纳米比亚矿业投资环境分析

纳米比亚矿产资源非常丰富,其中金刚石和铀矿生产在世界上占有重要位置。纳米比亚矿产资源开发潜力巨大,受到国际矿业投资者的关注。本文针对该国的矿产资源、矿业立法、税收政策等方面的内容进行了较系统的介绍和分析,供有意赴纳米比亚投资矿业者参考。     

中非共和国矿业市场概况

中非共和国地处非洲中心,地质勘查程度低,矿产资源潜力较大。本文主要介绍了中非共和国国家概况、矿产资源开发现状、矿业投资政策与法规,以供有意赴中非共和国投资矿业者参考。     

活动断层、地震灾害与减灾对策问题

本文在对活动断层的定义和相关概念的论述基础上,通过活动断层与地震灾害间空间分布上的相关性分析,以及海原断裂带松山和阿尔金断裂带阿克塞老城西等地点的探槽地质剖面的介纠等,揭示出活动断层近地表永久性地质变形的局部化特征,永久变形带宽度一般小于30m。文章最后介绍了美国加州地震断层划定法案的主要内容和活动断层填图计划作为积极有效减灾的一项公益性对策,指出中国大陆地区应有步骤地开展大比例尺活动断层填图来有效地减轻可能遭遇的地震灾害。     

中国气候变化南南合作对《巴黎协定》后适应谈判的影响

适应气候变化是发展中国家的重要谈判议题。《联合国气候变化框架公约》2015年达成《巴黎协定》后如何落实适应议题实施细则成为关注焦点。发达国家以温室气体排放总量大为理由,施压中国等发展中大国出资全球适应气候变化行动;发展中国家内部对适应气候变化受害方和出资方的划分存在较大分歧,造成适应议题下发展中国家集团难以形成合力,《巴黎协定》实施细则谈判进展缓慢。中国气候变化南南合作作为中国与其他发展中国家之间重要的气候变化领域合作形式,能否通过寻找发展中国家契合点,依据合理机制,对适应谈判发挥一定作用,须及早进行利弊分析及顶层设计。文章通过分析美欧日对外援助的机制、梳理非洲小岛国等主要发展中国家集团在应对气候变化不利影响方面的需求、总结以往中国适应项目对外援助情况的基础上,提出了今后中国气候变化南南合作与适应谈判中需要注意的问题,包括区分适应援助和减缓援助、避免中国气候变化南南合作的属性被误读等问题,为争取广阔外交利益、合理构建南南合作机制提供政策建议。     

Seizing policy windows: Policy Influence of climate advocacy coalitions in Brazil,China, and India, 2000–2015

What drives the development of climate policy? Brazil, China, and India have all changed their climate policies since 2000, and single-case analyses of climate policymaking have found that all three countries have had climate coalitions working to promote climate policies. To what extent have such advocacy coalitions been able to influence national policies for climate-change mitigation, and what can explain this? Employing a new approach that combines the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) with insights from comparative environmental politics and the literature on policy windows, this paper identifies why external parameters like political economy and institutional structures are crucial for explaining the climate advocacy coalitions’ ability to seize policy windows and influence policy development. We find that the coalitions adjust their policy strategies to the influence-opportunity structures in each political context—resulting in confrontation in Brazil, cooperation in China, and a complementary role in India.     

江西省应对气候变化政策

为应对全球气候变化,各级政府纷纷提出应对气候变化的战略和政策。以江西气候变化和影响事实为基础,分析和总结了目前江西省应对气候变化所采取的政策,包括农业政策、林业政策、水资源管理政策及防灾减灾政策等,得出了政府是应对气候变化的领导者、组织者和政策的制定者的结论,认为政府在应对气候变化行动中具有重要的引导作用。     

