Divide and conquer—Discursive agency in the politics of illegal logging in the United States

In 2008 the US amended the century-old US Lacey Act to prohibit the import of illegally harvested or traded timber. Together with similar policies in the EU and Australia, this initialized a paradigm shift in global forest governance towards a legality (verification) regime that could substantially contribute to environmental and social stewardship in the forest sector. The analysis of the formation and implementation of these new policies in the US, Europe and Australia is, however, only just beginning.Based on 31 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, 19 informal conversations, more than 100 documents, and participant observation data, we analyze the policy making and implementation of the 2008 US Lacey Act amendment. Our results suggest two essential drivers for this policy change: (1) the deployment of discursive divide-and-conquer strategies and (2) a shift away from sustainability to legality, on both the international level and in the US. Based on the Discursive Agency Approach, we illustrate how carefully deployed discursive and governance strategies were crucial for building a coalition between environmentalists and parts of the wood (products) industry. This coalition was able to create a powerful storyline that muted the opposition and presented a politically attractive amendment proposal. We further show how these strategies have significant effects on the perception of the amended Lacey Act and its implementation. During implementation, coalitions as well as discursive and governance strategies shifted substantially but were still determined by the pre-amendment policy discourse. We conclude by exploring the importance of our findings for what we might expect from the concept of legality in global forest and environmental governance.     

Adaptive and risk-based approaches to climate change and the management of uncertainty and institutional risk: The case of future flooding in England

This paper focuses on how scientific uncertainties about future peak flood flows and sea level rises are accounted for in long term strategic planning processes to adapt inland and coastal flood risk management in England to climate change. Combining key informant interviews (n = 18) with documentary analysis, it explores the institutional tensions between adaptive management approaches emphasising openness to uncertainty and to alternative policy options on the one hand and risk-based ones that close them down by transforming uncertainties into calculable risks whose management can be rationalized through cost-benefit analysis and nationally consistent, risk-based priority setting on the other hand. These alternative approaches to managing uncertainty about the first-order risks to society from future flooding are shaped by institutional concerns with managing the second-order, ‘institutional’ risks of criticism and blame arising from accountability for discharging those first-order risk management responsibilities. In the case of river flooding the poorly understood impacts of future climate change were represented with a simplistic adjustment to peak flow estimates, which proved robust in overcoming institutional resistance to making precautionary allowances for climate change in risk-based flood management, at least in part because its scientific limitations were acknowledged only partially. By contrast in the case of coastal flood risk management, greater scientific confidence led to successively more elaborate guidance on how to represent the science, which in turn led to inconsistency in implementation and increased the institutional risks involved in taking the uncertain effects of future sea level rise into account in adaptation planning and flood risk management. Comparative analysis of these two cases then informs some wider reflections about the tensions between adaptive and risk-based approaches, the role of institutional risk in climate change adaptation, and the importance of such institutional dynamics in shaping the framing uncertainties and policy responses to scientific knowledge about them.     

多制式移动终端身份感知系统研究

移动终端的合法监管是国家安全部门保障移动网络安全的重要手段,获取移动终端身份标识是实现监管的基础.首先阐述了移动终端的主要身份标识,以及监管系统相关研究现状;然后给出一种面向双频点GSM网络和WCDMA网络的多制式移动终端身份感知系统设计方案,阐明系统技术原理与实现方法,并提出对该系统进行优化的技术方案;最后进行测试,验证了方案的可行性.     

Comparative assessment of thematic accuracy of GLC maps for specific applications using existing reference data

Inputs to various applications and models, current global land cover (GLC) maps are based on different data sources and methods. Therefore, comparing GLC maps is challenging. Statistical comparison of GLC maps is further complicated by the lack of a reference dataset that is suitable for validating multiple maps. This study utilizes the existing Globcover-2005 reference dataset to compare thematic accuracies of three GLC maps for the year 2005 (Globcover, LC-CCI and MODIS). We translated and reinterpreted the LCCS (land cover classification system) classifier information of the reference dataset into the different map legends. The three maps were evaluated for a variety of applications, i.e., general circulation models, dynamic global vegetation models, agriculture assessments, carbon estimation and biodiversity assessments, using weighted accuracy assessment. Based on the impact of land cover confusions on the overall weighted accuracy of the GLC maps, we identified map improvement priorities. Overall accuracies were 70.8 ± 1.4%, 71.4 ± 1.3%, and 61.3 ± 1.5% for LC-CCI, MODIS, and Globcover, respectively. Weighted accuracy assessments produced increased overall accuracies (80–93%) since not all class confusion errors are important for specific applications. As a common denominator for all applications, the classes mixed trees, shrubs, grasses, and cropland were identified as improvement priorities. The results demonstrate the necessity of accounting for dissimilarities in the importance of map classification errors for different user application. To determine the fitness of use of GLC maps, accuracy of GLC maps should be assessed per application; there is no single-figure accuracy estimate expressing map fitness for all purposes.     

From financialization to operations of capital: Historicizing and disentangling the finance–farmland-nexus

This largely programmatic paper offers a new way of thinking through the incorporation of farmland into financial markets. Building on the notion of “operations of capital”, it sketches analytical entry points for scrutinizing the inner workings of agri-finance capital formation. The concept of operations can make two useful contributions to the existing discussion. First, it helps provide a more nuanced historicization of the entanglement between finance and farmland. Finance has a long history of penetrating agriculture and the new quality of the contemporary coupling of finance and farmland only becomes fully visible when adopting a more nuanced historical perspective. Rather than imagining the history of capitalism as one where industrial capitalism gives way to financialized capitalism, the concept of operations sensitizes us for the situated modes, processes and practices of financial economization that have reworked economy, society and nature at specific historical conjunctures.Second, it allows us to move beyond simply treating “financialization” as explanans. Shifting attention to the situated practical activities of global finance, it eventually helps us explore central categories of financial economization (“capital”, “resources”, “property” and “value”) as practical accomplishments rather than taking them for granted. Only then can we come to terms with how finance works through farmland in different geographical settings. Empirical material from an ongoing research project will support my arguments.     

