Natural resources deterioration, environmental degradation and sustainable resettlement

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Economy,culture and environment: perspectives on the Australian food industry

Intersections between economy, culture and environment pose exciting future challenges for human geography. Part of Griffith Taylor's pioneering role as a geographer was to investigate relationships between these three aspects of human life, although his agenda was that of environmental determinism. This paper considers these intersections as they relate to contemporary geographical studies of restructuring, in particular the emergence of a genuinely global economic system since about 1980. Recent developments in cultural geography argue that geographical analysis of restructuring has been dominated by an economic determinism which has buried other stories which could be told about industrial change. The paper sketches lines of possible dialogue between economic geography and cultural studies, illustrating the argument with examples from restructuring in the Australian food industry. In opening such a dialogue, economic geography would be better placed to return to interactions between economy, culture and environment. In his day, Taylor was not afraid to upset the conventional wisdom about these relationships and this may be one of his most enduring legacies.     

Reflections on the iconography of environmental justice activism

The United States environmental justice movement has grown in the last 20 years from tactical cooperation between civil rights and environmental activists on hazardous waste issues into a broad-based movement for social change. As dozens of organizations invest resources in an environmental justice agenda, it is important to examine how such organizations portray their stance toward the goals of the larger movement in order to better understand tensions within the movement between social justice and environmental protection, diversity and commonality, and localized and broader movement agendas. This paper explores what contemporary environmental justice imagery tells us about this social movement through a critical discourse analysis of environmental justice organizations' logos. The conceptual approach used here links a tradition of critical discourse analysis of textual materials with elements of a critical visual methodology. The paper examines how the social grievance of environmental injustice is constructed in relation to the social and natural world, and considers what these images tell us about the identities, relationships and modes of authority that constitute the contemporary environmental justice movement.     

'Just sustainability': the emerging discourse of environmental justice in Britain?

Environmental justice is both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization and action, and a policy principle to guide public decision making. It emerged initially in the US, and more recently in the UK, as a new vocabulary underpinning action by community organizations campaigning against environmental injustices. However, as the environmental justice discourse has matured, it has become increasingly evident that it should play a role in the wider agendas for sustainable development and social inclusion. The links between sustainability and environmental justice are becoming clearer and more widely understood in the UK by NGOs and government alike, and it is the potential synergy between these two discourses which is the focus of this paper. This paper argues that the concept of 'just sustainability' provides a discourse for policymakers and activists, which brings together the key dimensions of both environmental justice and sustainable development.     

Canada's environmental farm plans: transatlantic perspectives on agri-environmental schemes

Evaluation of Ontario's Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) scheme, launched in 1993, provides an opportunity for comparisons with agri-environmental measures instituted in the European Union and other parts of North America. The EFP has a strong 'bottom-up' dimension in that it is farmers' organizations that have been central both to the scheme's instigation and to its ongoing management. This has affected the nature of the actions taken by individual farmers participating in the scheme. These actions are reviewed, especially in terms of the participants' attitudes towards stewardship of the land, environmental outcomes, cross-compliance measures, barriers to participation and the role of statutory regulation. Some contrasts are drawn with the greater 'top-down' controls exerted in several EU agri-environment schemes, with the latter's promotion of extensification and the changing role of farmers as 'producers of countryside' in a multi-functional agricultural system. The diffusion of EFP schemes throughout Canada is noted and is cited as confirming the maintenance of fundamentally different attitudes to the development of farm-based environmental actions compared with those adopted in the EU.     

西伯利亚自然资源及其开发潜力

西伯利亚自然资源极其丰富,开发潜力巨大,在全俄乃至更高层次的区域中具有明显的竞争优势.根据国内外最新资料,对西伯利亚的能源、矿产资源、森林资源、水资源和水能资源的开发现状进行了详尽的分析,从开发面临的优势与劣势、机遇和挑战等方面对西伯利亚的自然资源开发潜力进行了探讨,并根据SWOT分析结果提出了西伯利亚自然资源开发的策略和建议.     

