The role of forests in global climate change: whence we come and where we go

Neither the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) nor the Kyoto Protocol include a satisfying mechanism for reducing the substantial emissions from deforestation which are responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is acknowledged that planting forests, for example through afforestation and reforestation in the Clean Development Mechanism, clearly provides an opportunity to sequester carbon in vegetation and soils. However, it takes decades to restore carbon stocks that have been lost as a result of land-use changes. Reducing the rate of deforestation is the only effective way to reduce carbon losses from forest ecosystems. As negotiations on a post-Kyoto agreement have already started the authors argue that a complete and fair post-Kyoto regime will have to expand existing regulations by creating a framework to encompass all land-use and forest-related changes in carbon stocks. Developing countries administer the majority of the world's environmental resources and provide a vital global public good by maintaining environmental assets. However, with increasing pressure on development and the use of resources, developing countries can hardly be expected to provide these services free. Therefore, they will have to be integrated into a more comprehensive incentive framework which also rewards forestry conservation, sustainable forest management and afforestation. The authors discuss how an incentive system for the protection of forests can be included in a future climate regime. Different design choices are considered and two recent approaches to reward developing countries that avoid further deforestation are compared: the 'compensated reduction of deforestation' approach and the Carbon Stock Approach.     

Drugs for Tropical Diseases in the Third World

Abstract

The relationship between the World Health Organization's Special Programme for reducing tropical diseases and the pharmaceutical industry is the author's main theme. The problems of malaria, schistosomiasis, filariasis trypanosomiasis – both types – leishmaniasis and leprosy are surveyed with references to their chemotherapy, the search for new drugs and possible immunity. It is concluded that existing drugs are far from perfect, but untll better ones have been discovered, they represent the best treatment for most of the diseases reviewed.     

云南景洪 雨林中的“阿凡达世界”

<正>在电影《阿凡达》中,我们生活的星球是另一个世象:植物茂密多谲,动物强健多智。伐木锯和猎枪的声音还不曾到达这个纯洁得近乎神话的世界。在很多年前,这样的世界的确存在过,甚至到今天还未在地球上完全消失。位于我国云南西双版纳州的景洪市,就是世界上仅有的几个"阿凡达世界"之一,与其他地方一样,它期待着被爱和呵护。     

走进婆罗洲 马来西亚热带雨林之植物篇

正相关链接热带雨林(Tropical Rain Forest)是指一类生长在年平均温度在24℃以上,或者最冷月平均温度在18℃以上的热带潮湿低地的常绿高大的森林植被系统,由无御寒无抗旱能力的树种组成,层次多而界限不明,它具有独特的外貌与结构特征,与世界上的其他森林类型有着明显的区别。     

走进婆罗洲 马来西亚热带雨林之植物篇

<正>相关链接热带雨林(Tropical Rain Forest)是指一类生长在年平均温度在24℃以上,或者最冷月平均温度在18℃以上的热带潮湿低地的常绿高大的森林植被系统,由无御寒无抗旱能力的树种组成,层次多而界限不明,它具有独特的外貌与结构特征,与世界上的其他森林类型有着明显的区别。     

走进婆罗洲 马来西亚热带雨林之动物篇

<正>昆虫在地球上约出现于3.5亿年前,经历了漫长的演化过程。全世界已经知道的昆虫约有100多万种,加上一些尚未被发现的,保守估计实际数字不少于200万种,是个非常庞大的数目,远远超出地球上的植物总数量。昆虫约占动物界种数的80%,每年还陆续发现新的物种,中国已经知道的有10万多种。     

Policy innovation in the Australian states

The communication of new ideas is synonymous with Henry Mayer and his contribution to Australian political studies. As a teacher and communicator, Henry is the acknowledged source of the idea for numerous books and articles. As a researcher, it is the ‘new’ that has attracted him into a variety of areas. As a writer on a range of diverse topics, the presentation of new ideas and approaches has been a persistent theme. As an editor, it was always the fresh approach and the new slant that interested him most. And, as a colleague, he can be as stimulating, and as irritating, as any process of innovation and social change.     

Thinking Politically about Sustainable Development in the Tropical Forests of Latin America

This article examines a number of factors which facilitate the adoption and success of policies and projects to promote grassroots sustainable development – that is, the sustainable, multiple use of forests at the community level, including aspects of local self-reliance and control of economic resources. I will argue that the extractive reserve legislation in Brazil and community forestry projects in Mexico and Peru depended on the formation of pro-grassroots development coalitions. The exact make-up of those coalitions depended on three factors: (1) the initial disposition of key governmental and dominant class actors to such policies; (2) the intensity of local conflicts and the extent of community organization; and (3) the involvement of international actors. The cases suggest that in the absence of serious government or upper class opposition, the adoption and durability of such policies and projects can be promoted by the formation of a coalition of organized communities, domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs), some allied government agencies, and support from international actors. However, when key government agencies and socio-economic élites are fundamentally opposed to sustainable development initiatives at the grassroots level, much higher levels of community organization, conflict, and domestic and international support appear to be necessary.     

