State power and environmental initiatives in China: Analyzing China’s green building program through an ecological modernization perspective

This paper applies the ecological modernization (EM) framework to analyze China’s green building program. EM focuses on the effective institutionalization of environmental objectives into respective political and economic systems, and thus provides valuable insights into the roles of the state and other stake holders in environmental regulation. Since the mid-2000s, the Chinese government has advanced an aggressive green building campaign, which is distinguished by its speed, scale, and evolution from one of voluntary participation to a top-down implementation through administrative hierarchies. While this has resulted in a remarkable growth of green building projects, questions remain about the effectiveness and sustainability of such a state-centered approach. Though interviews with officials, planners, architects, real estate developers, and property managers in several Chinese cities, data analysis of the green building stock, and surveys of architects, this paper analyzes Chinese green building patterns and situates such patterns among the contradictory motivations of different levels of government and their relationships to different stake holders. This research finds that the top-down state apparatus is not sufficient to overcome these contradictions and the profit motives of the property developers. However, many under-developed opportunities exist to leverage property developers, building professionals, and the public to engage in green building practices. In the end, I argue that the state must embrace reform to build flexible and collaborative movements with other parties with strong public participation. China’s ecological modernization process may feature a stronger state and faster changes, but it is not exempted from the need of political modernization.     

Sanitation and the commons: The role of collective action in sanitation use

A lack of safe sanitation threatens human wellbeing and has overlooked implications for environmental sustainability. There is a growing need to understand community-level drivers of sanitation use, as poor sanitation in a few households can create risks for neighboring households and contaminate the surrounding environment. This paper considers sanitation in the context of common-pool resources, focusing on processes of collective action and sustainable sanitation use, and draws on a case study conducted in Koassanga, Plateau-Central, Burkina Faso, where an ecological sanitation system intervention was implemented. Using a qualitative study design, 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted with residents using a social capital framework for water, sanitation and hygiene. Data were thematically analyzed to understand how collective action played a role in sustaining use of the sanitation system. The case study findings indicated that social capital characterized by membership in local groups and associations may have contributed to successful implementation of the intervention and ending open defecation, through normalization and monitoring of the use of ecological sanitation systems. In addition, community leaders played prominent roles in ensuring that collective management of the sanitation systems was sustained. These findings highlight potential for further examination of sanitation systems from a common pool resources perspective to identify other factors that contribute to long-term sustainability. With growing interest in community-led sanitation approaches, this understanding can inform more effective strategies for governments and NGOs to promote the health of entire communities to achieve SDG targets for universal coverage.     

Water Resources Issues and Control Policy Recommendations in the Process of “Industrialization,Urbanization and Agricultural Modernization” in Henan Province

In the process of “industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization”（he-rein--after referred to shortly as “IUAM”）in Henan province, water resources issues have caused deterioration of water environments and water attenuation. These are the region''s most common and prominent issues, caused by improper activities, water environmental conflict and ignoring the results of local water environment carrying capacity. This environmental problem is getting worse and worse, seriously restricting the region’s “IUAM” healthy development. According to coor-dinated development between “IUAM” and water resources bearing capacity, we carry out the environmental management of water resources policy research and design and put forward some corresponding policies and proposals.     

Groundwater status and associated issues in the Mekong-Lancang River Basin: International collaborations to achieve sustainable groundwater resources

Groundwater is an important and readily available source of fresh water in the Mekong-Lancang River Basin. With a rapid population growth and increasing human activities, an increasing number of countries in the Mekong-Lancang River Basin are experiencing depleted and degraded groundwater supplies. In transboundary river basins, such as the Mekong-Lancang River, prioritizing the use of the shared aquifer by one riparian government may affect the opportunities of other riparian governments and lead to potential water conflicts between neighboring countries. To promote the sharing of strategies and information for the sustainable and equitable use of water resources of the shared basin, international collaborative workshops on groundwater resources have been organized for all Mekong-Lancang River countries. These workshops provide an opportunity to communicate and discuss nationally sensitive issues on groundwater by the associated countries, with topics covering multiple aspects of groundwater, such as the groundwater status in the basin, quality issues, water use conflicts, hydrological information gaps, management policies and capacity building for successful water resource management. Consensus has been reached by all countries on the importance of catchment-based groundwater management and the need for close communication among the countries. Strategies for managing transboundary aquifer issues must foster international collaboration based on the regional network, influence national networks and enhance the capacity to building maps and monitoring systems based on associated databases. The sustainability of water resources cannot be achieved without the integrated involvement and contributions by multiple countries and various stakeholders. Therefore, collaborative workshops provide a great opportunity to further our understanding of the hydrologic processes of the Mekong River Basin, share the benefits of the aquifer and provide a strategy and vision for sustainable water resource management in the Mekong-Lancang River countries.     

