Global warming has been one of the major concerns behind the world＇s high-speed economic growth. How to implement the coordinated development of the carbon footprint and the economy will be the core ...issue of the world＇s economic and social development, as well as the heated debate of the research at home and abroad in recent years. Based on the energy consumption, integrated with the ＂Top-Down＂ life cycle approach and geographically weighted regression （GWR） model, this paper analyzed the spatial differences and multi-mechanism of carbon footprint in provincial China in 2010. Firstly, this study calculated the amount of carbon footprint of each province using ＂Top-Down＂ life cycle approach and found that there were significant differences of carbon footprint and per capita carbon footprint in provincial China. The provinces with higher carbon footprint, mainly located in northern China, have large economic scales; the provinces with higher per capita carbon footprint are mainly distributed in central cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and energy-rich regions and heavy chemical bases. Secondly, with the aid of GIS and spatial analysis model （GWR model）, this paper had unfolded that the expansion of economic scale is the main driver of the rapid growth of carbon footprint. The growth of population and urbanization also acted as promoting factors for the increase of the carbon footprint. Energy structure had no considerable promoting effect for the increase of the carbon footprint. Improving energy efficiency is the most important factor to inhibit the growing carbon footprint. Thirdly, developing low-carbon economies and low-carbon industries, as well as advocating low-carbon city construction and improving carbon efficiency would be the primary approaches to inhibit the rapid growth of carbon footprint. Moderately controlling the economic scale and population size would also be required to alleviate carbon footprint. Meanwhile, environmental protection and construction of low-carbon cities would evoke extensive attention in the process of urbanization.
In this paper we explore hybridity in Australian natural resource governance, both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of neoliberalism. We develop an understanding of this governance regime as an assemblage of ...subjects, ethics, ends and techniques that constitute a hybrid of practices directed by three mentalities of government: neoliberalism, localism and ecocentrism. This three-way parentage engenders particularly complex internal dynamics – tensions and congruencies, grounds for contest and opportunities for collaboration – that shape and transform the regime. Our analysis clarifies the formative roles of the three logics and in so doing offers a new perspective of tripartite governance dynamics. We conclude by showing how the co-existing mentalities compete to establish NRM policy that is in accord with their respective ends and ethics, subjectify problems and other actors to fit with their own agendas, and attempt to secure primacy for those technologies congruent with their logics. At the same time, as mutually constitutive forces of the regime, they exhibit varying degrees of adaptivity as they co-opt or accommodate technologies favoured by their competitors.
: The central operating strategy within the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and most of the advanced capitalist world's environmental policy is to address climate change through the market mechanism known as ...emissions trading. Based upon government issuance and private trading of emissions reductions credits and offsets, this approach quickly rose to $135 billion in annual trading. But in the wake of the collapse of climate negotiations in Copenhagen and a world financial crisis which undermined market faith in derivative investments, carbon trading has an uncertain future. Linkages between deep‐rooted financial market and emissions market problems are revealing in spatio‐temporal terms, especially in the context of a deeper overaccumulation crisis and investors’ desperate need for new speculative outlets. It is in the nexus of the spatial and temporal aspects of carbon financing amidst resistance to “new enclosures” by adversely affected peoples, that broader‐based lessons for global/local environmental politics and climate policy can be learned.
This paper explores the active roles that domestic consumers might play in different transition pathways to a lower carbon electricity economy. It begins with a review of psychological and ...sociological perspectives on the drivers for everyday energy-use patterns, situating these in the context of the body of research on transitions in sociotechnical systems. On the basis of the review, a social-science-based framework is proposed for analysing the active ways in which domestic actors might facilitate or support the transition to a lower carbon economy. Applying the framework to an analysis of centralised and decentralised transitions pathways suggests that domestic actors can play an active role in transition through establishing new routine and conventional uses of energy in everyday life. Domesticating lower carbon technologies such as smart meters and microgeneration equipment supports the disruption of unsustainable energy-using routines and could help to make energy consumption and energy costs more visible and relevant to the everyday lives of domestic users. The findings call attention to the need to consider the wider effects of energy-system transition within and around consumer-oriented lifestyles.
Modes of Governing Municipal Waste Bulkeley, Harriet; Watson, Matt; Hudson, Ray
Environment and planning. A,
11/2007, Letnik:
39, Številka:
11
Journal Article
Recenzirano
From recent debates on governance and governmentality, two key analytical imperatives arise: the need to engage simultaneously with the structures and processes of governing, and the need to ...recognise the plurality and multiplicity of governing sites and activities. In seeking to address these imperatives, we develop an analytical approach, the modes of governing approach, which engages with the rationalities, agencies, institutional relations, and technologies of governing that coalesce around particular objectives and entities to be governed. Drawing on the example of municipal waste management, we illustrate how this framework can illuminate the dynamic and multiple nature of governing, and outline the key modes of governing which currently shape the policy and practice of municipal waste.
