The conventions of agri-environmental practice in New Zealand: farmers, retail driven audit schemes and a new spirit of farming

Audit schemes dictating the parameters of environmentally and socially acceptable management practice have emerged as a pervasive feature of global agri-food production. While the impacts of such schemes on the global movement of food and fibre and the evolving terrains of power in agri-food relations are well documented, the associated reconstruction of farming identities in the localities where audits are implemented has received less attention. The emerging responses to audit schemes in the New Zealand kiwifruit and dairy sectors are key examples of the contentious nature through which auditing is incorporated within farming practice. Analysis of these responses reveals the potential for audits to alter the spirit of farming in New Zealand, initiating new conventions of interaction between producers and industries. Within a convention theory framework, the incorporation of auditing within standard management practice involves a negotiated process in which the farmers employ strategic justifications of their capability (and value) relative to the quality designations established by the audit. Rather than evaluate the relative merits of a farm, its product and its owner through the craft and skill of the independent land manager, successful farming is increasingly associated with the individual’s ability to conform to an audit’s structures. The global trend toward audit schemes suggests that similar challenges to the spirit of farming may be replicated in other contexts.     

Restructuring on a vertiginous plateau: The evolutionary trajectories of British Columbia’s forest industries 1980–2010

The volatility of British Columbia’s (BC’s) forest industries over the last three decades has not only reflected the immediate impacts of demand fluctuations arising from the broader vicissitudes of capitalist economies but the evolutionary implications of industrial and resource dynamics. The 1980s recession in particular marked a turning point in the evolutionary trajectory of BC’s forest industries, associated with global paradigmatic changes driven by flexibility imperatives, the maturation of the forestry resource cycle to the plateau or fall-down stage, and conflicts caused by environmental, social and trade protectionist opposition to vested industry interests. This paper focuses on the broad contours of the restructuring of BC’s forest industries since 1980. Conceptually, the paper elaborates a resource industry life-cycle model (RILCM) that integrates industry and resource cycle dynamics and the implications of economic crisis. Empirically, the analysis uses longitudinal output and employment data, summaries of the policy re-regulation of the BC forest economy since 1980, and comparative static plant-level data, 1980–2008. The analysis reveals the 1980s recession as a turning point in the transformation of BC’s forest industries, characterized by high levels of volatility and long-term decline in the main commodities. Industrial restructuring has also witnessed a fragmentation of production, the emergence of small firm dominated value-added activities, and broad changes to the coreperiphery structure of the forest industries within BC. It is argued that evolutionary approaches to economic geography need to incorporate resource peripheries and crisis and acknowledge the role of crisis and non-economic factors in shaping regional transformation.     

Private agri-food governance and greenhouse gas abatement: Constructing a corporate carbon economy

Private sector actors are playing an increasingly significant role in the definition and governance of ‘sustainable’ agri-food practices. Yet, to date little attention has been paid by social scientists to how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are addressed as part of private agri-food governance arrangements. This paper examines how private actors within agri-food supply chains respond to emerging pressure for measures to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. Drawing upon the Anglo-Foucauldian governmentality literature, we introduce the notion of the corporate carbon economy to conceptualise the practical techniques that enable private agri-food actors to make GHG emissions thinkable and governable in the context of existing market, regulatory, and supply chain pressures. Using a case study of the Australian dairy industry, we argue that private agri-food actors utilise a range of techniques that enable them to respond to existing government environmental regulations, balance current market pressures with future supply chain requirements, and demonstrate improved eco-efficiency along food supply chains. These techniques – which include environmental self-assessment instruments, tools for measuring GHG emissions, and sustainability reporting – have little direct relevance to the ‘international climate regime’ of carbon trading, and carbon markets more broadly, yet individually and in combination they are crucial in enacting an alternative regime of GHG governance. In concluding, we contend that the growing use of sustainability metrics by international food companies is likely to have the most powerful implications for GHG governance in the agri-food sector, with potentially far-reaching consequences for how future action on climate change is rendered thinkable and practicable.     

