关于搞好我省水土保持与走可持续发展道路的思考

我省水资源枯竭与水土流失的现实严重制约着城乡经济的发展。搞好水土保持是我省全面建设小康社会、走可持续发展之路的必然选择。     

Gauging support for innovative farmland preservation techniques

Given growing concerns about the loss of farmland in the US, governmental and nonprofit groups are seeking innovative, cost-effective methods to preserve lands that will elicit additional landowner participation. This article describes four innovative farmland preservation techniques and derives implications for the policy process through interviews of key stakeholders: program administrators, lawmakers, and landowners. Experts on farmland preservation were also interviewed to ensure stakeholder perceptions substantively inform the policy process. Four techniques were selected for assessment from approximately 30 novel techniques. Reactions to these policy options reflect stakeholder perceptions of a baseline condition; the perceptions help evaluate which options are likely to survive the policy process and what attributes will lead to their acceptability because few of these techniques have yet become policy. Although the stakeholders may have more limited experience with the policy process, land preservation experts validated many of the results and the possibility of success in the “rough and tumble” of the policy process. Of the four investigated techniques rights of first refusal was the most favored, although respondents thought effective implementation would require careful targeting and a dedicated funding source. Experts agreed this technique was most likely to survive in the political arena. Agricultural conservation pension was also viewed favorably, though it was considered administratively difficult to implement. Several experts thought that, though inchoate, the pension plan could potentially be more cost effective than rights of first refusal. Land preservation tontines were perceived to be an interesting concept, but confusing, difficult to implement, and ill-defined. Term conservation easements were viewed unfavorably because they did not preserve land permanently.

Tackling the Big Questions in Social Impact Bond Research through Comparative Approaches

Abstract

This special issue of theJournal of Comparative Policy Analysis brings together four cross-disciplinary articles representing the first concerted attempt to combine comparative approaches to extend theoretical and empirical understandings of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs). SIBs are investment-backed payment-by-results projects and have been subject to vigorous academic debate on their appropriateness and efficacy since the first SIB launched in 2010. This introduction to the special issue outlines the state of the academic literature on SIBs, identifying gaps and suggesting five big questions that do not yet have satisfactory answers: (1) What are the administrative or political problems to which SIBs respond? (2) Where and why do SIBs emerge in particular contexts? (3) What is the role of SIBs in the evidence-based policy movement? (4) Is delivering an intervention through a SIB more effective than other means and are associated costs justifiable? (5) Do SIBs catalyse wider organizational, system, or institutional changes? This introduction then summarizes the articles included in this special issue, discusses how they respond to these big questions, and suggests that further comparative research might best address remaining gaps in the literature.     

Performing the ‘India Permitida’: The Counter-Gift of Indigenous Women Targeted by a Corporate Social Responsibility Programme (Chile)

Relying on ethnographic data, this article critically analyses the pro-mining position adopted in Chile's Atacama Region by a group of Diaguita women who benefited from a corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme to revive indigenous culture. While the desire to escape from poverty (salir adelante, moving forward) appears as the main reason for participating, the benefits generated a sense of indebtedness resulting in allegiance to the company. The investigation also shows how this programme played a part in building a scenario in which indigenous females perform subjects apparently more suited than men to the neoliberal and multiculturalist governmentality of the Chilean State, whose politics favours mining.     

Pay to protect: Examining the factors of the use of market-based instruments for local water sustainability

Given the myriad of policy instruments aimed at enhancing water quantity conservation available to municipalities, what drives them to opt for a market-based instrument (MBI)? MBIs can be effective and efficient policy instruments to enhance water quantity conservation, but there is little known about why municipalities utilize them. This study hypothesizes that three contextual elements influence a municipality's use of an MBI: the natural, political, and structural environment. The results from two logistic regression models suggest that in a municipality suffering a higher drought level, both a conservative political environment and operating under a council-manager form of government (with the effect more pronounced under a non-council-manager form) will increase the likelihood that it will use an MBI to address water conservation.     

