Policy Alternatives in Adaptive Communities: Simulating the Environmental Justice Consequences of Hazardous Site Remediation Strategies

Many governments have implemented environmental justice mandates requiring agencies to consider the implications of cleanup decisions for poor and/or minority populations. To the extent that this mandate alters decisions, it usually does so by considering the composition of a community in the present without adjusting for potential demographic changes that may occur over time. However, communities change and these changes are likely to affect how well an agency meets its environmental justice mandate over the long term. In this research, an agent‐based model is introduced to simulate how alternative environmental remediation scenarios may affect environmental justice outcomes in a dynamic residential environment with two demographic classes with preferences for living in proximity to neighbors similar to themselves. Under these circumstances, there is unlikely to be one best strategy to achieve both environmental improvement and environmental equity, and a focus on valuable land is the least effective over the long run.     

Epistemic Communities and Environmental Groups

This article contests the view that environmental groups act mainly as megaphones for scientists. It asserts that environmental groups have an independent, often dominant role, in shaping norms that govern environmental policy.
The theory of epistemic communities, as advanced by Haas, is analysed in the context of the whaling and CFC/ozone depletion issues. It is found that the alleged role of epistemic communities as legitimate bearers of truth has been exaggerated and that we need to develop environmental policy in a context of 'post positivism'.     

环境正义与可持续性公共治理

环境正义在本质上是关于环境利益与环境责任的公平分配问题。它在种际、国际、代际以及区域间、群体间表现为不同的形态。环境正义事关人与自然的和谐、事关社会秩序的稳定、事关人类的永续发展。可持续性公共治理是区别于运动式治理的一种新的公共管理典范。通过可持续性公共治理来实现和维护环境正义,人类中心主义思想的超越、多元环境治理主体的整合、环境利益的分配与协调、环境责任的划分与追究、环境信息的公开与共享、环境决策的开放与规范、环境事务的参与和监督、环境政策的伦理审查等十分重要。     

城市封闭社区的开放困境与转型进路研究

在城市化节奏高歌猛进和市场体制改革的大力驱动下,我国经济社会的转型态势日趋明显.其中,城市封闭社区作为空间转型重构的主要载体和基层社会治理的基本单元日益受到各领域的重视.从实践进展来看,现阶段我国城市封闭社区的发展总体上体现了城市社会基层治理的制度变迁,但其所带来的空间效应却远未达到西方发达国家程度,社区精神、阶层排斥意识与公民社会等都尚未形成,某种意义上还只是社会贫富分化现象的外显.因此,通过全面探讨该类社区的空间特征,归纳其在空间开放过程中面临的多重现实困境.对于推动"破碎化"城市公共空间的加速整合,完善街区制落实推广的相关政策意见,建立健全现代城市社会治理制度体系等方面有着较为深远的现实性意义.     

Defining Environmental Justice Communities for Regulatory Enforcement: Implications from a Block‐Group‐Level Analysis of New York State

The absence of a clear definition of environmental justice areas has been cited as one of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's major deficiencies in managing federal environmental justice programs. Several states have explicitly defined potential environmental justice areas and integrated targeted efforts into the policy‐making process. At the block‐group level, this study evaluates the effects of New York State's environmental justice policy, which defines communities of concern in terms of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as mandates supplemental regulatory enforcement activities for these neighborhoods, on the agency's policy implementation practices under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. The empirical findings suggest that there is inconclusive evidence regarding race/ethnicity‐ and class‐based environmental inequity. Also, the state's policy intervention is not universally effective. Moreover, task environments of a given community are a consistent determinant of the agency's regulatory compliance monitoring and assurance activities. This study then derives broader implications regarding the adoption of a policy instrument that defines and screens potential environmental justice communities.     

