Evaluating the use of an integrated forest land-use planning approach in addressing forest ecosystem services conflicting demands: Experience within an Irish forest landscape

There is an increasing demand for genuine public participation in Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) planning to address the various demands for forests to deliver a range of ecosystem services. However, as of yet, there are few developed and tested mechanisms to help authorities and stakeholders with diverse interests to effectively work together to reach a common goal. Integrated Forest Land-Use Planning (IFLUP) is an approach that has the potential to accommodate multi-stakeholders’ demands in the field of SFM planning. In this paper an IFLUP framework process that facilitates stakeholder participation in future-oriented SFM planning is explored. This framework combines scenario analysis and stakeholder collaborative learning. Its application in a case study area in the West of Ireland is outlined and its effectiveness in accommodating conflicting stakeholder demands on forest ecosystem services as well as its potential opportunities and challenges are evaluated.Based on the results and participants evaluation feedback of the IFLUP workshop outcomes, there was a shared view that the IFLUP approach has potential to address conflicting societal demands on forest ecosystem services within local forest landscapes. Likewise, collaborative learning process helps build trust and respect among stakeholder groups as well as improving the legitimacy and acceptance of SFM planning outcomes.     

Integrating scenario planning and design thinking: Learnings from the 2014 Oxford Futures Forum

This issue of Futures has covered a lot of ground and much of it breaks new ground. It is not too bold to write that these articles have added new thinking to the scenario and design literatures. Even bolder, we believe that human existence and long-term sustainability are predicated in part on the ideas in this issue of Futures. In his recent book The Meaning of Human Existence, Pulitzer Prize winning Biologist E.O. Wilson wrote: premier among the consequences [of human existence] is the capacity to imagine possible futures, and to plan and choose among them. How wisely we use this uniquely human ability depends on the accuracy of our self-understanding. The question of greatest relevant interest is how and why we are the way we are, and from that, the meaning of our many competing visions of the future. Wilson, 2014, p. 14.     

Scenarios based on sustainability discourses: Constructing alternative consumption and consumer perspectives

This paper describes a research based scenario project on sustainable consumption in Belgium. In the Consentsus project a scenario method was developed and tested by the research team to assess scenarios both as learning and participation tools for sustainable consumption. By using a decomposition analysis a solid ground was laid to adequately summarize three guiding principles on how to reach a (more) sustainable consumption: eco-efficiency, de-commodification and sufficiency. These ‘pure’ strategies – showing significant similarities with concrete discourses – were then translated into a participative process: two expert-driven workshops and interim research yielded three future images of food consumption as well as indications on their boundary conditions. These three images reflect significantly diverging approaches on how to organize practices related to food consumption. This structural diversity allowed us to address an archetypical consumer, i.e. a generalized consumer based on the specificities of the scenarios. These consumer perspectives do not aim at indicating real (even potential) groups, but aim at illustrating how the environment of interactions around the consumer fundamentally changes throughout the three sustainability discourses. It is argued that thinking through alternative modes of consumption is of importance to support and elucidate debate in governance arenas that address transitions towards a more sustainable consumption.     

The New Narrative: Applying narratology to the shaping of futures outputs

Both scenario development and design practices incorporate elements of storytelling, but this use remains undertheorised. This paper will draw upon literary theory, film theory and science fiction criticism to develop an analytical model of narrative structure and rhetorics which speaks to the concerns of scenario developers and designers when engaged in shaping the final outputs or deliverables of a futures project.After highlighting the differing role of telos in art and futures and defining the metacategory of “narratives of futurity”, this paper then defines the terms “story”, “narrative”, “narrator” and “world” in the literary context. It then shows how those concepts map onto futures practice, before going into detail regarding the variety of narrative strategies available across a range of different forms and media, and the qualitative effects that they can reproduce in audiences. There follows the construction of a 2 × 2 matrix based on the critical concepts of narrative mode and narrative logic, within which narratives of futurity might be usefully catalogued and compared, and from which certain broad conclusions may be reached as regards the relation between choice of medium and rhetorical effect. The implications of this analysis are explored in detail.     

Scenarios as a scholarly methodology to produce “interesting research”

Recent debates identified the insufficient production of “interesting research”, namely research that is innovative and develops theory while being both usable and rigorous. We propose that scenarios methodology as a scholarly form of inquiry is one way in which we can generate “interesting research”. We present and compare how this methodology was used to investigate three research studies: (i) the unfolding of retailing formats in India; (ii) the evolution of migration patterns in Europe and the Mediterranean; and (iii) climate change and regional and urban planning in the Tulum region of the Peninsula of Yucatán. We found that when scenarios are used as a scholarly methodology involving iterations and revisions, they help to challenge existing assumptions, identify novel lines of inquiry, and enable new research opportunities to emerge,—thus opening up a research mode that helps engaged scholars to make sense of and address complex and uncertain contexts and produce interesting findings.     

