Socio‐economic transitions and everyday life changes in the rural world: Pyrenean households and their contemporary economic history

This article focuses on understanding rural life and how agrarian everyday life changes as a consequence of the radical socio‐economic transformations that, across the world, have accompanied rural communities in their transition from economies of subsistence to industrial production, and, in some areas, from there to providers of service to the tourism‐oriented leisure economy. In the last century in the Alt Urgell District (Spanish Pyrenees), many communities went from a production model based on subsistence farming and livestock breeding first to a specialization in milk production and later to tourism. The industrialization of milk production, the radical transformation of the scale of their operations, and the monetization of life transformed the identity and structure of these communities. The subsequent transformation of many of these farms to accommodate the leisure industry changed the shape of these households again. This paper reflects on how science, governance, commodification, and technology played a role on the transformation of the rural mountain areas, their people, and their everyday life.     

Loss and damage: a critical discourse analysis of Parties’ positions in climate change negotiations

The years-long negotiations on loss and damage (L&D) associated with climate change impacts reached a milestone with the adoption of the Paris Agreement, sanctioning the permanence of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) created in 2013. The WIM aims at advancing knowledge gathering, coordination and support to address L&D associated with extreme and slow onset events in vulnerable developing countries (Decision 2/CP.19). Despite being among the most controversial issues to be recently treated in climate change negotiation, L&D has attracted little attention in the field of international relations. This paper aims at addressing this gap by reconstructing the emergence and evolution of the negotiating positions on L&D of developing and developed countries. It employs a critical discourse analytical approach and builds on Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework for critical discourse analysis, taking decision 2/CP.19 as the core communicative event. Consistently, the decision is analysed at three different levels: as a text (micro-scale); as a discursive practice (meso-scale); and as a social practice (macro-scale). The analysis makes use of a wide range of materials including previous decisions, High Level Segment statements and Parties submissions. It reconstructs Parties’ conflicting views on the positioning of L&D vis-à-vis the adaptation space (L&D as a part of, or as beyond adaptation) and the scientific, ethical and legal arguments employed to support these standpoints. It highlights, in particular, the strategic importance which the ‘compensation argument’ had in determining developing countries’ capacity to influence the UNFCCC process up to the inclusion of a specific article on L&D in the Paris Agreement. While calls for compensation might have lost momentum as a result of the Warsaw and Paris talks, the paper argues that their potential is far from exhausted. They in fact imply a more general request for climate justice which the UNFCCC has not yet addressed.     

绍兴市土地利用时空变化研究

[目的]探讨经济发达地区土地利用变化时空规律,为城市发展提供合理土地利用政策,同时优化土地利用结构以支持经济可持续发展。[方法]通过遥感影像获取长时间序列的土地利用数据,探讨近30多年来绍兴市的土地利用变化,进一步利用土地利用动态变化模型,对绍兴市土地利用变化过程、趋势、变化轨迹进行了深入分析。[结果](1)绍兴市土地利用在1980~2000年相对稳定,在2000年后变化强度逐年增强,2005~2015年土地利用转化量增多和类型多样。绍兴市东北部平原和县区核心区域是经济发达地区土地利用变化的活跃区域,主要是其他类型土地向建设用地转移;(2)1980~2015年绍兴市土地利用变化轨迹主要受到人口增长和GDP增长的影响。[结论]城市化的发展和人口的迅速增长,使城市人口和土地面积迅速增加,造成城市边缘的农业用地转化成了建设用地。经济的发展、科技的进步及政府政策的制定,改变了人们的生活和工作方式,进而影响土地利用类型。     

Social Entrepreneurship in China: Driving Institutional Change

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the concern with exclusionary and unethical business practices has led to the growing popularity of social entrepreneurship, which focuses on the creation of social value, not wealth. In this article, I reflect on social entrepreneurship in China, a unique context given the strong communist party leadership and the transition to a market economy. To begin, I discuss the legal and political framework for social entrepreneurship in China, followed by an overview of the sector’s characteristics, including age, size, social issues emphasized, leader characteristics, and the role of women. Next, I provide examples of three social enterprises in China that illustrate the diverse possibilities for this sector as a force for social and institutional change. I conclude with some suggestions for strengthening China’s social enterprise ecosystem.     

