重大环境污染事故罪的立法修改问题探讨

重大环境污染事故罪宜修改为污染大气罪、污染内水罪等几个罪名;将重大环境污染事故罪的结果犯修改为危险犯有其更为充分的理由;适应环境污染具有的特殊性,应当在重大环境污染事故罪中引进严格责任;重大环境污染事故罪的法定刑应提高为10年有期徒刑,无限额罚金制应改为限额罚金制,并且还应增设教育性、民事性与行政性等非刑罚措施。     

城镇化进程中农村环境保护法律问题探究

农村城镇化是我国新农村建设推进的必然趋势,它缩小了城乡差距,带动了我国农村的经济发展,同时也对我国农村环境保护提出了新的挑战。本文从我国农村城镇化的现状入手,分析了城镇化进程过程对农村环境问题的影响。进而在考察我国城镇化进程中环境治理现状的基础上深刻剖析了我国农村环境所亟待解决的诸多法律问题,从而探究切合我国农村城镇化进程中环境保护的法律制度安排,具有积极的现实意义。     

Political Ideology,Political Party,and Support for Greater Federal Spending on Environmental Protection in the United States: Evidence from the General Social Surveys, 1993–2018

This paper focuses on the effects of political ideology and party affiliation on support for more government spending on environmental protection. Pooled‐sample results show that Liberals (Democrats) are more likely to support higher government spending on environmental protection than Moderates (Independents), who, in turn, are more likely to support higher spending levels than Conservatives (Republicans). The results persist even when we control for respondents' opinions concerning whether the federal government, in general, does too little or too much. When stratifying by party, ideological divisions generally narrow, while stratifying by ideology leads to slightly wider divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Together, these results suggest that when Liberals and Conservatives form opinions about government spending on the environment, party affiliation, to some degree, dampens the effects of ideology. Between 2014 and 2018 the probability of supporting more environmental spending increased, albeit slightly, for all ideologies and parties, but more so for Liberals and Democrats.     

The more the better? Rule growth and policy impact from a macro perspective

Do more rules improve overall policy performance? To answer this question, we look at rule growth in the area of environmental policy from an aggregate perspective. We argue that impactful growth in rules crucially depends on implementation capacities. If such capacities are limited, countries are at risk of ‘empty’ rule growth where they lack the ability to implement their ever-growing stock of policies. Hence, rules are a necessary, yet not sufficient condition for achieving sectoral policy objectives. We underpin our argument with an analysis of the impact of a new, encompassing measure of environmental rule growth covering 13 countries from 1980 to 2010. These findings call for ‘sustainable statehood’ where the growth in rules should not outpace the expansion in administrative capacities.     

Climate politics in hard times: How local economic shocks influence MPs attention to climate change

Most countries struggle to implement CO₂ reducing policies. Implementation is politically difficult since it typically forces politicians to trade-off different concerns. The literature on how parties and members of parliament (MPs) handle these trade-offs is sparse. We use structural topic models to study how MPs in an oil dependent environment responded to a shock in the oil price that created spatially concentrated costs of climate policies. We leverage the rapid oil price drop between parliamentary sessions and MPs’ constituency adherence in a difference-in-differences framework to identify if MPs respond differently to variation in the salience of trade-offs. We find that MPs facing high political costs of climate policies tried to avoid environmental topics, while less affected MPs talked more about investments in green energy when the oil price declined. Our results suggest that the oil price bust created a ‘window of opportunity’ for advocates of the ‘ green shift’.     

European air pollution assessments: co-production of science and policy

This paper examines the question whether the scientific knowledge framework produced in the context of the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) can keep its credibility, legitimacy and relevance when used in a different policy arena, e.g. the European Commission (EC) of the European Union. The paper combines a conceptual framework for considering effective assessments with the notion of boundary work and co-production of science and policy to examine differences between the roles and division of tasks between scientists and policy makers in the two different policy contexts. The paper concludes that, despite the differences between the two policy settings, user characteristics and the historical context are to a certain extent similar in LRTAP and the EU Clean Air for Europe Programme (CAFE), and that participants in the two processes partially overlap and tackle the same policy problem. The scientific knowledge framework as developed within LRTAP can maintain credibility, legitimacy and relevance when it is used in CAFE if certain conditions are fulfilled. One condition is the effective functioning of LRTAP, because the CAFE assessment process remains also dependent on the LRTAP process. Data collection and mapping efforts in the context of LRTAP form also the basis for the analyses within CAFE. Furthermore, a broadly embedded scientific basis is needed in the countries to enable each country to follow or relate to the analyses commissioned by the EU. The conceptual framework and concept of boundary work used in this paper turned out to be helpful in focusing on the dynamic relationship between science and policy.

Technology spillovers and stability of international climate coalitions

Cooperation in international environmental agreements appears difficult to attain because of strong free-rider incentives. This paper explores how different technology spillover mechanisms among regions can influence the incentives to join and stabilise an international agreement. We use an applied modelling framework (STACO) that enables us to investigate the stability of partial climate coalitions. Several theories on the impact of technology spillovers are evaluated by simulating a range of alternative specifications. We find that spillovers are a good instrument to increase the abatement efforts of coalitions and reduce the associated costs. In our setting, however, they cannot overcome the strong free-rider incentives that are present in larger coalitions, i.e. technology spillovers do not substantially increase the success of international environmental agreements. This conclusion is robust with respect to the specification of technology spillovers.

环境犯罪立法模式：比较与选择

环境问题已经成为全人类共同关心和关注的问题,环境问题的本质是人类本身的生存问题。保护环境的目的在于保证人类自身的生存和人类社会的可持续发展,为此,世界各国刑法均规定了环境犯罪,以回应人类保护环境的价值诉求。由于受传统刑法理论的影响,我国现行的环境犯罪立法,包括立法价值、立法模式、立法技术等等,还不能彰显我国刑法在保护环境方面的功能。文章以比较的方法探讨了我国环境犯罪立法模式的功能不足,以及我国环境犯罪立法模式的应然选择。     

Inside UN Climate Change Negotiations: The Copenhagen Conference

UN negotiations on climate change entail a fundamental transformation of the global economy and constitute the single most important process in world politics. This is an account of the 2009 Copenhagen summit from the perspective of a government delegate. The article offers a guide to global climate negotiations, tells the story of Copenhagen from behind closed doors, and assesses the current state of global climate governance. It outlines key policy issues under negotiation, the positions and policy preferences of key countries and coalitions, the outcomes of Copenhagen, and achievements and failures in climate negotiations to date. The Copenhagen Accord is a weak agreement designed to mask the political failure of the international community to create a global climate treaty. However, climate policy around the world is making considerable progress. While the UN negotiations process is deadlocked, multilevel climate governance is thriving.     

论我国刑法第338条的立法缺陷与完善--以犯罪构成要件为视角

作为1997年刑法增设的一个罪名,重大环境污染事故罪有诸多理论与实践问题值得探讨.其主观构成要件、侵犯的客体,等等,多年来学界争议颇多.对上述问题进行深入探讨,有利于正确掌握该罪的犯罪特点,准确适用刑法.刑法第338条规定的重大环境污染事故罪是结果犯,以行为造成法定严重后果为行为构成犯罪之必要条件,不利于打击所有污染环境的犯罪行为.为促进环境的可持续发展,建议对该条予以修改和完善,增加危险犯条款.