基于多种污染物损害视角的地方政府间环境规制合作策略研究

考虑多种(非累积性和累积性)污染物对环境造成不同损害的前提下,首先基于Stackelberg博弈分析占主导的地方政府和跟随的工业企业各自的动态决策过程,确定工业企业的最优污染物排放量;随后运用最优控制理论构建两个相邻地区在非合作和合作博弈下关于跨界污染最优控制的博弈模型,分析地方政府的环境治理策略,包括最优的环境保护税、污染治理投资,探讨污染物存量的动态变化情况,并对此两种博弈结构进行了比较分析。理论及仿真分析表明：无论地区间是非合作还是合作博弈,工业企业的最优污染物排放量与其污染物减排比例的相关性不确定;每个地区的最优环境保护税与污染物减排比例呈正相关。但合作博弈下,每个地区均会考虑其非累积性污染物排放对其相邻地区造成的损害;每个地区均会增加污染治理投资;所有地区的总收益高于非合作博弈下,且高出部分(合作剩余)受累积性污染物的损害以及非累积性污染物对相邻地区损害的影响,但是与非累积性污染物对本地区的损害无关。     

基于微分博弈的流域生态补偿机制研究

流域环境治理的市场失灵是外部性产生的根本原因,政府主导下的生态补偿机制能够将流域环境治理的外部效应内部化,是解决流域环境问题的有效手段。本文基于微分博弈模型,研究生态补偿机制对流域上下游政府治污努力的影响,通过对比无生态补偿、有生态补偿和中央干预三种情形下上下游政府的博弈均衡解,分析流域生态补偿机制的作用,并提出对策建议,为完善中国流域生态补偿机制提供科学依据。研究结果表明,在解决流域环境治理问题时,上下游政府各自为政的非合作方式绝不可取,中央干预能够有效提升流域整体收益,但当下游政府给予上游政府足够大的生态补偿时,能够极大激发上游政府的治污努力程度,促使流域整体收益达到最优。基于此,本文认为完善流域生态补偿机制,应当完善纵向与横向相结合的财政转移支付机制,建立有约束力的流域生态补偿激励机制,并考虑流域实际,因地制宜地选择适当的流域生态补偿模式。     

Coming to terms with environmental justice

The momentum of environmental justice has grown over the last decade, fueled by a passionate, sometimes inflammatory rhetoric. Confronting business with a series of distinctly different policy challenges, environmental justice advocates generally feel that economically disadvantaged populations are often exposed to more than their fair share of industrial pollutants and are thus suffering a “disparate risk.” a term now incorporated in permitting guidance adopted by EPA.Business generally has had less than a coherent response. At a policy level it is challenging to address an issue with so many different aspects, from relocation of low income communities to the sovereign rights of Native Americans; from noisy transportation routes to property devaluation. But, where businesses are responding effectively, they seem to be creating public participation mechanisms which allow for authentic representation and place an emphasis on listening to a community's real needs.     

Exposure Assessment: Methods of Analysis for Environmental Carcinogens1

Human populations are exposed to environmental carcinogens in both indoor and outdoor atmospheres. Recent studies indicate that pollutant concentrations are generally higher in indoor atmospheres than in outdoor. Environmental pollutants that occur in indoor air from a variety of sources include radon, asbestos, organic and inorganic compounds, and certain particles (e.g., tobacco smoke). Some of the gases or vapors are adsorbed on suspended particulate matter, whereas others exist entirely in the gas phase or are distributed between the latter and a particle-bound state. Because of differences in chemical and physical properties, each class of carcinogens generally requires different sampling and analytical methods. In addition, a single indoor environment may contain a wide variety of air pollutants from different sources. Unfortunately, no single best approach currently exists for the quantitative determination of such complex mixtures and, for practical reasons, only the more toxic or the more abundant pollutants are usually measured. This paper summarizes the currently available monitoring methods for selected environmental pollutants found in indoor atmospheres. In addition, some possible sources for those pollutants are identified.     

