Environmental Science & Policy最新文献

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.

This paper critically reflects on the impact of “development minerals” on rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the case of Malawi. It does so by analysing data collected at multiple quarrying sites in Lilongwe District, with the objective of assessing how production of these commodities can help meet Malawi’s commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Findings indicate that despite their extraction being associated with environmental problems, development minerals do impact positively on the livelihoods of Malawians in rural areas where very few viable alternative income-earning opportunities. To maximise the sector’s contribution to the SDGs in Malawi, however, greater emphasis must be placed on formalising and supporting quarrying operations and other activities oriented around development minerals.

The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus has been promoted as an approach to integrated governance that can increase system sustainability. However, there have been limited empirical studies that demonstrate how WEF nexus governance leads towards sustainability. Therefore, the study investigates how collaborative governance of the WEF nexus connects to sustainability in Singapore, considered one of the most sustainable cities in the world. The objective is to understand the structure of WEF nexus governance in Singapore and explore how this structure contributes towards sustainability. This study uses a case study approach with qualitative text analysis on multiple data types to address this research objective. The results show two key findings. First, the findings show that WEF nexus governance in Singapore has a collaborative governance approach at the national level but is less integrated at lower levels of governance. Second, the results show that while governance integration, including WEF nexus connections, contributes to sustainability, there are also factors beyond WEF nexus governance that contribute towards sustainability in Singapore. The study concludes that WEF nexus governance provides an opportunity for improved sustainability within the system, but WEF nexus governance alone may not be sufficient for sustainability to be realized.

Theory of Change (ToC) is widely used as a tool to support strategic planning, monitoring, and evaluation in many fields, especially for social and environmental programs. However, there is still limited documented experience with the application and use of ToC in a research context. CGIAR, a global network of 15 centers conducting international research-for-development, included a standardized ToC approach in a recent round of developing 32 large research Initiatives. This unique experience offers an ideal opportunity to learn from organization-scale ToC implementation and use. The paper provides an overview of research-for-development challenges and ToC concepts and a brief history of ToC use in CGIAR. We describe the application of ToC in this recent case and then assess strengths and weaknesses of the process and the ToCs developed as part of the Initiative proposals. CGIAR made important advances in standardizing ToC concepts and terminology, tools, and guidance, and in integrating ToC into annual reporting and evaluation. Nevertheless, many of the ToCs were insufficiently clear and specific, with substantial scope for further improvement. This is due in part to the rushed and decentralized proposal development process, undertaken during pandemic restrictions, but also reflects different mental-models of research-for-development processes and gaps in understanding and capacity. Recommendations to improve development and use of ToC include capacity development in conceptualizing research impact pathways, ensuring that research design teams have a dedicated M&E specialist paying particular attention to ToCs, improved ToC templates, and better accountability for ToC development and use over the life of a program.

The Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology reviewed 7561 publications, identifying 1271 relevant works published between 2014 and 2022 based on data from the Web of Science database. The PRISMA 2020 technique, with appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria to minimize errors, revealed significant annual increases in publishing volume during this period. The United States and China ranked first and second in terms of publication volume and citations, while the Peoples of China and the United States ranked first in terms of publication quality. Inequalities in network density and linkages were found, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences receiving the most citations and degrees. The document co-citation analysis network was developed to increase understanding of the frequency and amplitude of bursts of different publications in distinct clusters. Seneviratne SI in Cluster 1, (2014) had the most citations (18) and the highest strength (4.81). CiteSpace’s analytical technology identifies high-frequency keywords, explores co-occurrence patterns, and highlights emerging concepts, shedding light on cutting-edge research dynamics and the impact of new ideas from policies or public events. In this review, bursts of new concepts highlight rapid growth in the field. Seneviratne SI (2014) and Seager R with Zhang Q (2015) were top contributors in citations and references. Notably, knowledge gaps exist in anthropogenic climate dynamics, environmental factors, drought risk mitigation, and attribution. Future scholars should focus on these and comparable issues, while Chinese and American authors should prioritize article quality above publication numbers.

Agricultural landscapes are the result of the long-term, complex, and intermingled interfaces between nature and culture. Among the stakeholders involved in the production of agri-environmental and climate services, farmers play a crucial role, and their contribution should be duly acknowledged to promote sustainable land management. Therefore, this research aims to contribute to the participatory design of agri-environmental contracts to incentivize landscape and biodiversity practices. To achieve this goal, 13 innovation labs with multi-actor perspective were established across nine different European countries. These groups envisioned a future sustainable landscape characterized by diversity and balance of economic, socio-cultural, and environmental components. Trust-based networks and effective communication channels emerge as vital components for the success of sustainable local production systems. Practitioners emphasize the significance of European-level policies in effecting transformative change and influencing farmers'willingness to contribute to both food production and environmental public goods. They defined concrete contract features such as public funding, hybrid payments, and the presence of intermediaries for the potential of agri-environmental measures. Notably, practitioners perceive a wide range of benefits associated with the implementation of agri-environmental measures, extending beyond economic compensation. Gaining a deeper understanding of practitioners' perceptions of their territories and agri-environmental measures is crucial for policymakers to design tailored and appealing programs that resonate with practitioners'needs.

Climate change poses severe threats to coastal social-ecological systems (SES) worldwide. Recent calls recognize the importance of including Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in research on climate change impacts. Yet studies that have attempted to weave ILK and scientific knowledge have seldom considered the gendered nature of climate change impacts. Building on the literature on gender and climate change and knowledge pluralism, this study contributes to addressing this research gap by exploring local knowledge on climate change impacts and its relation to scientific knowledge through a gendered approach and focusing on the Western Indian Ocean region, and more specifically on Kenya. We adopted a mixed methodology combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. We found evidence of pronounced climate change impacts on coastal SES both in the scientific literature and in local reports. Our findings highlight that there is an extensive overlap between information derived from scientific and local knowledge systems. Importantly, our study revealed reports of change that were only provided by SSF communities, namely changes in coastal dynamics, a decrease in rainfall, and a decrease in the abundance of green algae. Although we found gendered variations in changes reported by SSF communities, gendered differences of climate change impacts on SSF were not detected in the reviewed literature. Overall, our results suggest that knowledge cross-fertilization generates a holistic, relational, and place-based view of climate change impacts, which may support sound and gender-inclusive adaptive policies. We conclude by suggesting key policy recommendations for climate adaptation and risk management

In the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations, countries are committed to achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a paradox as it owns the second-largest basin in the world while more than half of the population has no access to basic drinking water. This fact is our starting point to conduct a performance evaluation exercise of the 11 provinces from 2008 to 2019. Our approach has five distinguished features: we take account of population trends; we use a tailored and complete database of urban centres; we define and decompose flexible indicators, and we use a non-parametric estimation method. Our results show that there is inefficiency and ineffectiveness in urban water access. Overall, larger efficiency–effectiveness differences are over time observed mostly due to a lack of technological change and a resource constraint. We also highlight the role of public policies.