Perceptions of climate change in China: The research and policy connection     

LiHua Zhou  J. Scott Hauger  Ning Liu  HuiLing Lu 《寒旱区科学》2014,6(2):0089-0098

Global climate change has evolved from a scientific problem into an economic and political problem oI worlOwloe rater- est. National perspectives play a crucial role in addressing climate change. Mutual understanding of perspectives is nec- essary to result in rational policies and a consensus among stakeholders with divergent interests. Conceptual frameworks for understanding the problem of climate change in China, the largest developing country and the largest greenhouse gas emitter, are of great significance to national and international efforts to address the problems of climate change. Chinese perceptions of climate change as a sustainable development problem have recently been in tension with an emerging Western perspective that frames climate change as a security issue. This paper explores Chinese perceptions of climate change as expressed in recent governmental policy statements, public opinion surveys, and academic scholarship with a focus on publications in Chinese-language journals, often unfamiliar in the West. It looks at the relationship between Chinese research and policy and finds that the Chinese policy frame of climate change as a sustainable development problem draws from the body of domestic research and is reflective of the perspectives and multidisciplinary approach of Chinese researchers in areas of climate change.  相似文献   

Governance strengths and weaknesses to implement the marine strategy framework directive in European waters     

《Marine Policy》2014

The ambitious Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) has been the focus of much marine research across Europe in the pursuit of achieving Good Environmental Status in the four European Union marine regions; Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and North-east Atlantic. This research addresses the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of the current European marine governance structures and its relationship to implement the MSFD. Results of the SWOT analysis were acquired through a combination of approaches with MSFD experts and stakeholders including: 30 face-to-face interviews, an online survey with 264 stakeholder respondents and focus groups within each European marine region. The SWOT analysis concurrently identifies common strengths and weakness and key governance issues for implementing the MSFD for European marine regions. This paper forms one assessment within the governance component of the Options for Delivering Ecosystem Based Marine Management (ODEMM) project and presents timely issues that can be of benefit to national and European Union policy makers.  相似文献   

Forest law enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon: Costs and income effects     

《Global Environmental Change》2014

Despite recent success in reducing forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon, additional forest conservation efforts, for example, through ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’ (REDD+), could significantly contribute to global climate-change mitigation. Economic incentives, such as payments for environmental services could promote conservation, but deforestation often occurs on land without crucial tenure-security prerequisites. Improving the enforcement of existing regulatory disincentives thus represents an important element of Brazil's anti-deforestation action plan. However, conservation law enforcement costs and benefits have been much less studied than for conditional payments. We develop a conceptual framework and a spatially explicit model to analyze field-based regulatory enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon. We validate our model, based on historical deforestation and enforcement mission data from 2003 to 2008. By simulating the current conservation law enforcement practice, we analyze the costs of liability establishment and legal coercion for alternative conservation targets, and evaluate corresponding income impacts. Our findings suggest that spatial patterns of both deforestation and inspection costs markedly influence enforcement patterns and their income effects. Field-based enforcement is a highly cost-effective forest conservation instrument from a regulator's point of view, but comes at high opportunity costs for land users. Payments for environmental services could compensate costs, but will increase budget outlays vis-à-vis a command-and-control dominated strategy. Both legal and institutional challenges have to be overcome to make conservation payments work at a larger scale. Decision-makers may have to innovatively combine incentive and disincentive-based policy instruments in order to make tropical forest conservation both financially viable and socially compatible.  相似文献   

Climate policy innovation in the South – Domestic and international determinants of renewable energy policies in developing and emerging countries     

