Russia’s green development

Author(s):  
Olga Ulybina

This chapter discusses the effect of the concepts of environmental sustainability, ecological safety, and green growth on the state of the natural environment and the lives of the people in Russia. The chapter focuses on trends and cases in environmental pollution (air, forests, water, and soil), climate change, the energy sector, and the Arctic. Over the three post-Soviet decades, Russia has gone through many changes in environmental governance. The main environmental achievements concern increased energy efficiency and a reduction in the extent of industrial pollution. However, overall progress towards a greener society has been slow, hindered by the reliance of the national economy on natural resource extraction, political inertia, limited public environmental control, poor law enforcement, and insufficient respect for civil rights. We highlight the policy gap in the area of environmental justice and frame ‘green growth’ problems as ‘environmental justice’ problems.

Author(s):  
Phiri Rodgers

The need to enhance environmental sustainability, sustainable development and growth that takes into account the well-being of the people and nature because of the increased production and consumption of goods and services is the major driver to the introduction of green economy in Zambia and countries in southern Africa. This article examines the extent to which local government in Zambia has embraced green growth and green economy and critically analyses the concept of green economy and green growth. This study is based on a review of planning and policy documents, a household questionnaire survey and interviews with various institutions, planners and rural development organisations. A number of policies implemented at the local government level were analysed and reflected upon irrespective of whether they contain the components of green growth and green economy and the extent to which they contribute to attaining green economy. The article argues that the need for economic diversification is important as far as green economy is concerned. The article recommends the need to invest in research and development in order to find more carbon-free economic activities. The conclusion is that local government is key to achieving green growth and green economy, because it is involved at all levels, from policy formulation to implementation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Md. Mizanur Rahman

The study's overarching objective was to identify the pitfalls and bottlenecks in ensuring environmental justice on an equal basis embedded in the existing legal, policy, and institutional framework. The environmental victims were examined, and the opinions of the line experts were garnered. The study revealed that ordinary people could not seek justice to the court directly for environmental damage due to bubbles in the legal and policy framework. The courts suffer from various challenges like fuzziness in the jurisdiction, lack of legal advisors, and workloads. On the other hand, the court has no power to take cognizance of an offense independently. The wealthy and influential polluters are reluctant to respect the law due to insufficient punishment prescribed by the statutes. The victims are rarely compensated, and there are a few options to resolve the dispute in alternative ways. The provision of legal aid for the poor and disadvantaged people is not much helpful. The public departments are stuck with a lack of logistics and human resources. The jurisdictional overlapping, underlapping, and conflict of interest among the departments worsen monitoring, control, surveillance (MCS), and effective coordination. The regulatory framework does not welcome the community in decision-making and natural resource management. Hence, the study recommends legal and institutional reform. Policy initiatives are warranted for effective environmental governance, green growth, campaign, and volunteerism.


Author(s):  
Steve Vanderheiden

This chapter surveys the origin and development of environmental justice discourse from its early use as a civil rights strategy to resist the siting of hazardous waste facilities in the neighborhoods of poor people of color to its more contemporary usage as a directive for equity in global cooperation in pursuit of environmental sustainability. From debates among scholars and activists over the demands of justice as applied to problems of global climate change mitigation and adaptation, or climate justice, it examines three principles of justice invoked in a landmark climate treaty and later applied to the design and evaluation of international climate change policy efforts. The chapter concludes by considering potential new directions that environmental justice theorizing might take in the context of other issues in environmental politics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luh Putu Puspawati ◽  
I Made Swastika ◽  
Tjokorda Udiana Nindhia Pemayun ◽  
Tjokorda Gde Tirta Nindhia

Historically the tradition of male calf release in Tambakan Villlage was initiated from the vow of the defeated soldier of the kingdom of Buleleng over the kingdom of Bangli in the Island of Bali in the region of present day Indonesia. The defeated soldiers of Buleleng were hiding in the forest around the presentday village of Tambakan, Buleleng, Bali. All the soldiers vowed to the Deity dwelling in the forest to hand over a male calf if they survived the pursuit of the enemy. In the end, the enemy could not find them and the soldiers remained in the forest and continued their lives there. The village was named as Tambakan, meaning a buffer of enemy attack. The village was surrounded by a fence made from bamboo during that time. The soldiers then paid their vows by releasing male calves into the forest. This historical incident then developed to become a belief of the local peoples that if they vow to release a male calf to the Deity, then their wish will be fulfilled. Indeed many wishes of the people did come true when they released a male calf to the forest. Consequently, the population of the bulls increased in the forest, and by the influence of the Hindu Tantra sect, about 23 bulls from the forest are taken out every 2 years to be sacrificed in the temples addressed to Goddess of Durga. The meat of the sacrificed bulls is then distributed to the members of the village to be consumed. The releases of male calves gives benefit to environmental sustainability and the distribution of the meat after sacrificing guarantees food security for the people.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1409
Author(s):  
Shengyun Wang ◽  
Yaxin Zhang ◽  
Huwei Wen

