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   

基于时空影响因子的未来社区生活圈公共服务设施优化配置北大核心CSCD     

余正  上官宗珊  周丹丹  刘同伟  黄奥婕  陈喜嘉  谢文煜  邹成畅 《测绘通报》2022,(8):143-148

公共服务设施作为社区生活圈的核心内容,直接决定了社区生活圈的生活品质。对社区公共服务设施建设情况进行量化评价,并对设施建设的未来规划提供科学决策支持逐渐成为规划者和决策者的一大难题。本文通过ArcGIS工具对POI数据进行处理、统计和可视化,在总结他人社区生活圈量化评价方法的基础上,结合温州本地特色,搭建了一套社区生活圈公共服务设施评价模型。利用该模型可对各类社区进行综合评分和分级,并根据模型评分结果挖掘公共服务设施未来优化方向。此外,还实现了社区生活圈评分的动态计算与展示,为社区服务设施建设选址、路网建设与公共服务设施建设优先级评定等提供决策支持。既可帮助规划者和决策者快速建立对整个区域生活圈建设现状的量化认知,又可助力公共服务设施的优化配置,为社区生活圈公共服务品质评价与提升探寻全新的思路与方法。  相似文献   

2000—2020年中国人口分布格局演变及影响因素   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

刘涛  彭荣熙  卓云霞  曹广忠 《地理学报》2022,77(2):381-394

基于第五、六、七次全国人口普查数据,本文分析了2000—2020年中国人口分布的空间格局、集散态势和影响因素。结果表明,中国人口分布依然保持东密西疏的基本格局,胡焕庸线两侧的自然地理环境差异性决定了这一格局的长期稳定性;人口空间集中化趋势在21世纪初的10年内主要发生在东南半壁,但在2010—2020年间成为各区域的共同特征。省会城市的人口集聚能力持续增强,2010—2020年的优势更加凸显,但这种行政力量主导的首位度提升效应将随着全省发展阶段的演进而逐渐弱化。人口变动的区域分化明显：沿海城市群的空间连绵化逐渐形成了强吸引力、高承载力的沿海人口增长带,东北地区几乎转向全面的人口收缩,中部各省依托省会展开的人口竞争依然激烈,川渝黔地区普遍实现了人口的止降回增,西北地区则面临人口收缩风险。此外,区域人口增长的驱动因素逐渐从经济要素主导转为经济要素和舒适性要素并重,各地区舒适性的差异可能将成为影响未来人口空间格局变化的重要因素。  相似文献