Global production networks in the passenger aviation industry

Although the number of directions which geographical research on transport is taking has recently increased, the extent to which transport geography capitalises on theoretical advancements made in other sub-disciplines of human geography is still fairly limited. This especially pertains to economic geography which, in contrast to the predominantly positivist and quantitative transport geography, has developed over the last few decades a more post-positivist and qualitative profile. By means of focusing on passenger air transport – one of the most neglected industries in economic geography – this paper aims to help bridge this gap. Three under-researched aspects of air transport are identified and a combination of two economic-geographical approaches – global production networks (GPN) and evolutionary economic geography (EEG) – is advocated as a useful conceptual basis for further, more qualitative and more critical research on this dynamic sector. The paper argues that GPN and EEG would help research on air transport to: (1) employ network thinking beyond the infrastructural understanding of networks of air connections and thus better explain the multi-actor nature of the aviation sector, (2) complement the research on supra-national and national regulatory frameworks with more attention to the array of sub-national environments that shape the aviation industry ‘from below’, and (3) explore how the relations between aviation and economic development are moulded by different place-specific institutional factors. To lay foundations under further research the paper conceptualises the aviation industry as a global production network and uses the example of Polish passenger air transport to highlight the paper’s key empirical implications.     

The evolution of the electronics industry in Johor (Malaysia): Strategic coupling,adaptiveness, adaptation,and the role of agency

Bringing together concepts from the global production networks and evolutionary economic geography literature, this article empirically examines the trajectory of the electrical and electronics industry in Johor (Malaysia). Based on trends in firm entries and exit as well as interviews with companies, we find limited robustness in the industry’s trajectory. While there is evidence of the role of ‘structure’ in this outcome, we argue that human agency – particularly the actions of subnational policy-makers – is key. This is manifest in a preference for fostering regional ‘adaptiveness’ through the often uncritical promotion of a diversity of economic sectors. This compromises the meaningful pursuit of regional ‘adaptation’ in the form of new and more complex branches emerging from existing industries. This arrested development, in turn, hinders an effective strategic coupling between the regional economy and multinational corporations, thus undermining regional resilience.     

Strategies for addressing climate change on the industrial level: affecting factors to CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> emissions of energy-intensive industries in China

This paper explores China’s strategies for addressing climate change on the industrial level. Focusing on six energy-intensive industries, this paper applies gray relational analysis theory to the affecting factors to CO₂ emissions of each industry after calculating each industry’s CO₂ emissions during 2001–2010. Further research based on GM(1, 1) model is conducted to forecast the trend of the factors, the energy consumption and each industry’s CO₂ emissions during the 12th Five-Year Plan period. As a breakthrough in previous conclusions, energy consumption structure was divided into the respective proportion of coal, oil, natural gas and electricity in the primary energy consumption, with which industrial output and energy intensity are combined to analyze each of their impacts on the energy-intensive industries. It turns out that all the factors’ impacts on emissions of the six major energy-intensive industries are significant, despite their differentiated extents. It is worth noting that, contrary to previous findings, industrial output is not the leading affecting factor to CO₂ emissions of the energy-intensive industries compared with the proportion of coal and electricity in the primary energy consumption. The GM(1, 1) forecast results of energy consumption and CO₂ emissions by the end of 2015 show that coal and electricity will remain a large proportion in primary energy consumption. This research may shed some light on China’s adjustment of energy structure under the pressure of addressing climate change and hence provide decision support for the acceleration of renewable energy utilization in the industrial departments.     

Framing industrialization of the offshore wind value chain – A discourse approach to an event

The paper explores value chain governance through a discourse approach to an event which included an exhibition and a conference. This approach appears promising for investigating industries in their formative phase and is particularly relevant for new renewable energy sectors. By studying the European offshore wind value chain, the paper investigates the coupling between wind industries and offshore industries as an encounter of various conventions. The key speakers at the conference, particularly those from the utility companies, introduced new principles for organizing the value chains they are leading, in order to reduce costs, and turn the immature sector into a mature one. Their storyline of industrialization by standardization breaks, however, with the storyline demonstrated by the firms in offshore oil and gas, and maritime industries at the exhibition. The latter offshore suppliers find evidence of quality in their business history and their trust-based relations to their clients. Theoretically the paper contributes to the global value chain governance debate by offering another perspective on power. The discourse approach helps us explain how influential actors could enforce one convention over another. The paper contributes methodically by suggesting a discourse approach to events. Events appear as a significant arena for negotiating industry formation and convenient for researcher’s data gathering for text analysis.     

Groundwater of Egypt: “an environmental overview”

Although Egypt has the great Nile River, which is the main supply of water, Egypt’s water is limited to 55.5 billion m³ per annum. Owing to the rapid growth of the population and the increasing consumption of water in agriculture, industry, domestic use, etc., it is expected that Egypt will rely to some extent on groundwater to develop the new projects such as Tushka in Upper Egypt and East Oweinat. Issues related to groundwater in Egypt are identified with the common geological features associated with formation of the aquifers and demonstrating the location of the main resources of groundwater, followed by the main objective of this paper, which is addressing the environmental issues related to groundwater in Egypt. Several studies have been reviewed and personal communication made with the authorities to introduce this work and provide an overview of the groundwater quality problems in Egypt with examples from different parts of the country.     

