缅北局势及其对中缅经济走廊建设的影响

通过系统梳理缅北局势发展历程,剖析冲突各主体的诉求,分析缅北局势对中缅经济走廊建设的具体影响,并从第三方介入构建缅军与少数民族地方武装之间双方认可的《全国全面停火协定》的视角提出应对的机制和措施。结果显示：目前,缅北局势呈现出冲突规模随时间推移持续上升的趋势,冲突从果敢爆发后向南北方向扩散并高度集中于中间区域;受地缘环境复杂和大国利益交汇影响,缅北冲突在短时间内无法消除;缅军与少数民族地方武装之间的冲突在短期内无法消除,冲突各方缺乏平等对话的平台与和谈共识,持续性冲突将是缅北的常态。缅北局势影响了中缅经济走廊建设,致使中缅经济走廊的投资项目无法有效推进,阻滞“人字形”走廊的通畅,并有损中国政府及企业在缅形象。针对缅北局势的影响,中国及其他国际组织等应认真调研和精确把握双方诉求和缅甸的局势,积极协助缅甸冲突双方、为主要政党搭建对话平台、构建平等的协商机制、促进和谈有效推进。经济走廊建设既要注重硬环境的建设,更要加强软环境的投资等,这些将是保证中缅经济走廊建设有效推进的关键。因此,以缅甸为突破口,在中国周边构建“一带一路”建设的样板,探讨落实倡议的有效路径,总结各类经验。     

A building label placement method for 3D visualizations based on candidate label evaluation and selection

Adding building labels greatly improves the recognizability of buildings and the readability of three-dimensional (3D) city scenes. However, building label placement is much more complex in 3D scenes than in two-dimensional (2D) maps. The annotation effect is influenced by the attributes of the 3D label, building visibility, and the spatial relationship between the building and viewpoint. In this context, automatically generating building labels for 3D scenes during interactions requires highly complex computations. By contrast, evaluating candidate labels and then selecting the suitable label for each building can be effectively implemented. This paper introduces an approach for labeling buildings in 3D scenes based on evaluations of label candidates. The proposed method predefines a candidate label set for each building. These candidates are then evaluated in terms of their attributes and the relationship between the labels and viewpoint at runtime. The best candidate label, or a situational alternative for each building, is then placed in order of comprehensive label priority to avoid annotation conflicts. A series of experiments demonstrate that this method effectively enhances the correlation of labels and buildings, improves interactive efficiency, and realizes a viable global label layout.     

Water scarcity problems in Israel

The demand for scarce fresh water requires Israel to cease squandering this limited resource on agriculture, at present consuming about 70% of the annual supply. Environmental pollution must cease as well, for untreated urban water effluent contaminates ground water. All Israel's 700 million cubic metres sewage water must be suitably purified to irrigate about one hundred thousand hectares. Climatically controlled greenhouses and advanced agricultural research will reduce the amount of water and land required for the cultivation of the fresh vegetables and fruit, and small proportion of the dry fodder needed for the country's consumption. Israeli agriculture's association with moral, ideological and social ideas obstructs meaningful reduction in the allocation of water to agriculture. The Zionist movement has always seen transforming land into a means of production as the index of its success. Failure in this would signify an inability to adapt to adverse environmental conditions and be a sweeping repudiation of Zionism. The protracted Israeli-Arab national conflict also affects water policy. Israeli Jewish society has always considered rural settlement, agricultural activity, as part of the substance of its national identity and power, bonding the people with the land and consolidating territorial sovereignty. Since the 1970s, capitalism, which has dominated Israeli ideology, has favoured the individual's interests over the community's. Thus agriculture is mobilized to accommodate the private struggle for the good of the farming sector against the needs of the national collective.     

特大城市“三线冲突”空间格局及影响因素

划定“三线”(生态红线、城市开发边界、基本农田保护红线)是构建城市生产、生态、生活空间格局和实现“多规合一”的关键。但在实际工作中,“三线”由不同部门依据不同准则划定,在空间上往往存在冲突。本文以武汉都市发展区为例,从图斑层面探讨“三线冲突”的类型与表征,并分别采用空间格局分析和相关分析法研究“三线冲突”的空间格局特征和区域条件对其影响。研究结果表明：①武汉都市发展区内“三线冲突”以生态—耕地冲突和生态—城市冲突为主,城市—耕地冲突面积较小;②生态—耕地、生态—城市和城市—耕地冲突热点分别集中于都市发展区边缘、都市发展区内部和城乡过渡带,呈圈层分异的特点;③区域条件的6个指标对3类“三线冲突”子类型冲突强度的影响因素各不相同。研究结论为：一是“三线冲突”强度可以用“三线冲突”强度指数(TLCI)表征;二是空间自相关分析、梯度分析、景观格局分析法可以很好地刻画“三线冲突”空间特征;三是对“三线冲突”的自然—人文驱动机制的研究有待进一步完善和深化。本文有助于从城市空间视角加深对“多规冲突”问题的理解,识别“三线冲突”的自然—人文驱动因子,为实现“多规合一”提供理论支撑。     

