Where's the Fire? Co-Constructing Bushfire in the Everyday Landscape

This research studied factors that residents of a fire-prone Victorian community used when deciding whether to leave their homes on a day officially declared “Catastrophic,” the highest Fire Danger Rating. Taking a social constructivist perspective, we explore how the expert view of bushfire risk, represented by Fire Danger Ratings, is interpreted within the context of local understandings of the landscape and social memory of bushfire. Residents perceive a disconnection between the Fire Danger Rating and local reality. Their social construction of bushfire is related to social and ecological memory, which comprises physical experience of the landscape and local fire knowledge narratives. The exclusion of this social complexity from Fire Danger Ratings diminished their utility as a way of helping people make meaning of bushfire. We propose that fire management agencies work with communities to develop a co-constructed view of bushfire risk that incorporates local bushfire knowledge into Fire Danger Ratings.     

Constructing Risk: multi-scale change,livelihoods and vulnerability in the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Change has been at the heart of the livelihoods concept since its inception, allowing for a clear focus on how people perceive, respond to and experience risk. The ardent focus on ‘the local’ within livelihoods work, both in research and programmatic terms, has to some extent overshadowed attention on the role of wider-scale political economic and environmental processes in generating change and determining responses to change. Livelihoods in the Mekong Delta have never been ‘local’, having long been historically embedded in international, regional and national economic, political and environmental transformations. Drivers of change at these wider scales have intensified, complicating local responses to change, whether through economic, social or political means. A more nuanced appreciation of how scaled relations can be supported is required to better anticipate and respond to the political ecology of risk.     

山区农户双重风险感知对搬迁意愿和搬迁行为的影响

以受汶川“5.12”地震和“7.10”特大山洪泥石流灾害严重影响的汶川县原草坡乡为例,从农户风险感知现状出发,考察风险感知对搬迁意愿和搬迁行为的不同影响。研究结果表明：农户对自然灾害风险感知越强、对搬迁安置风险感知越弱,其搬迁意愿越强;较高的自然灾害风险感知会提高农户搬离灾害隐患点或风险区的概率,较强的搬迁安置风险感知会降低农户全家搬迁的可能性;搬迁安置风险感知对未搬迁和部分搬迁农户的影响程度超过自然灾害风险感知的影响。基于汶川县原草坡乡的实证研究,提出避灾搬迁安置决策中的“双重风险感知”假说。     

气候变化风险的新型分类

风险分类是对气候变化风险进行系统风险评估和管理的前提和基础。本文首先按部门和领域识别了主要的气候变化风险,然后采用国际风险管理理事会(International Risk Governance Council, IRGC)的新型风险分类体系(简单风险、复杂风险、不确定风险和模糊风险)进行分类:提出以"不确定性"作为分类依据;把IPCC第四次评估报告中描述不确定性的主要术语——"信度"和"可能性"作为分类特征参数,分别构建了四类风险的模糊隶属函数,根据最大隶属度原则从定量角度对气候变化风险进行分类;同时利用IPCC的两个定性指标"达成一致的程度和证据量"对定量分类方法进行补充,初步建立了气候变化风险的分类方法体系。获得的气候变化风险分类的初步结果,可以为风险管理机构选择不同类别的评估和管理方法进行风险研究提供科学依据。     

Scenarios on future land changes in the West African Sahel

In an attempt to anticipate possible futures of drylands of West Africa in the face of rapid socio-economic and environmental changes, we developed four scenarios based on recent survey data, the literature and our knowledge of the region. The four scenarios are inspired by those developed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: (1) ‘downward spiral’ characterized by rapid climate change, expansion of agriculture and chaotic urban growth; (2) ‘integrated economy’ with integrated land management, food production for local markets and rural–urban exchanges; (3) ‘open doors’ characterized by large-scale out-migrations, land grabbing by foreign companies and development aid and (4) ‘climate change mitigation’ with an increase in biofuel crops, land management for carbon capture and development of off-farm activities. We conclude that the Sahel region is most likely moving away from being a highly climate-dependent region based on agriculture towards a more open and diversified economy. West African countries have to find a balance between the new opportunities and risks created by economic globalization.     

