Partitioning Stakeholders for the Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services: Examples of a Mangrove System

Although the importance of ecosystem services provided by natural forests, especially mangroves, is well known, the destruction of these environments is still ubiquitous and therefore protection measures are urgently needed. The present study compares the current approach of economic valuation of ecosystem services to a proposed one, using a study case of a mangrove system as an example. We suggest that a cost-benefit analysis for economically valuing environmental services should be performed with three additional modifications consisting of (i) a categorization of local stakeholders as demanders of particular ecosystem services, (ii) acknowledgement of the government as one of these demander groups, and (iii) the inclusion of opportunity costs in the valuation. The application of this approach to the mangrove area in the east portion of Great Abaco Island, the Bahamas, reveals that not only the ecosystem services received differ between demander groups, but the monetary benefits and costs are also specific to each of these groups. We show that the economic valuation of the ecosystem should be differentiated for each category, instead of being calculated as a net ‘societal value’ as it is currently. Applying this categorization of demanders enables a better understanding of the cost and benefit structure of the protection of a natural area. The present paper aims to facilitate discussions regarding benefit and cost sharing related to the protection of natural areas.     

生态服务付费存在的问题及生态工人机制探讨

生态服务付费（PES）的理论源于新古典福利经济学,隐含了对生态服务定价、市场将自动演变出生态服务买家和卖家的假设。由于缺少生态服务的现实市场,这种假设很难奏效,需要重新审视大多数生态服务付费项目有关福利经济学的基本理论假设,需要创新生态补偿的新方式。同时,坚持生态惠民、生态利民、生态为民,是绿水青山就是金山银山发展理念的核心内涵,是对以人为中心的环境保护与经济发展的生动诠释。特别是对于重要的生态脆弱区来讲,生态环境保护工程的实施更应关注域内原住民的发展。通过回顾PES的理论演变和总结国内外典型PES案例实践,分析了PES在理论假设与实践方面存在的脱节问题,并发现通过PES项目实施中创建的社会网络和就业为当地参与者增加了新的创收机会。在此基础上,通过引导当地住民参与生态保护与修复,探讨了生态保护、经济发展和民生改善的协调联动良性生态工人机制的形成。     

The Relationship between Community and Individual Measures of Wellbeing: comparisons by remoteness for Indigenous Australians

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) Australians, the wellbeing of the community in which one lives and/or has an ongoing attachment to is an important aspect of individual health and wellbeing. In non-Indigenous policy discourse, the main way to summarise community-level wellbeing is through indices of socioeconomic outcomes that can be used to rank regions or areas within regions. While these have been produced for the Indigenous population, they only capture one particular aspect of community wellbeing. The analysis presented in this paper extends our knowledge of place-based community wellbeing by looking at the presence or absence of particular facilities, barriers to accessing services, and neighbourhood or community problems. Indigenous Australians in remote areas were less likely to report the presence of a number of facilities and more likely to report barriers to accessing government services. However, there were no consistent differences in the reporting of neighbourhood and community problems—some types of problems had a higher incidence in non-remote areas (e.g. theft and dangerous or noisy driving), whilst other problems were higher in remote areas (alcohol, illegal drugs and violence). Indices of these variables were also found to be associated with individual emotional wellbeing, providing prima facie evidence of the link between community and individual measures.     

Three Management Challenges for Protection of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage in a Tasmanian Multiple-use Conservation Area

Protected areas that are created to safeguard environmental values such as Indigenous culturescapes may in fact significantly fail in this task. This study concerns such an instance in far north-west Tasmania, where the government adopted a multiple-use resource conservation-development management model for the Arthur–Pieman Conservation Area (APCA). The model offers protection of cultural heritage values whilst permitting numerous community recreational and commercial uses. One particular objective is to protect ‘an extraordinary richness of Aboriginal cultural heritage’ in one of Earth's great archaeological regions (DPIWE, Arthur–Pieman Conservation Area Management Plan, 2002, p. iii). Yet under the auspices of multiple use, Aborigine and others report unremitting damage and loss of ancestral values. To examine how this is so in an actively managed protected area, perceptions of 16 environmental professionals and local residents engaged in APCA planning and management are used to identify three major challenges for appropriate custodianship of the Aboriginal cultural landscape: Aboriginal–Eurocentric conflicts; limited community governance capacities; and deficient regulatory provisions. It is concluded that APCA multiple-use management of heritage conservation is ineffectual and that an alternative governance model is required urgently. The management challenges examined here offer insights for problematic Indigenous cultural heritage conservation in other jurisdictions of Australia and elsewhere.     

