Knowledge, uncertainty and physical geography: towards the development of methodologies for questioning belief

Although it is widely acknowledged that our understanding of environmental systems cannot be reduced to single predictions and unique explanations, determinism remains a common strategy in physical geography. This paper argues for explicit assessments of uncertainty in environmental data and models as a necessary, although not a sufficient, condition for balancing uncertain scientific arguments against uncertain social, ethical, moral and legal arguments in managing environmental systems. In particular, this paper aims to: (1) demonstrate the importance of assessing uncertainty within a realist research framework; (2) consider the nature of scientific uncertainty as the basis for developing methodologies that question belief; and (3) explore some important aspects of a methodology for evaluating uncertainties in environmental research.     

A real options approach to amenity valuation: The role of uncertainty and risk aversion

Many empirical studies in the fields of urban and environmental economics rely on the hedonic pricing framework. This paper draws attention to two important elements that are not covered by this theory: uncertainty and relocation costs. It develops a theoretical model where agents face uncertainty, but may accumulate savings as a form of self‐insurance. It shows that uncertainty pushes up relocation costs due to the option value of waiting, while self‐insurance helps to reduce this lock‐in problem. Moreover, the model suggests that the implicit price of environmental quality increases with uncertainty even if agents are risk‐neutral.     

Environmental responsibility and the possibilities of pragmatist-orientated research

Human geographers have explored at some length the discourses and subject positions implicated in the recent rise of ‘environmental responsibility’. Assigning it either as an individual disposition enacted in various spaces, a performative ‘othering’ tool, and/or a form of ecological governmentality, these debates have said little about the role of research and researchers in encouraging environmental responsibility. Utilising arguments from William James’ ‘radical empiricism’, I argue that exploring practices through a pragmatist lens enables a tentative re-envisioning of environmental responsibility. Re-visiting my doctoral research into the household-level adoption of sustainable consumption practices, I claim environmental responsibility as an ethical experience felt at the moments when practices are reconsidered. Here, my presence played a vital role in this social experimentation, which, as pragmatists argue, is the fundamental basis of positive social change.     

Uncertainty, Risk, Trust, and Information: Public Perceptions of Environmental Issues and Willingness to Take Action

Environmental policymaking has remained an important issue in American public policy for many years. While many individuals have proenvironmental attitudes, they remain unwilling to take the actions necessary to achieve environmental goals. Many variables have been used to explain support for environmental policymaking. This study looks at the effect of uncertainty about environmental quality, perception of risk from environmental hazards, and trust in government and university scientists on willingness to take environmental action. The study examines the impact of these three variables on two environmental issues—tap water and nuclear power. The data were collected from a national sample of 400 individuals. This article presents the results of this research and examines the complex relationships among risks, trust, uncertainty, and willingness to take environmental action. The conclusions improve our understanding of environmental attitudes as well as have practical implications for policymakers who need to build public support for policies designed to improve the environment.     

ADDITIVE-RATIO MEASURES OF INTERACTMTY IN INPUT-OUTPUT SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT. A general axiomatic framework is developed for analyzing alternative measures of interactivity between the sectors of a given activity system (such as the industrial sectors of an economy). Within this overall framework, we analyze an ordinal class of additive-ratio measures which has been applied to a wide variety of systems, including both economic and ecological systems of activities. Our main result is to show that such measures can be characterized by four interactivity axioms. In addition, a wide variety of alternative measures are compared to additive-ratio measures in terms of this axiom system.     

洛阳市双重空间尺度的生态城市建设

生态城市建设有两个基础平台,一是市区本身的"城市生态系统",二是市区周围一定区域范围内的"城市-区域生态系统"。生态城市建设必须在双重空间尺度上展开:在城市尺度上,优化城市生态系统,在城市-区域尺度上,优化城市-区域生态系统。洛阳在我国乃至世界城市中具有鲜明特色和典型意义,在双重空间尺度上开展生态城市建设,对洛阳市的城镇化进程和可持续发展有重要意义。     

Defining and Contesting Environmental Justice: Socio-natures and the Politics of Scale in the Delta

Abstract:  This article examines a contemporary process intended to "identify a strategy for managing the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta as a sustainable ecosystem that would continue to support environmental and economic functions that are critical to the people of California" ( Delta Vision 2008 , http://deltavision.ca.gov/AboutDeltaVision.shtml ). Environmental injustices in the Delta are exacerbated by connected conflicts between knowledge and power, over the scale at which "environmental justice" and the "Delta" are understood through public policy. The rejection of environmental justice and the socio-natural in the Delta Vision process represents how contemporary policy processes are recreating and reenacting the power/knowledge dynamics that have defined the Delta, placed it on a path to ecological collapse and injected high levels of social and racial injustice in its landscape over the past 150 years. Our article combines an ethnographic and a historical geographical approach that contributes to the literature on environmental justice and scale and links with the literature on water governance and power to advance the task of defining environmental justice from the academic and policy perspectives.     