陇中和鲁西南乡村居民对当地气候变化感知研究

基于问卷调查、气温和降水资料等气象资料以及农业灾害资料,分析甘肃省会宁县和山东省单县乡村居民对当地气候变化感知情况,探讨影响感知的因素.研究发现,绝大部分受访者在大部分情况下正确感知到气候变化,但感知及其影响因素较复杂.气候变化及其产生的影响是制约人们感知的最重要的要素,决定了感知的总体特征;感知也受相较调查时间而言较...     

青藏高原东部样带农牧民生计脆弱性评估

脆弱性评估为脆弱性地区农户摆脱贫困、区域可持续发展提供科学依据。以青藏高原东部样带为例,基于可持续生计框架,建立了农牧民生计脆弱性评估的指标体系,利用11个乡镇的879户农牧民样本数据,开展了不同地带生计脆弱性评估。该指标体系反映了农牧民面临的主要风险,其生计资产,以及农牧民和政府应对风险的措施。结果表明:高原区农牧民生计脆弱性程度高于山原区和高山峡谷区。高原区的满掌乡最为脆弱,即便有政府的帮助,农牧民也不能应对风险。脆弱性程度高的山原区上部和高原区,处于不能适应的边缘,如不采取措施,当地牧民将不能应对气候变化、草地退化、药材退化等多种风险。导致该区牧民生计脆弱的原因既有各种风险的冲击,也因牧民自身生计资产和适应能力的不足。高山峡谷区和山原区下部的乡镇,农牧民能有效地应对风险,需进一步拓宽第二、第三产业就业渠道。因此,高原区和山原区上部的纯牧区是脆弱区域,政府应采取积极的措施,增强农牧民的适应能力。政府的救助措施应从改善自然资产转变到改善人力资产和金融资产,如技能培训、实行医保和畜病防治全覆盖、提供低息和无息贷款、在黑土滩区全面实行退牧还草、对退化草场进行治理和恢复。     

气候变化下中国未来综合环境风险区划研究

综合环境风险区划是变化环境下开展综合防灾减灾工作的基础,对于综合风险防范措施的制定具有指导意义。以农业、生态和人群3个系统为主要受灾体,从作物产量、生态系统变迁、高温热浪对人群的影响3个方面综合评估了4种典型浓度路径（Representative Concentration Pathways）RCP2.6、RCP4.5、RCP6.0和RCP8.5情景下21世纪末期（2071~2099年）的中国综合环境风险,并以RCP8.5情景为例编制了未来综合环境风险区划。结果表明,该时期中国综合环境风险主要出现在黄淮海地区、华南部分地区和青藏高原部分地区。综合环境风险区划共分为6个一级区和43个二级区;一级区分别为西北低风险区、东北生态较低风险区、青藏高原生态中度风险区、晋陕生态-农业中度风险区、华南农业高风险区、黄淮海农业-热浪高风险区。     

Caught in the Currents: Pollution,Risk, and Environmental Change in Marine Space

Human interactions with the marine environment and pollution hold broad lessons for understanding environmental change. Expanding geographical inquiry beyond its traditional, land-based foci and delving deeper into marine environment and risk issues offers fruitful avenues by which to elaborate and refine our understanding of nature-society relationships. I present a case study of marine petroleum transportation risks in the Straits of Malacca to illustrate the complex history of political and economic processes across a range of scales and shaping the risks in the Straits. The inescapable tension between generalizing global social and environmental processes and recognizing the array of local differences drives ongoing policy debates in the Straits, as it does increasingly for many global environmental problems.     