Agri-food contestations in rural space: GM in its regulatory context

Why are genetic technologies necessary in the agri-food sector and why have they created such opposition in the rural domain? The paper attempts to place GM in its contested regulatory context, situated as part of three different and competing paradigms of agri-food and rural development: the agri-industrial, post-productivist and rural development models. Conceptually, it is argued that GM is currently positioned as a relatively new variant and component of the mutating and dominant agri-industrial paradigm. This sets the context and development of GM at a global level. The paper explores in its first part how the spread of GM relates to the maintenance of the unsustainable. Whilst this remains a driving force we see, in the second part, with reference to the unfolding nature of European regulation since 2000, the ways in which this agri-industrial imperative is shaped by particular State actions which blend this agri-industrial model with a wider set of consumer, private sector and environmental concerns. Overall, the EU has managed to translate a global agri-industrial imperative, despite significant external pressure, into a highly regulated ‘post-productionist’ framework in which both private and public interests are given responsibility for delivering consumer rights. This may, or may not allow room for rural sustainable development alternatives to take hold. At least it provides something of an opportunity.     

Learning from the history of disaster vulnerability and resilience research and practice for climate change

This paper calculated the embodied carbon in China export and its distribution in each industrial sector. The calculation results showed the total carbon emission of export experienced an increase before 2007 and then a decrease till 2010. The ratio of export embodied carbon accounting for the total carbon emission in China also increased from 31 % in 2002 to 52 % in 2007 and then declined to 40 % in 2010. As for distribution, the export embodied carbon emission of the following industries such as machinery and equipment manufacturing, metal products manufacturing industry, chemical industry, textile, clothing and leather products manufacturing industry ranked the highest. According to the calculation and analysis of the main driving factors of embodied carbon growth, we analyzed the structure effect, scale effect and technological effect’s influence on embodied carbon growth, respectively. We also calculated the trade competitiveness index of 17 export industries. Through research, we found that the products with strong international competitiveness belong to high-carbon-emission categories, which was the main reason of high carbon emission in China export. Finally, we proposed related policy suggestions to promote China’s export trade structural readjustment and optimization and China’s low carbon development in export.     

Keeping the high-tech region open and dynamic: the organizational networks of Taiwan's integrated circuit industry

This paper aims to bridge the literatures of industrial districts and organizational networks by studying the development of organizational relationships in Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) industry. Firms of the IC industry in Taiwan are highly concentrated in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (HSIP). They not only have contributed the most to the combined sales for the HSIP compared to other industries for half a decade, but also have made Taiwan the country with the fourth-largest IC industry in the world today. Along with the creation and maintenance of global competitiveness in this industry, the means of developing organizational relationships and geographical linkages are examined in this paper. The empirical findings are based on analysis of data regarding the organizational connections for Taiwan's IC industry during 1976 to 1996, collected at the individual firm level. It is found that a concurrent process of intensifying the internal as well as external linkages has occurred in the HSIP, a young high-tech region. It indicates that not only is the ``regional advantage' sufficiently sustained, but also the global industrial networks are continuously expanded to maintain the openness and dynamics of the region.     

甘肃黄河谷地城市与城郊生态功能区产业发展模式研究

国家层面对甘肃发展的总体定位是我国重要的生态屏障、经济走廊、战略通道、能源基地和文化源区,因此,甘肃黄河谷地城市与城郊生态功能区的发展对于我国西部地区乃至全国的经济社会发展具有举足轻重的作用.从分析目前甘肃黄河谷地城市与城郊生态功能区的发展现状入手,针对甘肃黄河谷地城市与城郊生态功能区主导产业不明确的问题,提出了政府对于生态功能区的优惠政策应由向区域倾斜转变为向产业倾斜,并在此基础上积极培育和发展重点产业,通过提高环境标准、推进生态农业重建工程、促进现代物流业发展、加快产业优化、构筑立体旅游产业体系和发展新兴能源产业等措施构建全新的产业发展模式,重塑我国西部重要的现代工业基地,实现生态功能区的健康与和谐发展.     

