Exploring the health context: A qualitative study of local heat and climate change adaptation in Japan

Extreme temperature events and global climatic changes may put human health at risk. Urban centers are particularly vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change. Japan is a densely populated and highly urbanized island frequently exposed to natural hazards and heat episodes. Japanese governments and practitioners design heat adaptation strategies to protect health and reduce risks. Are these strategies implemented at the local level? How do policymakers and researchers perceive heat and climate change adaptation measures? How are these strategies evaluated? In short: what is happening in Japan “on the ground”? This critical review briefly outlines heat adaptation solutions and challenges from three Japanese prefectures. It draws attention to implementation and evaluation barriers, and highlights creative approaches to adaptation, such as involving civil society volunteers.     

江苏省海洋经济与区域经济耦合协调性研究

伴随着海洋资源开发和海洋科技进步,海洋产业在国民经济中扮演着日益重要的角色,海洋经济与区域经济的协调发展成为研究热点。江苏省是沿海地区经济发展强省,但其海洋经济发展优势并不突出,为了对其海洋经济与区域经济的耦合协调发展状态及耦合发展的制约因素进行研究,文章在探析海洋经济系统与区域经济系统耦合发展机理的基础上,借鉴物理学耦合度函数构建了海洋经济与区域经济的耦合协调度模型,并对2006~2012年江苏及其他沿海省市海洋经济与区域经济的耦合协调度进行了评价。结果表明2006~2012年间,江苏省海洋经济与区域经济的耦合协调度不断提高,逐步迈入了磨合发展的关键期,但海洋产业发展模式落后和海陆互动性弱等因素导致其与沿海其他省市相比仍有较大差距。本研究能够为江苏海洋经济发展提供科学建议。     

Land-use and sustainability under intersecting global change and domestic policy scenarios: Trajectories for Australia to 2050

Understanding potential future influence of environmental, economic, and social drivers on land-use and sustainability is critical for guiding strategic decisions that can help nations adapt to change, anticipate opportunities, and cope with surprises. Using the Land-Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model, we undertook a comprehensive, detailed, integrated, and quantitative scenario analysis of land-use and sustainability for Australia’s agricultural land from 2013–2050, under interacting global change and domestic policies, and considering key uncertainties. We assessed land use competition between multiple land-uses and assessed the sustainability of economic returns and ecosystem services at high spatial (1.1 km grid cells) and temporal (annual) resolution. We found substantial potential for land-use transition from agriculture to carbon plantings, environmental plantings, and biofuels cropping under certain scenarios, with impacts on the sustainability of economic returns and ecosystem services including food/fibre production, emissions abatement, water resource use, biodiversity services, and energy production. However, the type, magnitude, timing, and location of land-use responses and their impacts were highly dependent on scenario parameter assumptions including global outlook and emissions abatement effort, domestic land-use policy settings, land-use change adoption behaviour, productivity growth, and capacity constraints. With strong global abatement incentives complemented by biodiversity-focussed domestic land-use policy, land-use responses can substantially increase and diversify economic returns to land and produce a much wider range of ecosystem services such as emissions abatement, biodiversity, and energy, without major impacts on agricultural production. However, better governance is needed for managing potentially significant water resource impacts. The results have wide-ranging implications for land-use and sustainability policy and governance at global and domestic scales and can inform strategic thinking and decision-making about land-use and sustainability in Australia. A comprehensive and freely available 26 GB data pack (http://doi.org/10.4225/08/5604A2E8A00CC) provides a unique resource for further research. As similarly nuanced transformational change is also possible elsewhere, our template for comprehensive, integrated, quantitative, and high resolution scenario analysis can support other nations in strategic thinking and decision-making to prepare for an uncertain future.     

区域创新系统与产业转型耦合协调度分析——以铜陵市为例

从人地系统的视角考察区域创新系统与资源型城市转型之间的内涵关系,揭示二者之间相互耦合协调的作用机制。通过构建评价指标体系,采用熵值赋权法并运用耦合协调度模型对2008~2013年铜陵市区域创新系统与资源型城市转型发展指数、耦合协调度进行测度、评价和分析。研究表明,在产业转型政策实施和区域创新系统建设条件下,铜陵市区域创新系统与资源型城市转型指数均呈增长趋势;二者的耦合协调度由低度水平跨越式上升至高度水平,呈现非线性的演变特征。并根据研究结论,提出了相关建议。     

