Environmental Science & Policy最新文献

Improving green economic efficiency (GEE) and productivity are crucial for China to realize sustainable development goals. However, the economic growth of China has followed an extensive development model with high energy consumption and heavy pollution. This study conducts data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the GEE of China. First, we introduce the polar coordinates theory in the epsilon-based measure (EBM) model to construct a Ray epsilon-based measure (REBM) model. In addition to the merits of EBM model, the REBM model accounts for the weak disposable relationship between undesirable and desirable outputs. Second, based on REBM model, a REBM-Malmquist-Luenberger (REBM-ML) index is constructed to evaluate the green total factor productivity (GTFP). Finally, we conduct spatial econometric analysis to reveal the dynamic evolution of GTFP. According to the empirical results, the GEE of China is generally low, and the urban agglomerations located at coastal regions own higher GEE. However, the GTFP made progress overall, mainly benefited from the technical progress. Accordingly, in the process of sustainable development, China still faces the challenge of energy saving and emission reduction. The spatial econometric analysis reveals that the GTFP of China existed a significant divergence trend and there was spatial spillover effect between cities, as well as urban agglomerations. Furthermore, we provide policy implications and suggestions for Chinese sustainable development.

The promotion of sustainable tourism to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals has garnered considerable attention. This paper aims to present a comprehensive analytical framework with data envelopment analysis (DEA) based index systems for examining the interaction between energy and the economic growth of tourism, with a specific focus on tourism destinations within the Yangtze River Delta region of China. The significance of energy in enhancing tourism economy efficiency is established by treating energy input as separable and disposable, while non-energy inputs are considered quasi-fixed. Subsequently, a quasi-fixed energy input directional distance function within the DEA framework has been developed to assess tourism economy efficiency. Furthermore, this paper explores the relationships among environmental pollution, tourism carbon emissions, and tourism economy growth using coupling coordination and decoupling models, respectively. The results indicate that, although improving, there remains a gap for tourism destinations to achieve integrated development between environmental and economic systems. The decoupling type of tourism destinations transitions from expansive negative decoupling to strong decoupling, and the relationship between tourism economic development and tourism carbon emissions tends to be coordinated. This paper provides an empirical study on the measurement of tourism economy efficiency and the relationship between carbon emissions, environmental pollution, and tourism performance. It advances understanding towards implementing sustainable and integrated regional development strategies.

Recently, we are witnessing a growing interest in the study of climate narratives and storylines. These are seen as critical tools both for improving shared understandings involving different stakeholders (including scientists from different disciplines) and guiding initiatives for transformative adaptation actions and decision making. This paper approaches the storylines about a severe drought event that took place in southeastern South America (SESA) in 2008/2009 from an interdisciplinary dialogue between climatologists and anthropologists. This approach responds to the need for a more robust understanding of the event and the responses adopted locally, i.e: not restricted to physical aspects but considering socio-economic and political aspects, with the aim of contributing to the development of socially relevant climatic information for realistic climate risk decision making contexts. In particular it intends to contribute to the decision-making processes of government agencies focused on climate communication and public climate services, such as national and weather services and regional agencies. Considering disciplinary differences, we account for the interpretative polyphony regarding this event, i.e.: what each actor/sector is talking about (for what and to whom they are talking about) when referring to "the drought", and analyze climate storylines as an agonistic field of meanings. This implies recognizing the disputes and contradictions among them, how different storylines promote certain lines of argumentation and meanings to the detriment of others, knowledge gaps, the role of social power relations, socio-political order factors and their impact in terms of the necessary transformations towards an environmentally sustainable and socially just horizon.

Gender inequalities pervade Ghana, with a lot of studies focusing on them. However, little has been documented about gender inequalities in water research in the country. This article seeks to contribute to the existing knowledge by providing empirical evidence of the nature of gender inequality in water research and calls for improving gender-based studies in water research institutions in the country. Known for its research activities on water resources, the Water Research Institute (WRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is taken as a case. Therefore, the study specifically addresses these questions: (i) does water research of the WRI include gender and gender-related topics (ii) what is the representation of women researchers in the WRI? (iii) what existing gender inequalities impact women researchers’ contributions to knowledge production in the WRI? The study adopted a mixed method approach combining questionnaire survey, phone interviews, and document review to generate primary and secondary data to address the research concerns. Although the WRI produced articles within the 10-year studied period, the bibliometric analyses showed that none of them discussed topics related to gender. The lack of integration of gender issues in water research skewed water knowledge towards only water's chemical/biophysical aspects. Also, women research scientists were fewer than their male counterparts, with these women researchers experiencing gender-related discrimination and intimidation. As a government institution, it is recommended that the WRI considers integrating gender topics in its research activities to generate knowledge that informs better water policy formulation and hence, benefits all including women and girls in the country.

This paper describes how lived experience research, a qualitative research method based on phenomenology, can be modified and incorporated into interdisciplinary environmental risk communication projects. Lived experience methods can give insight into stakeholders’ needs and concerns, enabling development of better communication products and potentially helping overcome disciplinary barriers on project teams. We describe the purposes and methods of lived experience research, draw upon two cases from our own experiences to outline how methods can be adapted for the contexts of interdisciplinary research projects, and describe potential barriers to and opportunities for using this research method in team communication projects, including co-production of knowledge, internal research team acceptance, and making project products more responsive to user needs.