Mining and extractive urbanism: Postdevelopment in a Mozambican boomtown

Mozambique has attracted international attention in recent years following the discovery of huge reserves of coal and gas deposits. A major focus of Mozambique’s extractives boom is the province of Tete, once a remote outpost but now a hub of power generation for the southern African region and an emerging centre of global investment in coal extraction. Some of the world’s largest mining firms from both established and emerging economies have descended on Tete, investing billions of dollars in developing concessions to extract some of the world’s largest untapped coal reserves with wide-ranging implications for the region’s political economy and effecting significant shifts in relations between state, capital and territorial control. At the urban scale, Tete city and its expanding periphery are increasingly characterised by enclaves and spaces of enclosure, as some groups benefit from and are integrated into global circuits of production whilst others suffer displacement and dispossession. In seeking to trace the emergence of Tete’s resource economy, the paper contends that three distinctive spatialities have resulted from these developments, including the infrastructure networks being constructed around the extractive industries, the enclave spaces arising from the coal boom (and the particular labour geographies that shape them) and the new and distinctive urban geographies that are the product of Tete’s rapid urbanisation. The paper seeks to assess the impacts, stakes and challenges linked to investments in extractive activities and looks at how the costs and risks are being differentially distributed within and between the affected communities.     

Study on the CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> emissions embodied in the trade of China’s steel industry: based on the input–output model

The impact of trade on the environment and the climate has become a focus of attention. Tending to develop industries with higher added values, developed countries rely on importing high energy consumption goods from developing countries, and however, some CO₂ emissions are embodied in the process of import. Currently, the accounting method of the territorial responsibility used to get the international data of greenhouse gas inventories ignores the difference between domestic consumption and export demands. Thus, developing countries bear the responsibility of pollution emissions from the export. The steel industry is an important basic industry of China’s national economy as well as a vital part in the industrial system. With the expansion of trade scale, the impact of the export and import of China’s steel on CO₂ emissions is growing. This paper studied the embodied CO₂ emissions in the trade of China’s steel from 2005 to 2014, using the input–output model and the trade data of the China’s steel imports and exports. The results indicate that (1) the complete CO₂ emissions of China’s steel industry are high. (2) The increase in the export scale makes the embodied CO₂ emissions in the trade of China’s steel export increase, and (3) China is a net exporter of CO₂ emissions in the steel trade. Especially after 2007, the value of China’s steel exports has been larger than that of China’s steel imports, so China had borne much CO₂ emissions responsibility in the trade of China’s steel. Therefore, this paper puts forward that, in the future, the export structure of goods should be optimized into the high-tech products with the high added value, low energy consumption and low carbon emissions, and meanwhile, service industry is promoted to improve technical support to reduce CO₂ emissions in the steel industry.     

Using LMDI method to analyze the influencing factors of carbon emissions in China’s petrochemical industries

China’s petrochemical industries are playing an important role in China’s economic development. However, the industries consume large amounts of energy and have become primary sources of carbon emission. In this paper, the change in carbon emissions from China’s petrochemical industries between 2000 and 2010 was quantitatively analyzed with the Log-Mean Divisia Index method, which was decomposed into economic output effect, industrial structural effect and technical effect. The results show that economic output effect is the most important factor driving carbon emission growth in China’s petrochemical industries; industrial structural effect has certain decrement effect on carbon emissions; adjustment of industrial structure by developing low-carbon emission industrial sectors may be a better choice for reducing carbon emissions; and the impact of technical effect varies considerably without showing any clear decrement effect trend over the period of year 2000–2010. The biggest challenge is how to make use of these factors to balance the relationship between economic development and carbon emissions. This study will promote a more comprehensive understanding of the inter-relationships of economic development, industrial structural shift, technical effect and carbon emissions in China’s petrochemical industries and is helpful for exploration of relevant strategies to reduce carbon emissions.     

Geographies of folded life: How immunity reframes biosecurity

Biosecurity, in broad terms, aims to reduce the impact and incidence of threats to life through regulatory means. For reasons we raise in this paper, such regulation can often lead to the specification of disease free processes within the food and farming industry, with biosecurity success measured in terms of the degree of compliance with and allegiance to modern farming practice. We counter this progressive narrative in three ways. First we draw on UK-based qualitative fieldwork with vets, farmers and pigs to demonstrate how biosecure farming and disease freedom are translated and qualified, in practice, to pathogen free, pathogen management and ultimately to configuring health through immunity management. Second, these translations demonstrate how building health is dependent on spatial and microbiological diversity rather than uniformity. Crucially, health involves patch-work and situated knowledge practices that are under threat within an industry increasingly marked by control and homogeneity. Third, in conceptual terms, we argue that while pig farming is organised through both biosecurity and a biopolitical regulation of life, immunity opens up political space for exploring an alternative politics of life, one where farmers and others are not so much made responsible for disease prevention, but make valued contributions to understandings of animal health and food security.     

