Probing the (in)compatibilities of social theory and policy relevance in Piers Blaikie’s political ecology     

Roderick P. Neumann 《Geoforum》2008,39(2):728-735

One of Piers Blaikie’s most important contributions to the development of political ecology is his critique of land and resource conservation policy in the global South. In this paper I trace the development of Blaikie’s ideas about the policy relevance of political ecology, focusing particularly on the challenges posed by the introduction of poststructural social theory into the field. I begin by revisiting Blaikie’s earlier critiques of environment and development policy. This will provide the departure point to explore how his thinking on the relationship of theory and policy and of academic and development practices has evolved in subsequent writings. I have invented two personas, “early Blaikie” and “late Blaikie”, to facilitate this task. Second, I want to probe some of the challenges that late Blaikie presents for doing political ecology research, to some extent by pitting early Blaikie against late Blaikie and letting them hash it out. Third, I turn to my own and others’ research and consultation experiences as a way to examine the possibilities for reconciling theoretically driven critiques with policy relevant research.  相似文献   

Fate of the verde: Water, environmental conflict, and the politics of scale in Arizona’s central highlands     

Bob Bolin  Timothy Collins  Kate Darby   《Geoforum》2008,39(3):1494-1511

  相似文献   

Neoliberalism and natural resource management: Agri-environmental standards and the governing of farming practices   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Vaughan Higgins  Jacqui Dibden  Chris Cocklin 《Geoforum》2008,39(5):1776-1785

Private standards and certification schemes are widely acknowledged as playing an increasingly important role in agri-environmental governance. While much of the existing research concludes that these mechanisms consolidate the global extension of neoliberalism – enhancing the power of corporate actors to the detriment of smaller producers – we argue that this overlooks the complex ways in which standards are used by governments and farmers in the governing of farming practices. Focusing specifically on a process standard – Environmental Management Systems (EMS) – promoted by the Australian government as a way of verifying the ‘clean and green’ status of agricultural exports, we examine how one regional group of producers has sought to use EMS standards in practice. Our analysis of a case study in the state of Victoria appears to confirm that EMS was a successful instrument for the extension of neoliberal governance, reinforcing the production of neoliberal subjectivities and practices amongst farmer participants and enabling the government to compensate for gaps in environmental provision. However, it would be a mistake to interpret the development of this EMS scheme as an example of naïve farmers manipulated by the state. In practice, farmers used the opportunities provided by government funding to undertake actions which expressed their own agri-environmental values and practices. Establishment of an EMS and associated eco-label enabled producers to demonstrate and extend their capacity to act as good environmental stewards. Our research highlights how the local application of environmental standards negotiates and shapes, rather than simply contributes to, neoliberal rule.  相似文献   

Quantitative sinkhole hazard assessment. A case study from the Ebro Valley evaporite alluvial karst (NE Spain)     

Francisco Gutiérrez  Jesús Guerrero  Pedro Lucha 《Natural Hazards》2008,45(2):211-233

Quantitative sinkhole hazard assessments in karst areas allow calculation of the potential sinkhole risk and the performance of cost-benefit analyses. These estimations are of practical interest for planning, engineering, and insurance purposes. The sinkhole hazard assessments should include two components: the probability of occurrence of sinkholes (sinkholes/km² year) and the severity of the sinkholes, which mainly refers to the subsidence mechanisms (progressive passive bending or catastrophic collapse) and the size of the sinkholes at the time of formation; a critical engineering design parameter. This requires the compilation of an exhaustive database on recent sinkholes, including information on the: (1) location, (2) chronology (precise date or age range), (3) size, and (4) subsidence mechanisms and rate. This work presents a hazard assessment from an alluvial evaporite karst area (0.81 km²) located in the periphery of the city of Zaragoza (Ebro River valley, NE Spain). Five sinkholes and four locations with features attributable to karstic subsidence where identified in an initial investigation phase providing a preliminary probability of occurrence of 0.14 sinkholes/km² year (11.34% in annual probability). A trenching program conducted in a subsequent investigation phase allowed us to rule out the four probable sinkholes, reducing the probability of occurrence to 0.079 sinkholes/km² year (6.4% in annual probability). The information on the severity indicates that collapse sinkholes 10–15 m in diameter may occur in the area. A detailed study of the deposits and deformational structures exposed by trenching in one of the sinkholes allowed us to infer a modern collapse sinkhole approximately 12 m in diameter and with a vertical throw of 8 m. This collapse structure is superimposed on a subsidence sinkhole around 80 m across that records at least 1.7 m of synsedimentary subsidence. Trenching, in combination with dating techniques, is proposed as a useful methodology to elucidate the origin of depressions with uncertain diagnosis and to gather practical information with predictive utility about particular sinkholes in alluvial karst settings: precise location, subsidence mechanisms and magnitude, and timing and rate of the subsidence episodes.  相似文献   