Norwegian aquaculture expansion and Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM): Simmering conflicts and competing claims

ICZM (Integrated Coastal Zone Management) is a decision-making process for sustainable use, development and protection of coastal marine areas and their resources, in continuous realization. Norway is currently dependent upon the commitment and motivations of the municipalities to fulfill its ICZM initiatives. These communities are lacking epistemic communities that can help prevent the simmering conflicts surrounding aquaculture expansion, as demonstrated by media data from 1984–2010. With the forthcoming harvest of the zooplankton redfeed in Norwegian and surrounding waters, the Aquaculture industry could be in a situation of expanded feed resources, which would ensure its expansion if localities are made available. This would also be in line with the Norwegian government's commitment to the expansion of this industry. A government-endorsed growth of the Aquaculture industry will add fuel to these simmering conflicts concerning the use of the eco-system of collective goods and services available along national coastline in Norway for Aquaculture purposes. The suggestions from the recently released report from the Select Committee appointed by the Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs in Norway on Effective and Sustainable Area Use in the Aquaculture Industry cab be an aid to supporting the growth of epistemic communities and a subsequent successful national ICZM implementation, thereby paving the way for a conflict-less coastal area management.     

No peace for the forest: Rapid,widespread land changes in the Andes-Amazon region following the Colombian civil war

Negative environmental impacts of violent conflict have been observed worldwide. Whether or not active global conflicts are declining in number remains hotly debated, the number of countries entering post-conflict periods is on the rise, and the impact of this transition on land cover changes remains poorly understood. In Colombia, though large-scale armed conflict has concluded, the post-conflict period represents an ongoing threat to forest conservation, putting at risk commitments to meet global conservation goals and even those stipulated in the peace accord. This paper aims to assess land cover change associated with the Colombian conflict in the Andes-Amazon region between 1988 and 2019. First, we use the Landsat archive to map land cover and characterize the spatial patterns of change at the regional level. Second, to empirically identify the effect of conflict on land cover change, we employ a difference-in-difference approach using local conflict events data. During conflict (1988–2011), land cover in the Andes-Amazon remained relatively stable, however during the post-conflict period (2012–2019), the conversion from forest to agriculture increased by 40%. We find that forest cover surrounding conflict events (1 km radius) decreased significantly, on average by ~ 19% during conflict, which accelerated to ~ 30% in the post-conflict period. Similarly, agriculture expansion is most substantial during the post-conflict period, but exclusively in municipalities with population below the 50th percentile. Landscape metrics show that in peripheral municipalities (<50th), agriculture occurs in clumped distributions during the conflict period. Meanwhile, during the post-conflict period, this expansion happens more quickly, with significantly greater agricultural patch sizes than during the conflict period. We conclude that a slow implementation of conservation governance, the emergence of illegal land markets, and illicit land uses (i.e., coca and illegal cattle ranching) may accelerate land cover change in the coming years.     

Projecting long-term armed conflict risk: An underappreciated field of inquiry?

Little research has been done on projecting long-term conflict risks. Such projections are currently neither included in the development of socioeconomic scenarios or climate change impact assessments nor part of global agenda-setting policy processes. In contrast, in other fields of inquiry, long-term projections and scenario studies are established and relevant for both strategical agenda-setting and applied policies. Although making projections of armed conflict risk in response to climate change is surrounded by uncertainty, there are good reasons to further develop such scenario-based projections. In this perspective article we discuss why quantifying implications of climate change for future armed conflict risk is inherently uncertain, but necessary for shaping sustainable future policy agendas. We argue that both quantitative and qualitative projections can have a purpose in future climate change impact assessments and put out the challenges this poses for future research.     

Conflict at sea

Naval conflict has been less important in the second half of the twentieth century than in the first. Navies have operated in support of armies or as instruments of coercive diplomacy. There has been only one true naval war. Conflict in the Falklands was typical because it was local, limited and unexpected. These are likely features in future, for total war at sea seems so pointless that it could only arise by accident, a risk increased by some naval activities in peace. But the motives and the capacities for local and limited conflict at sea are proliferating.     

Dark Times: nighttime satellite imagery as a detector of regional disparity and the geography of conflict

Satellite observations of night-time emitted lights describe a geography of the spatial distribution of resource use. Measurements of nocturnal lights enable the calculation of the total light emitted from each country of the world, and the light emitted per capita. We consider different groups of countries that share a land or maritime border and whose light per capita can be more equally/unequally distributed. A sharp difference in light per capita among neighboring countries reflects marked differences in economic welfare and in the extent of built environments. We demonstrate how this geography of nocturnal lights informs our understanding of the dynamics of conflict at the national and regional scale. We propose an index of regional disparity and test its ability to detect conflict dynamics by relating the index score with the occurrence and intensity of conflicts as classified by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research’s Conflict Barometer 2012 for the countries of the world. This method can be used to produce a global available temporal sampling of “cold spots” of disparity where conflicts are likely to occur. This will help foresee the identification and monitoring of regions of the world,which are becoming particularly unstable, assisting in the definition and execution of timely and proactive policies.