Assessment and Application of National Environmental Databases and Mapping Tools at the Local Level to Two Community Case Studies

Communities are concerned over pollution levels and seek methods to systematically identify and prioritize the environmental stressors in their communities. Geographic information system (GIS) maps of environmental information can be useful tools for communities in their assessment of environmental‐pollution‐related risks. Databases and mapping tools that supply community‐level estimates of ambient concentrations of hazardous pollutants, risk, and potential health impacts can provide relevant information for communities to understand, identify, and prioritize potential exposures and risk from multiple sources. An assessment of existing databases and mapping tools was conducted as part of this study to explore the utility of publicly available databases, and three of these databases were selected for use in a community‐level GIS mapping application. Queried data from the U.S. EPA's National‐Scale Air Toxics Assessment, Air Quality System, and National Emissions Inventory were mapped at the appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions for identifying risks of exposure to air pollutants in two communities. The maps combine monitored and model‐simulated pollutant and health risk estimates, along with local survey results, to assist communities with the identification of potential exposure sources and pollution hot spots. Findings from this case study analysis will provide information to advance the development of new tools to assist communities with environmental risk assessments and hazard prioritization.     

A Probabilistic Model of the Economic Risk to Britain's Railway Network from Bridge Scour During Floods

Scour (localized erosion by water) is an important risk to bridges, and hence many infrastructure networks, around the world. In Britain, scour has caused the failure of railway bridges crossing rivers in more than 50 flood events. These events have been investigated in detail, providing a data set with which we develop and test a model to quantify scour risk. The risk analysis is formulated in terms of a generic, transferrable infrastructure network risk model. For some bridge failures, the severity of the causative flood was recorded or can be reconstructed. These data are combined with the background failure rate, and records of bridges that have not failed, to construct fragility curves that quantify the failure probability conditional on the severity of a flood event. The fragility curves generated are to some extent sensitive to the way in which these data are incorporated into the statistical analysis. The new fragility analysis is tested using flood events simulated from a spatial joint probability model for extreme river flows for all river gauging sites in Britain. The combined models appear robust in comparison with historical observations of the expected number of bridge failures in a flood event. The analysis is used to estimate the probability of single or multiple bridge failures in Britain's rail network. Combined with a model for passenger journey disruption in the event of bridge failure, we calculate a system‐wide estimate for the risk of scour failures in terms of passenger journey disruptions and associated economic costs.     

Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index: A Global Benchmark for Corporate Sustainability

Increasingly investors are diversifying their portfolios by investing in companies committed to the concept of corporate sustainability. Investors are attracted to this new investment style because it promises to create long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from ongoing economic, environmental and social developments. It focuses on future challenges and is capable of capturing qualitative non-financial information for criteria such as quality of management, corporate governance structures, reputational risks, human capital management, stakeholder relations, corporate social responsibility.Here we present the framework used by the Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index (DJSGI) for identifying and ranking companies according to their corporate sustainability performance. In a yearly review the 10% leading sustainability companies in each of the 64 industry groups are selected for inclusion in the DJSGI. Throughout the year the companies are continuously monitored and, if necessary, downrated or excluded from the Index. A variety of sources is used for the assessment and for cross-checking of information, including company questionnaires, company documents, publicly available information, stakeholder relations, media screening and company interviews. The selection process is externally verified and the methodology is reviewed yearly to capture the increasing knowledge and standardisation of sustainability issues and to align it with ongoing initiatives such as the Global Reporting Initiative.     

