Science-based coastal management in Fiji: Two case studies from the NGO sector

The effectiveness of coastal management in developing countries is widely perceived to be inhibited by a lack of scientific data on the coastal zone. To try to fill this need for information, donors and big international non-governmental organizations are increasingly initiating large-scale, science-driven conservation programs, with the goal of creating and using management relevant transdisciplinary datasets. In Oceania, these programs are entering a context where local ecological knowledge is already informing existing community-based approaches to coastal management. This paper examines two large-scale programs in Fiji, the Marine Management Area Science initiative and the Vatu-i-Ra and Cakau Levu Reefs Seascape Project, and offers insight relevant to the planning and implementation of similar programs where local management systems are already in place. Research methods used to examine the programs included document analysis, direct observation, and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders over multiple field visits to Fiji in 2009 and 2010. Results suggest that as donors, non-governmental organizations, and partners move forward in implementing these programs, there must be active steps taken to bridge boundaries between disciplines and among knowledge systems, evaluate the added value of science for all stakeholder groups, and build opportunities for datasets to be used after donor funding ends.     

Changing relationships between Religion, the State, and Society in Russia

This paper first traces the major changes in the relationship between the (Orthodox) Church and State in the different Russian polities, using Madeley’s framework of historic mono-confessional blocs and multi-confessional belts. Second, it outlines the recent tendencies and characteristic features of church–state relations in today’s Russia. Third, using data from sociological surveys, it analyses the current dominant popular perceptions and societal attitudes towards religion and the State, including religious freedom. Being part of the historic mono-confessional Orthodox bloc, the different Russian polities produced different models of church–state relations: from a symphony of religious and political powers, through a forced nationalization of the Orthodox Church (Russian Empire from the époque of Peter the Great until revolution of 1917), and forced secularisation (during the Soviet Union), to a return of mutual support of (Orthodox) Church and State despite a formal (constitutional) separation in Putin’s Russia.     

Spatial and temporal changes in the relationship between church and state in Hungary

Hungary is located in the Carpatho–Pannonian area and has been the interface at which European Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy and Judaism have met and mixed for nearly 500 years. The Hungarian state was founded in the 10th and 11th centuries with Catholic support. This was well before the emergence of the modern Hungarian nation in the 18th and 19th centuries on the basis of a mix with Protestantism. During the latter period, Hungarians were followers of several confessions. In spite of this, the Catholic Church generally managed to retain its politically dominant position until 1946, and the elimination of kingdom. In 1949, the Hungarian state and the churches were officially separated. This was followed by an era of atheist, anticlerical policy by the communist totalitarian regime until 1989. Since then state–church relations have largely conformed to European norms and were based on a division of tasks and cooperation. Churches in Hungary played an important role in maintaining civil society and ideas of national consciousness during the totalitarian communist regime. That is why religious conviction and ecclesiastic affairs have a broader political context here than in the west. In the second half of the 20th century, secularisation accelerated by state support was curbed and reversed due to a religious revival, which took place mainly in rural areas following the change in political regime. The scale of religious pluralism was related to the arrival of people who belonged to non-traditional confessions.     

Satellite imagery activism: Sharpening the focus on tropical deforestation

Since the first land remote sensing satellite was launched in the early 1970s, government agencies, private companies and research institutions have used satellite imagery data for a growing range of civil and commercial applications focused on natural resource management and exploitation, and environmental monitoring. The global diffusion of remote sensing expertize, along with growing public access to satellite images, has created conditions for improving levels of global transparency. One aspect of this global transparency is the advent of new users of imagery data – or 'imagery activists'– including, among others, issue-oriented nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), media groups, multinational organizations and academic researchers who now are able to access satellite imagery in order to draw domestic and international attention to particular public policy concerns. This paper broadly surveys the contemporary phenomenon of satellite imagery activism and outlines the main challenges facing imagery activists, particularly in relation to deforestation and other forest monitoring issues.     

Oil Extraction and Benefit Sharing in an Illiberal Context: The Nenets and Komi-Izhemtsi Indigenous Peoples in the Russian Arctic

ABSTRACT

How can indigenous communities in illiberal regimes benefit from oil production? This paper compares the experience of two indigenous peoples in the Russian Arctic, the Nenets and the Komi-Izhemtsi, in their quest for environmental protection and the development of benefit-sharing arrangements with Lukoil, a Russian oil company. The Nenets people, recognized by the Russian state as indigenous, are marginalized political actors who identified a route to receiving compensation for loss of land and damage to the environment as well as economic benefits under the auspices of Russian law and Lukoil’s corporate policies. In contrast, the Komi-Izhemtsi, despite indigenous status in global institutions including the United Nations and the Arctic Council, are unrecognized as indigenous domestically and initially received no compensation. Their path to benefit sharing was more challenging as they partnered with local nongovernmental organizations and global environmentalists to pressure Lukoil to sign a benefit-sharing agreement. Ultimately, the comparison illustrates how transnational partnerships can empower indigenous people to gain benefits from natural resource exploitation even in illiberal political systems.     