气候变化下湖北省稻谷生长期降雨量指数保险设计

[目的]气候变化对我国粮食生产造成巨大损失,传统农业保险存在较多问题,天气指数农业保险作为金融创新工具,成为转移农业天气风险的有力路径。[方法]文章在分析降雨量指数保险合约设计思路的基础上,依照天气指数保险合约定义,选取稻谷生长期每日降水的累积降雨量作为天气指标,采用经济—气候模型和湖北省78个县市的面板数据,按风险区域分别设计了干旱指数保险合约和暴雨灾害指数保险合约。[结果]虽然湖北省全省累积降水的影响总体是负向的,但累积降水量对稻谷单产在十堰、襄阳等干旱区域的边际影响是正向的、显著的,累积降水量在暴雨集中区域江汉平原地区、咸宁市及辖内县市,有着显著的负向影响。[结论]气候变化对粮食生产的影响显著,根据面板数据的估计结果,有必要按不同的风险区域分别设计天气指数保险合约。该文的研究在天气指数保险设计方面做出了一定的探索,进一步使天气指数保险合约成为转移农业天气风险的有力创新工具。     

Bouncing Back from Extreme Weather Events: Some Preliminary Findings on Resilience Barriers Facing Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

Extreme weather events (EWEs) pose unprecedented threats to modern societies and represent a much‐debated issue strongly interlinked with current development policies. Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute a driving force of economic growth, employment and total value added, remain highly vulnerable to and ill prepared for such environmental perturbations. This study investigates barriers to SMEs’ resilience to EWEs in an attempt to shed light on enabling factors that can define effective organizational responses to non‐linear environmental stimuli. Relying on structural equation modeling and data gathered from 109 SMEs that recently experienced EWE impacts, we link the general concept of SMEs’ resilience barriers to EWEs with a series of elements to determine specific internal and external factors that contribute the most to EWE resilience. In particular, external barriers of institutional conditions and mechanisms of support and guidance as well as internal barriers of resources and managerial perceptions are found to be the most critical ones in determining resilience. The assessment offers essential research evidence for practitioners on SME management and sets forth linkages with current mechanisms for policy interventions towards an appropriate resilience agenda for SMEs. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Corporate environmental reporting: Are French firms compliant with the Task Force on Climate Financial Disclosures' recommendations?

This article deals with the practices of French corporate environmental disclosure with a focus on climate-related risks. In particular, it aims to analyse the compliance of CAC 40 firms with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (2017), an international initiative made up by Financial Stability Board to enhance financial transparency. On the basis of a content analysis of firms' reference documents spanning 2015–2018, we constructed the Climate Compliance Index (CCI) to evaluate whether firms disclose information on climate risks and opportunities about governance, strategy, risk management and metrics. Our results highlight a gradual increase of the CCI despite disparities across sectors and management areas. The content analysis allows us to develop a set of indicators frequently reported by domain and to identify and define climate risks and opportunities and their financial impacts per sector, which is a first step to improve the disclosure of non-financial information.     

Examining the change in wellbeing following a holiday

Building on existing evidence that tourism contributes to wellbeing, this study aims to investigate how both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing changes after a holiday. A longitudinal inquiry involving three waves of observation (during, the fourth week, and the eighth week following a holiday) was carried out in five tourism cities in China, using Latent Growth Curve models to analyze change. Results suggest that life satisfaction – an indicator of hedonic wellbeing – does not decline as expected whereas other indicators of hedonic wellbeing declined dramatically in the first month and then mildly in the second month following a holiday. Comparatively, eudaimonic wellbeing declined gradually and mildly during the same two-month intervals. Higher levels of optimal tourism experiences predicted slower declines of both hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.     

Microfoundations of network exploration and exploitation capabilities in international opportunity recognition

While international entrepreneurship (IE) recognizes opportunity recognition (OR) as a central activity and the prominent role of network capabilities in OR, it is not informative as to how different network capabilities influence OR in international markets. We utilize dual network capability through the lens of exploration-exploitation to better understand how these two different capabilities influence the identification of international opportunities. Given that microfoundations perspective and prior experience in IE are under-developed and under-theorized, we explore founder’s prior experience as an essential microfoundation for the dual network capability. By employing structural equation modeling on a sample of 647 early internationalizing firms from a developing country, the study demonstrates that founders’ prior experience is a significant microfoundation of dual network capability in international OR. However, both exploration and exploitation capabilities fail to bring new opportunities in a changing market environment. A post-hoc analysis reveals that at a higher level of market change, younger firms benefit more from network exploration, whereas older firms achieve greater success when leveraging benefits from network exploitation. The study concludes with implications and future research avenues.     

关于赫尔德历史发展的思想

赫尔德是历史哲学的开拓者之一。他从人在宇宙中的地位出发,独创性的提出了历史发展思想。他的历史哲学思想具有两面性。