Consumption preferences and environmental externalities: A hedonic analysis of the housing market in Guangzhou

The urban housing market of China has been transformed since the 1980s from a centrally-planned to a free-market system. This study aimed to (1) investigate the position of outdoor environmental quality in house-buyers’ preferences; (2) assess monetary values attributed to environmental externalities by the hedonic pricing method (HPM); and (3) test the applicability of HPM in China. The study area was Guangzhou, the major city of south China with a booming real-estate market. A questionnaire survey was conducted with households in new residences sold in 2004. The main buying motives were improving living quarters and floor area. Security concerns and a preference for high-rise buildings were somewhat unexpected. Good outdoor environment, including green space provision, proximity to parks, and views of green space and water, carried significant hedonic values. Differences between the submarkets of old and new towns were found; new town households expected apartments in high-rise blocks, exclusive residential land use, and views of green space, while old town households preferred proximity to shopping areas and workplaces, green space within the development and proximity to nearby parks. The findings could help to fine tune the developing housing market to match supply with demand in quality terms. Values accorded to environmental attributes could justify funding for urban green spaces and nature conservation. The study verified the applicability of HPM to the housing context in China.     

The sustained yield forest management act and the roots of environmental conflict in Northern New Mexico

Recent research on environmental conflict in New Mexico has focused on racial and ethnic conflict between environmentalists and Hispanic loggers as a means to explain the trajectory of environmental struggle and the failure of Hispano/environmentalist coalitions opposing Forest Service management policies. This paper seeks to extend this explanation by considering the constraining role of federal legislation, institutional management and commercial resource exploitation that limited opportunities for Hispano/environmental collaborative challenges to federal resource management arrangements. I analyze the foundations of sustained yield forestry on the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico though a focus on the legal construction of sustained yield policies and the practices of implementing sustained yield on the Vallecitos Federal Sustained Yield Unit, a special timber production sub-unit of the Carson. The paper illustrates how the deployment of sustained yield forestry in New Mexico produced not only conditions of production favorable to commercial timber operators, but also established a complex and contradictory regulatory environment that effectively constrained collaborative efforts between environmentalists and small-scale loggers in their efforts to construct alternative futures for resource management in the region.     

An overview of the resources and environment conditions and major geological problems in the Yangtze River economic zone,China

Focusing on the Yangtze River economic zone, the previous geological researches are systematically summarized, resources and environment conditions and major geological problems which are needing to be concerned in land planning and construction are studied. The results show that the resource conditions of cultivated land, shale gas, geotherm, lithium and so on are superior in the Yangtze River economic zone, and the resources and environment conditions are conducive to develop the modern agriculture, clean energy industry and strategic emerging industries. 3×10¹³ m² farmlands without heavy metal pollution are concentrated; there are three national level shale gas exploration and development bases with explored reserves of 5.441×10¹¹ m³; geothermal availability is 2.4×10⁹ t of standard coal each year, equivalent to 19% of the amount of coal in 2014; Asia’s largest energy lithium metal ore deposit is found. In some parts of Yangtze River economic zone, there are some major geological problems such as active faults, karst collapse, ground subsidence, landslide-collapse-debris flow, affecting the river-crossing channels, high-speed railway, urban agglomeration and green ecological corridor planning and construction. Those problems should be concerned, and the relevant suggestions and countermeasures are put forward. Meanwhile, the ideas to further support the development of the Yangtze River economic zone are put forward.     

The black box of power in polycentric environmental governance

Failure to address unsustainable global change is often attributed to failures in conventional environmental governance. Polycentric environmental governance—the popular alternative—involves many centres of authority interacting coherently for a common governance goal. Yet, longitudinal analysis reveals many polycentric systems are struggling to cope with the growing impacts, pace, and scope of social and environmental change. Analytic shortcomings are also beginning to appear, particularly in the treatment of power. Here we draw together diverse social science perspectives and research into a variety of cases to show how different types of power shape rule setting, issue construction, and policy implementation in polycentric governance. We delineate an important and emerging research agenda for polycentric environmental governance, integrating diverse types of power into analytical and practical models.     

