Performing environmental governance

This essay reflects on issues of researcher positionality within participant observation and action research, and the specific methodological issues surrounding research on neoliberal governance strategies, using my experience at the US Environmental Protection Agency as case material. Although I was initially concerned about participating with the anti-progressive Bush Administration, I attempted to adopt the interests and subjectivity of an environmental bureaucrat. Doing so proved to be an extremely effective way of exploring the multi-vocality and cross-cutting interests constituting the state, which often appears from the outside to be a policy monolith. Participant research among elites in the neoliberal state is an effective way to observe such complexity. It became apparent that, because mainstream economics tends to adopt a totalizing epistemology, both its casual and dogmatic adherents usually do not conceive of a coherent external critique. This often means that researchers of any theoretical background can be quite frank concerning their purposes, background, and interests, even as participants.     

The trouble with nature: Ambivalence in the lives of urban Australian environmentalists

The number and range of contests over the social production of nature is growing. Much environmentalist discourse, however, continues to appeal for unequivocal scientific support on clearly demarcated issues of pure, a-social nature. This paper explores the question of how participants in environmental movements view this demarcation in the context of their own lives. After introducing scholarly critique of dualistic ideas of nature and the ambivalence characteristic of environmentalist conceptions of nature, the paper draws upon a qualitative study with environmentalists in the Australian cities of Melbourne, Perth and Hobart. Inquiring into the interplay of discourse of nature and everyday worlds, interviews revealed a complex interdependence of dualistic and non-dualistic understandings of nature. This ecology of ideas was especially evident in spatial imaginaries of nature. Scientific terminology, social disaffection and pessimism were associated with abstract and mutually exclusive conceptions of society and nature. Reflections on personal experience, however, indicated more flexible and hopeful negotiations in everyday liminal spaces offering ‘the best of both worlds’. It is concluded that environmentalist resistance to dismantling of conceptual boundaries between society and nature may often stem not from failure to appreciate socionatural complexity, but from a strongly felt sense that the self can only truly be found in nature.     

Sustainability schizophrenia or “actually existing sustainabilities?” toward a broader understanding of the politics and promise of local sustainability in the US

As an approach to development, many see capitalism as reaching across an enormous range of scholarly domains and political interests. For some time geographers and others have begun to conceptualize capitalism as less of a system of intrinsic economic logic and more a collection of social and discursive relationships. By bringing capitalism into the “discursive world” these commentators and others have provided the theoretical ground for an exploration of alternative economic forms, especially those that are more socially and ecologically just. This paper makes an argument for putting sustainable development through the same theoretical scrutiny. Drawing on examples from the US we recruit the concept of “actually existing sustainabilities” from Altvater’s concept “actually existing socialisms” as an entry point to this conversation. Our purpose is to show that the potential for sustainability in the US exists in current local policies and practices if we rethink how we frame it.     

下扬子区孤峰组放射虫化石带划分及环境分析

下扬子区中二叠统孤峰组线硅质岩中的放射虫化石极其丰富,这些化石主要阿尔拜虫类（ａｌｂａｉｌｌｅｌｌｉｄｓ）球形多囊虫类（Ｓｐｈｅｒｉｃａｌｐｏｌｙｃｙｓｔｉｎｅ）十字多囊虫类（ｓｔａｕｒａｘｏｎｐｏｌｙｃｙｓｔｉｎｅ）组成,其中以Ｐｓｅｕｄｏａｌｂａｉｌｌｅｌｌａｃａｌｐｒａｔａ．Ｐ．ｌｏｎｇｔａｎｅｎｓｉ,Ｐ．ｃｆ．ｌｏｎｇｉｃｏｒｎｉｓ,ＨｅｇｌｅｒｉａＭａｍｍｉｌｌａ,Ｆｏｌｌｉｃｕｃｕｌｌ     

秦岭造山带新生代构造隆升与区域环境效应研究

据沉积，构造、地貌并结合地球物理资料综合研究认为，秦岭造山带新生代构造隆升是在中生代白垩纪晚期构造隆升基础上，于晚第三纪中新世迅速隆升，而早更新世早期则是新构造活动最强烈时期。秦岭造山带的新生代构造隆升的方式主要有地垒式、掀斜式、振荡式和翘板式4种。诱发这一地区新构造抬升的主要原因和动力学机制是华北地块自北而南，扬子地块自南而北相向向秦岭造山带之下陆内俯冲和秦岭地块深部软流圈抬升共同作用所致。     