Flexible working and organisational change: the integration of work and personal life

In a final large group session of a working conference in the Tavistock group relations tradition, members were concerned about who would get the consultants' 'blessing' as confirmation of their learning during the course of the conference. Some members referred to Jacob's fight at the river Jabbok and other parts of the Jacob legend from the Old Testament book of Genesis as a metaphoric frame to disentangle and explore their experiences. This concern mirrored a more general theme, which is as old as mankind - the theme of inheritance and succession. In this paper this theme will function as a frame for a broader exploration of the Jacob legend, the early development of psychoanalysis, the Tavistock tradition of group relations and the experience of organizational role holders in family businesses and other organizations. Instead of merely regarding inheritance and succession as a handing over, it will be postulated that assuming an inherited legacy requires a certain self-authorization on the part of the heir in order to own and further develop it. The capacity for containment of frustration and the ability to feel the pain of longing are requisites for ultimately taking up one's inheritance in the ongoing tradition of one's world.     

Energy modelling for technology assessment: the MARKAL approach

The primary objective of energy policy in many countries is to change the structure of their energy systems so as to reduce the dependence on imported oil. A large amount of funds is spent on energy research and development. The technologies competing for such funds have widely varying characteristics. These relate to costs and benefits, technical performance, environmental effects, the requirements for land, water and materials and the impact on employment. It is necessary to analyse these effects in some detail before decisions on technology programmes can be made. A complete assessment of the possible value of a particular technology cannot be made on an individual basis. It is necessary to consider many technologies simultaneously, competing against each other for various shares of the energy market. However, analysing the behaviour of the entire energy system requires the handling of an extensive amount of data and can only be done effectively with the help of a computerised system. The model, MARKAL, described in this paper is a multi-period linear programming model which has been developed and applied by 15 OECD countries for the purpose of energy technology research and development planning. Examples of the use of the model for this purpose are given both for the group as a whole and for individual countries. The model is structured so that an exogenously specified set of end-use demands must be satisfied given available technologies and energy supplies. The model allows for substitution possibilities in both the energy supply and demand sectors. A feature of the model is the use of varying objective functions such as minimum discounted costs, oil imports, or environmental effluents. These can be used individually or in combination in trade-off situations. The broader question of the use of energy modelling for technology assessment, including its limitations, is also discussed with particular reference to the insights that can be gained from the MARKAL model. Information from the MARKAL model has been used by the International Energy Agency to assist it in formulating a strategy for energy research development and demonstration.     

资源持续利用的投入产出分析

本文在列昂节夫利用投入产出分析方法进行环境问题研究的基础上,重新设计了投入产出表,将消除污染部门作为中间部门,将未消除污染物的环境效益值作为新创造价值的一部分。目的有二：第一,利于分析资源的循环利用程度;第二,利于分析持续发展状况,如强、弱持续发展。     

中国西部风景河流的保护政策探析

通过分析我国西部流域开发中的不同争论,强调河流的审美功能也同样值得关注。在对美国《自然与风景河流法案》进行分析的基础上,认为有必要进一步促进公众的参与,通过加强流域总体规划,构建具有中国特色的风景河流保护体系,并形成统一的中国国家公园管理体系,这将有力促进西部可持续发展。     

Generalized Haber's Law for Exponential Concentration Decline,with Application to Riparian‐Aquatic Pesticide Ecotoxicity

A simple analytic solution to the dynamic version of Haber's law was derived, conditional on a specified toxic load exponent (n) and on exponential decline in environmental toxicant concentration. Such conditions are particularly relevant to assessing ecotoxicity risk posed (e.g., to juvenile salmonids) by agricultural organophosphate (OP) pesticides that are subject to degradation and/or dissipation. A dynamic Haber's law model was fit to previously published detailed data on lethality for two aquatic species induced by six agricultural OP pesticides, and more crude fits were obtained to less detailed data on five other OP and on two non‐OP pesticides, indicating that for lethality, a range of 0.5 ≤ n ≤ 1.5 may be typical for OP pesticides. The AgDRIFT^® stream deposition model was next used to establish that first‐order or exponential loss, with dilution half‐times on the order of ≤0.01 days, pertains approximately to pesticide residues in streams that arise after aerial application of agricultural pesticides 100 feet upwind. The analytic model was then applied to demonstrate that pesticide concentrations deposited in downwind streams following an aerial application are effectively diluted by about 50‐ to 300‐fold from their initial concentration. Riparian ecotoxicity risk assessment models that ignore this effective dilution, and base pesticide‐specific estimates of reduced survival on the initial concentrations, are therefore unrealistically conservative.     