1804号台风“艾云尼”龙卷分析

2018年6月8日,在1804号台风“艾云尼”螺旋雨带中发生了两次陆龙卷天气,分别袭击了广州市南沙区横沥镇和佛山市南海区大沥镇。利用广州CINRAD/SA多普勒天气雷达、佛山CINRAD/XD多普勒天气雷达、5 min间隔的地面自动气象站和MICAPS等资料,研究了两次陆龙卷的天气背景、环境参数和龙卷风暴中尺度结构特征。结果表明:广州南沙龙卷为台风环流外围龙卷,位于台风中心的东北象限,强度为EF3级;佛山南海龙卷为台风环流内部龙卷,位于台风中心的东侧,强度为EF1级。龙卷均发生在中低空强东南急流在珠江口附近上下叠加和高层辐散的有利大尺度环流背景下。环境条件表现为较强的低层风垂直切变和较大的风暴相对螺旋度（SRH）、较小的对流有效位能（CAPE）和对流抑制能量（CIN）、极低的抬升凝结高度（LCL）;地面存在中尺度辐合线和小尺度涡旋。广州S波段雷达探测到两次龙卷母风暴的低层钩状回波和入流缺口回波特征及低层中等强度中气旋,龙卷出现在钩状回波顶端、中气旋中心附近。佛山X波段双偏振雷达清晰地探测到佛山南海区大沥龙卷的微型超级单体和龙卷碎片特征（TDS）。      

Future impacts of environmental factors on achieving the SDG target on child mortality—A synergistic assessment

An estimated 26% of current global child deaths can be attributed to various and modifiable environmental factors, which are addressed under multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study assesses future reductions in child mortality in relation to the achievement of environment-related SDG targets. It uses projections of health risk factors from the IMAGE 3.0 Integrated Assessment Model, based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), linked to a standard multi-state health model (GISMO), distinguishing risk factors, disease occurrence and cause-specific death. The study concludes that, on a global level, the SDG target on child mortality will not be achieved in any of the three SSP scenarios analysed, mainly due to persistent high mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. By 2030, environmental health risk factors – including childhood undernutrition, no access to improved drinking water and sanitation, no access to modern fuels and exposure to malaria – will still be responsible for 14% to 16% of total global child deaths (8% to 10% when excluding nutrition-related mortality). Under the middle-of-the-road SSP2 baseline scenario, achievement of the SDG targets on hunger, drinking water and sanitation and modern energy services, would avoid 433 thousand child deaths by 2030. If, in addition, also higher standards would be achieved for access to water and energy, as well as universal secondary female education and advanced malaria control, a total of 733 thousand child deaths is projected to be avoided by 2030 (444 thousand child deaths, when excluding nutrition-related mortality), which would reduce projected global child mortality by 13%. Overall, more than 25% of the child mortality reduction that is needed to achieve the SDG target in Sub-Saharan Africa can be achieved through SDG-related policies on food, water and energy. This requires integrated and intersectoral approaches to environmental health.     

泥河湾盆地晚新生代微体古生物地层及环境演化的探讨

通过对泥河湾盆地43条剖面和6个钻孔晚新生代地层和微体古生物(介形类和有孔虫)的调查研究,发现非常丰富的介形类,计26属70余种,有孔虫4属4种,其中介形类自下而上可明显地划分为5个组合带:(1)Potamocypris plana-Candoniella-Ilyocypris组合带;(2)Leucocythere-Ilyocypris-Candoniella组合带;(3)Leucocythere-Cytherissa-Limnocythere组合带;(4)Ilyocypris-Limnocythere flexa-Limnocythere dubiosa组合带;(5)Limnocythere dubiosa-Limnocythere sancti-Patricii-Ilyocypris组合带。按以上5个介形类组合带的分布,第1组合带及所含地层红崖村组和石匣组的时代为上新世;第2~4组合带及所含地层泥河湾组的时代为早更新世;第5组合带为中-晚更新世,分布于虎头梁组和许家窑组,虎头梁组置中更新世为宜,许家窑组为晚更新世。根据5个介形类组合带和有孔虫的分布及介形类的始现、繁盛、兴衰的演替特征,对泥河湾古湖和盆地的形成经历了上新世的起始,早更新世早期的扩展,中、晚期稳定、发展、湖面最大,中更新世向西部退缩和晚更新世消亡、桑干河水系形成五个发展阶段的演化进行了探讨。     