《Global Environmental Change》2014

This article attempts to disentangle the determinants of the adoption of renewable energy support policies in developing and emerging countries. By analyzing policies already implemented in industrialized countries, we focus on the diffusion but not the invention of climate-relevant policies. We look at four different types of policies (renewable energy targets, feed-in tariffs, other financial incentives and framework policies) and consider both domestic factors and international diffusion mechanisms utilizing a discrete-time events history model with a logit link on a self-compiled dataset of grid-based electricity policy adoption in 112 developing and emerging countries from 1998 to 2009. In general, we find stronger support for the domestic determinants of policy adoption, but also substantial influence of international factors. Countries with a larger population and more wealth have a higher probability of adopting renewable energy policies. Only in some specific cases do natural endowments for producing renewable energy encourage governments to adopt policies, and hydro power resources even correlate negatively with the adoption of targets. Among the international determinants, emulation from colonial peers and membership within the EU seem to facilitate policy adoption. International climate finance is less relevant, as the Global Environmental Facility and the Clean Development Mechanism may only increase the adoption of frameworks and targets, but they have no influence on tariffs and incentives.  相似文献   

Electricity generation and cooling water use: UK pathways to 2050     

《Global Environmental Change》2014

Thermoelectric generation contributes to 80% of global electricity production. Cooling of thermoelectric plants is often achieved by water abstractions from the natural environment. In England and Wales, the electricity sector is responsible for approximately half of all water abstractions and 40% of non-tidal surface water abstractions. We present a model that quantifies current water use of the UK electricity sector and use it to test six decarbonisation pathways to 2050. The pathways consist of a variety of generation technologies, with associated cooling methods, water use factors and cooling water sources. We find that up to 2030, water use across the six pathways is fairly consistent and all achieve significant reductions in both carbon and water intensity, based upon a transition to closed loop and hybrid cooling systems. From 2030 to 2050 our results diverge. Pathways with high levels of carbon capture and storage result in freshwater consumption that exceeds current levels (37–107%), and a consumptive intensity that is 30–69% higher. Risks to the aquatic environment will be intensified if generation with carbon capture and storage is clustered. Pathways of high nuclear capacity result in tidal and coastal abstraction that exceed current levels by 148–399%. Whilst reducing freshwater abstractions, the marine environment will be impacted if a shortage of coastal sites leads to clustering of nuclear reactors and concentration of heated water discharges. The pathway with the highest level of renewables has both lowest abstraction and consumption of water. Freshwater consumption can also be minimised through use of hybrid cooling, which despite marginally higher costs and emissions, would reduce dependence on scarce water resources thus increase security of supply.  相似文献   

Does effective climate policy require well-informed citizen support?     

《Global Environmental Change》2014

Citizen support for climate policies is typically seen as an important criterion in climate policy making. Some studies of climate policy support assume that a significant number of citizens need to be aware of the policies in question and able to provide informed opinions. In this study, we probe this assumption using a web-based survey of residents of the Canadian province of British Columbia (n = 475) by assessing: (1) citizen awareness and knowledge of climate policies, (2) citizen support for different climate policies, (3) the relationship between citizen knowledge and policy support, and (4) the effect of information provision on policy support. Our main finding is that most survey respondents are not aware of any of British Columbia's climate policies, and have little understanding of the potential effect of these on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Once they are made aware of different types of climate policies, respondents are more likely to express support for regulations, such as the zero-emissions electricity standard and energy efficiency regulations, and less likely to support a carbon tax. Statistical analysis indicates that citizen knowledge of policy is not associated with higher policy support. Furthermore, providing information on likely policy effectiveness to our survey respondents did not translate into higher support, suggesting that widespread knowledge and well-informed citizen support are not necessarily required for implementation of effective climate policies.  相似文献   

Policy innovation in a changing climate: Sources,patterns and effects     

《Global Environmental Change》2014

States have been widely criticized for failing to advance the international climate regime. Many observers now believe that a “new” climate governance is emerging through transnational and/or local forms of action that will eventually plug the resulting governance gaps. Yet states, which remain oddly absent from most discussions of the “new” governance, will remain key players as governance becomes more polycentric. This paper introduces a special issue that explores the ability of states to rise to these interconnected challenges through the analytical prism of policy innovation. It reveals that policy innovation is much more multi-dimensional than is often thought; it encompasses three vital activities: invention (centering on the ‘source’ of new policy elements), diffusion (that produces different ‘patterns’ of policy adoption), and the evaluation of the ‘effects’ that such innovations create in reality. The papers, which range from qualitative case studies to large ‘n’ quantitative studies, offer new insights into the varied roles that states play in relation to all three.They show, for instance that: the policy activity of states has risen dramatically in the past decade; that state innovation is affected to similar degrees by internal and external factors; and that policies that offer flexibility to target groups on how to meet policy goals are most effective but that voluntary reporting requirements are ineffective. This paper draws upon these and many other insights to offer a much more nuanced reflection on the future of climate governance; one that deservedly puts states at the front and center of analysis.  相似文献   

