Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Tim Dyson, Population and Food: Global Trends and Future Prospects
R. S. J. Sparks, M. I. Bursik, S. N. Carey, J. S. Gilbert, L. S. Glaze, H. Sigurdsson and A. W. Woods, Volcanic Plumes
Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine
Dali L. Yang, Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Forward     

利益主体视角下的西部新农合制度运行困境分析

实现新农合制度设计的初衷目标、提升制度的惠农政策效果,是亟待解决的重大现实问题.为探寻制度实施效果与设计预期目标的偏差,科学厘清出影响西部新农合惠农政策效果的主要因素,本文基于西部10省区17县(区)的780份农户调研数据及相关统计数据,从医(医疗服务机构)、患(参合农民)、保(医疗保障机构)、管(政府)四方利益主体的视角,对西部新农合制度运行中的困境进行剖析.研究结果表明,既有的新农合制度运行框架模式,会陷入医疗服务机构行为扭曲与服务供给可及性差并存、医疗保障机构经办能力不足与保障效果欠佳并存、政府市场化导向与公共服务职能缺失并存、农民参合意愿强烈与被动参合并存的运行困境.三方强势主导形成的主体间利益失衡,必然影响到新农合的持续运行发展.因此,在新农合制度由试点普及向规范持续运行转轨的关键时期,必须以激励约束机制为突破,构建利益相关主体的协同联动改革机制,有效调动运行主体的积极性,实现新农合制度的持续运行.     

基于不同利益相关方认知的水源地生态补偿探讨——以上海市水源地和用水区居民问卷调查为例

采用实地问卷调查和条件价值法评估上海市饮用水源保护的利益相关方认知,探讨黄浦江上游水源地生态补偿机制。研究结果表明,当前水源保护相关政策认知比例普遍较低,水源地部分居民福利受到一定影响,对政府补偿政策的期望较为一致,用水区多数居民愿意分担部分水源保护的责任和义务;水源地WTA和用水区WTP分别为1526元/(月•户)和306元/(月•户),相应未来5年的总受偿意愿和总支付意愿为759.48×10⁸元和465.08×10⁸元;生态补偿方案的合理设计以及不同利益相关方的良好沟通是解决水源地环境冲突的关键。     

Critical pedagogy of place to enhance ecological engagement activities

Scientists in higher education institutions around the globe recognize the importance of engaging with public stakeholders to share their enthusiasm, explain their science, and encourage primary and secondary students to enter the sciences. However, without direct consideration of students’ and teachers’ perspectives and interests, scientists may design activities around their own goals, limiting the impact on school stakeholders (i.e., students, teachers, paraprofessional staff, students’ parents, and other caregivers). We drew from natural and social science research to describe how expanding the conception of place beyond the biophysical can help engage school stakeholders in meaningful ways. We describe the multidimensional PLACE framework that we developed to integrate perspectives, knowledge, and values of all stakeholders in engagement programming. The framework is organized around topics that stakeholders should discuss early on to ensure successful partnerships. We recommend that scientists identify and use pedagogy that is inclusive; language framed around dialogic communication methods; aims and motivations centered on engagement; cultural funds of knowledge of place (i.e., disciplinary, personal, or experiential knowledge); and evaluation of engagement based on meaningful metrics. Two case studies are presented to illustrate how the PLACE framework components, when addressed, can lead to robust, successful partnerships between scientists and schools.     

农村水污染治理驱动因素的利益相关者识别

引入利益相关者理论对我国农村水污染治理减低污染风险的驱动因素进行了识别。通过对农村水污染系统内的利益相关者进行界定,划分了政府、农村社区居民和社会力量3个利益群体,并通过Binary Logistic回归模型对3个利益群体的驱动力进行量化分析,经实证模型检验表明,反映政府作用的考核机制(含财政投入与监管能力)、反映社会力量的社会资金投入以及反映农村社区作用的自主管理能力和居民环保投入所占比重的发生比(OR值)分别为2.248、1.725、1.525和1.236,表明政府主导对减轻农村水污染起关键作用,社会力量和农民社区自身多方发挥作用对降低农村水污染风险的影响也是显著的。     

Places and People: Rhetorical Constructions of “Community” in a Canadian Environmental Risk Assessment

This paper addresses the issue of public engagement in environmental risk contexts through a rhetorical analysis of the key term “community” in a risk assessment of mining-caused soil contamination. Drawing on Burke's concept of terministic screens and method of cluster criticism, the analysis shows the divergent constitutions of “community” in the Sudbury Soils Study's official discourse and the citizen-activist rhetoric of the Community Committee on the Sudbury Soils Study. Tracing the verbal and visual clusters within each organization's articulation of “community” as place and people reveals how the official Study's technical-regulatory ideology of environmental risk and citizen participation is countered by the Community Committee's contestatory environmental justice ideology. These competing views of “community” are mutually constitutive in that the official Study's mainstream risk discourse establishes the terms for the Community Committee's reactive counter-discourse, thus limiting citizen participation mainly to questions of “downstream” impacts. Our rhetorical analysis of “community” suggests a generative method for understanding the complex power relations animating specific risk communication contexts as well as for potentially reinventing “community” in terms more conducive to meaningful citizen engagement.     