Brutal presence or convenient absence: The role of the state in the politics of flooding in informal Accra,Ghana

This paper argues that human vulnerability to flood hazards in urban slums in developing countries is greatly affected by the positioning and activities of their city governments. As a result, the paper explores the central role of city authorities in the production of flood vulnerability in selected informal settlements in Accra, Ghana. Using a case study research design, the study draws on multiple qualitative methods to gather evidence including: document review, focus group discussions, flood victims’ interviews, institutional consultation and field observation. The paper reveals two main positions of state and city authorities in Accra’s perennial floods: first, being present and complicit in informal urbanization through their involvement in the politics of land management in flood prone zones; and second, being absent through their inaction in informal growth in flood-risk areas. To each of these positions of the urban state, there are emerging responses from residents and other non-state actors operating within and outside these informal communities. The paper proposes a re-examination of the current structure and processes of urban governance, state-community engagements and urban citizenship in informal communities.     

Navigating the tensions in collaborative watershed governance: Water governance and Indigenous communities in British Columbia,Canada

First Nations in British Columbia (BC), Canada, have historically been—and largely continue to be—excluded from colonial governments’ decision-making and management frameworks for fresh water. However, in light of recent legal and legislative changes, and also changes in water governance and policy, there is growing emphasis in scholarship and among legal, policy and advocacy communities on shifting water governance away from a centralized single authority towards an approach that is watershed-based, collaborative, and involves First Nations as central to decision-making processes. Drawing on community-based research, interviews with First Nations natural resource staff and community members, and document review, the paper analyzes the tensions in collaborative water governance, by identifying First Nations’ concerns within the current water governance system and exploring how a move towards collaborative watershed governance may serve to either address, or further entrench, these concerns. This paper concludes with recommendations for collaborative water governance frameworks which are specifically focused on British Columbia, but which have relevance to broader debates over Indigenous water governance.     

利用北斗GEO卫星反射信号反演土壤湿度

提出了一种基于北斗GEO卫星反射信号的土壤湿度长期连续探测方法,建立了土壤湿度反演模型,给出了信号处理的一般流程,并搭建陆基接收平台进行了验证试验。该方法采用GNSS-R双天线体制接收处理北斗GEO卫星直射和土壤反射信号,在信号同步的基础上提取信号功率并计算土壤反射率,进而根据反演模型得到土壤湿度。以北斗GEO卫星作为信号源,该方法可以在信号处理中省去一般GNSS-R处理过程的定位解算环节,能够实现对固定区域土壤湿度的长期连续观测。试验结果表明,基于北斗GEO卫星反射信号的土壤湿度反演结果在时间和数值上均具有良好的连续性,与土壤湿度参考值相吻合,均方根误差达到0.049,较北斗IGSO和GPS MEO卫星在反演土壤湿度方面性能更优。     

Fossil Fuel Saving through a Direct Solar Energy Water Heating System

The global warming and energy crisis is motivating the search for sustainable power sources. The objective of this work is to analyze the economic return and quantify the reduction in the emission of pollutants, when low‐cost solar collectors are used as a partial substitute for a boiler that uses fuel oil as the energy source, in order to heat water for the swimming pools of the Physical Education Center, Federal University of Santa Maria. The collectors are made from PVC and other easily acquired materials. The estimations for energy saving are based on a collecting area of 182 m². From knowledge of the collectors' efficiency, the mathematical demonstration shows a fuel oil saving of 13,174 kg, representing 24% of the total amount consumed per annum. The investment required for the construction and installation of the collectors is US$ 6,445 and the estimated useful live is five years. The internal rate of return is 30%. The emission of pollutants is reduced by a considerable amount of 41,213 kg CO₂ equivalent/year. The use of direct sun energy as an alternative power source represents a significant economic interest as well as contributing to the mitigation of greenhouse gases.     

跨省区域治理:中国跨省都市圈经济整合的新思路

跨省都市圈日益成为中国区域经济发展的战略单元,如何处理行政区划与区域经济一体化之间的内在关系,实现空间经济整合是当前中国政界和学术界关注的焦点。通过辨析城市群、大都市区、大都市圈、大都市带等基本概念的基础上,界定了跨省都市圈的概念,并提出了成熟型跨省都市圈必须具备的6个基本条件。借助"行政区经济"理论,分析了当今限制中国跨省都市圈空间整合的瓶颈,认为各自为政的行政区划及其管理体制,极大地制约着跨都市圈经济的区域融合与一体化进程,在中国现有的政治管理体制下,单纯依靠传统的行政区划管理或政府管理,难以从根本上解决跨省都市圈内部存在的行政分割问题。根据西方较为流行的"治理"理论,提出了"跨省区域治理"的空间整合新思路,并按照市场经济的内在要求和规律,构建了"跨省区域治理"的基本框架体系,主要包括: ①跨省都市圈成员省市政府的现代区域治理理念体系;②跨省都市圈现代区域政治体系;③跨省都市圈现代区域市场经济体系;④跨省都市圈现代区域社会体系;⑤跨省都市圈现代城际合作体系。