Social preferences regarding the delivery of ecosystem services in a semiarid Mediterranean region

The valuation of ecosystem services has primarily been conducted within the context of the economic value of these services to society. Ecosystem services research has since advanced to identify conflicts of interest between different sectors of society while prioritizing conservation actions. This approach can be important in semiarid ecosystems, where biodiversity conservation can be hindered by a lack of community awareness. In the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula, conservation is perceived by society as a barrier to the economic development provided by agricultural or tourism activities. We use the contingent valuation method to identify community perception and economic values of different ecosystem services provided by semiarid ecosystems in the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. This method identifies the perceptions of individuals benefiting from ecosystem services and examines their willingness to pay for the maintaining of these ecosystem services. Results showed that most respondents recognized the importance of services to human well-being and were willing to conserve these services. Preferences for maintaining water and air quality showed that respondents understood the relationship between the conservation of ecosystem services and local well-being. However, responses varied greatly across categories of beneficiaries; this finding highlights a potential conflict of interest that should be considered in any decision-making processes.     

Globalisation and Border Dynamics: impacts on the urban development of Darwin,Australia

National boundaries and border cities have been transformed globally. This is partly due to neoliberal globalisation, the continuous formation of a ‘borderless world’ and partly to the global ‘war on terror’. Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory (NT), is on the northern coast of Australia, bordering its overseas Asian neighbours. Far away from the main Australian population centres in the south, the city grows slowly, relying mainly on Australian government investments, infrastructure, and the incorporation of defence programs in the north. The rise of Asia, as well as Australia's increasing economic reliance on Asia, has created new opportunities for Darwin's growth. The development of Asian economies has resulted in growing global investment in resource extraction in NT. Asia, though, has been seen as a key threat in the modern history of Australia. This national sensitivity is underpinned by the global ‘war on terror’ in which Australia is deeply involved. Australia has tight border control regimes and a growing military presence on the northern border area. This paper examines how these co-existing but contradictory dynamics have reshaped the urban development of Darwin City. The consequential social and spatial patterns are identified and discussed.     

Modelling collective Yawuru values along the foreshore of Roebuck Bay,Western Australia using fuzzy logic

The cadastral model has played a key role in Indigenous dispossession in settler states. Yet, the recognition of Indigenous land rights, which has increased globally since the 1960s, frequently requires Indigenous communities to directly engage with this spatial model. In Australia, native title claimants must use entity-based models of space to delineate their traditional territories during the claim process. They must also engage with planning and development documents which use the cadastral model of space to assert and defend their rights following native title recognition. This is often problematic as Indigenous spatial ontologies emphasise complexity and continuity which is inimical to the ‘crisp’ representations of cadastral space.This study explores the potential of a fuzzy index modelling approach to represent cultural values using a case study from Broome, Western Australia. Sketch mapping, fuzzy index modelling and combinatory techniques were used to produce a model of several cultural values held by the Yawuru community for the in-town foreshore of Roebuck Bay. This model was overlaid on local planning documents to provide the Yawuru community with strategic intelligence for post native title governance. The experience of co-producing this model suggests that such techniques may assist Indigenous communities to engage with settler structures. This implies that policies which fail to extend analytical capacity to interested native title groups as part of programmes of spatial enablement continue to perpetuate historical processes of colonial domination.     

