Bhopal revisited: The view from below

Abstract

The night of 2–3 December 1994 will mark the tenth anniversary of the world's largest industrial disaster. Over the years the attention Bhopal has attracted has centered on the extended legal negotiations between the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and the Indian government. What is less known is that despite a settlement in 1989 and a review in 1991, the gas survivors continue to suffer untold misery. Indeed their lives are more insecure today than they were in 1984.     

The property question revisited: The restitution myth

The handling of the property question in the German unification process and Treaty has met with harsh criticism by east Germans and west Germans alike, unifying, for once, both radical and liberal left, as well as some conservatives. Conservative groups in the west were up in arms about the Treaty's recognition of the land reform under Soviet occupation, while the majority of people in the east and also the western left brandished the principle ‘restitution before compensation’ as a major obstacle to investment in the east. This article argues that restitution did not have the significance that is often claimed. In reality the situation was much more complex, and many other factors than the possible restitution of property were responsible for the slower than expected economic recovery of the east.     

迎接WTO挑战走可持续发展之路

可持续发展是当今人类的共同选择.我们济南钢铁集团总公司在九五计划时期,遵循可持续发展的要求,狠抓节能降耗,成效显著.十五计划期间,我们决心迎接WTO挑战,走可持续发展道路,创建节能清洁型工厂.     

Selling the Public on Sustainable Watershed Conservation

Abstract:  The city of Quito, Ecuador, began working in 2000 to protect the ecologically fragile watershed area for its drinking water. In order to protect the Papallacta watershed, the independent Fund for the Conservation of Watersheds (FONAG) was launched to finance and manage economically sound sustainability projects in the area. FONAG is funded in part through start up grants from several organisations and a 1 per cent fee on all Quito water bills, but it has been unable to build an endowment sizeable enough to begin implementing conservation projects. We measure perceptions of the fund among Quito's university–based residents in two settings and evaluate the quality of the fund's proposed communication campaign based on existing communication theory. Further, we propose an adapted environmental education model based on a synthesis of existing theory and the empirical findings from our examination of the FONAG example. The Papallacta case study illuminates the potential strengths and weaknesses of the cultural ecology and political will of this type of collaborative sustainability project for addressing water problems in a developing country in a mountainous setting, centred around the themes of water conservation and sustainable development.     

“Informal pluralism” and Japanese politics: Sino-Japanese rapprochement revisited

This study attempts to take the 1972 Sino-Japanese rapprochement as a case study testing the hypotheses that emerged from recent research on the pluralistic nature of Japanese politics. It concentrates on “informal pluralism,” an important characteristic of Japanese political life. Internal maneuvers of Japanese politics during the normalization process have been closely examined. These internal elements include: the Liberal Democratic Party—informal organizations in action, the ruling party/bureaucracy apparatus—informal channels, opposition parties diplomacy—informal styles, and intellectuals—informal advisory groups.     

Cooperatives as Sustainable Livelihood Strategies in Rural Mexico

The sustainable livelihoods perspective and cooperative movement are rooted in frameworks that value social justice in the form of participatory democracy, distributional equity, and solidarity. Unlike studies of cooperatives that focus mainly on economic efficiency and productivity, we argue that this socio‐political dimension of the cooperative projects is crucial for understanding their potential as sustainable livelihoods. This exploratory research examines the experiences of two rural Mexican communities in Guanajuato and Oaxaca, which formed cooperatives as alternative livelihood strategies. Our results show that each community used similar grassroots political culture to develop cooperatives designed to meet local needs.     