宁夏农业干旱灾害综合风险分析

农业干旱灾害风险分析是农业防灾减灾的重要内容。本文以灾害风险理论为基础,构建宁夏农业干旱灾害综合风险评估模式,该模式综合考虑了干旱致灾因子、孕灾环境、承灾体和防灾减灾能力4类风险影响因素,并在GIS技术的支持下,完成宁夏农业干旱灾害风险区划。结果表明：宁夏各地农业干旱灾害风险差异较大,风险较高的区域集中在宁夏中南部山区的同心、海原、固原、西吉、彭阳等地,风险较低的区域集中在北部大部分地区以及南部泾源、隆德等地,这一结果与宁夏各地环境特点、经济投入、农业发展现状和趋势一致。     

Double exposure in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin

This paper examines how double exposure to economic and environmental stressors – and the interaction between the two – affect smallholder farmers in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin. Studying two case study villages we find that people, in general, are resilient to environmental stressors. However, most households show less resilience to the socioeconomic stressors and shocks that have been introduced or intensified by economic globalisation. Our findings indicate that economic change brought about by structural adjustment policies pressures rural people to alter their approach to farming, which makes it more difficult for them to respond to environmental change. For example, smallholder farmers find it difficult to make a transition to commercial farming within the Limpopo Basin, in part because farming techniques that are well adapted to managing environmental variability in the region – such as seeding many small plots – are not well suited to the economies of scale needed for profitable commercial agriculture. People use a variety of strategies to cope with interactive environmental and economic stressors and shocks, but many face considerable constraints to profitably exploiting market-based opportunities. We conclude that economic stressors and shocks may now be causing small-scale agriculture to be less well adapted to ecological and climate variability, making smallholders more vulnerable to future climate change. Some local level policy interventions, including those that support and build on local environmental knowledge, could assist rural agricultural societies in adapting to future environmental change in the context of economic globalisation.     

Heterogeneity in climate change risk perception amongst dairy farmers: A latent class clustering analysis

Livestock production has been criticized for its effect on greenhouse gas emissions and policy makers are now supporting actions to reduce these impact. Voluntary adoption of these actions will be precluded by the farmer perception of the risks from a changing climate. We employ a latent class clustering approach to understand the heterogeneity within a sample of dairy farmers, based on 8 statements related to climate change risk.The majority of farmers are found to be 'confused moderates' who have no strong opinion towards the possible future impacts of climate change. Two further classes emerged, namely 'deniers' and 'risk perceivers'. We find that higher education levels have an influence on increasing risk perception, as does the intention to pass the farm onto another family member. Membership of agri-environmental schemes does not preclude awareness or acceptance of climate change risk, principally due to the lack of emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions within these schemes. In addition, use of social networks seems to be a significant factor in raising the profile of risk perception within farmer decision-making.We conclude that advisors and those engaging with the farming community must accommodate climate messages in their communication strategies. Furthermore, emphasis on the greenhouse gas benefits from adoption of agri-environmental schemes would seem to be an efficient vehicle for raising the risk profile of climate change and influence future uptake of Government and industry supported actions.     

The Role of Local Knowledge in the Risk Management of Extreme Climates in Local Communities: A Case Study in a Nomadic NIAHS Site

In the context of climate change, research on extreme climates and disaster risk management has become a crucial component of climate change adaptation. Local communities, which have been facing extreme climates for a long time in their production and daily life, have developed some locally applicable traditional knowledge that has played an important role in their adaptation to extreme climate and disaster risk management. Therefore, this research aims to link Local knowledge (LK) to community extreme climate disaster risk management in order to construct a conceptual model. It then takes the extreme climate adaptation strategy of traditional nomads in a temperate grassland of China as an example to analyze the role of LK in extreme climate adaptation using the proposed theoretical framework. The main research objectives of this study are: (1) To construct a conceptual model to illustrate the relations among extreme climate events, risk management, LK, and farmers' adaptation strategies; (2) To apply the theoretical framework to a field case to reveal context-specific extreme climate adaptation mechanisms with LK as a critical component; (3) To test the framework and provide suggestions for the extreme climates adaptation, and the conservation of LK related to climate change adaptation. The results show that from the perspective of disaster risk management, local communities could manage extreme climates as a disaster risk through adaptation strategies formed from LK, because as a knowledge system, LK contains relevant knowledge covering the whole process of disaster risk management.     