人口城镇化与土地城镇化协调性测度及优化——以南昌市为例

人口与土地是城镇化的重要组成部分,分析二者之间状态演化对促进城市健康发展具有重要意义。在界定人口城镇化与土地城镇化二者概念基础上,基于人口构成、人口素质、人口生活、城镇规模、城镇投入、城镇产出等构建评价指标体系,并通过耦合协调模型对省会型城市南昌市2002~2011年两者之间的协调关系进行测度和分析,结果表明：① 人口城镇化指数与土地城镇化指数呈波动变化并持续上涨,城镇发展由土地滞后型向人口滞后型转变;② 人口城镇化与土地城镇化的协调状态由失调衰退区向过渡协调区演进,发展类型则由高度不协调状态向勉强协调状态过渡。在此基础上分析了南昌市人口城镇化速度滞后于土地城镇化速度的原因,指出两者关系主要受到城市发展外在制度与内在基础的共同作用,并认为构建人口与土地城镇化双重优化路径是协调人口城镇化与土地城镇化同步发展的有效途径。     

北京市基础设施与经济社会发展关系

基础设施对城市与区域经济社会发展具有正的溢出效应。本文以北京市为例,分别测度了北京市基础设施对经济增长的贡献率,基础设施部门对其他经济部门的关联关系,以及基础设施与经济社会发展水平的协调度。研究发现：①1978-2014年,北京市基础设施对经济增长的平均贡献率为34.9%,其中“七五”“八五”和“九五”时期基础设施建设提速,其贡献率高达45%左右;从各基础设施对GDP的狭义贡献度来看,邮电基础设施所创造的GDP最高,占到全市GDP的9%以上,往下依次为交通、能源和水务部门;②交通和能源部门的感应度系数较高,说明其他经济部门的增长将增加对该基础设施部门的需求,进而带动后者的增长,同时也意味着该基础设施部门易对经济发展产生制约作用,需要适度超前建设;③北京市基础设施发展水平相对滞后于经济社会发展,尤其是水务基础设施,虽然在波动中有所改善,但仍然是基础设施发展的短板,与经济社会的协调发展度最低。     

Closing the governance gaps in the water-energy-food nexus: Insights from integrative governance

The water-energy-food nexus has become a popular concept in environmental change research and policy debates. Proponents suggest that a nexus approach promotes policy coherence through identifying optimal policy mixes and governance arrangements across the water, energy and food sectors. Although the nexus literature identifies some barriers to achieving coherence it does not clearly explain why the barriers are present, what influences them, and how they can be acted upon. These gaps disconnect the nexus literature from the governance processes it ultimately seeks to influence. This paper examines how the integrative environmental governance literature can help to close these gaps. It extracts insights from seven streams of research literature and discusses their relevance for the nexus literature. We argue that connecting the nexus to decision-making processes requires: i) rethinking the boundaries of nexus analysis vis-à-vis other sectors and levels; ii) elaboration of shared principles that can guide decision-making towards policy coherence − or an appropriate form of fragmentation − in different contexts; iii) viewing policy coherence as a continuous process of changing values and perception rather than as an outcome.     

Seizing policy windows: Policy Influence of climate advocacy coalitions in Brazil,China, and India, 2000–2015

What drives the development of climate policy? Brazil, China, and India have all changed their climate policies since 2000, and single-case analyses of climate policymaking have found that all three countries have had climate coalitions working to promote climate policies. To what extent have such advocacy coalitions been able to influence national policies for climate-change mitigation, and what can explain this? Employing a new approach that combines the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) with insights from comparative environmental politics and the literature on policy windows, this paper identifies why external parameters like political economy and institutional structures are crucial for explaining the climate advocacy coalitions’ ability to seize policy windows and influence policy development. We find that the coalitions adjust their policy strategies to the influence-opportunity structures in each political context—resulting in confrontation in Brazil, cooperation in China, and a complementary role in India.     

Man and Nature: George Perkins Marsh and Alexander Von Humboldt

George Perkins Marsh's book Man and Nature was the first work of natural history to fundamentally influence American politics. This paper establishes the powerful impact that Alexander von Humboldt's writings had on Marsh. Marsh took ideas that Humboldt introduced across his books and synthesized them into a single powerful argument regarding the dangers of deforestation. These warnings eventually led to policies that sought to more carefully manage forestland, plant trees, and spawn the 20^th century conservation movement.     

“Contested policy mobility”: the creative transformation and temporary use of brownfields in Redtory,Guangzhou

This article argues that the changing distribution of power between coalitions of stakeholders challenges typical top-down dynamics of policy mobility, and causes contestations that in turn lead to the multi-scalar co-construction of policy- and place-making in China. When property-led redevelopment, commandeered by the coalition between government and investors, could no longer dominate the renewal of brownfield sites, a nationally endorsed mobile policy of creative transformation led China’s renewal of these areas into a new phase of “contested policy mobility”. Three kinds of contestations have been observed in Redtory, Guangzhou. First, in adopting the alternative mobile policy of using brownfields temporarily before permanent redevelopment, local governments were aiming to retain control of development rights throughout a nationally mandated urban economic “creative transformation” process. Second, emerging new interest groups from within the public sphere were able to resist subsequent redevelopment plans, thereby challenging the mobile policy’s top-down momentum. Finally, divisive interests within the coalition ultimately weakened their power when contesting the government and investors.