Making a reservoir: Heterogeneous engineering on the Kemi River in Finnish Lapland

This article tells the story of long-lasting and ongoing struggles surrounding the construction plans for a major reservoir on the headwaters of the Kemi River in the Finnish Province of Lapland. A point of contention since the beginning of hydropower development on the river in the mid twentieth century, the reservoir project has been promoted and abandoned multiple times in waves of land purchasing, legal procedures, opposition campaigns, and the delineation of nature reserves. Despite a Finnish Supreme Administrative Court ruling officially setting an end to the project, it never entirely left public discourse and is currently being re-negotiated in slightly adapted form. Articulating voices and documenting practices of riverbank inhabitants, activists and hydro electricity managers, this article presents the struggle as multiple modes of heterogeneous engineering, where both proponents and opponents work towards creating different realities. The article develops the metaphor of heterogeneous engineering by drawing attention to three temporal dimensions central to the reservoir struggle: moments, which refer to the situated emergence of practices and strategies; futures, which speak to the attempts to build and contest expectations regarding conflicting projects; and durations, which consider the cumulative aspects of a decades-long struggle on people and landscapes. Thereby, the article contributes to discussions on making, planning and environmental management, and illustrates ways of studying these processes as situated practices in relation to time.     

Birds as lines: The production of alternative regimes of environmental management in the aftermath of a toxic disaster

This paper analyses how in the aftermath of one of the worst environmental disasters ever to occur in Spain – the Aznalcóllar Disaster – various environmentalist and conservationist groups mobilised migratory birds to bring new insights and the need for new precautions to the controversy elicited by the spill. The case study, thus, revolves around how environmentalists established a “hybrid collective action” to draw attention to unconsidered risks and impacts of the disaster and thereby make the case for open debate. Building upon this, I engage with two different, though interrelated, theoretical debates that contribute to a rethinking of environmental management (EM) as a social and materially situated practice. Drawing on the idea of “tactic” (De Certeau, 1984), I draw attention to the devices, actions and procedures that environmentalists carried out to resist attempts to minimise the spill and to undermine administrations’ assumptions of control, coherence and singularity associated the idea of management. Drawing on Tim Ingold’s latest work (2007, 2008, 2011), I analyse environmentalists’ most successful tactic: the enactment of migratory birds as “lines”. Together with other authors in this special issue, I will use this notion to make an argument against some of the assumptions of the “hybrid ontology”. In contrast to more essentialists and static notions of non-human agency and politics, the idea of line is particularly useful as a way of understanding how nature(s) can be effectuated differently and how this leads to the imagining of new regimes of cohabitation, human and non-human management and intervention.     

Nationalising local sustainability: Lessons from the British wartime Utility furniture scheme

Analyses of sustainable design and commodity networks often make a priori assumptions about the capacity of markets to provide solutions to environmental problems; and have a tendency to celebrate local scales of action. This paper offers a contrasting account, in which the national state sought to carefully manage scarce natural resources and to ensure equitable consumption at a time of deep crisis. We utilise the historical example of the British wartime Utility furniture scheme in order to draw out three lessons for sustainable and equitable environmental practice. First, we argue that national states do not simply provide an institutional backdrop to sustainable production but rather can act as important organising agents. Second, the paper emphasises that sustainability is best achieved through interventions across a commodity network, beyond simply modifications to a single node such as design. Finally, we underscore the value of ‘pragmatic centralism’ in environmental decision-making, calling attention to the collaborative practices that underpinned the scheme. The example of Utility’s adaptive responses—borne out of crisis, scarcity and shortage during wartime—offers much that is of intrinsic interest to current concerns about resource consumption and the drivers of sustainability in commodity networks.