Golf and the environmental politics of modernization

In this critical review we reflect on findings from a socio-historical study of golf’s relationship with the environment. We focus especially on the golf industry’s pursuit of modernization from the early 1900s to the present. Golf’s quest to ‘be’ modern, we contend, has specifically constituted three particular ‘turns’: a first turn in the early 1900s involving the scientific rationalization of golf course development and maintenance; a second, ‘exemptionalist’ turn in the post-war years whereby science and technology fueled a perception of immense control over nature; and a third, more recent turn to ecological modernization (EM) whereby science and technology are leveraged toward environmental stewardship – or at least claims thereof. We ultimately argue that the golf industry’s recent adoption of EM principles in their environment-related work has political implications, as it ‘protects’ the industry from more radical environmental alternatives.     

Customary tenure systems under siege: contemporary access to land in Northern Ghana

Land in most of Africa is controlled under the customary tenure system which is governed by well intentioned social and cultural rules meant to grant equal access to families within groups with common interest in land. Rapid changes in the domestic situation of countries resulting from both refractions of policies and influences from the global economy and emerging complexities within the local socio-economic context has altered the traditional land tenure systems in most parts of Africa. In the rural setting and for agricultural purposes, the customary tenure system seems to be crumbling slowly, while in the urban centres and for housing, industrial and commercial purposes the system has collapsed in favour of a commoditised one. The emerging patterns of access in Northern Ghana show growing inequalities in access, control and ownership. There is the need for a new architecture of land rights negotiated by a participatory process and regulated by both state and traditional institutions.     

Too hot to handle: Depoliticisation and the discourse of ecological modernisation in fire management debates

The management of fire within landscapes is a topic of increasing contestation. This is particularly the case in relation to the practice of ‘prescribed burning’, which aims to exercise a form of control of wild fires through the application of science-based techniques that putatively reconcile the conservation of biodiversity with the protection of human life and property in particular places. The belief in possibilities to solve environmental problems by scientific approaches and in outcomes that do not involve harm or vulnerabilities is an element of a trend called “Ecological Modernisation” (EM). Various studies have shown how discourses of EM have come to dominate the ways in which many contemporary environmental problems are approached. We argue that highlighting the presentation of such discourses as neutral and non-politicised precludes a critical examination of the ways in which the knowledge claims upon which they rest can be seen to reinforce only particular sets of constructions of the relationship between humans and the natural world. Through an analysis of knowledge claims made in relation to recurring topics such as the use of fire by Indigenous Australians and the adaptation of species to fire, we illustrate that behind the discourse of ecological modernisation sit deeply engrained variations in terms of where people locate vulnerability in relation to the pressing problem of wildfire and fire management. We argue that the depoliticisation of the topic sustains specific types of relationships between people and nature while delegitimising others and obscures the fundamentally different notions about relationships between humans and non-human nature upon which the debate ultimately pivots.     

En(gender)ing the debate about water’s management and care - views from the Antipodes

In this paper, we map the gendered contours of contemporary water management in order to demonstrate that regimes for individual ownership of water rights, markets, and the productive use of water simply reinscribe and simultaneously submerge in their apparent gender-neutrality a normative masculinity that underpins economic globalization and fortifies existing power relations. Not only do such arrangements disadvantage reproductive values and non-consumptive users; more generally, they also lack the capacity to ensure water’s sustainable development. Consequently, new management institutions for sustainability are demanded and, in making a case for equity-enhancing and adaptive institutions that better reflect water’s materiality, its multiple values and emerging water scarcity, we argue the need to invoke the conserving and ecologically protective feminine principle. To support our reasoning, we analyse water reform processes instituted in Australia and specifically by the State of Tasmania, referring to the latter jurisdiction to illustrate the gendered nature of resource management and to underscore tensions between economic globalization and sustainability, concluding that the tensions between the two agendas are probably irresolvable. We position our work in the borderlands among gender studies, feminist geography and philosophy, and political ecology, drawing together insights about the construction of resource management, the possibilities of the feminine care ethic, and ideas about the characteristics of institutional systems that could ensure equitable allocation and sustainable use of the planet’s resources.     