Configuring growth coalitions among the projects of urban aggrandizement in Kunming,Southwest China

In this paper, we examine two urban projects in Kunming, Southwest China, one a massive scheme to build a new city center on rural land outside the city, and the other, an act of urban restructuring involving the rebuilding of an old Hui (Muslim) neighborhood in the old city center. We analyze the coalition of forces configured to undertake these large-scale projects; we underline the role of specially formed city-building organizations and the support provided by the state-owned institutions that dominate the city’s political economy; and we draw attention to the caution with which the city government handled resistance to urban restructuring among Hui residents. We argue that urban growth projects in inland cities like Kunming are marked by certain features that distinguish them from similar projects in Eastern Chinese cities but maintain that nonetheless the drive for profit maximization at the expense of residents is unchanged.     

Empowering NGOs? Long-term effects of ecological and institutional change on regional fisheries management organizations

The participation of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) in regional fisheries management organizations has inspired optimism among many observers and researchers about increasing the effectiveness of these regional organizations in managing highly migratory and straddling fish stocks sustainably. Others claim that the attendance of ENGOs in meetings of regional fisheries management organizations as accredited observers or as part of member state or cooperating non-member state delegations, could make decision-making complex, long, and inefficient. More generally, NGO participation has attracted broad scholarly interest in the study of interest groups and transnational advocacy in political science. Yet, we know little about the determinants of ENGO participation in meetings of regional fisheries management organizations in the first place. To fill this gap, this article develops a theoretical framework conceptualizing ENGO participation and developing expectations about how ecological and institutional change shapes ENGO participation. The framework deals with structural determinants of ENGO participation, as existing literature primarily has been preoccupied with the study of actor-specific explanations of specific NGOs’ impact in specific political processes. By contrast, we examine how ecological change – such as target fish stock health and biomass status – and institutional change – such as financial resources, membership composition of regional fisheries management organizations and participation by other non-state actors, such as experts and fishing industry representatives – shape ENGO participation. We empirically explore this framework in the context of seven regional fisheries management organizations. A dataset comprising yearly fish stock-level data on participation, institutional, and ecological factors, for 1980–2014, was compiled for our quantitative inquiry into the determinants of ENGO participation. We find robust evidence that institutional change shapes ENGO participation, but not ecological factors related to target fish stock health. We discuss our findings against the backdrop of ongoing debates about NGOs in political science, and spell out broader implications for future research on NGOs in regional fisheries management organizations.     

东南亚恐怖主义的时空演进及其网络关系

以全球恐怖主义数据库（GTD）的研究数据为基础,运用地学空间统计分析方法和社会网络分析方法,对2000－2018年东南亚发生的恐怖主义事件进行时空演变特征分析及其参与组织的社会网络关联解析,得出以下结论：1）东南亚恐怖主义发展态势呈现显著的阶段性波动增长,在空间上表现为明显的集聚性,由2000－2013年的两极集聚中心转变为2014－2018年的三级集聚中心。2）东南亚恐怖主义组织众多,恐怖组织类型复杂,各恐怖组织及独狼型恐怖主义之间通过情报、资源及人员交流等方式进行联系,形成了一个巨大的跨地区恐怖组织网络;以伊斯兰祈祷团（JI）为代表的东南亚恐怖组织在上个世纪90年代利用域外组织的支持建立了一个横跨多国、分工明确的4M活动网络,并利用此活动网络进行资金筹集、人员培训、策划活动等。3）东南亚恐怖主义迅速发展有其深层次原因,既有地区内部社会文化、政治环境和经济发展的影响,又有区域外恐怖主义势力的干预。     

The impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on a network of 276 international organizations

Global sustainability governance is marked by a highly fragmented system of distinct clusters of international organizations, along with states and other actors. Enhancing inter-organizational coordination and cooperation is thus often recognized as an important reform challenge in global sustainability governance. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by the United Nations in 2015, thus explicitly aim at advancing policy coherence and institutional integration among the myriad international institutions. Yet, have these goals been effective in this regard? We assess here the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on the network structure of 276 international organizations in the period 2012–2019, that is, four years before and four years after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals. The network structure was approximated by analyzing data from the websites of these 276 international organizations that were joined by more than 1.5 million hyperlinks, which we collected using a custom-made web crawler. Our findings are contrary to what is widely expected from the Sustainable Development Goals: we find that fragmentation has in fact increased after the Sustainable Development Goals came into effect. In addition, silos are increasing around the 17 SDGs as well as around the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.