Green Watershed in Yunnan: a multi-scalar analysis of environmental non-governmental organisation (eNGO) relationships in China

Responding to China's major environmental challenges, researchers are increasingly exploring dynamics between international non-governmental organisations, the nation-state, and local communities. Much less understood are domestic environmental non-governmental organisations (eNGOs) and their interactions with actors across scales. This paper responds by exploring domestic eNGOs and interactions with institutional actors, including international donors, and with levels of Chinese government. The practices of eNGOs in China are influenced by interactions at various scales. Rather than being directly influenced by international partners and simply constrained by state regulations, Chinese eNGOs are embedded in more complex power relations. These interrelationships are exemplified in the operations of Green Watershed, a domestic eNGO working in Yunnan Province. Green Watershed has extensive interactions with international donors and various levels of government as a result of its national campaign and long-term local projects. Relationships between eNGOs’ international donors and the Chinese government are significant in influencing eNGO practice. NGO–government relations in China are inconsistent and constantly changing owing to the diverse interests and priorities of the various levels of government. The impacts of the local practice of Chinese eNGOs are deeply informed by their relationships both at and beyond the local level. Complex interrelationships make it difficult to achieve bottom-up, participatory resource management in China.     

倾斜摄影技术在灾后建筑物损毁评估巾的应用分析

在分析了常规遥感技术在建筑物损毁评估应用中存在不足的基础上,介绍了最近几年发展起来的倾斜摄影技术的基本原理、数据获取和信息提取的情况,概述了倾斜摄影技术在建筑物损毁评估中的应用现状.提出倾斜摄影技术用于建筑物损毁评估可以从人工目视解译、房屋倾斜程度计算、房屋立面裂缝提取三个角度开展,并分别概述了这些方法的主要处理流程.最后针对倾斜摄影用于建筑物损毁评估面临的困难,对未倾斜摄影技术应用在建筑物损毁评估精度方面的前景进行了展望.     

Toward an environmental justice of the rural-urban interface

In this article, I make the case for an explicit extension of environmental justice research to the rural-urban interface or fringe. A more systematic exploration and synthesis of the blurred boundaries and transitional character of the interface might advance the empirical scope of environmental justice research while contributing to the environmental justice literature’s evolving treatment of space, ecology, and oppression. I subsequently synthesize previous research to outline some fringe characteristics, which signal the interface as a distinct geographical space deserving of closer attention in environmental justice studies, before proposing a few unique dimensions of injustice on the interface. In light of these new facets of rural-urban injustice, I finally outline some preliminary empirical and conceptual questions the interface might pose to environmental justice studies more broadly.     

Assessing environmental justice through potential exposure to air pollution: A socio-spatial analysis in Madrid and Barcelona,Spain

The concept of environmental justice (EJ) has recently gained currency, both as a factor for and a goal of sustainable development. Its implementation in practice implies establishing current environmental injustice patterns and analysing planning policies, with the aim to reduce socio-demographic inequalities in the negative environmental impact borne by different population groups. This paper proposes a method to assess differential exposure to excessive pollution levels by socio-demographic groups in intra-urban spaces.The approach developed in this paper is based upon GIS and quantitative spatial analysis techniques. It incorporates the idea of an ‘environmental justice weighting scale’ for policy-making, using normative pollution thresholds to measure inequalities more objectively and consistently. Spain’s two largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona, have been chosen as case-studies, taking nitrogen dioxide as the pollutant, and the geographic distribution of six vulnerable population groups (children, elderly people and international immigrants) in the year 2010. The results reveal that a large part of these groups suffer exposure to air pollution exceeding the maximum permitted levels disproportionately, which would imply a case of environmental injustice.     

Hazard Assessment of Cold and Hot Damage for Double-Season Early Rice (DSER) in Lower-Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River Basin

Cold and hot damages which are both common disasters occurring in DSER growth time in lower-middle reaches of the Yangtze River Basin harm early rice. The two disasters occurrence should be deeply studied to protect the DSER yield. This study was based on meteorological data of 48 agricultural meteorological stations during 1961-2010 period and agricultural meteorological data during 1981-2010 for DSER in lower-middle reaches of the Yangtze River Basin. In this study, the growth time was divided into several phases according to the growth stage, including tillering stage, booting stage, flowering stage and filling stage. The disasters taking place at some stages was identified by building new judging standard and their intensity value was calculated by harm accumulated temperature calculation model. Fisher optimal division method was used to classify the disasters and H-P filter was used to consider the reduction of the yield. It was conducted to analize the disasters’ characteristics in growing season, the intensity of hazard and the weight of hazard at each stage by judging and quantifying cold and hot damage and developing hazard assessment model of disasters. All findings were displayed in maps by GIS technology. The results showed that: ①New disaster judging standard was more suitable for DSER and the hazard assessment model could reveal the disaster situation in lower-middle reaches of the Yangtze River Basin. ②Cold damage was severe at tillering stage while hot damage was severe at filling stage. In the view of the distribution of the decadal disaster intensity, cold damage became to be weak and hot damage became to be strong. Compared with the plains, mountainous region and hilly ground were attacked by cold damage frequently and hot damage rarely from the perspective of spatial distribution of disasters. Distinctly, plains near large areas of water were often harmed by cold damage at booting and flowering stage. ③The area of high hazard value and high disasters value at each stage were overlapped by each other roughly. Studying the hazard of the whole growth season showed that the highest hazard value was in Zhejiang province, and the next in Hubei Province. So Hu’nan and Jiangxi Provinces were quite suitable to grow DSER. ④In contrast with the hazard weight at each stage, the vulnerable phases of the whole growth time were in sequence of filling stage> tillering stage> flowering stage > booting stage. What’s more, aiming at defensing and fending off risk, some special stages in special province should be paid close attention including booting and filling stages in Hubei Province, tillering and flowering and filling stages in Hu’nan Province, tillering and filling stages in Jiangxi Province, flowering and filling stages in Zhejiang Province. The conclusion can be taken as theoretical basis for the government management of agricultural production, disaster prevention and mitigation.     