气候变化风险及其定量评估方法

风险评估是气候变化研究领域的核心课题之一,减缓和适应战略的理论需求推动下发展出许多定量评估方法,完成了大量的评估工作。然而,已有研究在气候变化的风险构成上从不同的角度去认识,且评估方法论在整体上缺乏对致险因子与承险体的集成分类。基于此,本文明晰气候变化风险构成,包括致险因子的危险性、承险体的暴露度与脆弱度及其相互关系,明晰了风险产生与变化逻辑。融合致险因子与承险体特征,将气候变化风险定量评估方法归纳为突发事件和渐变事件两类,并分别进行了理论阐述和案例剖析。最后,根据气候变化风险的研究现状和评估需求,从温升目标、脆弱性曲线、适应措施等方面提出未来展望。     

Assessing the application and value of participatory mapping for community bushfire preparation

The increased ease for individuals to create, share and map geographic information combined with the need for timely, relevant and diverse information has resulted in a new disaster management context. Volunteered geographic information (VGI), or geographic information voluntarily created by private citizens enabled through technologies like social media and web-based mapping, has changed the ways people create and use information for crisis events. Research has focussed on disaster response while largely ignoring prevention and preparedness. Preparing for disasters can reduce negative impacts on life and property, but despite strategies to educate communities, preparation remains low. This study assesses the application and value of VGI in bushfire risk reduction through a participatory mapping approach. It examines VGI as a social practice and not simply a data source by considering the user experience of contributing VGI and the potential for these activities to increase community connectedness for building disaster resilience. Participatory mapping workshops were held in bushfire-risk communities in Tasmania. Workshop activities included a paper-mapping exercise and web-based digital mapping. Survey results from 31 participants at three workshops indicated the process of mapping and contributing local information for bushfire preparation with other community members can contribute to increased social connectedness, understanding of local bushfire risk, and engagement in risk reduction. Local knowledge exchange was seen as valuable, but the social dimension appeared even more engaging than the specific information shared. Participants reported collaborative maps as effective for collating and sharing community bushfire information with a preference for digital mapping. Some limitations of online sharing of information were also reported by participants, however, including potential issues of privacy, data quality and source trustworthiness. Further work is needed to extrapolate findings from the study sample to the broader population.     

Shaping and Sharing Responsibility: Social Memory and Social Learning in the Australian Rural Bushfire Landscape

Responding to increased frequency and severity of bushfires, Australian governments called for “shared responsibility” for bushfire preparation and mitigation. This requires engagement between all sectors of community—government agencies, businesses, not-for-profit, and residents. Fire management agencies remain concerned about whether all communities in fire-prone landscapes are equally equipped to participate in sharing responsibility. A related question is how experience of bushfire influences subsequent community fire management practices. This paper addresses social learning and social memory in a landscape that has experienced repeat bushfires between 2006 and 2013. It examines the relationships between memory, learning and practice among a farming community in western Victoria and government agencies with bushfire management responsibility. Findings suggest that social learning and social memory interact and new practices emerge as the participants embrace “shared responsibility.” However, ambiguities remain about “what” is being shared and what being “responsible” means at different points in preparation and response.     

The Victorian Bushfires of 2002–03 and the Politics of Blame: a Discourse Analysis

This paper identifies contrasting environmental discourses on bushfire from the public debate that followed the Victorian fires of 2002–03. Submissions to the inquiry into the 2002–03 Victorian bushfires provide a particularly rich source of documentation. It is argued that environmental events such as bushfire only become political issues, or problems, when they are constituted as such through environmental discourse. Through the analysis, three contrasting discourses on bushfire are identified—here labelled the ‘conservationist’, ‘ruralist’ and ‘wise use’ discourses. In examining how different ‘constructions’ of bushfire have led to conflict, each discourse is shown to consist of a range of actors who draw on shared storylines. Having established a better understanding of the different attitudes, beliefs, interests and values that underpin debates about bushfire, the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the prospects for compromise among the discourses and the potential for improved land and fire management outcomes.     

