Agreement,significance, and understandings of historical responsibility in climate change negotiations

For over 20 years, Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have struggled with the normative significance of history for the differentiation of responsibilities. Negotiations on ‘historical responsibility’ have been marked by considerable conflict between developed and developing countries. However, in 2010, the Parties acknowledged the concept in a consensus decision. This article analyses UN Climate Change Conference delegates' agreement with the decision, whether it reconciled conflict between interpretations of historical responsibility, and the significance that delegates ascribe to the decision for future agreements. The decision has not eliminated conflict between different interpretations. Delegates who understand historical responsibility as linking countries' historical contributions to climate change to their responsibilities to act agree more with the decision and foresee it having a stronger influence on future agreements than do those viewing the concept in more conceptual terms. The decision marks the start of negotiations concerning how rather than whether historical responsibility should guide operative text. This article demonstrates that (1) the divergent interpretations pose clear challenges for a necessary but demanding agreement on operationalization, and (2) focusing on an ambiguous version of proportionality between contribution to change and responsibility can become a first step for convergence between divergent positions.     

Differentiating (historic) responsibilities for climate change

Following the conclusion of the official work of the Ad Hoc Group for the Modelling and Assessment of Contributions to Climate Change (MATCH), this article considers the politically more sensitive aspect of the Brazilian proposal, namely the issue of differentiating (historic) responsibility for, and not merely (causal) contribution to climate change. Its aim is (1) to highlight the fact that, while related, the two issues (‘contribution to’ and ‘responsibility for’) are fundamentally different and should not be confused, and (2) to propose a methodology for calculating shares of responsibility as opposed to the shares in causal contribution arrived at through the MATCH results. Two conceptions of responsibility (‘strict’ or ‘limited’) are applied in order to operationalize the notion of ‘respective capabilities’ given in Article 3.1 of the UNFCCC. The key message resulting from the calculations is that causal contribution—while an important indicator of (environmental) relevance to the problem—must not be confused with the moral responsibility for it. The rather large difference between the responsibilities at the two extremes of the scale under both conceptions gives pause for thought as to what sorts of burdens can justly be demanded in any application of the UNFCCC principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, whether in the context of the Brazilian proposal or beyond.     

Environmental justice in coastal systems: Perspectives from communities confronting change

Life in the Pacific is characterised by interconnected, fast and slow socio-ecological change. These changes inevitably involve navigating questions of justice, as they shift who benefits from, owns, and governs resources, and whose claims and rights are recognized. Thus, greater understanding of perceptions of environmental justice within communities will be crucial to support fair adaptation. We contend that an environmental justice approach offers a theoretical foundation to help illuminate key concerns and trade-offs as communities navigate global change. Here, we apply an empirical environmental justice lens to the use and customary management of coastal resources in Papua New Guinea. Through two case studies, we examine perceptions of distributional, procedural and recognitional justice. We find similarities and differences. There were common concerns about the injustice of unequal fishing pressure and destructive methods, but in one case, concerns about people’s material needs overrode concerns about non-compliance and unequal costs. In the other case, deliberative decision-making served as a platform for not only negotiating and re-defining the distribution of costs and benefits, but also airing grievances, thereby strengthening recognition of different people’s values and concerns. In addition, we find that recognitional aspects of justice, such as respect, can confer or undermine the legitimacy of procedures for governing resources and thus making fair decisions about distribution. The heterogeneity of justice criteria in our cases emphasizes the need to elicit and understand plural justice perceptions in different contexts.     

Using Dasymetric Mapping to Identify Communities at Risk from Hazardous Waste Generation in San Antonio,Texas

The primary objective of this study is to examine if minorities, the poor, and non-homeowners have a higher potential for exposure than the general population to large-quantity hazardous waste generation in Bexar County, Texas. Results indicate that this is indeed the case: people living near the generators are more often Black non-Hispanic or Hispanic, and more likely to live below the poverty level and not own their own home. Although previous studies conducted in the United States have used states, counties, zip codes, or census tracts as the unit of spatial analysis, we use dasymetric mapping to create population maps at a resolution of 30 m. This allows for the reconfiguration of the areal aggregations chosen for the analysis while preserving its findings. It also reduces, if not eliminates, the effects of the Modifiable Area Unit Problem (MAUP) on the results.     