Validation of a multiplex PCR assay for the forensic identification of Indian crocodiles

A dependable and efficient wildlife species identification system is essential for swift dispensation of the justice linking wildlife crimes. Development of molecular techniques is befitting the need of the time. The forensic laboratories often receive highly ill-treated samples for identification purposes, and thus, validation of any novel methodology is necessary for forensic usage. We validate a novel multiplex polymerase chain reaction assay, developed at this laboratory for the forensic identification of three Indian crocodiles, Crocodylus palustris, Crocodylus porosus, and Gavialis gangeticus, following the guidelines of Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods. The multiplex PCR was tested for its specificity, reproducibility, sensitivity, and stability. This study also includes the samples treated with various chemical substances and exposed to various environmental regimes. The result of this validation study promises this technique to be an efficient identification tool for Indian crocodiles and therefore is recommended for forensic purposes.     

Enduring neoliberalism in Alberta's oil sands: the troubling effects of private–public partnerships for First Nation and Métis communities

Changes in federal government relations with First Nations and Métis in Canada have been described as shifting over time, from fur trade colonialism, to welfare colonialism, to neoliberal partnerships. Acknowledging changes and continuities in Aboriginal peoples–state relations over time, this article examines the effects of recent policies that emphasize private–public partnerships for economic development on Indigenous communities in northern Alberta. We argue that while the term ‘partnership’ connotes equality, cooperation, and consensus, the actual workings of partnerships are anything but equal, and the effects include fragmentation, competition, and lack of overall accountability. These outcomes work against the needs and aspirations of Indigenous communities.     

Ideological and pedagogical tensions in an environmental sustainability education project: A review of adult education practices around Lake Fundudzi,South Africa

ABSTRACT

Research in poor communities in South Africa faces intellectual challenges and tensions which offer lessons for evaluating environmental education (EE). This article illuminates five such tensions that emerged during the course of an adult environmental education programme, implemented from 1999 to 2002, in communities surrounding the catchment of Lake Fundudzi in South Africa: tensions arose between traditional and modern concepts of community; between traditional and post-apartheid structures of local governance; between liberal empowerment and traditional conservationist ideologies; and also within and between environmental ideologies and research paradigms. Paramount among the lessons learned is the need to develop multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary (MIT) practices that are sensitive to local community and environmental needs, and to solutions expressed through local residents, community workers and academics – in other words, the recognition and affirmation of local indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs).     

Molecular Identification of Indian Crocodile Species: PCR‐RFLP Method for Forensic Authentication*

Abstract: South East Asian countries are known for illegal poaching and trade of crocodiles clandestinely, to be used in skin, medicinal, and cosmetic industries. Besides crocodiles being listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, India has its Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 for conservation of crocodile species. Hitherto, lack of any rapid and reliable technique for examinations of crocodile‐based crime exhibits such as skin, bones, etc. has been a major problem for an effective promulgation of law on illegal trade. DNA‐based identification of species using PCR‐RFLP technique for an apt identification of all the three Indian crocodile species namely, Crocodylus porosus, Crocodylus palustris and Gavialis gangeticus is presented here. A 628 bp segment of cytochrome b gene was amplified using novel primers followed by restriction digestion with three enzymes i.e., HaeIII, MboI, and MwoI, separately and in combination. The technique has produced a species‐specific pattern for identifying the three crocodile species individually, which fulfills the requirement for its forensic application. It is expected that the technique will prove handy in identification of all the three Indian crocodile species and strengthen conservation efforts.     

生态文明背景下的节约型校园构建

党的十七大首次把"生态文明"写进了政治报告,引起了社会各阶层的高度关注。高校作为社会先进文化的传播者、前沿科技的研究者,在贯彻落实生态文明重要思想的发展战略中理应成为排头兵。高校节约型校园的构建对于和谐社会的建设、高校资源的节约、生态文明思想的传播具有不可替代的作用。