From modelling theory to policy: lessons from the LCS project

The Low-Carbon Society (LCS) research project (Strachan et al., 2008) is to be congratulated for providing a rich, useful source of models to inform and precipitate discussion of policy options for moving towards a low-carbon society. This commentary explores additional considerations that warrant inclusion in any policy discussion: the feasibility of political will and leadership, the limitations of technical feasibility, and clarity about what ‘the price of carbon’ means. Difficulties exist with establishing carbon prices due to differences in energy prices between countries and the distinction between baseline (existing policies) and additional parts. An alternative may be to place more emphasis on the energy price for mitigation, along with other indicators (energy efficiency, carbon intensity, renewable power diffusion) for comparison. A policy is proposed, based on the energy price combined with an emphasis on accelerating technological innovation and overcoming barriers to the adoption of energy efficiency measures.     

The UK Climate Change Programme and communication with local authorities

Drawing on results of a 2003 survey of environmental officers in every Local Authority (LA) in England and Wales, this paper assesses the reception and response of local government to the information being provided through the UK Climate Change Programme. Over three quarters of respondents (n=184) felt they did not have access to the best information about the impacts of climate change on their areas. Although up-to-date information is freely available from a number of official Government sources, those official sources are not consulted as consistently as the media or as intensively as the internet, despite being consistently regarded as much more accurate, credible, and appropriate to LA needs. We interpret this apparent contradiction between LA officer confidence in official sources and their relatively infrequent use as a consequence, first, of technical–cognitive and practical–temporal difficulties accessing and understanding official sources of climate change information and, second, of concerns about the practical relevance of that information for the administrative functions of local government and thus for any meaningful response by LAs to climate change. Our survey recorded considerable levels of stress, cynicism, and futility among LA officials that not only complicate communication efforts but also call into question the central assumption of the UK Climate Change Programme that simply making more locally specific information about climate change impacts available will motivate appropriate action.     

基于约束最小二乘与信赖域的储层参数反演方法

基于包体岩石物理模型的储层参数地震反演方法面临数学形式复杂、多解性强、适应性差、涉及迭代运算等问题,本文提出一种基于约束最小二乘与信赖域的储层参数地震反演方法.该方法基于储层参数与弹性参数关联岩石物理模型,使用最小二乘方法构建目标函数和信赖域约束全局寻优求解,有效降低了地震反演多解性,极大提高了收敛速度.特别是通过在最小二乘求解中引入垂向约束,有效提高反演结果的抗噪声能力.经过模型测试和实际资料的应用,验证了方法的可行性和适用性.

     

Risk and trust in the cultural industries

Preliminary claims have been made that working practices within cultural industries such as fashion, music, design and the night time economy may differ from Fordist or modernist arrangements. Cultural firms are often imagined to be more innovative, information-rich, dynamic, flexible, non-hierarchical and dependent on local clusters and networks than their Fordist counterparts (Lash and Urry, 1994). As their impact and significance increase, understanding how creative and cultural industries actually work is of high priority. This paper presents preliminary findings from an on-going ESRC funded study of cultural Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) within Manchester, England. Drawing on one element of the project, this paper considers the significance of risk and the importance of social trust for the cultural entrepreneur. Following a discussion of Beck’s development of risk as an analytical concept, and its intersection with Giddens’ notion of ‘active trust’, the paper examines how risk and trust are defined, experienced and negotiated by entrepreneurs in Manchester’s cultural industries. It is suggested that senses of risk are constitutive and often pivotal to the whole economic and social basis of cultural entrepreneurship – risk being central to choices made not only in business but in the lifeworld more generally. The paper then investigates the importance of trust for facilitating as well as countering or offsetting risk. Empirical evidence is presented to show how risk and trust co-relate and interact as constitutive elements within a wider set of shifting relationships between work, leisure and lifestyle in the ‘creative city’.     

Mucky carrots and other proxies: Problematising the knowledge-fix for sustainable and ethical consumption

This paper uses evidence from focus groups in England to consider how consumers think about and, more importantly, distinguish foods by both primary and secondary qualities, using both their own judgement but also advice produced by various organisations acting as ‘knowledge intermediaries’, such as independent certification bodies. We thus consider the ‘sorting out’ that consumers do with food, particularly in developing typologies of ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’, and the cues on which they base these judgements, from the material immediacy of ‘mucky carrots’ to the abstract remoteness of organic certification. In particular, we problematise the ‘knowledge-fix’ that underlies attempts to provide knowledge to promote more sustainable and ethical consumption. This raises problems of how consumers give assurance schemes meaning, how ethical and sustainable schemes are subject to re-fetishization and how consumers tend towards increasing scepticism and distrust of such claims, thus making a ‘politics of reconnection’ far from easy.     

