Creating Settings for Youth Empowerment and Leadership: An Ecological Perspective

Youth development programs are increasingly focusing on youth empowerment and leadership, a shift which often requires adult staff to adopt new roles and practices. This article explores staff practice in the context of a multisite initiative designed to engage marginalized youth in social change through youth-led grants. Interviews with youth workers and managers revealed practices at multiple ecological levels. Individual-level practices supported youths’ capacities to participate. Group-level practices fostered social interactions and activities that actualized the youth-led approach. Setting-level practices created structures that supported and protected group activities while organization-level practices promoted a favorable environment for youth leadership. Analyzed from an ecological and activity settings perspective, these results contribute to understanding the multifaceted and complex nature of youth work in power-sharing practice models. Practice implications include identifying training needs to help practitioners navigate across multiple ecological levels and suggesting reflection questions for practitioners.     

Is there a global environmental justice movement?

One of the causes of the increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world is the changing metabolism of the economy in terms of growing flows of energy and materials. There are conflicts on resource extraction, transport and waste disposal. Therefore, there are many local complaints, as shown in the Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJatlas) and other inventories. And not only complaints; there are also many successful examples of stopping projects and developing alternatives, testifying to the existence of a rural and urban global movement for environmental justice. Moreover, since the 1980s and 1990s, this movement has developed a set of concepts and campaign slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include environmental racism, popular epidemiology, the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous, biopiracy, tree plantations are not forests, the ecological debt, climate justice, food sovereignty, land grabbing and water justice, among other concepts. These terms were born from socio-environmental activism, but sometimes they have also been taken up by academic political ecologists and ecological economists who, for their part, have contributed other concepts to the global environmental justice movement, such as ‘ecologically unequal exchange’ or the ‘ecological footprint’.     

生态文明视野下贵州资源型国企发展方式的转变

贵州国有资源型企业,是全省工业经济中高能耗、高污染的重要主体。基于生态文明视野,贵州资源型国企转变发展方式,对全省转变工业经济发展方式和实施经济社会发展战略,具有极其重大意义。针对贵州资源型国企转变发展方式存在的问题,提出强化对全省资源型国企的约束,促使其转变发展方式的对策建议。     

我国生态环境恢复立法析要

生态环境的可持续发展是实现经济和社会可持续发展的前提。生态环境的可持续发展既需要预防生态环境退化,还应根据生态环境发生退化的程度对其进行事后恢复。生态环境恢复关系到＂当代人＂和＂后代人＂的环境权益。与传统环境立法不同,生态环境恢复立法更强调对已经被破坏的生态环境进行事后救济。我国现行立法中,这方面的法律规范尚有诸多缺失,应加强生态环境恢复方面的立法,为生态环境的可持续发展提供法制保障。     

"天人合一"的生态意义究竟何在?——兼向刘兵、曹南燕教授请教

虽然"天人合一"本身并不简单地等同于人与自然和谐,但是"天人合一"思想却具体表现了人与自然和谐共存的思想。"天人合一"所蕴涵的等级价值体系和人与自然和谐共处是不矛盾的。"天人合一"思想的生态意义在于提供我们思考生态问题的新视域,以突破人类中心主义与非人类中心主义的两难困境。     

生态文化建设及环境教育

生态文化是一种生态文明观，是生态保护、生态建设的物质成果与精神成果总和。生态文化建设包括发展生态产业，实施生态工程，进行生态体制、生态社会及生态社会风气建设。环境教育是生态文化建设的重要途径，其主体有学校、政府组织、企事业单位等。     

建设生态文明 实现人与自然和谐发展

党的十七大倡导生态文明建设，并把“生态文明”作为全面建设小康社会目标的新要求。生态文明是人们在改造客观世界的同时，改善和优化人与自然的关系，建设有序的生态运行机制和良好的生态环境所取得的物质、精神、制度成果的总和。它体现了人们尊重自然、利用自然、保护自然，与自然和谐相处的文明形态，是人类与自然之间建立的一种和谐、文明的生态关系。树立人与自然同存共荣的自然观，将极大地促进社会经济可持续发展。     

试论西部民族地区生态移民跨省安置与生态无人区的划定问题

生态移民是以保护环境和提高人民生活质量为目的的有计划、有目的的政府行为。它是一个意义深远的系统工程。生态移民工程不应成为某一地区或某些地区孤立实行的工程,对一个国家来讲,生态移民工作应该是一个整体性的工作,必须从社会公平和民族平等原则出发,对整个国家的整体角度统筹规划。搞好我国生态环境保护工作中生态移民的跨省安置和划定大片的无人区的问题应成为一个很重要的方面,本文对此提出了一些自己的看法。     

贵州喀斯特地区生态环境与经济发展的重要问题--关于贵州生态农业发展与建设的思考

发展生态农业是贵州实现农业可持续发展和农业现代化的必由之路。贵州应按照“整体、协调、循环、再生”的原则 ,保护农业资源和环境 ,走农业可持续发展的道路     

理性文化——法治的文化生态环境

依法治国 ,已经作为治国方略且在宪法中确立其法律地位。不过更为重要的是 ,依法治国是一种实践 ,是一个渐进的过程。要实现法治 ,就需要一个良好的文化生态环境。理性文化应是主要方面 ,它蕴含科学精神、社会契约观念、政治市场观念、思想市场观念、公民意识、权利义务观念、平等自由观念等基本要素