中国生态脆弱区全球变化风险及应对技术途径和主要措施

自工业革命以来,全球环境发生深刻变化。生态脆弱区生态系统稳定性差、抗干扰和自我恢复能力弱,在全球变化背景下,自然资源供给能力下降、土地退化、生物多样性减少、灾害频发,生态系统面临巨大风险,亟需开展生态脆弱区全球变化风险应对研究。本文重点对中国典型生态脆弱区全球变化风险来源、全球变化对生态脆弱区的影响、全球变化风险应对等研究进行总结,并提出未来全球变化应对策略,以期促进中国典型生态脆弱区生态系统对全球变化响应的深入理解,提高生态脆弱区应对全球变化的能力。生态脆弱区全球变化风险源于环境变化对自然、社会、经济复杂系统的影响。全球变化对生态脆弱区的影响是显著的,以气候变化为主要标志,人类活动为主要驱动力,引起极端气候事件、灾害频发、土地退化、植被生产力降低、生物多样性减少、冰川冻土消融和水资源格局改变等环境问题,并在未来全球变化持续影响下可能加剧,而生态建设工程的实施显著改善了生态环境。今后应加强自然、社会、经济系统耦合,加强资源环境要素监测和全球变化风险评估与预警等方面的研究。     

气候变化感知对城市居民冰雪旅游环境责任行为的影响机制——以北京市为例

冰雪旅游是推动冰雪经济与旅游产业高质量融合发展的重要途径,现已成为文旅产业中最具潜力的领域之一。然而在全球气候变化的影响下,冰雪旅游发展面临严峻挑战。文章以北京市为例,运用结构方程模型对冰雪旅游情境中城市居民的气候变化感知、感知价值、旅游意向和环境责任行为等变量间的影响关系及其形成机制进行分析。研究发现：(1)气候变化感知分为气候变化表征和气候变化风险两个维度,且两者显著正向影响冰雪旅游感知价值。同时,气候变化风险显著正向影响旅游者环境责任行为。(2)冰雪旅游感知价值显著正向影响冰雪旅游意向和环境责任行为。(3)冰雪旅游意向显著正向影响环境责任行为。(4)旅游经历在气候变化感知对冰雪旅游意向和环境责任行为的影响关系中具有显著的正向调节作用。本研究对厘清冰雪旅游情境下气候变化感知对游客环境责任行为的复杂影响机理具有重要的理论价值,同时也能够在一定程度上为相关部门把握“后冬奥”黄金机遇,推动冰雪旅游高质量发展提供决策参考。     

中国综合气候变化风险区划

气候变化作用于自然环境与社会经济系统,产生一系列影响。随着未来社会经济发展,气候变化危险性与自然环境和社会经济承险体耦合形成有规律的风险时空格局。将此时空格局系统化表达即是综合气候变化风险区划,是适应气候变化的科学基础之一。本文基于RCP 8.5下的近中期（2021-2050年）气候情景,分析了中国未来气温和降水变化趋势与速率,评价了干旱、高温热浪以及洪涝等极端事件危险性,选取人口、经济、粮食生产和生态系统等承险体风险作为综合风险定量评估的指标。在系统性、主导因素以及空间连续性原则的指导下,提出中国综合气候变化风险区划三级区域系统方案,划分出8个气候变化敏感区、19个极端事件危险区和46个承险体综合风险区。结果发现：2021-2050年RCP 8.5情景下中国的气候变化高风险区主要包括：华北弱暖增雨敏感区,华北平原热浪危险区,人口经济粮食高风险区;华南—西南弱暖增雨敏感区,黔滇山地热浪危险区,生态经济粮食人口高风险区;华南沿海涝热危险区,生态粮食经济人口高风险区。中国综合气候变化风险区划涵盖了气候变化情景、极端事件发生、社会经济与生态系统的可能损失信息,可以为国家或地方应对气候变化及气候变化风险管理提供科技支撑。