Impact of lightning on organic matter-rich soils: influence of soil grain size and organic matter content on underground fires     

Vittorio Zanon  Fátima Viveiros  Catarina Silva  Ana Rita Hipólito  Teresa Ferreira 《Natural Hazards》2008,45(1):19-31

A detailed study was carried out on a piece of land that had been struck by lightning during the violent rainstorm that raged over the Island of S?o Miguel (Azores Archipelago) in late October 2006. Temperature and gas measurements (CO₂, CO, H₂S and CH₄) were performed in four study trenches, dug in an area of ∼3 m², where an underground fire had been initiated by the impact with a lightning stroke, followed by the emission of a column of gases and smoke. The soil under study was originally a well-pedogenized about 80 cm thick bed, made of volcanic clayey to silty tephra fallouts and contained 5.5–9.7% of organic matter. The underground fire was monitored for one week and revealed a peak release of 404 ppm CO and 3.4% CO₂ originating from a horizon located about 45 cm under the soil surface. Measurements of temperature, performed one week after the impact, indicated a maximum value of 326°C inside the soil, while 516.5°C were measured on the surface of a lava block interred about 20 cm under the surface. Subsequently, a stratigraphic and sedimentologic study proved the role of the grain-size of the soil and of the organic matter content of the different horizons of the impact area, in determining the ratio between anoxic/oxidised combustion conditions and in the progress of the process itself. It was also noticed that combustion was not total all over in the soil bed and that the process had slightly migrated toward SW during the observation period. The combustion process went on for about ten days, in spite of several other violent rainstorms, until it was artificially extinguished through the excavations made to obtain study trenches. This particular circumstance evidenced the potential natural hazard represented by this kind of atmospheric event, especially in a land where the volcanic nature of the soil may easily mislead inexperienced observers and, consequently, delay proper action.  相似文献   

Geostatistical estimation of chemical contamination in stream sediments: The case study of Vale das Gatas mine (northern Portugal)     

A.R. Salgueiro  P. Freire vila  H. Garcia Pereira  J.M. Santos Oliveira 《Journal of Geochemical Exploration》2008,98(1-2):15

Based on an environmental geochemistry case study carried out in the neighbourhood of a W–Sn abandoned mine, the pollution in stream sediments was modelled through a Global Contamination Index. Such an index permits one to summarize the combination of deleterious elements in a single variable, obtained by the projection of samples onto the first axis of a PCASD (Principal Components Analysis of Standardized Data) applied to the entire n × p matrix containing the available concentrations of p = 16 elements in the set of n = 220 collected samples.In order to provide a sound basis for a coherent planning of the remediation process which will be put in operation in the affected area, it is necessary to balance the costs of reclaiming with the probabilities of exceeding the upper limits accepted for concentrations of environmentally harmful elements in sediments. Given these limits, they are back-transformed in the index values, providing a practical threshold between ‘clean’ and ‘contaminated’ samples. On the other hand, the minimum dimension of the cell to be reclaimed is restrained by the selected remediation process to be applied in the affected area. Hence, to meet the constraints of such a remediation process, it is required to estimate the probabilities of exceeding the index threshold in technologically meaningful sub-areas. For this end, the Indicator Block Kriging technique was applied, producing a series of maps where sub-areas to be reclaimed can be spotted for different probability levels. These maps, on which the decision making remediation agency can rely for its cost-benefit analysis, take into account both the spatial structure of ‘clean’ vs. ‘contaminated’ samples and the constraints of the reclaiming process.  相似文献   

Pervasive wetland flooding in the glacial drift prairie of North Dakota (USA)     