Municipalities require eco-efficiency in managing solid waste to enhance sustainability and achieve a circular economy. Despite the relevance of waste statistics, there is high data uncertainty, which limits attempts to benchmark eco-efficiency in this sector. To overcome this limitation, the data envelopment analysis tolerance method was used to evaluate the eco-efficiency of solid waste management for a sample of municipalities in Chile. For each municipality, a composite indicator embracing operational cost, recycled waste rates, and non-valorized waste rate was estimated. Data uncertainty was integrated in the assessment by simulating 729 scenarios for each municipality. Average eco-efficiency of the sample was 0.180, demonstrating the extremely poor performance of the municipalities in sustainable waste management. However, the eco-efficiency scores varied across municipalities, indicating differences in local capacity to develop and implement strategies for promoting circular economy. Large potential to improve eco-efficiency estimated in this study clearly shows that current solid waste management policies are not suitable for achieving circular economy objectives in Chile, thus alternative approaches should be adopted to enhance sustainable waste management.

For more than a decade, UN human rights institutions have increasingly highlighted the impact of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights and attempted to influence (inter)national policy-making, including policy-making on adaptation. Feminist and post-/decolonial approaches have long criticised the fact that human rights discourses employ problematic narrative strategies that lead to gendered and racist distortions, biases, and in- and exclusions. Against this background, the article will explore whether such problematic narratives are perpetuated in human rights discourses analysing and proposing policies to address climate change. Using a frame-analytical approach, the article will in particular focus on the concept of vulnerability which is a central, yet disputed concept in the human rights context. The article, firstly, highlights some of the most important critical insights of feminist and post-/decolonial approaches concerning human rights by carving out three problematic narrative strategies that are discernible in this context. In a next step, it is elaborated how human rights documents on climate change rely on the concept of vulnerability and what are the implications of the frame, id est the narrative and the metaphor, of vulnerability in the human rights context. It is further analysed how the vulnerability frame supports problematic narrative strategies which were carved out in the beginning of the article. The article ends with a summary and a discussion of the most important insights.

Citizen science is currently at the forefront of environmental scientific research and public policy for its potential to improve environmental governance, restore epistemic trust and help address some of the most stressing environmental challenges. Although citizen science is gaining increasing popularity, there is little empirical evidence to support these claims and demonstrate how bottom-up citizen science shapes public trust in environmental governance and science. In this paper we reflect on three grassroot environmental citizen science initiatives in Cameroon, Japan, and the UK to identify and present an instrumental framework which includes trustee attributes and conditions that influence how epistemic trust is shaped, and which should inform citizen science and other participatory practices. We explain that citizen science is an approach which enables political processes through the construction of well-informed techno-scientific arguments, which expose deficit assumptions about the public’s ability to participate in knowledge co-production process. To avoid repeating the failures of the past and risk amplifying issues of public distrust further, we provide suggestions built around key trustee attributes which can be incorporated in citizen science practices and we urge that environmental policy needs to create clear policy frameworks to enable the generation of actionable data, especially when such approaches are initiated and implemented as instrumental public participation methods.

Effective environmental systems have been recognized as essential to achieving sustainable development. Existing research on enhancing the effectiveness of environmental systems has predominantly focused on the improvement of various environmental governance measures, neglecting the differences in governance effects among different agents in environmental governance. Taking China as an example, we study the environmental governance efficiency (EGE) of four agents including central government, local government, enterprises, and the public. To reflect the characteristics of China’s environmental governance system, namely, the government takes the lead and enterprises and the public participate together, a nested leader-follower game network data envelopment analysis is proposed. The results of 30 provinces from 2009 to 2018 show that although China’s average EGE has improved, it is only 0.528 in 2018, with a large room for improvement. Moreover, the gap of EGEs among areas is gradually increasing, especially between the eastern area and the middle and western areas. Furthermore, the gap among provinces in the eastern area has narrowed, while the opposite is true in the western area. Finally, the EGE of the central government in most provinces is consistent with that of the local government. However, there are only 7 provinces whose EGEs of four agents are above the average. The policy recommendations are proposed accordingly.

As climate change accelerates, adapting to heat stress means preventing excess deaths, increased healthcare costs, reduced productivity, and damaged infrastructure and buildings. In cities, the urban heat island effect exacerbates these impacts. Adapting to heat stress requires action by a multitude of actors in different domains, including infrastructure and building owners, health care and social workers, and vulnerable inhabitants. While there is research on heat stress adaptation by single sectors, there is a significant knowledge gap regarding heat adaptation across sectors. To contribute to bridging this knowledge gap, we answer the following research question: To what extent and how are municipalities in the Dutch Province of Overijssel mainstreaming heat stress as part of their adaptation efforts? To answer this question, we combine action-oriented research employing the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework in a Dutch municipality, with a survey conducted among 15 municipalities located in the same province. Our research identifies two major challenges. First, the implementation of heat adaptation remains limited. Second, we identified two challenges regarding mainstreaming, namely a mismatch between the responsibility of heat adaptation in the built environment vis-à-vis the health care sector, and a lack of information on vulnerable groups that makes cross-sectoral collaboration more difficult. Thus, the extent to which heat adaptation is being mainstreamed as part of municipalities’ efforts to adapt the built environment is still quite limited and heat stress management at the intersection with the health care sector remains mostly absent, leaving vulnerable groups exposed.