Policy invention and entrepreneurship: Bankrolling the burying of carbon in the EU     

《Global Environmental Change》2014

This article presents the case of a policy invention where various kinds of entrepreneurship and a window of opportunity played important roles. In 2008 the EU adopted a new Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) policy with an inventive funding instrument at its core: the NER 300 fund, based on revenues from the auctioning of emissions trading allowances. Thus far, the literature on policy entrepreneurs has focused more on success factors that enable particular persons to be especially influential than on the defining characteristics of entrepreneurship. We contribute to the literature on entrepreneurship and windows of opportunity by distinguishing two entrepreneurial techniques – framing and procedural engineering – and two categories of commitment – ‘tortoise’ and carpe diem. We conclude that ‘tortoises’ who contributed to creating the broad and general climate policy window paved the way for issue-specific carpe diemers who promoted the more specific NER 300 policy invention. Furthermore, we distinguish and discuss four different entrepreneurship mechanisms that may influence policy invention processes.  相似文献   

东北振兴政策体系解构及区域经济响应研究     

王士君  顾萌  常晓东 《地理学报》2022,77(10):2547-2565

本文回顾、梳理了2003—2020年东北振兴战略实施以来国家和地方出台的一系列有关政策,分别在国家、省、地市级层面归类总结、解读,对政策的层级、类型和时序进行解构性分析,并基于Python自主编程对相关政策进行文本数据挖掘,最后对东北振兴系列政策引发的区域经济及国企改革效应进行评价。结果表明：① 国家、省、地市围绕东北振兴形成了多类型、多层级、多时间节点的复杂政策系统;② 东北振兴政策体系形成与变迁具有稳定性、连续性、时效性、地域性等特征;③ 东北振兴政策从长期尺度看推动了区域经济发展,但地方对政策依赖度高,短期政策刺激效果明显但可持续性较差;④ 在政策引导和支持下,东北地区国企改革不断深化,创新驱动效果明显,但也面临关键技术瓶颈。  相似文献   

中国境外经贸合作区的政策移动研究——以天津经济技术开发区和中埃·泰达苏伊士经贸合作区为例     

王淑芳  闫语欣  孟广文 《地理科学》2022,42(7):1187-1195

中国境外经贸合作区的建设是国内特殊经济区发展经验在空间上的延展。基于东道国独特的发展条件,需要将国内园区的建设经验进行调整,再运用到中国境外经贸合作区以适应东道国本地化发展。构建政策移动的理论框架,采用案例分析和比较研究法,以天津经济技术开发区与中埃·泰达苏伊士经贸合作区为例,将国内园区与境外经贸合作区的相关政策进行对比分析,验证政策在不同国家“土壤环境”中的适应性。研究发现：① 根据政策施行的影响因素和不同作用,政策移动可以分为政策移植、政策调试和政策创新;② 规划建设经验、运营管理经验、环保政策、人才政策等可直接进行政策移植;发展模式和文化政策要进行政策调试;法规政策、晋升政策和优惠政策需要进行政策创新;③ 园区的共性体现在国内园区成熟经验的借鉴、人才的培育与储备、园区生态环境的保护以及基础设施和配套设施的完善;④ 园区的个性体现在文化的求同尊异、园区品牌的打造、晋升制度的创新和协调机制的建立等。创新性地运用政策移动性理论将国内和国外园区进行关联研究,揭示了境外经贸合作区的移植、调试和创新国内园区政策的过程,深化了政策移动理论的内涵,丰富了境外经贸合作区的理论研究成果。  相似文献