Risk and the Sacred: Environment,Media and Public Opinion in Bali

This exploration of controversies over environmental regulation in the Indonesian province of Bali traces the relationship between the media, environmental attitudes and Balinese identity, focusing on the religious dimension of that identity and the ways in which this has become bound up with conceptions of environmental imbalance and a popular critique of capitalist development on the island. The fusion of cultural and environmental metaphors of ‘erosion’ and ‘preservation’ in public discourse is striking in the Balinese case, since sites of great spiritual significance are also attractive to investors for their aesthetic appeal and heritage value (Verschuuren et al. 2010). From the earliest emergence of environmental conflict on the island, the emotive power of cultural identity became intimately connected with environmental politics. This article traces several of the pervasive and interconnected dichotomies ‐ sacred and profane, cultural value and economic interest, environmental preservation and use (exploitation), certainty and uncertainty (risk) ‐ that characterise debates surrounding environmental regulation and development on the island.     

Facing Climate Change: Andrea Juan's Visual Play with Science and the Sublime

Andrea Juan has responded to climate change in her art since 2002, highlighting the potential enjoyment of uncertainty and the pleasure of discovering this ecological crisis. Through an examination of El bosque invisible: Serie Antártica [The Invisible Forest: The Antarctica Series], 2010, this article will examine how Juan represents environmental transformations through her process, aesthetic choices, and work in Antarctica. Antarctica—an emblem of environmental change and advancements in scientific research—serves as one of the main stages for Juan's placement of colorful fabrics and cloth figures that are meant to represent specific natural phenomena connected to climate change. Juan's documentation of these scenes in videos and digital stills quotes the Romantic tradition of the sublime in landscape painting, the artist-traveller, and a heroic notion of scientific fieldwork, which exposes a continued desire for control despite our increasing knowledge of our limitations, as well as two principal means through which we understand climate change: science and the sublime. Furthermore, the pleasing quality of Juan's art, in spite of the crisis to which she alludes, aligns with contemporary trends that favor participation, pleasure and hope. This tendency itself exposes the uncertainty of art's role in the face of such crises.     

Managing the risk of climatic variability in late prehistoric northern Chile

The concept of risk management encompasses the diverse strategies employed in preventing and mitigating losses associated with social and environmental calamities. Building on the growing literature on risk, we use archaeological data from the Tarapacá Valley, located in northern Chile, to document the risk-reduction tactics mobilized by the valley’s inhabitants to navigate the increasingly volatile environmental and social conditions of the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450). With the onset of exceptionally unpredictable environmental conditions after AD 1100, residents of the Tarapacá Valley chose strategies such as increased trade and agricultural diversification and extensification to minimize shortages in staple resources. Threats of raiding and intra-community strife exacerbated the risks associated with subsistence shortfalls. Valley communities elected a number of strategies to curtail conflict-induced risk, including movement of settlements and field systems to defensible locations, construction of walls and other defensive features, and the introduction of plazas. Rock art data suggest that trade was increasingly embedded in ritually sanctioned events involving groups from different ecological zones. While studies of risk have focused disproportionately on environmental hazards, subsistence-related crises are often compounded by social hazards that require their own risk-mitigating strategies, further constraining options for coping with subsistence stress.     

环境史与历史地理的关系

这篇文章有三个部分。第一部分考察了环境史作为历史学科一个独特子集的出现 ,并讨论了它的发展过程 :首先讨论了它的开始是植根于北美的资源保护和知识史 ,其次讨论了它的伦理演化和基本要点 ,最后讨论了它更具国际主义和跨学科性的关于自然中的人的观点。同时也考察了环境史研究的各种模式(主要是人类学的 )和议程。第二部分考察了主要历史和文化地理学家对环境史所提出的更大的人与自然的争论的贡献。着眼点主要关注四个研究领域 :(1)地球的变化和改变 ,(2 )全球扩展和资本主义经济 ,(3)人在自然界中的位置 ,(4 )栖息地、经济和社会之间的相互关系。第三部分考察了一些争论对于两个学科的意义、共性和挑战。结论是两个学科在“场所故事的叙述”中有许多互相帮助和学习的东西。     

人类基因工程面临的道德问题

基因工程已经用于人类克隆并因此引起了极大的关注和争议。比如道德灾难、基因歧视以及转基因产品的不确定性。因此人类克隆应该受到限制,用于治疗目的的人类克隆应该严格受控。     