城市绿地空间环境公平研究进展

始于1980年代的环境公平研究近年来重点转向环境资源,尤其是公园绿地在不同族群和不同收入人群中的空间分布。经过对国内外文献的梳理,从绿地空间环境公平研究主题、绿地公平性影响因素及其测度指标和方法进行了系统综述。分析发现：1）国内外关于绿地空间环境公平的研究主要集中在近十年,呈现稳步增长的态势。总体上从环境公平视角来关注城市绿地空间的研究仍不多,案例绝大多数来自发达国家的城市,更多集中在美国;2）研究主题集中在可进入性与环境公平、绿地空间改造与环境绅士化、绿地使用中的文化公平与环境公平问题以及绿地环境公平感知与地方依恋四个方面;3）城市绿地公平性的测度最常用的是可达性、服务面积等绿地供给性指标,近年越来越多研究开始使用绿地供给与使用者需求的综合测度指标。最后,基于中国快速城市化和快速工业化带来日益紧张的土地利用冲突与经济发展压力,再加上中国特殊的人口、环境特征与文化背景,中国城市普遍面临着对绿地空间需求的日益增长,未来应特别重视城市绿地空间的环境公平问题。     

Nonprofits and park equity in Los Angeles: a promising way forward for environmental justice

Disparities in park provision raise environmental and health justice concerns. With public agencies stepping back from providing environmental amenities in increasingly neoliberal urban regimes, nonprofits in the U.S. have assumed a prominent role in the parks and recreation sector. But very few studies have comprehensively assessed whether and how park nonprofits contribute to increasing or closing the equity gap in park provision. Focusing on Los Angeles, I analyze how park nonprofits operate and which demographic groups benefit from new and improved parks supported by nonprofits. Based on interviews with local practitioners and geospatial analyses, I find that nonprofits are leading a park equity movement in Los Angeles and helped address park disparities. To do so, nonprofits built diverse coalitions, leveraged complementary strengths, coalesced with public agencies, and helped generate public funds for parks. These findings show that equity-oriented nonprofits can successfully challenge the unjust outcomes of neoliberal governance.     

The demonstration effect: Natural resources, ethnonationalism and the Aceh conflict

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami brought Aceh's long-drawn separatist conflict back to international attention. Yet, the precise way in which the different aspects of the conflict entangled with resource-related grievances have remained poorly understood. Taking a political ecology approach, this paper sets out to understand the role of natural resource grievances within the complex and shifting set of mutually implicated factors leading to and sustaining the conflict from the early days of Indonesia's independence. The paper argues that the management of Aceh's natural resources – especially the rich gas and oil reserves – was not the sole or primary causal factor. Rather, state managed exploitation of natural resources had a demonstration effect, exemplifying other grievances and supporting the articulation of a separatist discourse naturalizing 'Acehnese' conceptualizations of resource entitlement. Comparing Aceh with other separatist conflicts, the paper suggests that, as conflict unfolds at the intersection of a shifting set of concerns, it is increasingly difficult to separate the underlying issues of identity, resource entitlements and human rights.     

Mapping urban risk: Flood hazards,race, & environmental justice in New York

This paper demonstrates the importance of disaggregating population data aggregated by census tracts or other units, for more realistic population distribution/location. A newly developed mapping method, the Cadastral-based Expert Dasymetric System (CEDS), calculates population in hyper-heterogeneous urban areas better than traditional mapping techniques. A case study estimating population potentially impacted by flood hazard in New York City compares the impacted population determined by CEDS with that derived by centroid-containment method and filtered areal-weighting interpolation. Compared to CEDS, 37% and 72% fewer people are estimated to be at risk from floods city-wide, using conventional areal weighting of census data, and centroid-containment selection, respectively. Undercounting of impacted population could have serious implications for emergency management and disaster planning. Ethnic/racial populations are also spatially disaggregated to determine any environmental justice impacts with flood risk. Minorities are disproportionately undercounted using traditional methods. Underestimating more vulnerable sub-populations impairs preparedness and relief efforts.     

