The agricultural potentialities of the Transvaal

During the past decade retail warehouses have become an important new element in the retail structure of many towns and cities. This paper outlines the character and geographical pattern of retail warehouse operations in Scotland and discusses some of the planning issues raised by these developments.     

The Natural Contract: From Lévi‐Strauss to the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court

In 2008, the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly became the first juridical body in the world to legalize what Michel Serres might have called a ‘natural contract.’ With the assistance of the U.S.‐based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, representatives at the Assembly in July of 2008 re‐wrote their 1998 constitution to include a landmark series of articles delineating the rights of nature — a notion long familiar to Indigenous communities in the Andean region, actively propagated by anthropologists like Claude Lévi‐Strauss at the French National Assembly as early as the 1970s, and often mocked by mainstream Western jurists for its conceptual confusion about the sorts of entities that can properly be said to have rights. Drawing on the experiences of activists currently engaged in the first national‐level lawsuit to make use of these rights as well as a range of both activists and non‐activists involved in alternative implementations of them, the article explores the possibilities, limitations, and paradoxes of this extension of rights‐based discourse. At a time when the natural world is increasingly being talked about at the United Nations and elsewhere not as a ‘rights‐holder,’ but as an ‘ecosystem services provider,’ I suggest that while the discourse of ‘rights' signals promising shifts in how Andean governments are conceptualizing agency and responsibility in ways that productively break with the trend toward marketization, it also runs the risk of providing the administration with symbolic cover for its intensifying commitment to what Eduardo Gudynas has called, a ‘new extractivism.'     

西方地理学界关于生产性服务业作用研究述评

生产性服务业是目前西方大部分服务业体系中对国民经济作用最显著的部分,20世纪70年代以来,西方学者关于生产性服务业作用的研究日益增加。总括而言,西方地理学者对生产性服务业作用的研究主要从四个方面进行:生产性服务业对城市与区域整体发展的作用、对地区的制造业发展的作用、对地区其他服务业发展的作用,以及对城市等级序列重构的作用。其中,主要是从产业的内在功能和布局两个角度研究生产性服务业的作用。     

在海陆复合生态系统理论框架下:浅谈人地关系系统中海洋功能的介入

随着社会生产力的提高,人类认识和干预自然的能力逐渐增强,人地关系也随之向广度和深度发展。在人地关系发展初期,人与陆地之间的相互作用强度远大于人与海洋之间的相互作用,而人地关系发展至今天,\"地\"的概念已经扩展到陆地和海洋的总体。本文首先阐述海陆复合生态系统理论,在此基础上分析海洋功能介入到原本主要以陆地为基地的人地关系系统中的机制问题。文章认为,海陆生态系统的进化、系统开放性所决定的物质能量和信息的交流以及人类需求的拉动都可能解释海洋功能对人地关系系统的介入。     

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。     

中国社会服务业外商直接投资的空间格局研究

利用省际数据探讨我国社会服务业FDI的空间集聚特征及格局影响机制,以期从新视角分析各地的对外开放程度。研究发现:①我国社会服务业FDI呈地带性分布特征;②社会服务业FDI的空间布局并不完全追随地区的经济发达程度;③我国社会服务业FDI存在不显著的空间正相关,其空间集聚程度低于生产性服务业FDI;④近年来空间正相关省份数量明显增多,东中部沿海及长三角的极化作用加强。⑤经济发展较快的区域逐渐显示出吸引外资进入社会服务业的优势;⑥政策及实施细则、经济发展水平和行业属性,是空间格局的重要影响机制。     

Managing,Valuing, and Protecting Heritage Resources in the Twenty-First Century: Peatland Archaeology,the Ecosystem Services Framework,and the Kyoto Protocol

Abstract

This paper argues that the development of the Ecosystem Services framework, which has recently emerged as an internationally recognized framework for valuing ‘the ‘natural capital’ of ecosystems, presents a number of opportunities for heritage management and the archaeological record, arguing that the inclusion of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental ‘value’ within this framework presents an opportunity to incorporate heritage alongside a range of other critical ‘services’. It presents a short case study focusing on the problems facing the preservation of peatland archaeological sites and deposits in situ alongside developments within peatland conservation and restoration initiatives partly driven by the ability of healthy, functioning peatlands to sequester carbon and hence mitigate climate change. It is argued that this drive towards peatland re-wetting may bring both positive benefits and opportunities for heritage management but also presents a number of practical issues, which now require active engagement from the archaeological community.