Economic and environmental effectiveness of a technology-based climate protocol

Abstract

The present stalemate in climate negotiations between the USA and the other Annex I countries has led policy analysts and economists to explore the possible emergence of alternative climate regimes that may be applied after 2012. This article explores the idea of replacing international cooperation on greenhouse gas emission control with international cooperation on climate-related technological innovation and diffusion. This idea—recently proposed among others by Barrett (2001) and Benedick (2001)—is based on the insight that incentives to free-ride are much smaller in the case of technological cooperation than in the case of cooperation on emission control. This article provides a first applied game theory analysis of a technology-based climate protocol by assessing: (i) the self-enforcingness (namely, the absence of incentives to free-ride) of the coalition that would form when countries negotiate on climate-related technological cooperation; (ii) the environmental effectiveness of a technology-based climate protocol. The analysis is carried out by using a model in which endogenous and induced technical change are explicitly modelled. The results of our analysis partly support Barrett's and Benedick's conjectures. On the one hand, a self-enforcing agreement is more likely to emerge when countries cooperate on environmental technological innovation and diffusion than when they cooperate on emission abatement. However, technological cooperation—without any commitment to emission control—may not lead to a sufficient abatement of greenhouse gas concentrations.     

The case for intensity targets

Abstract

While most of the world has pursued absolute emission limits for greenhouse gases, the Bush administration has proposed an alternative policy formulation based, among other things, on reducing emissions intensity—that is, emissions per dollar of real gross domestic product (GDP). Critics of this formulation have denounced the general idea of an intensity-based emission target, along with its voluntary nature and modest targets. This raises the question of whether intensity-based emission limits, distinct from the other features of the Bush initiative, offer a useful alternative to absolute emission limits. This essay makes the case that they do, based on how emission targets are framed. The argument draws on four key observations: greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise over the near term; absolute targets emphasize zero or declining emissions growth while intensity targets do not; developing countries' economic development is integrally tied to emissions growth for the foreseeable future; and intensity targets need not be any more complicated to administer than absolute targets.     

论农村社区在地震保安方面职能的发挥

目前,农村民居的科学抗震设防日益受到社会各界的广泛关注。农村社区作为农村社会的组成部分,其在地震保安方面职能的发挥有着不可替代的地位,充分发挥农村社区的防震减灾功能对提高农村民居的抗震设防水平,最大限度地减轻地震灾害有着深远意义。通过对农村社区特征和功能以及在地震保安方面作用发挥的阐述,针对现今存在的主要制约因素,提出政策建议,供参考。     

Environmental impacts of household appliances in Europe and scenarios for their impact reduction

Assessing the environmental impact due to consumption of goods and services is a pivotal step towards achieving the sustainable development goal related to responsible production and consumption (i.e. SDG 12). Household appliances plays a crucial role and should be assessed in a systemic manner, namely considering all life cycle stages, technological efficiency, and affluence aspects. The present study assess the impact of such household appliances used in Europe, and tests scenarios of potential impact reduction at various scales. Life cycle assessment is applied to 14 different household appliances (ranging from dishwashers to television devices) selected to build a set of representative products, based on their economic value and diffusion in households in Europe. Related impacts are calculated with the Environmental Footprint method for calculating a Consumer Footprint “appliances” for the baseline year 2010. A number of scenarios encompassing eco-solutions on a technical level, changes in consumption pattern, behavioral changes, as well as the combination of all these aspects are run to estimate the Consumer Footprint related to household appliances for the year 2030, compared against this baseline scenario. The baseline Consumer Footprint is confirming the importance of the use phase in leading the impacts in almost all impact categories. Testing different scenarios concludes that there is a reduction of the impact for most of the categories (with up to 67% for the ozone depletion potential, and still around 35% for the global warming potential), while two of the here examined impact categories (i.e. land-use and mineral resource depletion) show an overall potential that is even negative – i.e. the results of all scenarios are higher than the ones of the 2010 baseline scenario. The increase in purchase and use of such appliances may offset energy efficiency benefits in some of the examined categories. Hence, the assessment of sustainability of appliances consumption should always include several scales, from the efficiency of the products (micro scale), to the improvement of the energy mix (meso scale), up to accounting for socio-economic drivers and patterns of consumption affecting the overall appliances stock (macro scale).