Seeing the local in the global: Political ecologies, world-systems, and the question of scale

Scale, as concept, has featured prominently in political ecology and remains, even if implicitly, a crucial point of analytical reference. Recent studies, drawing from both human geography and ecology, have sought to demonstrate how scales, rather than pre-existing ontologically, are both socially and environmentally produced. Given the different scales through which social and environmental processes occur, the study of society-environment relations can be improved by analysing varying scalar configurations of interaction. This recent and promising methodological corrective would greatly benefit from a dialogue with world-systems approaches, which integrate diverse scale-producing processes and to some extent overlap in scope with political ecology. World-systems perspectives, by focusing on the long-term systemic character of people-environment relations, effectively connect micro- to macro-scale social and ecological processes and explain long-term internal dynamics and interrelations of systems at different scales. Conversely, world-systems approaches could learn much from political ecologists’ consideration of nonhuman processes into understandings of scale and society-environment relations, which has a long tradition in geography, as well as from the more context-sensitive analytical framework brought to those understandings. Case studies are discussed to demonstrate not only how these two perspectives could be integrated, but also how explanations of environmental change can be thereby improved. Combining the two approaches provides the basis for a more ecologically oriented world-systems paradigm and, in political ecology, for greater sensitivity to socially large-scale systemic processes and, given the originally anti-capitalist underpinnings of both paradigms, for more political coherence.     

Canada's environmental farm plans: transatlantic perspectives on agri-environmental schemes

Evaluation of Ontario's Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) scheme, launched in 1993, provides an opportunity for comparisons with agri-environmental measures instituted in the European Union and other parts of North America. The EFP has a strong 'bottom-up' dimension in that it is farmers' organizations that have been central both to the scheme's instigation and to its ongoing management. This has affected the nature of the actions taken by individual farmers participating in the scheme. These actions are reviewed, especially in terms of the participants' attitudes towards stewardship of the land, environmental outcomes, cross-compliance measures, barriers to participation and the role of statutory regulation. Some contrasts are drawn with the greater 'top-down' controls exerted in several EU agri-environment schemes, with the latter's promotion of extensification and the changing role of farmers as 'producers of countryside' in a multi-functional agricultural system. The diffusion of EFP schemes throughout Canada is noted and is cited as confirming the maintenance of fundamentally different attitudes to the development of farm-based environmental actions compared with those adopted in the EU.     

Cladoceran community composition in tropical semi-arid highland reservoirs in Tigray (Northern Ethiopia): A metacommunity perspective applied to young reservoirs

A field survey of zooplankton communities was carried out in 32 recently established tropical semi-arid reservoirs in the highlands of Northern Ethiopia with the aim to identify to what extent environmental factors determine species composition of the cladoceran community in such isolated and young reservoirs. To address seasonal variation, the survey was carried out both at the beginning and the end of the dry season. A total of 15 species of cladocerans were identified. Daphnia was the most abundant cladoceran genus, and was present in all reservoirs. Using presence-absence data, no association between cladoceran community composition and geographic distance was found. RDA results indicate that the set of environmental variables that explained cladoceran community composition differed among seasons. Depth, altitude and fish biomass showed a significant association with cladoceran community composition during the wet season, whereas variation in cladoceran community structure was associated with phytoplankton biomass in the dry season. The relative abundance of Daphnia was much higher in the pelagic than in the littoral zone of our study systems. Two key groups of pelagic filter-feeding cladocerans, Diaphanosoma and Daphnia, showed a clear pattern, in which one or the other tended to strongly dominate the community. In addition, we observed a negative association between dominance of Daphnia in the zooplankton community and dominance of cyanobacteria in the phytoplankton community.     

环境规制对无锡市区污染密集型制造业区位选择的影响

随着生态环境的恶化,发达地区制造业区位选择表现出强烈的环境容量制约性和政府规制主导性.本文在对1998-2008年无锡市区污染密集型制造业格局演变分析的基础上,构筑了引入环境规制影响因子的企业区位演变理论分析框架,并运用GIS空间自回归模型,对以上理论框架进行验证.结果表明,1998-2003年影响企业区位选择的主要要素为交通可达性、土地价格、开发区规划等,而环境规制相关要素对其影响不显著;而2003-2008年,表征环境规制影响强度的水质目标、清水通道等因子对制造业区位选择的影响显著,这表明环境规制开始成为影响污染密集型制造业区位的重要因子.本研究对于正确制定城市产业结构调整政策和合理引导经济环境协调发展具有重要的理论借鉴意义.