Applying Stone in a Western Landscape: Ranchers,Conservationists, and Causal Stories in the “American Serengeti”

As the emergence of nongovernmental conservation efforts generates conflict among various stakeholders, the causal story that each party articulates regarding conservation and the causes of land degradation reflects their unique interests. This study uses existing literature to evaluate causal stories surrounding a contemporary conservation effort: Montana's American Prairie Reserve. Through qualitative review of web‐based documents and newspaper articles, it generates a preliminary account of key stakeholders' causal stories. The case study suggests that parties who might be disadvantaged by ascribing responsibility for environmental harms in an adversarial fashion may instead elect to articulate causal stories that are more neutral than existing approaches might forecast. The study concludes by suggesting that further development of causal story literature may enable it to better address contemporary conservation efforts.     

The culture of risk regulation: Responses to environmental disasters

Disasters challenge the equilibrium of regulatory regimes and make policy shifts more likely. Using an institutional theory of cultural biases and the concept of cultural “surprise”, this article analyses the direction and intensity of media argumentation in respect of policy shifts. Instead of assuming a demand for greater State intervention after dramatic focusing events, as suggested by other theoretical frames, cultural theory opens a variety of options that range from embracing regulatory responses from different cultural biases to the radicalization of current, but failing, instruments. The analysis of media reaction to the environmental disasters caused by the oil spills of Exxon Valdez (United States), Erika (France) and Prestige (Spain) shows that the demand for more hierarchy does not monopolize the overall argumentation. The change demanded often implies a radicalization of a particular prevalent view where the associated institutional setting is failing its supporters.     

论科学发展观视野下环境行政决策之因应

科学发展观“以人为本、全面协调可持续发展”的要求与环境行政决策的合法化、科学化、民主化的诉求并行不悖、相互促进。环境行政决策应响应科学发展观的要求,进行体系上的重构,顺应环境法治的时代要求。具体因应对策为：环境行政决策应以“以人为本”为核心,进行必要的法律规制（实体规制与程序规制）和行政三分体制（决策、执行、监督）的创新,形成决策的合法、科学、民主与决策效率和谐互动的理想状态。     

Asymmetric bargaining between Myanmar and China in the Myitsone Dam controversy: social opposition akin to David's stone against Goliath

The Myitsone Dam suspension is an asymmetric negotiation between Naypyitaw and Beijing. The bilateral agreement of the hydropower project was concluded in 2009. However, Myanmar's civil society started to oppose the dam when political opportunities expanded in 2011. The quasi-civilian government in Myanmar was caught in an ‘audience cost dilemma': either to disappoint domestic constituents by fulfilling international obligations, or to compensate the Chinese dam developer for breaching the contract. In September 2011, Myanmar President Thein Sein declared the suspension of the dam throughout his tenure. Unexpectedly, China's state-owned dam company did not sue Naypyidaw. Moreover, Beijing even engaged with societal actors in Myanmar to seek their support for the project. How could Naypyitaw defy Beijing in this Myitsone Dam case? Drawing from 35 interviews with anti-dam campaigners and other stakeholders, as well as secondary data, this article argues that the rise of civil society successfully conditioned Naypyitaw's diplomatic options in the controversy. The change of Beijing's diplomatic strategy confirms that domestic constraint in Myanmar is not rhetorical. The Myitsone Dam case is an example that shows bilateral agreement without domestic endorsement can become China's business risk. Presumably, the dispute has wider implications for other Chinese overseas projects outside Myanmar.     

空间碎片现状的国际法思考

空间碎片是指位于地球轨道上的非功能性人造物体,近年来其对人类的外空活动构成重大威胁。目前,关于空间碎片的立法尚不完善。文章对空间碎片问题的现状、涉及空间碎片致害的国际责任问题和空间碎片造成的空间环境污染问题的现行法律规定进行了探析,认为有必要明确空间碎片的概念界定,并从现行国际条约的局限性入手,对空间碎片作出系统的法律规制。     

农村留守儿童健康成长的环境优化研究

农村留守儿童成长宏观环境可以归纳为以下四类:即国家和政府层面的有关留守儿童的法律政策环境;人口迁移流动背景下留守儿童减量化措施所构成的制度和发展规划性环境;新农村建设和"三农"问题解决背景下农村儿童工作特别是社区工作所构成的农村社区儿童工作环境;留守儿童问题及工作相关媒体宣传倡导所构成的传媒环境。针对上述4类环境及其优化进行分析并提出对策建议具有重要意义。     

The Capitalocene Part II: accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy

This essay – Part II – reconceptualizes the past five centuries as the Capitalocene, the ‘age of capital’. The essay advances two interconnected arguments. First, the exploitation of labor-power depends on a more expansive process: the appropriation of unpaid work/energy delivered by ‘women, nature, and colonies’ (Mies). Second, accumulation by appropriation turns on the capacity of state–capital–science complexes to make nature legible. If the substance of abstract social labor is time, the substance of abstract social nature is space. While managerial procedures within commodity production aim to maximize productivity per quantum of labor-time, the geo-managerial capacities of states and empires identify and seek to maximize unpaid work/energy per ‘unit’ of abstract nature. Historically, successive state–capital–science complexes co-produce Cheap Natures that are located, or reproduce themselves, largely outside the cash nexus. Geo-managerialism’s preliminary forms emerged rapidly during the rise of capitalism. Its chief historical expressions comprise those processes through which capitalists and state-machineries map, identify, quantify and otherwise make natures legible to capital. A radical politics of sustainability must recognize – and seek to mobilize through – a tripartite division of work under capitalism: labor-power, unpaid human work and the work of nature as a whole.     

‘Animals first!’ The rise of animal advocacy parties in the EU: a new party family

‘Euro Animal 7’ is the name given informally to 7 animal protection parties which represent voters in Cyprus, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. These parties contested in the 2014 European Parliament (EP) election and gained representation in Germany and the Netherlands. Animal advocacy parties are also represented in the national parliaments of Portugal and the Netherlands.

Animal protection is an emergent issue in international politics and this research offers an account of the political positioning of these animal advocacy parties, analyzing their manifestos and the election results. While acknowledging that some parties have distinct ideological traits and some are still reclusive in the form of a single-issue party, this article argues that animal advocacy parties constitute a new party family in European politics.     

The Greening of the Americas

ABSTRACT

This paper evaluates global capital’s ecological management and extends the assessment to the “green economy,” as developed in the first “green” neoliberal project, in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has been an important “laboratory” for experimentation in environmental governance mechanisms using debt-for-nature financial exchanges and other instruments of the Kyoto Protocol. I explore how “greening” can be understood as a new phase of capital accumulation, as I go into its five main aspects.