Paul E. Todhunter  Bradley C. Rundquist 《Natural Hazards》2008,46(1):73-88

This article describes a unique flood hazard, produced by the dramatic expansion of wetlands in Nelson County, located within the North American Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota, USA. There has been an unprecedented increase in the number, average size, and permanence of prairie wetlands, and a significant increase in the size of a closed lake (Stump Lake) due to a decade-long wet spell that began in 1993 following a prolonged drying trend. Base-line land cover information from the 1992 USGS National Land Cover Characterization dataset, and a Landsat TM scene acquired 9 July 2001 are used to assess the growth of the closed lake and wetland pond surface areas, and to analyze the type and area of various land cover classes inundated between 1992 and 2001. The open water profile in Nelson County changed from one marked by relatively comparable coverage of closed lake and wetland pond areas in 1992, to one in which wetland open water accounted for the vast majority of total open water in 2001. The bulk of the wetland pond area expansion occurred by displacing existing wetland vegetation and agricultural cropland. Producers responded to the flood hazard by filing Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) claims and enrolling cropland in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a federal land retirement program. Land taken out of agricultural production has had an enormous impact upon the agricultural sector that forms the economic base of the rural economy. In 2001 the land taken out of production due to CRP enrollment and preventive planting claims represented nearly 42% of Nelson County’s 205.2 K ha base agricultural land. The patterns obtained from this detailed study of Nelson County are likely to be the representative of the more publicized flood disaster occurring within the Devils Lake Basin of North Dakota.  相似文献   

加强技术创新服务地质调查——庆祝探矿工艺研究所成立30周年   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  

胡时友  彭文范  周良宗 《探矿工程》2008,35(7):1-4

为加强地质探矿技术力量,改变地质装备落后现状,经国务院批准,1978年8月8日成立了探矿工艺研究所。30年来,经过新老两代工艺所人的艰苦奋斗、刻苦钻研、勇于创新,在科研攻关、成果转化、基地建设和管理等方面都取得了可喜的成绩,为国家的地质科学事业做出了贡献,目前已成为一个“以勘查技术为基础,以承担地质调查任务和科研项目、提供勘查与监测技术方法和技术服务为手段,以服务国家经济建设、社会发展和地质工作为目标,以探矿工艺技术和地质灾害监测防治技术研发为主业”的地质调查科研机构。回顾了工艺所艰苦创业、改革进取的发展历程,对科技体制改革、专业结构调整、人事分配制度改革、地质调查和科研工作进行了总结,展示了丰硕的科研成果和强劲的科技实力;指出了工艺所在“十一五”期间地质调查和科研工作的重点领域和优先发展方向。  相似文献   

南海环境要素的年际变化与1982—1983年EI Nio     

柯东胜 《海洋与湖沼》1992,(4)

本文在大量调查资料的基础上,分析了1975—1984年南海环境要素的年际变化及其在1982—1983年的表现。研究发现,与正常年份比较,各要素在1982—1983年的表现都比较特殊,沿岸江河径流量猛增;气温、水温、盐度、pH值偏低;海水含氧量偏高,温、盐、密跃层强度增大;南海暖流和黑潮南海分支流轴的平均位置移到调查海区的最南面。作者认为,这一异常现象与1982—1983年赤道太平洋海域发生的强E1 Ni(?)o过程密切相关。  相似文献   

Management of the commons for biodiversity: lessons from the North Pacific   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Jerry McBeath   《Marine Policy》2004,28(6):580

The North Pacific has the world's largest groundfish fisheries, with a value in excess of $1 billion annually. The North Pacific also is home to the largest population of Steller sea lions (SSL), an ancient species that is now endangered. Decline of the western stock of SSL in the 1970–1990s coincided with the US nationalization and exponential growth in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands groundfish fishery.The article treats five aspects of the competition between the fishery and protection of the endangered species. First, we analyze competition of interests in the use, management, and preservation of the North Pacific commons, including offshore and near-shore fisheries, environmental organizations, governments (federal, state, and local), and the scientific community. Second, the article compares and contrasts provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Magnuson–Stevens Act (as amended in 1996 by the Sustainable Fisheries Act).Third, we examine the regulatory environment with a focus on the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and its relationship to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. We illustrate how NMFS establishes fishery management plans and the methods, such as crafting biological opinions and environmental-impact-statements, it uses to resolve conflicts. Fourth, we investigate how the dual pressures on the agency—to increase fisheries production for the benefit of the industry and to preserve endangered marine species—have affected its culture (behavioral norms and operational codes). Then, the article explains agency changes in terms of crises, competition among affected interests, and development of new scientific knowledge.The article concludes by drawing lessons from the SSL controversy in the North Pacific which may pertain to national and global biodiversity conflicts. These concern the role of law in biodiversity protection, the role of science, and agency capacity for change.  相似文献