Selecting Species for Marine Assessment of Radionuclides Around Amchitka: Planning for Diverse Goals and Interests

Considerable attention has been devoted to selecting bioindicator species as part of monitoring programs for exposure and effects from contaminants in the environment. Yet the rationale for selection of bioindicators is often literature-based, rather than developed with a firm site-specific base of data on contaminant levels in a diverse range of organisms at different trophic levels in the same ecosystem. We suggest that this latter step is an important phase in the environmental assessment process that is often missing. In this paper we address the problem of how to select a wide range of species representing different trophic levels that serve as a basis for selecting a few species suitable as bioindicators. We illustrate this with our assessment of radionuclides on Amchitka Island, Alaska. We propose a multi-stage process for arriving at the list of available species that includes review of literature, review by experts experienced in the area, review by interested and affected parties, selection of trophic levels or groups for analysis, arraying of possible species, and selection of species within each trophic level group for sample collection. We first had to identify all likely species, then narrow our focus to those we could collect and analyze. In all cases, review includes suggestions for possible target species with justifications. While this method increases the up-front costs of developing bioindicators for an ecosystem, it has the advantage of providing information for selection of species that will be most informative in the long run, including those that are the best bioaccumulators, thus providing the earliest warning of any potential environmental consequences. Further, the recognition that a range of stakeholder's needs and interests should be included increases the utility for public-policy makers, and the potential for continued usage to establish long-term trends.     

Community-Based Environmental Management in Atlantic Canada: The Impacts and Spheres of Influence of the Atlantic Coastal Action Program

The Atlantic Coastal Action Program (ACAP) is a unique, community-based program initiated by Environment Canada in 1991 to help Atlantic Canadians restore and sustain watersheds and adjacent coastal areas. ACAP is the eastem-most Environment Canada Ecosystem Initiative. The ACAP family is currently made up of 14 ecosystem-based organizations in the four Atlantic provinces. Each one of these non-profit organizations operates independently, but is formally linked under the umbrella of ACAP to represent a force stronger than the individual parts. In Environment Canada's experience, the program consistently demonstrates the value of a community-based approach and produces results on an ecosystem basis. This paper will examine some of the impacts of ACAP in terms of economics, credible community science, and environmental results which most often align with Environment Canada's objectives. It will explore the influences of the community-based approach to environmental management on multiple scales (local, regional, etc.). Through examples, the paper will demonstrate the effectiveness of ACAP in influencing some of the policies, programs and attitudes of various levels of government and industry in the region, as well as describe how the community-based model has been exported internationally. The paper will conclude with a discussion on a planned path forward for ACAP.     

The role of coalitions in disaster policymaking

Disasters have the potential to act as focusing events, which can increase the amount of attention on disaster‐related problems and encourage policy action. Understanding of the political characteristics of disaster policymaking is underdeveloped, yet it is known that these features may be dissimilar to those of non‐disaster policy areas, especially concerning the coalitions of policy actors engaged in the disaster policy process. Coalitions in the realm of disaster policy processes may be less likely to form, may look very different, and may have different goals than those in non‐disaster domains. Knowledge of the emergence, composition, and purpose of coalitions in disaster policy is lacking. This paper draws on prior theory and case observations to define and describe the characteristics of a disaster policy subsystem and to build a typology of coalitions that may appear within such a subsystem, providing a foundation upon which scholars can work to study coalition dynamics in disaster policy subsystems.     

Simulative governance: on the collaborative narrative of civil society participation in the CDM stakeholder framework

The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is often cited as an exemplar of new, hybrid forms of global environmental governance operating at the public–private interface. Practically, enacting this arrangement involves a wide range of non-state actors. This broad involvement is here assumed to mark a shift towards more polycentric and networked modes of governance in which agents collaborate as ‘stakeholders’ in the process of consensual rule-setting and implementation. Using post-political critique, the depoliticising effects of the stakeholder framework on civil society actors are interrogated, using formal and informal participation opportunities to raise concerns regarding specific CDM projects. The analysis suggests that the CDM’s collaborative narrative of stakeholding structurally fails to stimulate public (re)engagement and is, instead, a prime example of simulative governance that struggles to achieve the simultaneity of two incompatibilities: the participatory revolution and the post-political turn.