Using LMDI method to analyze the influencing factors of carbon emissions in China’s petrochemical industries

China’s petrochemical industries are playing an important role in China’s economic development. However, the industries consume large amounts of energy and have become primary sources of carbon emission. In this paper, the change in carbon emissions from China’s petrochemical industries between 2000 and 2010 was quantitatively analyzed with the Log-Mean Divisia Index method, which was decomposed into economic output effect, industrial structural effect and technical effect. The results show that economic output effect is the most important factor driving carbon emission growth in China’s petrochemical industries; industrial structural effect has certain decrement effect on carbon emissions; adjustment of industrial structure by developing low-carbon emission industrial sectors may be a better choice for reducing carbon emissions; and the impact of technical effect varies considerably without showing any clear decrement effect trend over the period of year 2000–2010. The biggest challenge is how to make use of these factors to balance the relationship between economic development and carbon emissions. This study will promote a more comprehensive understanding of the inter-relationships of economic development, industrial structural shift, technical effect and carbon emissions in China’s petrochemical industries and is helpful for exploration of relevant strategies to reduce carbon emissions.

     

Re-mapping regulatory space: The new governance of Australian dairying

Despite questions currently raised about the future of neoliberalism, it remains embedded within Australian agricultural policy and practice. This paper explores the strengths and limitations of mechanisms contributing to neoliberalism’s survival through a close examination of the restructuring of Australian agricultural production and governance processes under the influence of both globalising impulses and adherence to neoliberal strategies. We trace the changes in governance flowing from the dismantling of regulatory structures in the Australian dairy industry, and the creation of new forms of governance that have both facilitated this transition and dealt with its adverse, often unintended, consequences. The changing governance of Australian dairying is analysed through the lens of three arenas of governance: state, industry and place. Drought has played an important part in re-spacialising dairying and re-shaping the balance between farmers and industry, demonstrating the contingency at play in emerging governance structures. This study of processes of change within the highly export-oriented dairy sector of Australia focuses attention on resistance and on some of the messy actualities of the interplay between state, place and industry - and nature - in neoliberal agri-food governance.     

Research on China export structure adjustment: an embodied carbon perspective

This paper calculated the embodied carbon in China export and its distribution in each industrial sector. The calculation results showed the total carbon emission of export experienced an increase before 2007 and then a decrease till 2010. The ratio of export embodied carbon accounting for the total carbon emission in China also increased from 31 % in 2002 to 52 % in 2007 and then declined to 40 % in 2010. As for distribution, the export embodied carbon emission of the following industries such as machinery and equipment manufacturing, metal products manufacturing industry, chemical industry, textile, clothing and leather products manufacturing industry ranked the highest. According to the calculation and analysis of the main driving factors of embodied carbon growth, we analyzed the structure effect, scale effect and technological effect’s influence on embodied carbon growth, respectively. We also calculated the trade competitiveness index of 17 export industries. Through research, we found that the products with strong international competitiveness belong to high-carbon-emission categories, which was the main reason of high carbon emission in China export. Finally, we proposed related policy suggestions to promote China’s export trade structural readjustment and optimization and China’s low carbon development in export.

     

Strategic globalizing centers and sub-network geometries: A social network analysis of multi-scalar energy networks

Over the past three decades, a multitude of studies have examined the relational properties of corporate networks as a proxy for analyzing interurban hierarchies and structures. While this has been important in illuminating the nature of global connectivity, a significant conceptual lacuna exists in understanding how a multi-scalar analysis of interurban networks informs a more complete understanding of the geographies of globalization, and how cities within these networks act as regional globalizing centers. Building upon the theoretical and methodological foundations of ‘world city network’ (WCN) research, this paper investigates the corporate networks of the energy industry as a historic driver of globalization using social network analysis from an Australia geographical perspective. Globally and nationally scaled energy networks derived from the Platts and Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) corporate lists are used to explore the convergence of nationally and globally articulated networks, and identify cities instrumental in the globalization of the national industry sub-networks. These are strategic ‘globalizing centers’ which, in contradistinction to ‘global cities’ or ‘world cities’ as broad classifications, play nuanced roles in anointing industry-specific circuits of capital and information. The analysis of two complementary yet distinct networks provides theoretical insight into how scale plays an integral role in defining/articulating interurban relations.