湖泊流域社会生态系统脆弱性时空演变及调控研究——以滇池为例

脆弱性研究领域不断从自然生态系统向社会自然复合系统扩展,从社会生态系统视角动态化和人文化地研究脆弱性已成为趋势。湖泊流域是多层级的复合的社会生态系统,从流域角度、社会生态系统层面、体制机制维度,综合分析社会生态系统脆弱性的驱动机制,对系统治理和源头治理湖泊流域具有重大意义。文章以滇池为例,将"压力-状态-响应"模型和"暴露度-敏感性-恢复力"模型结合,构建脆弱性分析框架和评价模型,探寻湖泊流域社会生态系统脆弱性时空演变规律和脆弱性驱动机制,提出了湖泊流域脆弱性调控和区域可持续发展的思路。     

Uncertainty as Environmental Education

Here we focus particularly upon some implications of the symposium articles for future research agendas and priorities in environmental policy. First, however, we return to the central question posed by this symposium: “How can environmental policies achieve a combination of democracy with legitimacy and adequacy with effectiveness under conditions of great uncertainty?” In different ways, all articles addressed this problem in reconciling democracy with competent environmental management under conditions of uncertainty. Together, they provide the rudiments of an answer.     

试论宁夏扶贫移民的发展方略

扶贫移民是宁夏实施反贫困战略的重要组成部分,对脱贫致富起到了积极的作用。其主要经验是:采取了"吊庄"移民的方式并辅之以相应政策,多渠道的资金筹措方式,以水资源管理为核心的社区组织方式,多元化的开发模式。但也存在着规划方面的一些失误、生态环境问题突出、农业生产效益低下、行政区划和隶属关系不确定、文化类型单一层次低等问题,限制扶贫移民的成效。为此,要通过推行节水灌溉技术创建节水社会、调整农业结构建立现代市场农业、走多元化开发的道路、创建文明有序的移民社区等措施促使扶贫移民吊庄走出停滞,积极发展。     

Analysing How Environmental Concerns are Integrated in the Design of the EU Structural Funds Programmes

This paper analyses the environmental measures co-financed by the European Union (EU) Structural Funds in the less-developed regions. Specifically, it studies if these environmental measures are tailored to the specific needs of the different regions and whether they are driven by an ecological modernization approach. The inclusion of environmental goals into the regional policy is also tested by analysing its connection with the main European environmental directives. We find a suitability of the regional programmes to the regional specific environmental factors, a scarce presence of the ecological modernization paradigm behind the programmes implementation and a clear orientation of the regional programmes to meet the EU legislation.     

基于生态敏感性评价的城市土地利用模式研究——以长春净月经济开发区为例

生态敏感性高的城市地域的土地利用是城市规划、建设、管理过程中比较"棘手"的问题之一,经常因为环境保护与建设发展的矛盾而使之处于两难的境地。本文在总结和思辨一般性城市土地利用模式的基础上,借助GIS技术对长春市净月经济开发区的土地利用现状进行生态敏感性评价。结果显示,因特定的水域和人工林环境导致净月区总体上生态敏感性较高,按照划分的极高、高、中、低、非敏感5种生态敏感区,其中度及以上生态敏感区占全区50%左右。作者进一步以生态敏感性分区为前提,总结提出其土地利用的空间结构模式、类型结构模式和管理模式,并指出其中后二者尚在不断完善过程中。     

孙中山环境思想探析

孙中山的环境思想渗透于他的革命理论和实践中,是一个较为系统的思想体系,包括治理和改善环境、将环境因素纳入发展规划之中以及创建林业机构、发展林业教育和树立环境意识等三个层面的内容。孙中山的环境思想传承了中国传统的生态环境思想,也吸取了西方近代先进的知识体系和经验。立足于三民主义,主张国家主导环境建设,着眼于国家的整体和长远发展是孙中山环境思想的基本特点。     

浅议榆林市地域生态环境建设

榆林市位于我国东部季风气候区和西北干旱气候区的过渡带,毛乌素沙漠前缘,生态环境问题极其严重。因此,榆林市地域生态环境建设问题是榆林市规划与建设的最主要方面。本文借鉴国外城市生态环境研究的现状与实践,针对榆林地区生态环境的特点,对榆林市的地域生态环境建设提出理论框架,提出了榆林市地域生态环境系统建设设想,以期创建榆林市优美的地域生态环境。     

租地还是卖地:土地流转中农民有限理性行为分析——对中山市崖口村旅游开发用地的个案调研

土地流转过程中,农民租地或卖地的行为选择带来不同的收益,将直接影响到现在及未来农民的生活水平。由于受到自身条件和环境约束,农民只能追求安全保障基础上的利益最大化。本文通过对中山市崖口村村民在旅游开发用地中的决策行为进行深度调研,发现当地农民在土地流转中表现出因可得性偏向导致的差异化认知与态度、伦理行动下的集体选择、规避风险下的非最优选择的有限理性行为特征,最终的"卖地"决策对崖口村的未来发展带来了一定的风险。