Historical paths to current unrest: Extending the temporal lens in analysing geographies of agrarian change and conflict

The proliferation of soybean monoculture and its expansion into previously marginal territories in Argentina have resulted in land conflicts and attacks on peasant communities that possess land without having secured tenure. However, the rapid and intensive modernisation and industrialisation of agriculture production has had differentiated effect on different territories in Argentina. This article posit that understanding these differences requires an extended temporal analysis. While social research tends to focus on the present or recent past, this paper joins calls for greater attention to historical context and processes when examining current social dynamics and geographies. Focusing on the province of Santiago del Estero in Northwest Argentina, this paper provides a particular temporal-thematic approach for conducting such a historical path analysis, which here focuses on the province’s changing agrarian structures and political shifts that resulted in a complex, irregular and subsequently unstable land tenure system.     

采用弯曲进行道路化简冲突避免的方法

针对道路化简后可能导致要素间空间关系前后不一致的问题,提出了一种采用弯曲进行道路化简冲突避免的方法。首先,以弯曲为单元分析道路化简前后弯曲的形态变化规律,对化简过程产生的要素间空间冲突类型进行了归纳和总结;其次,基于道路弯曲与要素之间的空间关系,提出了相应的冲突判别规则;最后,利用弯曲化简的可控性和弯曲组的间接化简策略实现对化简冲突的避免。试验表明,该方法能有效地识别和避免道路化简产生的空间冲突,确保化简前后道路与其他要素空间关系的一致性。     

Transforming local natural resource conflicts to cooperation in a changing climate: Bangladesh and Nepal lessons

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, climate change impact discourse has highlighted potential for large scale violent conflicts. However, the role of climate stresses on local conflicts over natural resources, the role of policies and adaptation in these conflicts, and opportunities to enhance cooperation have been neglected. These gaps are addressed in this paper using evidence from participatory action research on 79 cases of local collective action over natural resources that experience conflicts in Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate trends and stresses contributed to just under half of these conflict cases. Nine factors that enable greater cooperation and transformation of conflict are identified. Participatory dialogue and negotiation processes, while not sufficient, changed understanding, attitudes and positions of actors. Many of the communities innovated physical measures to overcome natural resource constraints, underlying conflict, and/or institutional reforms. These changes were informed by improving understanding of resource limitations and indigenous knowledge. Learning networks among community organizations encouraged collective action by sharing successes and creating peer pressure. Incentives for cooperation were important. For example, when community organizations formally permitted excluded traditional resource users to access resources, those actors complied with rules and paid towards management costs. However, elites were able to use policy gaps to capture resources with changed characteristics due to climate change. In most of the cases where conflict persisted, power, policy and institutional barriers prevented community-based organizations from taking up potential adaptations and innovations. Policy frameworks recognizing collective action and supporting flexible innovation in governance and adaptation would enable wider transformation of natural resource conflicts into cooperation.

Key policy insights

• Climate stresses, policy gaps and interventions can all worsen local natural resource conflicts.

• Sectoral knowledge and technical approaches to adaptation are open to elite capture and can foster conflicts.

• Many local natural resource conflicts can be resolved but this requires an enabling environment for participatory dialogue, external facilitation, flexible responses to context, and recognition of disadvantaged stakeholder interests.

• Transforming conflict to greater cooperation mostly involves social and institutional changes, so adaptation policies should focus less on physical works and more on enabling factors such as negotiation, local institutions, knowledge, and incentives.

     

The cooperative and conflictual interactions between the United States,Russia, and China: A quantitative analysis of event data

The United States, Russia and China are militarily and economically among the most powerful countries in the post-Cold War period, and the interactions between the three powers heavily influence the international system. However, different conclusions about this question are generally made by researchers through qualitative analysis, and it is necessary to objectively and quantitatively investigate their interactions. Monthly-aggregated event data from the Global Data on Events, Location and Tone(GDELT) to measure cooperative and conflictual interactions between the three powers, and the complementary cumulative distribution function(CCDF) and the vector autoregression(VAR) method are utilized to investigate their interactions in two periods: January, 1991 to September, 2001, and October, 2001 to December, 2016. The results of frequencies and strengths analysis showed that: the frequencies and strengths of USA-China interactions slightly exceeded those of USA-Russia interactions and became the dominant interactions in the second period. Although that cooperation prevailed in the three dyads in two periods, the conflictual interactions between the USA and Russia tended to be more intense in the second period, mainly related to the strategic contradiction between the USA and Russia, especially in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. The results of CCDF indicated that similar probabilities in the cooperative behaviors between the three dyads, but the differences in the probabilities of conflictual behaviors in the USA-Russia dyad showed complicated characteristic, and those between Russia and China indicated that Russia had been consistently giving China a hard time in both periods when dealing with conflict. The USA was always an essential factor in affecting the interactions between Russia and China in both periods, but China's behavior only played a limited role in influencing the interactions between the USA-Russia dyad. Our study provides quantitative insight into the direct cooperative and conflictual interactions between the three dyads since the end of the Cold War and helps to understand their interactions better.     

A Road to Conflict: Stakeholder’s and Social Network Analysis of the Media Portrayals of a Social-Environmental Conflict in Bolivia

Society’s understanding of a conflict is mediated by information provided in mass media, for which researchers stress the importance of analyzing media portrays of stakeholders in a conflict. We analyze information from the Bolivian press regarding the construction of a road crossing the Isiboro-Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS). Using stakeholder’s and social network analyses, we explore stakeholder’s positions and alliances as represented in the media and contrast it with previous scholarly work. We found that some actors cited as central in scholar analyses of the conflict are largely absent in the media (e.g., private investors, conservationist sector) and that the media tend to present stakeholders as having more homogeneous positions than the academic literature does while also neglecting some important alliances in their account. The media also suggests that Indigenous communities are forging stronger alliances with urban sectors and civil society, alliances not stressed by researchers.     