流域科学与水资源管理

流域是水资源管理的基本单位。基于水资源文献的综合分析,讨论了自20世纪以来水资源管理概念、目标及途径的变迁,提出建立流域科学,以流域为研究对象,以揭示流域生态水文过程的客观规律为前提,采用现代管理科学理论和方法,应用先进工程技术手段优化配置水资源,满足人类活动及生态系统的多种需求,促进社会、经济及环境的可持续发展。并且指出流域科学的内涵应包括:①水资源的调查、监测和模拟;②水资源利用多目标设定;③水资源分配机制;④水资源管理指标的确定与评价;⑤水资源管理决策机构;⑥水资源管理反馈分析与人类活动调控。     

可持续水资源系统管理研究与展望

依据近些年国际水文水资源学术会议及交流等信息,综述近年来社会可持续发展对水资源系统管理提出的新的挑战及国际上可持续水资源系统管理研究的若干特点等问题,提出了几点认识和建议。     

Groundwater Sustainability in Arid and Semi-arid Environments: A Review2

Groundwater is an important part of the global hydrological cycle. Sustainable utilization of groundwater is related to regional ecological security and food security, especially in arid and semi-arid environments. This paper reviewed the important achievements of the research on groundwater sustainability in arid and semi-arid environments during the past 30 years, and summarized the research progress in groundwater sustainability of arid and semi-arid environments from the conception evolution of groundwater sustainability, evaluation methods, influencing factors, sustainable management, and research frontiers. Our analysis suggests that groundwater in water limited environments around the world has shown unsustainable characteristics both in terms of quantity and quality. However, the existing research focuses more on the quantitative characteristics than the quality characteristics of groundwater, and thus the seriousness of the decline in groundwater sustainability is potentially underestimated. It is pointed out that more research efforts need to be done in the future in balancing the groundwater resources for human and nature, clarifying the impacts of human disturbance and climate change on groundwater sustainability, and strengthening groundwater sustainability through transboundary watershed management. We argued that the difficulty remains how to quantify the sustainable yield of a groundwater basin, and how to assess the groundwater sustainability. Further investigations are required in improving the theoretical framework of groundwater sustainability, modeling the impacts of the various alternative groundwater development scenarios, developing more flexible and efficient indicator frameworks for sustainability evaluation of groundwater system, and deploying more sophisticated groundwater monitoring network for real-time data acquisition. Finally, awareness should also be raised towards ground water sustainability both at the legal level and in the sphere of political action.     

An examination of midwestern US cities’ preparedness for climate change and extreme hazards

Disasters continue to have a dramatic impact on lives, livelihoods and environments communities depend on. In response to these losses, the global community has developed various theories, assessment methodologies and policies aimed at reducing global losses. A contemporary outcome of these interventions is to build the disaster resilience. However, despite the disaster resilience-building endeavours espoused by policies, theories and methodologies, very little progress is being made in reducing disaster losses. This paper argues that a possible reason behind the limitations of current resilience-building policies and methodologies could be that most of these policies are based a mechanistic scientific paradigm that places an emphasis on system components that are perceived to build resilience and not the function of systems as a whole. This often leads to resilience-building initiatives that are based on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. This paper argues for the use of a complex adaptive systems approach to building resilience. This approach argues that contextual factors within different social systems will have a nonlinear affect on disaster resilience-building efforts. Therefore, it is crucial to move away from ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to more flexible approaches to building resilience. These hypotheses are tested by means of a correlation statistical analysis of agricultural communities in Southern Africa. Results of this analysis indicate that unique resilience profiles are evident in almost all of the communities studied. This indicates that resilience is not the same for everybody, and that resilience-building endeavours should be flexible enough to be adapted for different contexts.     

人类活动对全球淡水循环影响与水行星边界评估研究进展

近几十年来,人类活动对淡水循环的影响已经超出了流域尺度。解决目前所面临的水资源问题,不应只着眼于流域过程,而应从更大的空间尺度——全球尺度对地球系统过程加以研究。文章总结了人类活动对全球淡水循环的影响途径,论述了水行星边界方法框架与研究进展,分析了淡水利用管理从流域尺度到全球尺度的实现方法。水行星边界方法以地球系统科学...     

Collective irrigation reloaded. Re-collection and re-moralization of water management after privatization in Spain

In recent decades, water has been subjected to different commodification and de-collectivization processes. Increasingly, this is also affecting collective irrigation water management. Critical analysis of this privatization and de-collectivization wave in the irrigation sector has mainly focused on neoliberal institutional policies and market-oriented legislation. However, subtly and silently but equally determinant, the adoption of water-saving technologies is fostering the penetration of private enterprise and market-based governance into these hydro-social settings. This paper discusses this phenomenon through a case study of the community of Senyera in Valencia, Spain, tracking the privatization and subsequent contestation and re-takeover of water management by irrigation system users. The article shows how privatization removes users’ autonomy in the name of common well-being, and increases irrigation costs in a context of little transparency. But the case also highlights users’ capacity to re-value and re-signify their past collective action, remembering and ‘re-membering to’ the collective. Senyera water users critically and reflexively analyse privatization, reconstruct societal relationships around and embedded inside the new technology, and re-collectivize and re-moralize irrigation management in a new hydro-social scenario.     