Emissions trading has created new forms of exchangeable property which become commodities when traded in markets designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and mitigate climate change. This paper ...analyzes a set of social processes which influence who benefits from reductions in emissions generated by primary production from forest ecosystems. Informed by commodification literature, and property and access theory, we suggest that farmers and rural communities cannot derive full benefits from carbon sequestration because they lack key structural and relational mechanisms, such as capital, knowledge, expertise, technology, and, in some cases, even labour. We illustrate this argument by examining three ongoing carbon-forestry projects in China, Ecuador, and Mexico and we highlight its implications for future forestry mitigation projects and programmes.
Traditional approaches to studying human-environment interactions often ignore individual-level information, do not account for complexities, or fail to integrate cross-scale or cross-discipline data ...and methods, thus, in many situations, resulting in a great loss in predictive or explanatory power. This article reports on the development, implementation, validation, and results of an agent-based spatial model that addresses such issues. Using data from Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas (China), the model simulates the impact of the growing rural population on the forests and panda habitat. The households in Wolong follow a traditional rural lifestyle, in which fuelwood consumption has been shown to cause panda habitat degradation. By tracking the life history of individual persons and the dynamics of households, this model equips household agents with "knowledge" about themselves, other agents, and the environment and allows individual agents to interact with each other and the environment through their activities in accordance with a set of artificial-intelligence rules. The households and environment coevolve over time and space, resulting in macroscopic human and habitat dynamics. The results from the model may have value for understanding the roles of socioeconomic and demographic factors, for identifying particular areas of special concern, and for conservation policy making. In addition to the specific results of the study, the general approach described here may provide researchers with a useful general framework to capture complex human-environment interactions, to incorporate individual-level information, and to help integrate multidisciplinary research efforts, theories, data, and methods across varying spatial and temporal scales.
The development of industries in China’s resource-rich regions is mainly affected by resource reserves, environmental protection, and industrial structural adjustment. The development of ...resource-oriented industries that can’t support a high-quality regional economy is large but not well developed. This article considers China’s resource product imports and exports, carbon emissions, and industrial structure ratio factors in recent years. It is believed that China’s resource-rich regions have macro-level development bottlenecks, and the general development of a resource-based industries path is proposed based on the perspective of “resources, assets, and capital”. Taking Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as an empirical case, this article analyzes the pattern of regional industrial development by using the input-output method, calculates the degree of inter-industrial correlation, and constructs a regional industrial development system. The results show the following: 1. China’s overall industrial development pattern has undergone major changes; 2. emerging industries and service-oriented industries have risen in development status, and although resource-based industries have a weaker development momentum, they still have an important position; 3. the hierarchical industry development management model is helpful for forming a regional circular economy innovation development pattern. The results also indicate that the integrated management of “resources, assets, and capital” has a positive effect on the development of resource-based industries in resource-rich regions, which affects the overall industrial development pattern of the region and promotes economic development.
Close examination of the scalar politics of environmental organizations engaged in contesting the terms of neoliberal globalization highlights four limitations of current theorizations of scale in ...radical geography. First, this body of work has paid little attention to environmental NGOs and movements as important actors in scalar politics. This is not only an empirical gap, but a theoretical one: taking environmental actors and issues into account requires rethinking the ontologies and dynamics in scale theory. Second, recent attention to social reproduction in scale debates must be extended to the reproduction of environmental conditions. Third, sharp analytical distinctions between scalar structuration and the production of nature are untenable and reproduce a culture/nature dualism. Fourth, sharp distinctions between politics within or about established scales, versus politics among scales, are unstable and miss the precise strategies pursued in some politics of scale. These arguments are illustrated and explored via case material drawn from current struggles over efforts to define environmental governance as a form of regulatory expropriation in international trade agreements.
Protection of human life and property from flooding is a strategic priority in the UK. We examine how to encourage home owners to protect themselves and their residences. A model of factors that ...influence the decision to buy flood-protection devices is tested using survey data from 2109 home owners. The results show that the majority of respondents have not purchased domestic flood protection (N = 1732; 82.1%). Purchase of flood-protection devices was influenced by age; perceived seriousness; and beliefs about, and trust in, the role of regulators in managing flooding. In younger respondents the perceived seriousness of the dangers of flooding acted as precursors and barriers to action depending on individual sense of responsibility and agency. The second part of the study examines responsiveness to information. Information about flooding alone was insufficient to promote behavioural change, particularly among people who had not experienced a flood or who believed that they were not in a flood zone. Implications for understanding flood protection, managing agency issues, and flood-communication campaigns are discussed.
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