Is it possible to achieve a good life for all within planetary boundaries?

The safe and just space framework devised by Raworth calls for the world’s nations to achieve key minimum thresholds in social welfare while remaining within planetary boundaries. Using data on social and biophysical indicators provided by O’Neill et al., this paper argues that it is theoretically possible to achieve a good life for all within planetary boundaries in poor nations by building on existing exemplary models and by adopting fairer distributive policies. However, the additional biophysical pressure that this entails at a global level requires that rich nations dramatically reduce their biophysical footprints by 40–50%. Extant empirical studies suggest that this degree of reduction is unlikely to be achieved solely through efforts to decouple GDP growth from environmental impact, even under highly optimistic conditions. Therefore, for rich nations to fit within the boundaries of the safe and just space will require that they abandon growth as a policy objective and shift to post-capitalist economic models.     

What Happens When Rules Stay the Same? Examining Changes in Implementation Intent over Time

Rules are dynamic entities whose implementation is shaped by context, resources, and institutions. Variations in this implementation influence the functionality and effectiveness of rules. While the last decade has seen considerable scholarship on the determinants and effects of ineffective and effective rules, less is known about how rule implementation evolves over time. Particularly, what are the factors that influence administrative implementation intent over time? This study uses interview and archival data to examine administrative implementation intent of a single rule over a 25-year period. From qualitative data analysis, propositions are developed to explain why, although the text of the rule remained nearly the same, administrative intent of implement changed drastically.     

Agroecology as a territory in dispute: between institutionality and social movements

Agroecology is in fashion, and now constitutes a territory in dispute between social movements and institutionality. This new conjuncture offers a constellation of opportunities that social movements can avail themselves of to promote changes in the food system. Yet there is an enormous risk that agroecology will be co-opted, institutionalized, colonized and stripped of its political content. In this paper, we analyze this quandary in terms of political ecology: will agroecology end up as merely offering a few more tools for the toolbox of industrial agriculture, to fine tune an agribusiness system that is being restructured in the midst of a civilizational crisis or, alternatively, will it be strengthened as a politically mobilizing option for building alternatives to development? We interpret the contemporary dispute over agroecology through the lenses of contested material and immaterial territories, political ecology, and the first and second contradictions of capital.     

Raymond Williams,Romanticism and Nature

This article discusses the important British social, literary and cultural critic, Raymond Williams, in his relation to Romanticism, seen as a broad movement of protest expressed in many cultural fields against the conditions of life in capitalist modernity. After exploring the Romantic dimension of Williams’s major works, including Culture and Society [Williams, Raymond. 1958. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Harper & Row], The Country and the City [Williams, Raymond. 1973. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press] and several works of the 1980s, the article focuses on his trajectory from the ecological point of view, in terms of his attempts to deal with cultural attitudes towards Nature on the one hand and threats to the environment on the other.     

论三峡库区生态补偿法律制度的建构

三峡库区生态补偿法律制度建构是三峡工程长治久安的需要,是保护长江流域和整个国家生态环境的需要,是实现社会公平、构建和谐社会的必然要求,同时可以为国家生态补偿立法积累经验。三峡库区生态补偿法律制度的原则包括保护生态安全原则、公平原则、政府主导和市场推进相结合的原则。在库区生态补偿法律制度层面上,应当包括国家宏观调控法律制度以及市场补偿法律制度两个方面。     

"那"文化神话景观与大地伦理的建构

“那”文化中的神话,依照其生长于其上生产方式所赋予意义,它能够表现出壮族等民族的空间展演与时间隐喻的交汇特质,形成了科技理解与生态选择相统一的大地伦理模式,为后现代社会解决生态危机提供了较为现实而又不乏形上指向的文化参考语境。     

Book Reviews

This paper examines the significance of historically sedimented military practices for conservation in contemporary Guatemala. During a 36-year civil war, the military represented the lowlands as dangerous jungle that had to be tamed to justify its counterinsurgency campaigns, thus positioning the jungle's inhabitants as suspect citizens or potential insurgents. Also during the war, international conservationists coalesced to successfully lobby for a protected areas system that enclosed one-third of Guatemala's territory. This paper argues that this transnational conservation alliance, comprised of international conservation agencies and national elites, evokes the violence of scorched earth counterinsurgency. The use of jungle and forest discourses in successive territorial projects produces a racialized landscape that connects a violent past to a violent present. In recent years, jungle discourses have articulated advocacy for increased militarization to fight the ‘war on drugs’ in protected areas. As such, I argue thatconservation agencies and the military are complicit in reproducing social inequalities, often through violent exclusions.     

Learning as territoriality: the political ecology of education in the Brazilian landless workers’ movement

In this contribution, I explore the importance of agroecological education in the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). I analyze how certain MST educational programs are based in a critical place-based pedagogy. This type of pedagogy can serve as a form of territoriality, influencing individuals’ interactions with the land. Drawing upon a political ecology of education perspective, I conclude that MST educators can serve as Gramscian ‘organic intellectuals’, by using a critical pedagogy of place as a form of territoriality to: (1) create a conception of place that is not discrete, but instead relational, and (2) advocate counter-hegemonic land usage.     

从生态到生境:人类生态学的兴起与发展

论文通过对前人研究成果的梳理,认为人类生态学这一分支学科的主要特点在于关注点从生态学单纯针对动植物和生态系统等的研究转向了对人与自然的关注,而在不断的发展过程中又体现:使生态学从研究自然的学科到与人文交叉研究的学科、使生态学从关注小环境到对大社会的关注、使生态学从有机论走向生态人文主义、使生态学从生态中心论走上可持续发展道路等基本特征。     

新时代政治生态价值秩序研究

政治生态价值秩序是系统化、整体化的政治价值观,决定着政治主体的政治参与、政治角色、政治态度、政治行为和政治选择。中国政治生态具有鲜明中国特色政治文明标识,转型期以权力运行为核心的矛盾运动成为其基本演化动力。政治价值观及其价值秩序对于良好政治生态的建构具有决定意义,正确区分政治价值、政治价值观及其实现形式是构建合理政治生态价值秩序的前提。在政治生态价值秩序的建构中,效率与公平的平衡状态形构着民主的序位,多元社会和公共责任的选择界定着自由与和谐的维度和尺度,而公正、民主与法治在不同政治文化环境中的含义不同、实现形式迥异。