Turkish city

In line with sustainable development principles, the reactions to modern architecture and planning have led to a new appreciation of traditional cities and urban environments.

Considering the extensive neglect and devastation of local values in our cities and towns, urban development practice in Turkey cannot be said to meet the requirements of sustainability. This paper, therefore, will explore the logic of sustainable development and focus on the components of good urban design which are needed to produce it. Since promoting sustainable lifestyles in our towns and cities depends mainly on the design of the physical environment, the paper will propose a set of key design principles that can deliver sustainable urban development through exploring the qualities of ‘traditional urbanism’ in the Turkish cities as well as examining the latest approaches to urban design.     

An environmental tax-shift with indirect desirable effects

Imposing environmental taxation on external costs of energy will not only affect the environmental impact of the energy sector itself, but it will tend to decrease environmental damage from other sectors of the economy as well. We have assessed the effects of a shift of taxation from taxing labour to taxation of external costs caused in the energy sector. Several examples give results compatible with the hypothesis that the changing price relation between labour and energy resulting from such a tax shift will make re-use, repairs and recycling increasingly competitive and thus tend to decrease mining as well as waste production. Likewise, less energy-intensive commodities and services in general would become increasingly competitive, and would tend to decrease the environmental load further. These environmentally desirable effects are beyond the taxed external effects of the energy sector itself and occur as an indirect effect of the increased relative price of energy.     

安全学科的重要名词及其管理意义讨论

〗安全学科中一些重要名词的含义在我国学术界尚没有取得共识,给安全工作思路及工作效果带来一定的影响。根据事故发生中人的意志的作用,把事故分为人为主动策划、人为非主动策划和自然运动引发三类之后,可以将安全生产、生产安全、公共安全、职业安全四个名词解释为从不同角度涉及不同类别事故及其后果的学科或者工作领域。由于涉及的内容不同,前三者按照行业或事故类别管理其业务,后者则按照组织进行管理。管理思路的不同,使得我国的安全管理和西方国家的职业安全管理中所用的统计指标不同,统计数字也不具有比较意义。     

福建省梅花山国家级自然保护区公共管理研究

自然保护区的建立对改善区域生态环境、保护生物多样性、维护国家生态安全具有重要作用,如何有效管理自然保护区是当前自然保护区决策者、社区和研究者共同关注的问题。利用问卷调查法、专家咨询法和利益相关者分析法等,对福建省梅花山国家级自然保护区管理中的利益相关者进行分析,从公共管理框架设计和模式选择等方面探讨福建省梅花山国家级自然保护区的公共管理。研究结果表明,福建省梅花山国家级自然保护区管理中的利益相关者分为核心层、紧密层和外围层,其中核心层的利益相关者为政府、当地社区、非政府组织、企业与旅游公司,对福建省梅花山国家级自然保护区管理具有重要作用;政府具有高影响力、低利益/高公益,追求生态效益;当地社区为高影响力、高利益,追求经济效益;非政府组织具有低影响力、高公益,追求社会效益;企业与旅游公司具有低影响力、高利益,追求经济效益。基于利益相关者分析,围绕生态、社会和经济效益,进行福建省梅花山国家级自然保护区公共管理的框架设计和模式选择。福建省梅花山国家级自然保护区生态效益的管理采取政府主导型,社会效益的管理采取政府指导下的非政府组织管理型,经济效益的管理采取政府指导下的企业与旅游公司管理型以及社区共同管理型。     

基于公众健康的大气环境风险源定量分级方法

目前国内针对化工企业大气环境风险源的突发泄漏事故健康风险分级方法较少.通过设定可信最严重事故场景,计算环境风险源在现有风险管理水平和当地可预期气象条件下的事故影响概率和健康危害,获得健康风险(包括急性暴露风险、死亡风险和综合健康风险)并划分风险源等级,由此建立了一种考虑公众健康的大气环境风险源定量分级方法.将方法应用于太原市某化工企业液氯储罐区健康风险评估,获得了各风向下的事故影响概率、后果和风险玫瑰图,显示风险源的健康风险与周边公众的分布特征密切相关.在可信最严重事故场景下,综合风险最大值为4.88×10-6,特征风向为S风向,风险源等级为极高风险(Ⅰ级).      

A moral panic over cats

Some conservationists believe that free-ranging cats pose an enormous risk to biodiversity and public health and therefore should be eliminated from the landscape by any means necessary. They further claim that those who question the science or ethics behind their arguments are science deniers (merchants of doubt) seeking to mislead the public. As much as we share a commitment to conservation of biodiversity and wild nature, we believe these ideas are wrong and fuel an unwarranted moral panic over cats. Those who question the ecological or epidemiological status of cats are not science deniers, and it is a false analogy to compare them with corporate and right-wing special interests that perpetrate disinformation campaigns over issues, such as smoking and climate change. There are good conservation and public-health reasons and evidence to be skeptical that free-ranging cats constitute a disaster for biodiversity and human health in all circumstances. Further, there are significant and largely unaddressed ethical and policy issues (e.g., the ethics and efficacy of lethal management) relative to how people ought to value and coexist with cats and native wildlife. Society is better served by a collaborative approach to produce better scientific and ethical knowledge about free-ranging cats.     

城市应急联动系统的研究

叙述了建设城市应急联动系统的必要性,分析了城市应急联动系统国内外发展现状,提出了系统的4种运作模式即集权模式、授权模式、代理模式、协同模式,强调了系统基础设施建设应包含的重要内容,设计了系统技术支撑体系和系统基本功能。最后得出应加快我国城市应急联动系统的统一协调和建设的结论。