Constructing the Klamath: Nature,Culture, and the Management of a Western River

Despite decades of scientific research, stakeholder negotiations, and policy proposals, management of the Klamath River in southern Oregon and northern California remains hotly contested. This research examines the sociocultural dimensions of proposed removal of four Klamath River dams. Using a social constructivist approach to analyze the discourse of public comments regarding dam removal, I find commenters rely on diverse ideas of nature and divergent problem framings, contest the role of science, and draw on embedded and meaningful sociocultural narratives to legitimize their management preferences. These discourses shape the terrain upon which management actions are perceived, valued, and contested, and make management actions meaningful beyond their immediate spatial and temporal context. Dam removal on the Klamath River is far more than an ecological problem amenable to a scientific or technical approach; instead, it is a complex project shot through with the sociocultural identities, visions, and narratives of all involved.     

新时代的国土空间规划体系重建与制度环境改革

在全面推进生态文明建设背景下,急需建立适合中国国情的国土空间开发保护制度和国土空间规划体系,这是新时期建立空间治理体系的重要任务。在国务院新一轮的机构改革背景下,空间类规划的编制职能向自然资源部集中,急需探索和建立全国国土空间规划体系的总体框架和制度环境改革的推进路径。研究表明：国家国土空间规划体系的重建取决于三个方面,一是依赖于部门的职能整合,二是国土空间规划体系的整合与重构,三是依赖于制度环境改革。因此,在机构改革逐步完成的形势下,需要从国土空间规划体系重建与制度环境改革两个路径着手,从国家、省域、市县等层面阐述了中国国土空间规划体系的重建思路,构建五级四类、上下衔接、分级管理的国土空间规划体系。从确定国土空间开发保护制度、专业人才培养、规划资质管理、推进立法等几个方面推进制度环境改革。最后从推进国土空间规划立法、审批程序前置和推进相关法律法规修改完善等方面提出具体举措,以确立国土空间规划的法定地位与统领作用。结合新时期国土空间规划编制,提出了尽快出台国土空间规划编制办法和技术规程、重新调整中国国土空间规划编制的时序安排、加强技术队伍建设等若干建议。     

Ecological conflicts in Poland

Transformation of the political system, observed in Poland for 10 years in connection with economic restructuring and basic socio-economic reforms to harmonise with European Union structures, is also evident in terms of environmental management. Pollution has been reduced in many ways but the rise in living standards, linked with the rapid growth of cars and other forms of consumption, has had a negative effect and environmental conditions have deteriorated in the central areas of large cities. The growth of waste water and refuse is a considerable problem. More areas are now officially protected and the three levels of local government established at the beginning of January 1999 (voivodeship, district and community) all have certain defined environmental protection responsibilities which are cumulatively greater than before. Meanwhile there is a greater awareness in society of environmental issues, although it does not yet lead to a high level of participation in protection work. However, there are strongly-expressed opinions on the ecological acceptability of certain economic developments and conflicts are frequently arising within communities and local governments and also between investors on the one side and ecological organisations and environmental protection institutions on the other. Most controversial are new roads, power stations (like the Zarnowiec nuclear project) and reservoirs like the one on the Dunajec river at Czorsztyn. Local communities frequently resist plans for waste dumps, incinerating plants and other developments which are seen as injurious to health or the quality of life. The planned reprivatisation of the state-owned forests is also criticised by foresters and ecological movements. Conflicts are likely to grow as economic development accelerates but better information and greater public understanding of the need for sustainability should make for consensus. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Prospect of Lithium Resources Supply and Demand

正1 Introduction The conflict between resources and the environment has been increasingly outstanding as the population,economy and society around the globe have developed rapidly since the 21st century.An important challenge that the human     

黄河流域城市群扩张的时空格局演化及情景模拟——以呼包鄂榆城市群为例

黄河流域城镇扩张对区域景观格局影响显著,城市群人口聚集与增长引发了流域“人-地”矛盾和“空间冲突”等一系列生态环境问题。基于土地利用数据和FLUS模型对2025年和2035年呼包鄂榆城市群城镇化与土地利用时空演化特征进行多情景模拟预测。结果表明：① 1990—2018年呼包鄂榆城市群整体发展水平较低,建设用地面积经历了“平稳增加-缓慢增加-急剧增加”的变化过程,区域总体以草地为主,其占土地总面积的50%以上,其次是未利用土地和耕地,林地和建设用地次之。② 城市群扩张最剧烈地区在空间上主要发生在呼和浩特市、包头市等城市主城区,且扩张模式以外延式扩张为主,扩张来源主要是耕地、草地等生态用地。③ 三种情景模拟发现,2025年和2035年区域土地利用变化的空间结构和特征差异明显。自然发展情景下,城市扩张不受约束,高速增长占据了大量生态用地;加入生态约束条件很好的控制了对草地和林地的占用;经济发展情景下,城市扩张将进一步占据更多的未利用土地和耕地。本研究通过城市群扩张时空格局演化及情景模拟分析,尝试为区域规划、城市空间规划和区域生态空间保护提供多角度、多情景和可选择的政策决策参考。