基于小波分析的海洋平台实时结构健康监测

由于海洋平台结构长期处于恶劣的海洋环境中,并受到各种载荷的交互作用,结构容易产生各种形式的损伤。因此,对海洋平台进行实时监测有着十分重要的现实意义。以单筒简易导管架平台为例,主要在结构损伤的判定和定位两方面对海洋平台的实时结构健康监测进行研究,结果表明通过对结构响应信号进行小波分析,小波变换系数和小波包能量分布可以很好地定义损伤识别指标。     

页岩气储层钻井液损害评价研究

延长油田页岩气储层埋藏较深,地质条件复杂,页理构造发育,岩石物性极差,页岩易膨胀、分散。由于孔缝并存,页岩气储层比砂岩油藏具有更严重的微粒运移损害、储层应力敏感损害、水锁损害等特性。鉴于延长页岩储层太过致密,不能用常规方法进行渗透率测定。通过采用人造裂缝法测定钻井液对储层裂缝的污染程度来表征钻井液对储层的损害率。经人造裂缝法测定,延长油田现场使用的白油基钻井液体系对页岩气储层的污染渗透率恢复率达到91.060%,初步证实该体系具有良好的储层保护效果,可在延长油田进一步推广使用并验证。     

Green growth rhetoric versus reality: Insights from Indonesia

By 2030 Indonesia aims to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 29% while maintaining a 7% annual GDP growth rate, thus making “green economy” a reality. Based on a review of literature and secondary data and interviews with key informants, this article examines the gap between these national ambitions and the reality on the ground, with particular attention to the challenges of multi-scalar environmental governance. It first introduces the green economy concept and discusses the main green growth policies and initiatives at the national level. The article then examines green growth ambitions at the provincial level in East Kalimantan province. Our findings suggest that existing plans to further expand oil palm plantations are at odds with provincial efforts to reduce emissions. This highlights a key paradox we identify at the heart of the green economy concept as it is developing in Indonesia: between a development trajectory based on resource extraction and agro-industrial development, and ‘green’ aspirations linked to environmental protection and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. We conclude that the main challenges to address these contradictions are related to the lack of coordination between different governance scales and a political economy that is not conducive to reforms in the land-based sector. There is a need to align investment, planning, and green growth policies, based on a strong political commitment and an awareness of social and environmental trade-offs. On a more general level the article shows that the green economy concept refers to a form of environmental governance in which authorities and interests may overlap and come into conflict at different scales. Hence, differing priorities may lead the material expression of the green economy to diverge significantly from policy as it is initially laid out.     

Adaptive environmental governance of changing social-ecological systems: Empirical insights from the Okavango Delta,Botswana

Adaptive management and related fields have theorized new governance strategies that embrace complexity and are able to respond effectively to changing and unpredictable biophysical dynamics. However, this body of work pays inadequate attention to important on-the-ground realities, including feasibility of implementation and the power dynamics embedded in multi-scalar systems of environmental governance. This paper presents findings from a research project on challenges to adaptive management in the variable wetland ecosystem of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Many residents of this rural region rely on transitional agricultural practices, shifting between dryland and floodplain farming in response to dynamic precipitation and flooding patterns. Higher than average floods in 2009–2011 inundated many floodplain fields past the point of production, causing farmers to shift to the dryland for multiplem seasons. At the same time, the highly centralized Government of Botswana began to implement stricter regulations over floodplain resources, which stemmed in part from a new adaptive management plan developed for the region. As a result, many farmers felt pressured by the government to abandon transitional livelihood practices and to shift permanently to dryland agriculture even though many preferred to continue floodplain farming. This loss of a responsive livelihood strategy will likely result in decreased long-term adaptive capacity for many residents. Drawing on these findings, this paper advances the argument that if adaptive management is to become a viable option for communities in changing environments, more attention must be given to the role of unequal power relations in multi-scalar systems of environmental governance.     

Public environmental concern in China: Determinants and variations

How much are Chinese people and various citizen groups concerned about the environment relative to other major public problems? What are the key factors and to what extent do these factors shape individual Chinese environmental concern? Based on a micro-macro model and a county fixed model proposed in this study, we employ nationwide representative public opinion survey data and provincial statistics to examine the determinants and variations of public environmental concern in China. The data shows that environmental concern is not among the top-ranked issue concerns in China overall, but in the urban areas and in the east-coastal region environmental protection features as a rather important issue. Our regression analyses further demonstrate that the Chinese environmental concern is significantly affected by both micro-level socio-demographic variables and macro-level regional economic conditions and environmental risks. In the east-coastal region, such individuals as urbanites with high income are most environmentally concerned. There is a lack of concern over environmental issues among the public in the west region, where little association between individual sociodemographics and their environmental concern is detected. In the central-northeast region, education effect is evident in the rural area. Location contextual factors such as economic development and environmental risk account for most of the observed variations in public environment concern.