IN THE WAY OF DEVELOPMENT: INDIGENOUS LAND‐RIGHTS ISSUES IN MALAYSIA*

The Malaysian government regards the country's indigenous peoples as “backward” and in need of “modernization.” It aims to assimilate them into the so‐called mainstream society and to incorporate their lands and resources into national and global markets. These policy objectives leave little scope for indigenous groups to pursue their own life projects. Indigenous communities want to share in the benefits of economic development, but they are not prepared to give up their lands, cultures, and identities to obtain them. They have attempted to ward off the negative consequences of development projects by forming advocacy nongovernmental organizations, engaging in various forms of resistance, and seeking redress of their grievances in the courts. Most of all, they want recognition of their rights to land and place. The efficacy of their agency is severely hampered by a battery of repressive laws and by their own political weakness.     

Contesting the Future of Cape York Peninsula

Entrenched contests about the future of Cape York Peninsula's lands, waters and people have for long received national prominence. In the federal arena, this has climaxed with the campaign to overturn the State's declarations on wild rivers. Initially pursued as a means of influencing decisions on the determination of the government in a finely balanced federal parliament, it has been retained as an early test of the survivability of the minority Labor government. The peninsula's prominence is founded on its iconic conservation status and the continuity of Aboriginal occupance of their country, reinforced by the formidable capabilities of Indigenous and conservationist leaders. Contests are characterised by their complexity, durability and intractability. Contests are bedevilled by shifting alliances and schisms within Indigenous and conservationist constituencies. Increasingly potent is the schism between modernist/reformist/regionalist visions of Indigenous futures, forcefully presented by Noel Pearson against more traditionalist/localist visions held by many community leaderships. Other participants, notably conservationists, State politicians and bureaucracies have needed to align their policies around these contested visions. Over the last two decades, policies of State Labor governments have maintained some continuity, being pro-active on conservation goals, selectively supportive of Aboriginal advancement, necessarily passive in the determination of land claims, reactive in the resolution of land tenures and property rights, and inconsistent and ineffectual in conflict resolution and in providing leadership in shaping sustainable, multifunctional futures, attuned to the peninsula's unique challenges and potentials.     

Tourism as a local development strategy in South Africa

The promotion of tourism has been identified as a key strategy that can lead to economic upliftment, community development and poverty relief in the developing world. In the last few years, tourism has also emerged as a significant development option in post–apartheid South Africa. In the context of some current debates on tourism in poor countries, the paper examines how economic, social and environmental resources are being utilized to promote tourism as a local economic development strategy in South Africa, and more specifically it focuses on current local government endeavours in this regard and two communities that have suffered the loss of their economic resource base. Tourism–based development initiatives, one in KwaZulu–Natal and one in the Western Cape, are evaluated in the context of generating economic growth, alleviating poverty and addressing the apartheid legacy of discrimination and inequality. The significance of the dynamics of development processes involved in these initiatives has much wider relevance for local economic development, both within South Africa and elsewhere.     

‘Committing to Place’ at the Local Scale: the potential of youth education programs for promoting community participation in regional natural resource management

Emerging approaches to environmental governance require a greater level of community participation than did previous approaches in which these responsibilities largely rested with government agencies. There is consequently a need for increased engagement with NRM among a broad community sector. This paper examines initiatives by two prominent government agencies, the Murray–Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) and the National Museum of Australia (NMA), to engage school children from regional communities using education programs that focus on place and environmental health. We focus on the MDBC's International Riverhealth Conference held in Mildura in 2003 and the associated Murray–Darling Basin TalkBack Classroom sponsored by the NMA and the Parliamentary Education Office (PEO). We explore how key themes of local scale, place-based identities, youth voice and critical engagement are developed in these programs and consider how they relate to the environmental agency of children. We then reflect on the potential for the kinds of environmental agency promoted through these programs to help build the capacity of local communities to progress larger goals of environmental restoration and sustainability in the Murray–Darling Basin. The evaluation research reported here forms part of the Committing to Place research project, an Australian Research Council Linkage grant involving the University of Tasmania, the National Museum of Australia and the Murray–Darling Basin Commission.     