Pioneers,politicians and the conservation of forests in early New Zealand

In pioneering societies there is usually little interest in resource conservation, and scant concern for the consequences of environmental disturbance. Yet legislation to conserve the extensive forests of New Zealand was introduced soon after settlement began, and despite a general desire for material improvement. Ultimately, this paradox is attributable to George Perkins Marsh's demonstration of the ecological consequences of man's impact on his environment in Man and nature. The arguments of this work published in 1864 were soon heard in New Zealand. But a mere handful of New Zealanders recognized the importance of Marsh's ideas. For the most part, they were immigrants from the middle and upper ranks of British society, drawn to the colony by the prospects it offered, and removed from the general struggle to tame the land. Their concern was essential in promoting interest in the questions of environmental disturbance and conservation in the 1870s. The immediate reason for the introduction of the New Zealand Forests Bill in 1874, however, was Prime Minister Julius Vogel's recognition of the applicability of the conservationists' arguments to the New Zealand scene. Thus character and circumstance combined to heighten the impact of Marsh's writing and to temper the ethic of exploitative land use in the pioneering environment of New Zealand.     

Notes on women in the global city: Chicago

As the organizers of an event on women in the global city, we wanted to create a forum exploring the intersections of class, gender and other forms of inequality that fracture ‘global Chicago’. In the panelists' discussion of the intersections of struggles relating to housing, education and environmental justice in Chicago's particular version of the global city, we found evidence of lives disrupted by neoliberal trends, as well as possible sites to contest these disruptions. These struggles reverberate to shape a new urban vision, as the academics and activists assembled for our panel aim not just to work on the local issues of specific women, but to create a city in which work is well compensated, housing is affordable for everyone, schools educate all children well, all neighborhoods are safe both from crime and environmental pollutants, and everyone has the time to fully engage as active citizens of the city.     

Fate of the ash hurley in a global economy

The Irish sport of hurling, which pre-dates written history, has traditionally been played with an ash hurley shaped by a local craftsman known as a hurleymaker. Hurleymaking has always been an Irish practice, but now finds itself threatened by a global economy, an inconsistent supply chain, and synthetic manufacturing.     

Human rights in a global ecumene

How should we understand the cultural politics that has surrounded the development of international human rights? Two perspectives frame contemporary debate. For ‘cultural particularists’, human rights are western artefacts; alien to other societies, and an inappropriate basis for international institutional development. For ‘negotiated universalists’, a widespread global consensus undergirds international human rights norms, with few states openly contesting their status as fundamental standards of political legitimacy. This article advances an alternative understanding, pursuing John Vincent's provocative, yet undeveloped, suggestion that while the notion of human rights has its origins in European culture, its spread internationally is best understood as the product of a ‘universal social process’. The international politics of individual/human rights is located within an evolving global ecumene, a field of dynamic cultural engagement, characterized over time by the development of multiple modernities. Within this field, individual/human rights have been at the heart of diverse forms of historically transformative contentious politics, not the least being the struggles for imperial reform and change waged by subject peoples of diverse cultural backgrounds; struggles that not only played a key role in the construction of the contemporary global system of sovereign states, but also transformed the idea of ‘human’ rights itself. In developing this alternative understanding, the article advances a different understanding of the relation between power and human rights, one in which rights are seen as neither simple expressions of, or vehicles for, western domination, nor robbed of all power‐political content by simple notions of negotiation or consensus. The article concludes by considering, in a very preliminary fashion, the implications of this new account for normative theorizing about human rights. If a prima facie case exists for the normative justifiability of such rights, it lies first in their radical nature—in their role in historically transformative contentious politics—and second in their universalizability, in the fact that one cannot plausibly claim them for oneself while denying them to others.     

全球公共考古学的新视角

本文是《全球公共考古学的新视角》文集的一篇导论,对上世纪70年代以来公共考古学在英语国家及全球范围的发展做了综述。该文集的各章由各国考古学家撰写,分别介绍了公共考古学在各自国家的发展和现状。正如本文开宗明义所指出的,考古学与公众的关系从这门学科开始就相当密切,不只因为大部分重要考古发现是老百姓而非考古学家所为,而且几乎所有发掘工作都需要民众的参与。而且盗墓活动也难脱底层民众的干系。公共考古学的概念进入中国之后,一度被等同于大众考古或考古学的普及工作。具有讽刺意味的是。在相当长时间里,我国专家撰写科普读物被看作是不务正业,这类作品不被视为学术成果。这种看法正因公共考古学概念的引入而得到改观,从而使普及工作名正而言顺。因为考古学界认识到,没有高素质的民众,文化遗产的保护就是一句空话。公共考古学的概念最初是由美国考古学家理查德·麦克基姆西1972年出版的Public Archaeology一书所提出,后来迅速传播到世界各国。类似其他非英语国家,public的中译有"公共"和"公众"两种方式。英语的public有"官方"和"民众"的双重含意。这比较接近中文"公共"的意思,因为中文的"公共交通"或"公共设施"一般是指由行政部门主导和资助的大众服务。如果中国的遗产事业要与国际接轨,公共考古学也要摆脱目前局限于考古教育和知识普及的零敲碎打的大众实践,借鉴国际通行做法,由政府出于公众利益对考古学进行管理,鼓励公众积极参加考古活动和遗产保护与管理,并从多声部的公众视角来解释考古成果和布置博物馆陈列。     

Shifting Cultivation and Deforestation in Tropical Africa: Critical Reflections

Shifting cultivation is the agricultural technique employed by the majority of farmers in the tropical regions of Africa. The dominant narrative recited by policy experts, non‐governmental organizations and many scientists is that this practice is a principal cause of deforestation in tropical Africa. This article unpacks the various elements of this narrative and explores whether there is any evidence to substantiate it in West and Central Africa. The results challenge the conventional wisdom that shifting cultivation is leading to accelerating deforestation in tropical Africa.