东南亚国家的城市化:原因与可持续发展

东南亚国家在过去的几十年间城市化速度发展较快,促成城市化的原因既有历史原因,也有二战后实行的工业化政策,移民的因素。但东南亚国家在城市化过程中面临的问题是人口和经济活动过分集中在大城市,影响到了东南亚国家城市的可持续发展。为解决这个问题,东南亚国家政府制订了适当的城市化政策,综合开发落后地区,实行人口和工业分散化指施,但实施效果不佳。东南亚国家大城市的非集中化在今后将面临严峻的挑战。     

俄罗斯与北约:脆弱但可持续的伙伴关系

由于俄罗斯与北约对合作目标的互惠性认知虽有差异但在战略目标上基本一致,同时从绩效来看,双方各有所获。但双方对东欧和前苏联地区地缘战略空间的争夺,特别是俄罗斯用楔子战略和2010年新版军事学说对抗北约东扩,同时,双方对各自在未来欧洲安全机制中的角色定位和相互定位也不同,因此,俄罗斯与北约的伙伴关系将是脆弱的,但是可持续的。     

Peasant,Patriot, Environmentalist: Sustainable Development Discourse in Havana

Private urban agricultural ventures, initially a spontaneous response to food shortages during the Special Period, soon became a state‐sponsored project, related to global notions of sustainability. This article explores the relationship between sustainability discourse and its local dimensions to reveal the role of sustainability in the reformulation of the Revolution. Urban gardeners engage with international discourses of sustainability and interact with the Cuban state's articulation of these discourses. While this process forces urban gardeners to adapt to the changing meanings of growing food, it also provides a different language through which gardeners define themselves, especially in the context of a changing relationship with the state.     

可持续发展位视角内的当前中日关系

可持续发展位是用来分析当前国际关系的一个新视角。本文从这样一个视角来分析当前错综复杂的中日关系,并认为当前中日关系发展的症结在于中日之间的可持续发展位优势之争。     

东南亚华人家族企业可持续成长的路径选择

本文从公司治理的角度简单地描述了东南亚华人家族企业的成长历程 ,对其有效性、合理性和可持续性进行了比较细致地分析。在此基础上 ,本文比较客观地评价了东南亚华人家族企业 ,并对我国家族企业的可持续成长提出了一点建议。     

Selling Sustainable Development and Shortchanging Social Ecology in Costa Rican Forest Policy

Costa Ricans have worked hard to weave the norms and principles of sustainable development into their nation's environmental policies, especially with respect to natural renewable resources, such as the forest. As a result, the nation is known as a leader in innovative environmental initiatives. But sustainable development is a complex, evolving concept. This paper analyzes how the emphasis on biodiversity conservation during the 1990s and early 2000s has, rhetoric notwithstanding, neglected the social equality, or livelihood, component of sustainable development. This trend stands in sharp contrast to earlier periods, when decisionmakers crafted policies and institutions that supported social ecology. The article concludes with a few observations on building political will to revive the grassroots development component of sustainable development.     

The frontier revisited: displacement,land and identity among farm labourers in the Sundays River Valley

This paper aims to unpack the dynamics of displacement and the relationship of physical movement to elements of space (i.e. land) and place (or identity), in the Sundays River Valley, near the town of Kirkwood, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It primarily uses the motif of frontiers to cast light on displacement as an ongoing phenomenon and explore the different eras of occupation of land in the Sundays River Valley, from the early nineteenth century until 1970. It relates different layers of belonging and identity to the unfolding of capitalism and apartheid in South Africa. The article argues that ties to land are multiple, contested and based upon dispossession and physical movement rather than upon stability. While such a high degree of contestation of oral evidence in the Sundays River Valley might not give current claimants a detailed legal basis for restitution, it is an academically valuable idea to explore the origins of the inhabitants in the Sundays River Valley – because it can indicate the degree to which local identities are influenced by experiences of disruption and displacement. The paper argues that frontier relationships in the SRV are central in the formation of larger systems of relationships of race and class, and that this casts new light on displacement (both as a historical event and a contemporary experience), in the formation of identity and place in southern Africa.     

可持续发展位:当代国际关系研究的新视角

研究视角的选择对于国际关系理论的构建具有重要的意义.在新的时代背景下,由生态位发展而来的可持续发展位可作为当代国际关系研究的新视角.可持续发展位有其特定的内涵,它与综合国力、国家权力、国家利益和国家的国际地位有着密切联系,但又存在着重大区别.可持续发展位对当代国际关系研究具有十分重要的理论意义和现实意义.