Net Horizontal Payments for Ecosystem Services: An Application in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region of China

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are one kind of important tool for environmental protection, and have been widely studied by international scholars and conservationists. Based various definitions of PES from recent articles, we have outlined four principles for PES: parity, measurability, additionality and conditionality, and then have used these principles to develop a formula to calculate a standard for PES. Finding a way to use PES to achieve a win-win relationship between economic growth and environmental protection in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region (BTHR) is a key task for Chinese government. Synergetic development of BTHR has become a national strategy, like The Belt and Road Initiative. This article employed the formula we developed to calculate the net horizontal PES amounts that each provincial government within BTHR should pay. Our findings show that Beijing should have paid 10.44×10⁹ Yuan (0.4% of Beijing’s GRP) and Tianjin 16.56×10⁹ Yuan (0.93% of Tianjin’s GRP) to Hebei in 2016.     

Identifying and Preventing Biopiracy in Australia: patent landscapes and legal geographies for plants with Indigenous Australian uses

There are legal and moral imperatives to protect biological resources and the ‘traditional knowledge’ associated with them. These imperatives derive from complex legal geographies: international law (such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol), State and federal laws, Indigenous customary law, codes of ethics and research protocols. This paper reports on a ‘patent landscape’ analysis of patents that refer to Australian plant species for which there is Indigenous Australian knowledge. We have identified several patents of potential new biopiracy concern. The paper highlights the way in which actors can gain private property monopolies over biological resources and associated traditional knowledge, even though there are overlapping sovereign rights and Indigenous rights claims. Regulatory gaps need to be closed nationally to fully govern the diverse human–plant bio-geographies in Australia. Further, Indigenous laws and governance have largely been ignored by these actors. We suggest that the introduction of ‘disclosure of origin’ requirements in patent applications, sui generis Indigenous knowledge protections, the development of biocultural protocols, and a more nationally consistent system for ‘access and benefit-sharing’ are required to ensure more ‘fair and equitable’ use of plants and Indigenous knowledge in/from Australia, and to ensure the recognition of Indigenous rights to knowledge.     

Resilience and justice: planning for New York City

New York City has developed recent policy initiatives under the rubric of resilience. I consider the implications of extending the concept of resilience beyond the physical environment, analyze the effect of planning for adaptation rather than prevention, and finally examine the positive role played by community groups organized for environmental justice in responding to resiliency planning. My argument is that use of the term resilience tends to obscure distributional impacts and, even under a progressive mayor, supports neoliberal policy initiatives.     

Functional Zoning Mode and Management Measures of Qianjiangyuan National Park based on Ecological Sensitivity Evaluation

Functional zoning is an important guarantee for regulating the land use intensity of national parks and maintaining the integrity and stability of natural ecosystem. In this paper, we tease out of the functional zoning models and methods based on the empirical analysis of the world national parks, and then take the Qianjiangyuan National Park (QNP) as an example, study the functional zoning method based on ecological sensitivity. Results show that, the goal of national park construction in the world is changing from enhancing national cohesion to displaying the national image, from the pure natural protection and recreation use to protection of the comprehensive function of natural ecosystem integrity protection, recreation, environmental education, etc. The establishment of QNP is to protect the natural ecosystem of sub-tropical lowland broad-leaved evergreen forest, also to meet the community development and recreational consume of large population in Eastern China. So this paper establishes an evaluation index system based on ecological sensitivity, combining ecosystem services, potential habitats of important species, and development opportunities. Based on the analysis result, the functional zoning of QNP can be divided into strict protection area, ecological conservation area, traditional using area and recreational area. In this way, it can make the functional partition reflect system controls thought in area difference and space layout, and take the corresponding management measures in different functional areas, to promote the sustainable evolution of the natural ecological system in national park.     