The ecological features and significance of hydrology within arid inland river basins of China

 Hydrology and ecology are two important factors affecting the rational utilization of limited water resources within the arid inland basins of China. They depend on, are influenced by, and interact with each other. But, the functions and significance of the hydrological ecology vary from upper through intermediate to lower reaches. Abundant rainfall and large runoff in the upper regions favor the vegetation growth, and the bushy vegetation helps conserve water resources. The large-scale reclamation in the intermediate regions leads to many sustainable oases, but with severely changed hydrological conditions and destroyed ecological systems. Human activities result in the degradation of the vegetation and declination of the ecological system at the intermediate and lower regions. It is necessary to establish study approaches to ecological hydrology in arid inland river basins. Received: 30 October 1997 · Accepted: 26 May 1998     

《生命支持系统百科全书(EOLSS)》将于1997年问世

1997年将有一部跨国巨著——《生命支持系统百科全书(EOLSS)》与读者见面。该书将是世界上规模最大,也是最为重要的科学技术出版物之一。由美、欧、俄、中等国和地区350多位专家组成编委会,千余名专家执笔编写,全书将分50～60卷刊出,并以CD-ROM电子版本形成出版。     

Review: groundwater management practices, challenges, and innovations in the High Plains aquifer, USA—lessons and recommended actions

The US High Plains aquifer, one of the largest freshwater aquifer systems in the world, continues to decline, threatening the long-term viability of the region’s irrigation-based economy. The eight High Plains States take different approaches to the development and management of the aquifer based on each state’s body of water laws that abide by different legal doctrines, on which Federal laws are superposed, thus creating difficulties in integrated regional water-management efforts. Although accumulating hydrologic stresses and competing demands on groundwater resources are making groundwater management increasingly complex, they are also leading to innovative management approaches, which are highlighted in this paper as good examples for emulation in managing groundwater resources. It is concluded that the fragmented and piecemeal institutional arrangements for managing the supplies and quality of water are inadequate to meet the water challenges of the future. A number of recommendations for enhancing the sustainability of the aquifer are presented, including the formation of an interstate groundwater commission for the High Plains aquifer along the lines of the Delaware and Susquehanna River Basins Commissions in the US. Finally, some lessons on groundwater management that other countries can learn from the US experience are outlined.     

民勤绿洲水资源利用的综合效益评价

水资源利用是民勤绿洲发展兴衰的关键影响因素. 将民勤绿洲水资源利用的历程划分为三个典型时期——"以粮为纲"时期、改革开放时期、生态保护时期, 并以其作为研究的特征时期, 建立了民勤绿洲水资源利用综合效益评价的数学模型. 利用网络层次分析法确定各项指标权重, 基于网络层次分析法的运算结果, 对民勤绿洲水资源利用的综合效益进行了定量评价, 结果表明: "以粮为纲"时期, 生态效益开始下降, 水资源利用的效果欠佳; 改革开放时期, 经济效益和社会效益均明显增长, 但生态效益出现新一轮下降, 水资源利用的效果有利有弊; 生态保护时期, 尤其是石羊河流域重点治理规划实施之后, 生态、经济和社会效益都开始上升, 水资源利用的效果相对最佳. 评价结果旨在为类似地区水资源利用政策措施的改进提供决策依据.     

Stewardship of things: The radical potential of product stewardship for re-framing responsibilities and relationships to products and materials

In the context of broad-based concerns about the need to move towards a more sustainable materials economy, particularly as they are expressed in debates around Ecological Modernisation (EM), we argue that product stewardship has radical potential as a means to promote significant change in the relationship between society and the material world. We focus on two important dimensions that have been neglected in approaches to product stewardship to date. Firstly, we argue that immanent within the basic concept of stewardship is a problematisation of dominant understandings of property ownership in neoliberal market economies. In the space opened up by notions of stewardship, different ways of enacting both rights and responsibilities to products and materials emerge which have potential to advance the sustainability of material economies. Secondly, through exploration of existing expressions of product stewardship, we uncover a neglected scale of action. Both policy and dominant articulations of EM focus primarily on the efficiency of production processes; and secondarily, the attitudes and behaviours of individual consumers. Missing from this is the ‘meso-scale’ of social collectives including households, neighbourhoods, more distributed communities and small scale social enterprises. Based on a review of existing research from Australia and the UK, including our own, we argue that understanding of embedded practices of material responsibility at the household scale can both reinvigorate the concept of product stewardship as a potentially radical intervention, and reveal the potential of the meso-scale as a challenging but worthwhile realm of policy intervention.