An environmental justice assessment of public beach access in Miami,Florida

The scope of empirical environmental justice (EJ) research has expanded beyond hazards exposure to scrutinize social inequities in access to amenities, but no prior study has examined the EJ implications of public beach access. Furthermore, quantitative research on white privilege is very scarce. To address these knowledge gaps, our study examines racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequities in access to public beaches in the Miami metropolitan statistical area, Florida. Public beach accessibility is modeled with an innovative geospatial approach that involves population weighted distances to beach access sites. To assess EJ implications of public beach access for various racial/ethnic and socioeconomically vulnerable groups, spatial regression models are estimated using census tract-level data. Results indicate that beaches are more accessible to neighborhoods with a higher proportion of non-Hispanic Whites, while neighborhoods with higher percentages of Hispanics and socioeconomically disadvantaged residents have limited access. This study demonstrates the importance of assessing white privilege and access to environmental amenities in EJ research to better understand social inequities.     

Natural fodder resources of Uvs aimag of Mongolia

Based on comprehensive soil-geobotanical investigations and space-acquired images, we compiled the map for the types of pastures of the Uvs aimag, and made an assessment of their productivity and the allowable number of grazing animals.     

Nonrenewable resources in economic, social, and environmental sustainability

This paper reviews the linkages among energy and mineral resources and economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Nonrenewable resources are shown to be integral components of sustainability, regardless of which paradigmatic definition of the concept is invoked. Potential measures of the degree to which nonrenewable resources contribute to or detract from sustainability are presented. We conclude that a set of such measures should be incorporated in the comprehensive framework of sustainability currently being developed by the Federal government. National scale indicators could be presented within the structure of the seven criteria from the Santiago Declaration, whereas a life cycle or materials flow approach could be used when sustainability of specific resources is at issue.     

GIScience,environmental justice, & estimating populations at risk: The case of landfills in Wales

There has been a notable increase in the use of geographic information systems (GIS) in studies of environmental (in)justice in the last two decades. Whilst the potential of such techniques is increasingly being recognised, there remain some key research challenges facing researchers interested in wider notions of environmental justice (EJ). One avenue of research concerns the estimation of population denominator and the influence of the estimation model on the conclusions emanating from such studies. Whilst the potential of so-called dasymetric mapping techniques have been explored in other substantive areas such as crime and health geography, their use in EJ applications remains under-explored. This paper represents a preliminary attempt to redress this gap in the literature through a comparison of the deprivation profiles of residents living in the vicinity of landfill sites in Wales using both ‘traditional’ and innovative methods of population estimation that provide a more realistic representation of actual population distribution. The results as we demonstrate suggest that more emphasis needs to be placed on the methods by which population is estimated if the results of GIS-based environmental justice studies are to be more widely applied.     

水资源与环境投入产出研究进展及关键问题

随着投入产出分析理论不断完善和发展,其应用研究领域不断得到拓展和深化。以投入产出理论发展入手,重点对水资源与环境投入产出研究作评述,提出研究中存在的关键问题。介绍了投入占用产出与灰色投入产出分析理论的提出与发展,两者均是对传统投入产出理论的有效补充和完善。阐述了水资源在区域各部门间的投入产出规律,总结了环境投入产出研究中结合其他分析方法的投入产出模型。大量文献资料显示,在国内外水资源与环境投入产出模型的发展与近期研究中,水资源消耗分析与虚拟水研究是水资源投入产出分析研究热点,环境排污分析与环境影响分析研究是环境投入产出分析的重点。提出并分析了内部技术假设和部门总合对投入产出分析结果的影响,指出该两大关键问题急需探索解决。最后,就投入产出分析研究现状提出几点展望。