城市社区自治的问题与对策

妥善解决政府与社区之间的关系,加强政府职能的转变,是社区自治建设的前提。在社区自治建设中,关注更多的利益相关者,运用现代治理理念,加强社区自治、治理组织体系与机制的构建,是实现城市社区自治的关键。社区工作者是社区自治建设中不可或缺的力量,该组织的健康发展,是社区自治建设的重要保障。     

Environmental Justice and Green‐Technology Adoption

This paper presents an analysis of an environmental justice (EJ) program adopted by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) as a part of its regulation to phase out a toxic chemical used by dry cleaners. SCAQMD provided financial incentives to switch early and gave establishments in EJ neighborhoods priority in applying for grants. Despite this pro‐EJ policy, available data show that dry cleaners in low‐income, predominantly minority, and EJ‐designated areas were less likely to be an early adopter of green technologies, and this finding holds even after accounting for firm and market characteristics. Dry cleaners in disadvantaged neighborhoods were also less likely to receive a grant to switch technology despite the district's effort to set aside half of the funding for applicants from EJ areas.     

我国城市社区直接选举探究

社区居委会直接选举作为扩大基层民主的有效形式,已经成为全面推进城市基层民主的突破口,受到社会各界越来越多的关注。本文选取社区居委会直接选举中的两个环节进行分析,梳理了社区选举过程中的程序规范及存在问题,以期进一步推进城市社区居委会直接选举的程序化、公平化。     

Community Privilege and Environmental Justice: An Agent‐Based Analysis

Several theories compete to explain observed race‐ and ethnicity‐based environmental injustice in society. This paper focuses on analyzing the extent to which firms' siting decisions based on community privilege can explain this outcome. A unique feature of this analysis is that we include analysis of both unwanted land uses (disamenity firms) and desired land uses (amenity firms). The environmental justice analysis of amenities other than green spaces is rare, but amenities are crucial components of urban areas to which environmental justice studies must attend. We use an agent‐based model to explore community outcomes when environmental disamenities choose locations based on low community privilege, and compare this with scenarios in which disamenities only seek to minimize the cost of land. We also assess differences in environmental justice outcomes when amenities choose locations in areas with high community privilege. While disamenities' focus on locating in areas with low community privilege indeed affects environmental equity, the effect of amenity location is also important, and there are powerful interaction effects. The importance of privilege‐based location is found in these simulations regardless of which social group—majority or minority—is assumed to be the privileged group. This study suggests a limitation of EJ policies and models that focus on the politics of disamenity siting without considering the politics of amenity siting.     

我国环境政策预期与绩效的悖反及其矫正

受内外部两种力量的推动,我国环境政策大量制定并日益发挥重要作用,但环境政策的预期与绩效之间却存在着悖反现象:环境法律法规和目标政策的不断增多与漏洞逐渐显现的悖反;作为环境政策制定和实施主体的政府官员肩负的环保责任与为增加GDP推动经济发展而牺牲环境之间的悖反;作为环境政策规制对象的企业的社会良心与追求高额利润而规避风险之间的悖反;作为环境政策获益者公众的普遍、长远利益与特殊、短期利益之间的悖反。要矫正我国环境政策的悖反,应着力抓好环境政策的制定、理解、执行和评价四个环节。     

Assessing the Effectiveness of Executive Order 12898: Environmental Justice for All?

This article examines several federal and state laws, such as the Worker Protection Standards and the Florida Pesticide Law, to determine whether the goals of these laws are being achieved in the State of Florida. A survey based on questions pertaining to various laws was used to gather data on farm workers in three South Florida counties. Face–to–face interviews were conducted with farm workers in Palm Beach and Indian River counties, Florida, in 1997 and in Collier County, Florida, in 1999.
Overall, the findings indicate that farm workers in South Florida have been exposed to pesticides through direct or indirect spraying. The findings of the study reveal that federal and state laws—currently in place to protect the workers from pesticide exposure—are not effectively implemented, and farm workers are uninformed of the laws that exist to protect them from pesticide exposure.
The study concludes with policy recommendations that will improve the implementation and enforcement of the current laws, which are designed to protect farm workers from pesticide exposure.     

Mass Administrative Reorganization,Media Attention,and the Paradox of Information

How does media attention influence government decisions about whether to terminate independent administrative agencies? The authors argue that an agency's salience with partisan audiences has a direct effect, but a high media profile can disrupt normal government monitoring processes and obfuscate termination decisions. This argument is evaluated in the context of a recent mass administrative reorganization by the British coalition government using probit and heteroscedastic probit regression models. The evidence suggests that termination is less likely for agencies salient in newspapers popular with the government's core supporters but not those read by its minority coalition partner. We also find that agencies with greater overall newspaper salience as well as younger agencies have a higher error variance.