德国的环境变迁与环境史研究--访德国环境史学家亚克西姆·纳得考教授

亚克西姆·纳得考教授是德国著名环境史学家.2002年笔者在美进行环境史学研究期间,专门就德国环境史学问题访问了纳得考教授.访谈主要涉及两方面的内容一是关于德国的环境变迁,尤其是对环境变迁的感知,如自然的思想、景观的概念、绿党的历史、生态现代化的理论、疾病与环境的关系、社会制度与环境的关系、自然保护与文化的关系等;二是从与美国比较的角度分析德国环境史学史,重点探讨环境史在德国的起源和发展、它与全球史的关系、未来的发展趋势等.这个访谈为中国学者了解德国的环境史学提供了基本线索,有助于中国学者深入认识德国环境史的特性.     

环境史和环境史研究的生态学意识

本文从三个方面探讨了环境史和环境史研究的生态学意识以及环境史研究的发展趋势。环境史是在战后环境保护运动的推动下产生的 ,是意识变革的产物 ;现代生态学为环境史研究提供了新的视角和方法论 ;生态学研究的发展对环境史研究产生了影响。     

环境史续论

环境是指人类周围的空间范围,即人类赖以生存的物质世界。它包括自然环境和人工环境,但是不包括社会环境。生态中心论的提法忽视了人类的主动性和创造性,有些矫枉过正。环境恶化和环境污染,是环境史研究的两大重点。历史地理学、农史林史水利史的部分内容属于环境史,它们与环境史各有侧重,不能等同为一。考古学扩大了环境史研究的视野。环境史与上述学科的关系,体现了环境史跨学科的特点。     

环境史研究的三个层面

历史学者总是臆断人类生活在自然世界之外。环境史质疑这种假设,并且坚持人类是自然的一部分,我们对自然施加着影响,同时自然也对我们具有影响。这种新的观念聚焦在三套相互作用的变化之上：地球的各种系统（气候、地理、生态系统）伴随时间的变化,自这些系统中谋求生计的生产模式的变化,以及文化态度的变化及其在艺术、意识形态、科学和政治中的表现。这门新的历史学在其方法上是跨学科的,而在其含义上是跨国界的。     

Influencing Environmental Policy in Rural Communities: The Environmental Opposition at Work

Environmental opposition groups have often formed in rural communities as a response to sweeping environmental regulations. They do not match the stereotypes of nongovernmental organizations funded by extractive resource industries, but have a solid grass-roots membership that is stalling, if not altogether thwarting, the momentum of the environmental movement.     

Environmental Policy in India

This article reviews the significant changes India has achieved in environmental policy in the pool 10 years, especially in terms of regulatory procedures and organizational structure. Despite these changes, however, environmental quality has continued to deteriorate, largely because a wide gap persists between the intent of policy and the actual achievement and because major problems have eluded serious attention. The paper analyzes major problems in the implementation of Indian environmental policy, with particular attention to policy design, policy analysis, and standard setting. Political problems are identified that underlie difficulties in policy formulation and implemetation, and strategies to improve implemetation are proposed.     

Neo-Corporatism and Environmental Policy

The ecologically sustainable development (ESD) process represented a significant attempt by the Commonwealth Government to involve pro-environment and pro-development protagonists in a major environmental consultative forum. The government's inclusion of peak interest organisations into an exclusive consultation process resembles a neo-corporatist approach to interest intermediation. However, neo-corporatist theory has been applied almost exclusively to economic policy areas and interest organisations representing capital, labour and the state. Analysing the involvement of select environmental organisations in the ESD process, this paper argues that neo-corporatist theory can be extended to include non-production-based interest organisations. The implications of environmental organisation participation in a neo-corporatist structure are examined, including a discussion of the tension between neo-corporatist and new social movement theories.     

环境史:定义、内容与方法

环境史研究是历史研究的一部分,国内外都有人从事这方面的研究,并取得了一定的成绩,受到学术界的关注。然而,由于环境史研究起步比较晚,是20世纪后半叶开始的,因此,对环境史研究有关的一些理论问题,尚缺乏深入探讨。当此环境史研究方兴未艾之际,应当对这项研究的性质、目的、内容、重点以及研究方法等问题进行讨论,以明确环境史的研究方向,加快环境史研究的前进步伐。     

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.     

Environmental Geochemistry and Health

Abstract

During the first half-century of political independence, Americans were on the periphery of international science, little more than a minor appendage of European science. However, beginning about 1830, Americans began making great intellectual and institutional strides in science. Although progress varied from discipline to discipline, the end result was the establishment of an autonomous community, conducting research comparable to and in some case superior to, that of their European counterparts. This review records this evolution, utilizing three disciplines as case studies – astronomy, botany, and experimental physics.     

Environmental Situation In 2003

In 2003 the quality of Tibet‘s environment was kept in a good situation.     

Environmental Justice Meets Risk‐Class: The Relational Distribution of Environmental Bads

Recent treatments of environmental justice have highlighted the need to move beyond focusing upon inequalities in the distribution of environmental risks to address other aspects of environmental injustice, including unequal participation and recognition. While acknowledging the importance of extending environmental justice to include these other dimensions of justice, this paper argues that more, not less, analytical attention needs to be devoted to the diverse logics of distribution of environmental risks. In light of continuing dilemmas associated with whether environmental inequalities can be just or, alternatively, that environmental inequality and injustice are co‐extensive, this paper proposes to untangle some key connections between environmental inequalities and injustice through a critical confrontation of environmental justice with risk‐class analysis. Focusing on the positional or relational distribution of environmental bads as analysed in risk‐class analysis, this paper argues that bringing these two bodies of knowledge together can illuminate how relational inequalities have characteristics that make them particularly illegitimate from a justice perspective, thus making an advance in identifying key connections between environmental inequality and injustice.     

Environmental Values and Water Policy

The emergence of water markets has heralded the prospect of increased efficiency in the use of the resource for extractive purposes. However, water markets have not encompassed all elements of demand for the resource. Notably, demands for the environmental public goods provided by river flows have not been revealed in markets. State Governments have instituted regulations requiring ‘environmental flows’ to be quarantined from the market allocation process. This policy has triggered negative responses from irrigators and conservationists. Lobby groups have found that the process of determining environmental flows is a prospective site for rent seeking. To avoid policy being driven by rent seeking, information on the costs and benefits of environmental flows is useful. Whereas the costs of environmental flows are readily assessed through reference to market data on irrigators’ surpluses foregone, the benefits must be estimated through the use of non‐market, stated preference valuation techniques. These techniques — including contingent valuation and choice modelling — remain controversial. Some argue that they should not be used on ethical grounds. Others argue that they cannot be used on technical grounds. These arguments are discussed in this paper, using the context of the water policy debate. The evidence is that stated preference techniques are being used, and applications have been performed in Australia in the context of riverine health. However their use remains restricted relative to the scale of the Australian natural resource management task. Some possible explanations for this limited up‐take are provided along with some suggested ways forward.     

Environmental Education in Russian Universities

This paper presents the results of a simulation exercise designed to explore and understand the implications of trying to survive in a marginal and poverty-stricken African community. The aim of the simulation was to create an approximation of a community involved in an income-generating project, akin to a Public Works Programme. This project sought to enable every person to earn a dollar a day on which to live. In addition, the exercise helped the participants to question and assess whether the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have a chance of reaching their proposed targets. The nearly one hundred participants were undergraduate geography students, reading Development Studies and Demography at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. The outcome of the simulation was that the students developed a clearer understanding of poverty, particularly the ‘Deprivation Trap’, and how complex the development process is in practice.