This study adopted the two-stage super-efficiency network slack-based model (SBM) to measure the green development performance index (GDPI) of 30 provinces in China. The Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition was used to analyze the regional differences and their sources in China’s green development performance. The results are as follows: first, the green development performance showed a declining trend from 1997 to 2017. The improvement of environmental governance efficiency was the key to achieving green development progress. The green development levels of coastal areas were significantly higher than those of inland provinces. Second, the regional imbalance in China’s green development performance was gradually worsening. The inter-regional differences were the primary source of the overall differences. The intra-regional difference of green development within the northwest was the largest. Third, among the eight regions, only the southwest region had σ convergence in green development performance; in addition, absolute β convergence and conditional β convergence were divergent, thereby confirming the regional imbalance of the widening regional differences in China’s green development performance. This study aimed to provide a scientific basis and effective reference for further advancing China’s regional coordinated development strategy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5612
Author(s):  
Shu-Yuan Pan ◽  
Cheng-Di Dong ◽  
Jenn-Feng Su ◽  
Po-Yen Wang ◽  
Chiu-Wen Chen ◽  
...  

Biochar is a carbon-rich material prepared from the pyrolysis of biomass under various conditions. Recently, biochar drew great attention due to its promising potential in climate change mitigation, soil amendment, and environmental control. Obviously, biochar can be a beneficial soil amendment in several ways including preventing nutrients loss due to leaching, increasing N and P mineralization, and enabling the microbial mediation of N2O and CO2 emissions. However, there are also conflicting reports on biochar effects, such as water logging and weathering induced change of surface properties that ultimately affects microbial growth and soil fertility. Despite the voluminous reports on soil and biochar properties, few studies have systematically addressed the effects of biochar on the sequestration of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in soils. Information on microbially-mediated transformation of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) species in the soil environment remains relatively uncertain. A systematic documentation of how biochar influences the fate and transport of carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen in soil is crucial to promoting biochar applications toward environmental sustainability. This report first provides an overview on the adsorption of carbon, phosphorus, and nitrogen species on biochar, particularly in soil systems. Then, the biochar-mediated transformation of organic species, and the transport of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in soil systems are discussed. This review also reports on the weathering process of biochar and implications in the soil environment. Lastly, the current knowledge gaps and priority research directions for the biochar-amended systems in the future are assessed. This review focuses on literatures published in the past decade (2009–2021) on the adsorption, degradation, transport, weathering, and transformation of C, N, and P species in soil systems with respect to biochar applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-340
Author(s):  
Laura Phillips Sawyer

A long-standing, and deeply controversial, question in constitutional law is whether or not the Constitution's protections for “persons” and “people” extend to corporations. Law professor Adam Winkler's We the Corporations chronicles the most important legal battles launched by corporations to “win their constitutional rights,” by which he means both civil rights against discriminatory state action and civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution (p. xvii). Today, we think of the former as the right to be free from unequal treatment, often protected by statutory laws, and the latter as liberties that affect the ability to live one's life fully, such as the freedom of religion, speech, or association. The vim in Winkler's argument is that the court blurred this distinction when it applied liberty rights to nonprofit corporations and then, through a series of twentieth-century rulings, corporations were able to advance greater claims to liberty rights. Ultimately, those liberty rights have been employed to strike down significant bipartisan regulations, such as campaign finance laws, which were intended to advance democratic participation in the political process. At its core, this book asks, to what extent do “we the people” rule corporations and to what extent do they rule us?


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3960
Author(s):  
Meng-Meng Geng ◽  
Ling-Yun He

It is a problem worth thinking about whether the government’s environmental regulation policies can meet the residents’ requirements for environmental quality, and benefit the people. The study of the public’s subjective evaluation can more intuitively judge whether the government’s environmental regulation has realized “ecological benefits for the people”. Based on the data of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2013, this paper studied the impact of environmental regulation and environmental awareness on environmental governance satisfaction by an ordered probit model. The study found that environmental regulation has a significant positive impact on environmental governance satisfaction, while environmental awareness has a significant negative impact on environmental governance satisfaction. We also found that when public environmental awareness is taken into account, the positive relationship between environmental regulation and environmental governance satisfaction is affected. The robustness test proved this conclusion.


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