Social capital,trust, and adaptation to climate change: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

Climate change is expected to have particularly severe effects on poor agrarian populations. Rural households in developing countries adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change both individually and collectively. Empirical research has shown that access to capital—financial, human, physical, and social—is critical for building resilience and fostering adaptation to environmental stresses. Little attention, however, has been paid to how social capital generally might facilitate adaptation through trust and cooperation, particularly among rural households and communities. This paper addresses the question of how social capital affects adaptation to climate change by rural households by focusing on the relationship of household and collective adaptation behaviors. A mixed-methods approach allows us to better account for the complexity of social institutions—at the household, community, and government levels—which drive climate adaptation outcomes. We use data from interviews, household surveys, and field experiments conducted in 20 communities with 400 households in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Our results suggest that qualitative measures of trust predict contributions to public goods, a result that is consistent with the theorized role of social capital in collective action. Yet qualitative trust is negatively related to private household-level adaptation behaviors, which raises the possibility that social capital may, paradoxically, be detrimental to private adaptation. Policymakers should account for the potential difference in public and private adaptation behaviors in relation to trust and social capital when designing interventions for climate adaptation.     

龙门山前带中侏罗统近源冲积体系砂体展布与叠置模式

川西坳陷龙门山前带在中侏罗统沙溪庙组沉积时期,发育一套以冲积扇-辫状河三角洲为主的近源冲积体系。基于 高分辨率层序地层学理论,通过对野外露头、岩心、分析化验、地球物理和钻井资料的综合分析,阐明发育在山前带的近 源冲积体系的砂体成因类型,总结砂体垂向叠置关系和平面分布规律,建立近源冲积体系砂体叠置模式。结果表明,河道 和席化滩坝是研究区内主要的砂体成因类型,其中河道较为发育;物源和湖平面升降是影响砂体展布的重要因素,物源控 制河道砂体的展布,湖平面升降控制滩坝砂体的展布和河道砂体的质量;砂体叠置模式可以分为4种,分别是超低可容空 间叠置河道砂砾岩体、低可容空间叠置河道砂体、高可容空间叠置河道砂体和高可容空间河道叠置席化滩坝砂体。     

Non-sectarian scenario experiments in socio-ecological knowledge building for multi-use marine environments: Insights from New Zealand's Marine Futures project

The challenges of managing marine ecosystems for multiple users, while well recognised, has not led to clear strategies, principles or practice. The paper uses novel workshop based thought-experiments to address these concerns. These took the form of trans-disciplinary Non-Sectarian Scenario Experiments (NSSE), involving participants who agreed to put aside their disciplinary interests and commercial and institutional obligations. The NSSE form of co-production of knowledge is a distinctive addition to the participatory and scenario literatures in marine resource management (MRM). Set in the context of resource use conflicts in New Zealand, the workshops assembled diverse participants in the marine economy to co-develop and co-explore the making of socio-ecological knowledge and identify capability required for a new generation of multi-use oriented resource management. The thought-experiments assumed that non-sectarian navigation of scenarios will resource a step-change in marine management by facilitating new connections, relationships, and understandings of potential marine futures. Two questions guided workshop interactions: what science needs spring from pursuing imaginable possibilities and directions in a field of scenarios, and what kinds of institutions would aid the generation of science knowledge, and it application to policy and management solutions. The effectiveness of the thought- experiments helped identify ways of dealing with core problems in multi-use marine management, such as the urgent need to cope with ecological and socio-economic surprise, and define and address cumulative impacts. Discussion focuses on how the workshops offered fresh perspectives and insights into a number of challenges. These challenges include building relations of trust and collective organisation, showing the importance of values-means-ends pathways, developing facilitative legislation to enable initiatives, and the utility of the NSSEs in informing new governance and management directions in multi-use marine environments.     

Integrated,Regional, Natural Resource and Environmental Planning and the Natural Heritage Trust Phase 2: a case study of the Northern Agricultural Catchments Council,Western Australia

Since 2002, the Australian Natural Heritage Trust Phase 2 (NHT2) has required community groups seeking funds for natural resource management projects to have developed nationally accredited regional strategies and investment plans. This case study reports on the progress of one such regional (and sub-regional) group, examining in particular the perceptions of the community group members and other stakeholders of the overall process. Through interviews, participant observation and document analysis in 2004–05, the process of developing a regional strategy and an investment plan by the Northern Agricultural Catchments Council in Western Australia, and the involvement of regional stakeholders in the process, were examined. While the concept of regional-scale management was perceived favourably by community interviewees, their concerns related to increasing bureaucracy, the need for further local involvement, more on-ground action instead of further planning, the relevance of the regional Council to local communities, and the motives of Council members. Communication with regional stakeholders was extensive in preparing the regional strategy, but fell short during the development of the investment plan. The success of the regional planning process will be evidenced by whether members of the regional community actively implement regional priorities, and whether long-term funding and support from the State and Australian governments are provided.     

Engaging the public in climate change-related pro-environmental behaviors to protect coral reefs: The role of public trust in the management agency

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role that stakeholder trust in a management agency, as a source of information about climate change, plays in relationships among antecedents to climate change-related pro-environmental behavior. Data collected from a survey of Australian residents living adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park revealed that lower intensities of institutional trust were associated with a less biocentric worldview, a lower reported awareness of consequences of the impacts of climate change, and a lower sense of obligation to adopt pro-environmental behaviors. Findings suggest that managers should attempt to foster the trust their stakeholders have in their agency because when trust increases, stakeholders develop stronger relationships among the antecedents of pro-environmental behavior.