From Objective Environmental Problems to Subjective Environmental Concern: A Multilevel Analysis Using 30 Indicators of Environmental Quality

This article analyzes the effect of environmental degradation, the affluence hypothesis, and postmaterialist theory to assess the environmental concern of individuals in 51 countries. The hypotheses are tested using a multilevel analysis that employs an unprecedented number of objective indicators of environmental degradation, using the World Values Survey 6th wave (2010–2014). The results support the degradation hypotheses, where the importance of water scarcity in a country and national biodiversity are the major variables that explain individual environmental concern among all the indicators of environmental degradation. The affluence hypothesis is rejected and the postmaterialist theory is supported only at the individual level.     

Myths for Environmental Management

Myths help resolve differences in the policy process. The Resource Management Act 1991 is underpinned by four linked policy myths. ideas about resources, sustainable management, integration and rational planning. Implementing the Act will require acknowledging the myths in order to relieve conflicts inherent in the legislation.     

Urban Environmental Justice Indices

Environmental justice is the principle that environmental costs and amenities ought to be equitably distributed within society. Due to the ethical, political, and public–health implications, and because many choices confront those researching environmental justice, standardized measures are needed to inform public dialogue and policy. We develop and test seven indices on three Colorado cities to measure the relationship between the distribution of environmental hazards and minority and poverty–stricken populations, and recommend the Comparative Environmental Risk Index as a preliminary, standardized measure for comparing urban areas. This index is particularly relevant to disadvantaged communities, regional planning organizations, environmental–justice networks and scholars, and state and federal agencies.     

Environmental hazards and natural disasters

How can the apparently growing frequency and cost of environmental hazards be explained? Drawing on a range of examples, and especially the Canterbury earthquakes, it is argued that the creation of knowledge about these events depends on the interplay of lived and historical experience with scientific awareness. But often the vulnerability of places to particular events is obscured by popular use of the terms ‘natural hazard’ or ‘natural disaster’, as if human behaviour is absolved from any responsibility. It is shown how such thinking often increases the extent of the hazard, so that although we do not cause earthquakes, floods and bushfires, we are implicated and complicit in the outcomes.     

Landscape Change and Environmental Histories

Historical geography was once a popular element of university curricula in New Zealand. It was also a conspicuous focus of research. Today however there is only one identifiable course in historical geography in New Zealand's university calendars – at Massey – and few writers have maintained an active research interest rooted in the sub‐discipline. This Comment suggests some reasons why now is a good time for New Zealand's geographers to reassess this state of affairs, and outlines five themes that might be pursued in the construction of more explicit historical geographies at the start of the third millennium.     

湿地与全球环境变化

湿地是地球上具有重要环境功能的生态系统和多种生物的栖息地之一。湿地环境由湿地水文,湿地生物地球化学循环与生物对湿地的适应和改造构造,各种因子之间相互依赖,相互协同,构建湿地的整体功能,湿地在全球环境变化中地地位,主要表现在湿地环境自身健康水平和湿地在全球环境长期变化中的作用,一个未受异常自然和人类活动扰动的湿地环境,因其生物种属的多样性,结构的复杂性,功能的整合性和抵抗外力的稳定性,而处于较好的健     

Cross-Cultural Environmental Perception of Wilderness

This paper investigates the environmental perceptions of three disparate culture groups: Vermonters, non-Native Quebecers, and Native Cree of northern Quebec. All three groups were affiliated with the James Bay hydroelectric project. The hydroelectric project, per se, was not the focus of this research endeavor. Instead, this study merely took advantage of the environmental awareness promulgated by the project. The concept of “wilderness” was qualitatively employed to probe environmental perceptions cross-culturally. Pressing each group to define, locate, and assess the value of wilderness provided insight into each culture's framework regarding land use and exposed the mental scaffolding that undergirds their environmental conceptualizations.