基于扎根理论的强制性公民行为影响因素研究

探索强制性公民行为的影响因素,对于拓展相关理论和指导管理实践都十分有益。以扎根理论为主导工具进行研究,对强制性公民行为影响因素的概念模型进行了探索性研究,并得出了强制性公民行为影响因素的三大类属:个体因素、客体因素以及环境因素。研究结果还表明,个体因素在客体因素或环境因素对强制性公民行为的影响路径中起中介或调节作用;客体因素和环境因素对强制性公民行为的交互效应存在。     

Adapting to Climate: A Case Study on Riverine Flood Risks in the Netherlands

Climate change may well lead to an increased risk of river floods in the Netherlands. However, the impacts of changes in water management on river floods are larger, either enhancing or reducing flood risks. Therefore, the abilities of water-management authorities to learn that climate and river flows are changing, and to recognize and act upon the implications, are of crucial importance. At the same time, water-management authorities respond to other trends, such as the democratization of decision making, which alter their ability to react to climate change. These complex interactions are illustrated with changes in river flood risk management for the Rhine and the Meuse in the Netherlands over the last 50 years. A scenario study is used to seek insight into the question of whether current water-management institutions and their likely successors are capable of dealing with plausible future flood risks. The scenarios show that new and major infrastructure is needed to keep flood risks at their current level. Such a structural solution to future flood risks is feasible, but requires considerable political will and institutional reform, both for planning and implementation. It is unlikely that reform will be fast enough or the will strong enough.     

Assessing Cross-Media Impacts: A Comparative Risk Approach

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has developed a Cross-Media Comparative Risk Assessment model to address certain regulatory concerns. The model generates a Human and Ecological Risk Index for a facility releasing toxins into the environment. The risk indices are based on chemical fate and transport predictions, toxicity, population density, and ecological sensitive areas. The model can be used to rank facilities for inspection or as a tool to assess the progress of pollution prevention programs. Regulatory permitting departments can use the model to address the cross-media transfer of pollutants from one environmental compartment to another. The versatility of the model allows adaptation to each specific users needs.     

Credibly reducing information asymmetry: Signaling on economic or environmental value by environmental alliances

This article focuses on strategic alliances that strive for economic profit while contributing to environmental sustainability. These so-called environmental alliances operate on a spectrum between the goals of economic and environmental value. New environmental alliances signal in announcements to their external stakeholders where they position themselves on this spectrum of alliance goals in order to reduce information asymmetry and enhance their credibility. In this article, we predict the type of external signal that environmental alliances send by studying alliance processes and structures that embed the latent alliance goals. We built an original dataset by combining data on 389 environmental alliances from the SDC Platinum database for the period 2013–2017 and data on signals in 650 alliance announcements. Our findings show that announcements signaling on economic value are mainly used by environmental production and marketing joint ventures, thereby reducing the information asymmetry on their latent goal of economic value. Conversely, announcements signaling on environmental value are mainly used by environmental R&D contracts that focus on the latent goal of environmental value. Our article thus illustrates that alliances aim to enhance their credibility by achieving signal fit between external signals and latent alliance goals. Even though environmental alliances operate on a spectrum of economic and environmental value, we demonstrate that they prefer to avoid sending mixed messages and hence only signal on one of the alliance goals. Our article contributes to the literature on environmental alliances by applying signaling theory to explain these counterintuitive findings and to improve our understanding of how environmental alliances aim for credibility through their communication on their alliance goals.     

What is Driving Corporate Environmentalism: Opportunity or Threat?