国家公园公益化管理国外相关研究及启示

国家公园通过公益化管理体现其公益性。相关主体行为是相应管理的主要对象,以使之产生正外部性,减少或消除其负外部性。国外国家公园已有100多年的公益化管理实践,产生了大量研究。论文分析、归纳国外学者在相关方面所关注的主要内容,并系统梳理针对这些内容的研究,总结出其对国内国家公园公益化管理中应对现实问题、达成“理顺权属关系、扩大社会参与、实现公益服务、保障社区利益”等目标的启示：非国有土地管理合约化、管理权限系统化、保护责任制度化、社会募捐常态化、生态保护科学化;以及通过构建渠道、科学组织实现公众参与保护及管理;以体现公益、优化体验、环境教育为目标提供游憩服务;以正外部性最大、负外部性最小为原则对企业及访客进行管理;以激励相融、利益保障为原则实现社区共管共享等。     

Managing migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion: Regulation,extra‐legal relation and extortion

One major aim of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) integration programme, supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is to foster regional ‘community’ for sharing resources, people and financial flows. This ‘community’ is the target of both economic growth and poverty reduction. The emphasis on ‘community’ in the ADB's mushrooming quantity of documents raises important questions about what kinds of people are included, in what roles and with what kinds of support and protection. This paper explores these questions in relation to the political economy of regulating ethnic migrants from Myanmar working in Thailand. This paper argues that extra‐legal relations between migrants and state/para‐state agents constitute a crucial part of regulation. In transferring the regulation of migration to the national scale, the ADB inadvertently reinforces national differences between Thais and cross‐border people. Additionally, the complicated and fluctuating implementation of national regulations in both countries leaves migrants subject to violence and extortion from state and quasi‐state agents in Thailand. This paper shows that the dynamics of global capitalism require ‘deportable labour’ supplied by ethnic migrants who are included in the GMS community as the most invisible, vulnerable and exploited members.     

分权化对旅游地空间不均衡发展的影响

分权化制度框架下的旅游政策、公共设施建设、旅游投资等发展要素的差异是旅游地空间不均衡发展的根本原因。本文对相关文献进行了系统分析,界定了中国旅游分权化的利益主体,探讨了旅游利益主体组成的旅游地权力网络的分权形式、不同旅游分权利益主体在旅游发展中的角色与功能,提出了不同层面的不均衡表现及未来应关注问题。结果表明,中国分权化框架下的财税制度、利益分割引起不同旅游发展主体间的利益冲突,利益权力网络的空间不对称导致旅游产业结构、旅游土地利用、公共基础设施与旅游服务设施和社区空间发展不均衡。未来研究应以各级政府、投资商和社区居民三方利益的均衡与权力重组为出发点,从区域旅游组织分权、社区参与制度保障及其技术支持、产业空间再结构化、乡村旅游发展的政治角色4个方面展开,以实现旅游地的可持续发展。     

浅议CE法在我国盐湖生态系统服务价值评估中的适宜性

随着西部大开发战略的实施,盐湖资源的开发利用程度越来越高,为我国西部经济的快速发展做出了很大的贡献。由于人们对盐湖生态价值缺乏认识,盐湖资源开发过程中存在先开发后治理的趋向,使盐湖生态系统服务功能逐步下降,严重阻碍了盐湖资源的可持续开发利用。盐湖生态系统服务价值评估对其资源的合理开发利用、环境保护及实现可持续利用等方面有着重要的意义。系统回顾各类生态系统服务价值评估方法,结合盐湖生态系统服务的特点,对比分析其适用性及优缺点。结果表明,采用CE法对盐湖生态系统服务价值进行评估具有很大的优势,能较好且全面地体现其生态系统服务价值,对盐湖资源的保护及可持续利用具有重要的意义。     

How Collaborative Approaches to Environmental Problem Solving View Indigenous Peoples: A Systematic Review

Collaborative approaches to environmental problem solving are becoming commonplace around the world. These processes often occur in the traditional territories of Indigenous peoples. Hence, how Indigenous peoples are viewed in the collaboration literature is important because of the distinctive position they hold in many societies. In this article we conducted a systematic review of the collaboration literature that focused on environmental concerns and referred to Indigenous peoples. The goals were to identify how Indigenous peoples are discussed in this literature, and to reveal the assumptions that are made about the roles and views of Indigenous peoples and nations. The Indigenous governance literature was used to highlight the contrasting perspectives of Indigenous peoples. The systematic review revealed discordant assumptions about the roles of Indigenous peoples between these two bodies of literature. Implications for the theory and practice collaborative environmental problem solving are identified.