Proximity and power within investment relationships: The case of the UK private equity industry

The role of power in economic activity has been researched across the social sciences but there has been little engagement with the spatialities of power relations. This paper thus draws on a recent reinvigorated interest in power within economic geography to develop an approach for understanding how the spatiality of power relations in economic practices are constituted through different forms of proximity. It argues that proximity needs to be conceptualised as multi-dimensional including physical, cultural, virtual and organizational proximity between firms and actors. It further contends that the development of different forms of proximity shape the agency of empowered actors in industry clusters and regional economies. This general proposition is explored by presenting research into a case study: the UK-based private equity industry. The research focuses on the nature, role and development of different forms of proximity between private equity firms and the investee firms that are the subject of investments.     

中国八个地区的消费需求分析

本文应用经济学的消费需求分析模式,分析了我国８个代表地区的消费需求特性,并讨论了其对可持续发展的意义。     

基于三层级股权关系的长三角城市网络节点地位研究

如何更为精准地刻画流空间视角下城市网络节点地位,是城市网络研究的关注重点之一。本文以长三角地区县级空间单元为研究区域,采用全行业500强上市公司的“母-子-孙”三层级股权关系数据,构建有向加权网络来刻画长三角地区城市间投资联系水平;通过转变中心性与转变控制力对节点城市的网络地位进行分类;最后采用空间计量模型对长三角城市网络节点地位的影响因素进行测算和分析。研究发现：① 长三角城市网络节点地位呈现出“等级+网络”的特征。城市在网络中依旧呈等级分布;然而部分中小城市在网络中地位具有了上升通道,往往可利用资源禀赋使得其获得更高的网络地位,网络结构具有扁平化特征。② 长三角城市网络节点地位特征并没有完全遵循转变中心性与转变控制力的“高-高”“中-中”和“低-低”的匹配关系,而存在“高-中（低）”“中-高（低）”或“低-高（中）”的非匹配关系。③ 城市经济发展水平、人力资本、创新活力、产业结构、城市经营环境和公共服务设施配套情况等会对城市网络地位产生显著的影响。     

私募股权投资的估值问题研究进展

阐述了私募股权投资的估值问题.首先简要介绍了投资组合问题的发展历史与研究成果.接着较为详细地论述了私募股权投资的估值问题的研究现状,包括有限合伙人的投资组合选择,以及对投资企业的价值评估体系和评估方法的研究,并给出了所要研究的模型,即含有未支撑风险的私募股权投资模型.最后给出所要研究模型在通胀环境、Knight不确定环境下以及跳扩散环境下的拓展框架.     

Equity in the distribution of urban environmental amenities: the case of Washington,D.C.

This study examines equity issues in access to urban environmental amenities using Washington, D.C. as a case study. The amenities that are the focus of this study, urban trees and urban parks, have a range of social and health benefits for city dwellers, and Washington, D.C. is a major city with a large, diverse population and long-standing geographic divisions by race and class. Using spatial regression techniques, the study examines disparities in access to these amenities by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status at citywide and sub-city scales. Mixed evidence is found for disparities in access across amenities and across scales. The results emphasize the need for studies of access to urban environmental amenities to pay closer attention to the differences between amenities and to issues of scale.     

The benefits of a high-resolution analysis of transit accessibility

Accessibility is an important consideration in sustainable mobility policies, particularly for transit users. Measures suggested in the literature are based on coarse aggregate spatial resolution of traffic analysis zones that is sufficient for managing car travels only. To reflect a human door-to-door travel, transit accessibility demands an explicit view of the location of origin, transit stops and destination, as well as of the temporal fit between transit lines timetable and traveler’s needs. We thus estimate transit accessibility based on mode-specific travel times and corresponding paths, including walking and waiting, at the resolution of individual buildings and stops. Car accessibility is estimated at a high resolution too. A novel representation of transit network as a graph is proposed. This representation includes all modal components of a transit travel – walking, waiting at a stop, transit ride, transfers between lines, thus enabling unified view of a travel, regardless of mode. The use of modern high-performance graph database allows construction of high-resolution accessibility maps for an entire metropolitan area with its 100–200 K buildings. The application is tested and applied in a case study involving the evaluation of the 2011 bus line reform in the city of Tel Aviv. Specifically, we demonstrate that while the reform increased the average accessibility for the entire city the increase was not uniform with different areas of the city experiencing different absolute accessibility by transit and relative accessibility in comparison to car travel. The bus reform did in fact benefit travelers that experienced low relative accessibility, but the benefits are mainly accruing to longer trips. Our approach and computational methods can be employed for directly investigating the impacts of transportation infrastructure investments.