Environmental management systems (EMSs) can differ considerably in the mix of practices and the number of practices adopted by firms. This paper explores the various incentives motivating adoption of different types of practices by a sample of Standard & Poor's 500 firms and provides an explanation for why firms adopt practices selectively. Observable firm characteristics, proxies for the incentives faced by firms, are used to determine the types of firms more likely to adopt certain types of practices. We find that practices, such as having an internal environmental policy, corporate environmental standards and environmental auditing are motivated more strongly by regulatory pressures, while practices such as total quality environmental management and environmental reporting are motivated more strongly by the potential for gaining competitive advantage and improving relations with stakeholders.     

Awareness of Bad News, Environmental Attitudes, and Subjective Estimates of Coastal Pollution

Questionnaires distributed to 154 holiday-makers on beaches in Southwest England assessed awareness of local hazards or incidents associated with either the electricity supply industry or the water and sewage industry and examined the relationship between awareness and evaluations of the industry, current and future levels of pollution on the beach in question, and general levels of concern about environmental pollution. With respect to electricity, those respondents who were more aware of reports claiming a higher incidence of childhood leukemia in the vicinity of a nearby nuclear plant evaluated the electricity industry as less competent or trustworthy, showed higher levels of environmental concern, and were more pessimistic in their estimates of present and future levels of specific pollutants on their beach. With respect to the water industry, similar effects were associated with greater awareness of an accident at a water treatment plant and agricultural pollution of a nearby estuary. These findings are interpreted as suggesting a cyclical relationship between risk awareness and concern. On the one hand, reports about environmental hazards may lead to generalized concern across specific contexts; on the other hand, greater levels of concern may sensitize individuals to such reports.     

A Probabilistic Framework for the Reference Dose (Probabilistic RfD)

Determining the probabilistic limits for the uncertainty factors used in the derivation of the Reference Dose (RfD) is an important step toward the goal of characterizing the risk of noncarcinogenic effects from exposure to environmental pollutants. If uncertainty factors are seen, individually, as "upper bounds" on the dose-scaling factor for sources of uncertainty, then determining comparable upper bounds for combinations of uncertainty factors can be accomplished by treating uncertainty factors as distributions, which can be combined by probabilistic techniques. This paper presents a conceptual approach to probabilistic uncertainty factors based on the definition and use of RfDs by the US. EPA. The approach does not attempt to distinguish one uncertainty factor from another based on empirical data or biological mechanisms but rather uses a simple displaced lognormal distribution as a generic representation of all uncertainty factors. Monte Carlo analyses show that the upper bounds for combinations of this distribution can vary by factors of two to four when compared to the fixed-value uncertainty factor approach. The probabilistic approach is demonstrated in the comparison of Hazard Quotients based on RfDs with differing number of uncertainty factors.     

The Role of Environmental Accidental Risk Assessment in the Process of Granting Development Consent

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a procedure that must be followed for certain types of development before they are granted development consent. The procedure requires the developer to compile an environmental impact report (EIR) describing the likely significant effects of the project on the environment. A regulatory requirement in Slovenia is that an accidental risk assessment for a new installation should be a part of an EIR. The article shows how risk assessment (RA) related to accidental release of methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) or a polyvalent alcohol mixture from a new planned unit of a chemical factory in the Alpine region of Slovenia was performed in the framework of an EIA for the purpose of obtaining a construction permit. Two accidental scenarios were considered: (a) a spill of 20 m³ of MDI or polyvalent alcohol mixture into the river Soča (the river runs close to the chemical factory) and (b) a fire in the warehouse storing the raw material, where emission of toxic gases HCN, NO_x, and CO is expected during combustion of MDI. One of the most important results of this case is the agreement among the developer, the competent authority, and a consultant in the field of EIA and RA to positively conclude the licensing process despite the absence of formal (regulatory) limit values for risk. It has been approved that transparent, reasonably uncertain, and semi-quantitative environmental risk assessment is an inevitable component of an EIA, and an essential factor in informed, licensing-related decision making.