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.     

The archaeology and paleoenvironment of an Upper Pleistocene hyena den: An integrated approach

Data of high resolution for reconstructions of archaeological site formation processes can be obtained only by the use of precise excavation methods and comprehensive recovery techniques using fine-mesh water screening, followed by meticulous sorting and quantitative studies of all the small organic components from the screens. These methods are generally used at human occupation sites, but are not often employed at paleontological or mixed human-carnivore sites. At the site of Bois Roche, an Upper Pleistocene hyena den, we have used these meticulous recovery techniques in combination with absolute dating, geoarchaeological observations, taphonomic analyses, studies of microvertebrates and pollen analysis. Correlation of the site environmental data from pollen and microvertebrate assemblages with the vegetation record of a deep-sea core taken in the Bay of Biscay have allowed us to constrain the ages provided by ESR dating of bovid teeth and to reconstruct the physical environment of the site with a degree of confidence rarely achieved by the use of fossil remains from archaeological sites alone.     

Can Only Religion Save Us?

This paper will examine the loss of confidence in secular bases for the normative understanding of, and response to, the fundamental social and political problems. The recent arguments of Richard Falk in favour of a religious foundation for a humane globalization will be taken as paradigmatic. While the paper agrees that the normative core of major world religions supports Falk's particular conclusion that religion can provide the content for a universal critique of inhumane global governance, it will conclude that the universal claim that global human solidarity today can only be built on the basis of religious faith does not follow. The paper will contend that the required normative foundation for the positive project of constructing global human solidarity is neither religious nor secular, but synthetic, embracing both—in what I will call, following the work of John McMurtry—the “life-ground of value.”     

A Fisk patent metallic burial case from Western Missouri: an interdisciplinary and comprehensive effort to reconstruct the history of an early settler of Lexington,Missouri

In 2006 a cast-iron coffin was discovered in an unmarked burial plot in Lexington, Missouri. A multifaceted investigation was conducted to provide historical documentation and possible identification of the individual. The coffin is an early Fisk Patent Metallic Burial Case. Osteological analyses indicate that the skeletal remains belong to a 20 to 30 year old white female who consistently ate an omnivorous diet with significant amounts of C4 plants or seafood. Rib morphology and her burial garments suggest she frequently wore restrictive clothing. No gross skeletal pathological lesions or trauma were observed except for a patch of reactive bone and an atypical pattern of bone remodeling on the visceral surface of the sixth rib. Subsequent bacterial DNA analysis of the ribs and sternum indicate the presence of tuberculosis infection. Although not conclusive, multiple lines of evidence are consistent with the skeletal remains representing Elizabeth (Triplett) Stewart who died in 1854 of pulmonary tuberculosis. This multidisciplinary research significantly contributes to the local history of Lexington, Missouri and provides a likely identification of the deceased individual for the Stewart Family.     

The reconstruction of past environments through small mammals: from the Mousterian to the Bronze Age in El Mirón Cave (Cantabria,Spain)

El Mirón is a large cave in the Cantabrian Cordillera of northern Spain that presents a long archaeostratigraphic sequence radiocarbon-dated by over 60 assays to between 41,000 and 2000 BP. The sediments, collected from four areas within the cave and sieved-washed with fine wire meshes, contain microvertebrate remains of fish, frogs, lizards, birds and mammals, of which the latter are most abundant. Preliminary taphonomic analysis suggests that the microvertebrates were naturally collected by owls and (less) small carnivores. Small mammal assemblages are useful for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction because they are linked to particular habitats and are sensitive to environmental changes. The small mammals from El Mirón are ideal for this because sample sizes are large, bone preservation is good, and the stratigraphic sequence is long. In this paper we reconstruct the late Quaternary environments in the Cantabrian region of Spain using small-mammal assemblages from El Mirón Cave. On the basis of the ecologic adaptations of this suite of fauna, the majority still extant, we have identified seven habitat types, which are plotted through time. The evolution of the small mammal assemblages at El Mirón reveals seven major climatic shifts that correspond closely to the climatic changes recognized in the Iberian Peninsula during the last 41 kyr.     

Pet Sounds: Subsystems,Regimes, Policy Punctuations,and the Neglect of African American Farmers, 1935–2006

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) has reoriented the study of public policy and American politics in particular. In this study, we documented how a policy punctuation that appears to take hold at the macro level of the polity in the form of a policy regime has difficulty penetrating subsystem politics. We drew on subsystems theory, PET, and the latest work on policy regimes to document the resistance of the agriculture subsystem to efforts to add a civil rights dimension to agriculture policy between 1935 and 2006. We concluded that the issue evolution of agricultural support programs, and their insulation from civil rights policy, is a prime example of how subsystems use negative feedback to resist change.     

State of the Union Addresses and the President's Legislative Success

The State of the Union speech is generally considered a roadmap of the president's legislative program each year, yet little attention has been given to whether it functions as a determinant of the president's legislative success. The primary purpose of this article is to empirically examine the policy content of the message and the link to the president's policy success. In addition, I explore how this relationship is conditioned by the strength of the opposition party and the level of partisanship in Congress. Based on analysis of annual data from 1954–2000, the results indicate the speech has a positive and significant influence on the president's success in domestic policy. While this influence remains significant at low and average levels of partisanship and opposition party strength, it disappears when each factor is at high levels. I conclude with a discussion of how this study relates to previous research on the link between presidential speeches and legislative success.     

Biodiversity Conservation: The Process of Economic Assessment and Establishment of a Protected Area in Vanuatu

This article describes the framework adopted for the socio-economic assessment of protected areas intended to safeguard biodiversity. This framework, which can be described as a three-tiered approach to conservation, is applied to the process of assessment and establishment of a protected area (PA) in Vanuatu. The potential benefits that the landowners of the PA could derive from logging activities, and the subsistence values derived from the PA are considered. It appears that if the PA was to be established without the payment of any compensation, the landowners would face substantial net costs. During the research process, it was suggested that the Government of Vanuatu could take up a lease on the land to compensate the landowners for the loss of potential logging royalties. When the benefits accruing to the landowners from a lease agreement are compared with the foregone logging royalties, it is found that the net present value of a seventy-five year lease agreement is approximately equivalent to the net present value of logging royalties.