Scenarios to challenge strategic paradigms: Lessons from 2025

As a process looking for alternative visions of environment and corporate futures, scenario planning challenges strategic paradigms. In that way, scenario planning is dealing with the different beliefs of the many actors who make the organization and its global and business environments. Among these beliefs, emerging ideologies are one of the main shaping factors for the construction of new visions of corporate environment and corporate futures. To analyse the interaction between scenario planning and emerging ideologies, this paper will first propose a conceptual framework based on the dynamics of strategic paradigms. Second, it will discuss Electricité de France 2025 scenarios longitudinal case study in the context of the diffusion process of the French so called prospective approach to show interests and traps of scenario planning to manage paradigm shifts.     

Designing a foresight exercise for the future of rural communities in Romania

The paper aims to offer a good guideline for anyone who intends to do a futures or a foresight exercise for rural communities. The case presented is the one of the future of rural communities in Romania. The article begins with a brief presentation of the prevailing rural situation in Romania followed by a dialogue regarding suggestions for the possible objectives of a foresight exercise and the methods used (e.g. visioning, alternative futures, scenarios).     

The history of Western futures studies: An exploration of the intellectual traditions and three-phase periodization

The main purpose of this paper is to present a three-phase periodization of modern Western futures studies to construct historical classification. In order to reach this goal, the following intellectual traditions are introduced to review the philosophical and historical contexts that affect the very foundations of futures studies: (a) religions, (b) utopias, (c) historicism, (d) science fiction, and (e) systems thinking. The first phase (beginning in 1945 to the 1960s) was the era of scientific inquiry and rationalization of the futures characterized by the prevalence of technological forecasting, the rise of alternative futures in systematic ways, and the growth of professionalization of futures studies. In the first phase, futures had become objects of rationalization removed from the traditional approaches such as utopia, grandiose evolutionary ideas, naive prophecies, science fiction, religious attitudes, and mystical orientation. The second phase (the 1970s and the 1980s) saw the creation the global institution and industrialization of the futures. This era was marked by the rise of worldwide discourse on global futures, the development of normative futures, and the deep involvement of the business community in futures thinking. In the second phase, futures studies-industry ties were growing and the future-oriented thoughts extensively permeated the business decision-making process. The third phase (the 1990s – the present) reflects the current era of the neoliberal view and fragmentation of the futures. This phase is taking place in the time of neoliberal globalization and risk society discourses and is characterized by the dominance of foresight, the advance of critical futures studies, and the intensification of fragmentation. In the third phase, futures practice tends to be confined to the support of strategic planning, and hence is experiencing an identity crisis and loss of its earlier status of humanity-oriented futures.     

商业银行市场风险压力测试研究

2007年起始的全球金融危机暴露了银行业对压力时期的市场风险预测失灵。危机后,西方国家通过压力测试来评估银行的资本充足状况。这一举措起到了恢复市场信心的作用。因为影响市场的风险因素众多,所以市场风险压力测试有别于其他风险类别的压力测试。虽然市场风险压力测试在学术领域、监管层面和实际应用中都得到了一定程度的研究与发展,然而当前压力测试方法还存在诸多不足,如不能提供压力情景可能性分析、无法涵盖模型外风险因素的测度、受限于产品定价模型的假设等。因此,在未来发展中应更加关注压力测试结果在银行的运用,及充分考虑尚未被普遍纳入压力情景的隐性风险因素。     

MELiSSA the minimal biosphere: Human life,waste and refuge in deep space

MELiSSA (Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative) is a long-term technology program of the European Space Agency. Its aim is to construct autonomous habitats in deep space, supplying astronauts with fresh air, water and food through continuous microbial recycling of human wastes. This article considers how anticipated futures of space travel and environmental survival are materialized in the project to engineer the minimal biosphere capable of reliably sustaining human life: a human/microbe association with the fewest possible species. We locate MELiSSA within a history of bio-infrastructures associated with colonisation projects: refugia in which organisms dislocated from their originary habitats are preserved. Analysis of MELiSSA’s sewage-composting technology suggests that the disordering complexity of human waste presents a formidable “bottle-neck” for the construction of the minimal biosphere, in turn suggesting our dependence on microbial communities (soil, the human gut) of potentially irreducible biocomplexity. MELiSSA researchers think of themselves as pragmatic enablers of space exploration, yet a wider family of space colonisation projects are now imagined in terms of the prospect that the Earth might cease to function as the minimal biosphere capable of supporting civilisation. MELiSSA’s politics of anticipation are paradoxical, promising technologies with which to escape from the Earth and through which it may be sustained.     

日本商品期货市场近年衰落的原因和思考

进入21世纪以来,曾引领亚洲期货市场发展的日本商品期货市场明显衰落。在最初的要素条件、需求状况等外生比较优势逐步削弱的同时,规模经济、技术进步、产品差别等内生比较优势发展的滞后及市场分割、产业需求不足等固有矛盾的暴露,决定了日本商品期货市场发展的下行态势,日本监管当局规范和发展期货市场脱离实际的改革措施尤其加速了市场衰落的进程。本文从日本商品期货市场的现状入手,通过比较优势理论分析衰落的原因,并从大国商品期货市场的竞争和发展中探寻教训与经验,为我国商品期货市场发展提供借鉴。     

The Globe Sustained: Shakespeare’s allegory for sustainable development

Sustainability theory shows that the sustainability problem is a value orientation problem. In a recent study, Klaas van Egmond identified an underlying pattern of a crossed circle, representing affirmative and adversative value orientations, whose disintegration engenders unsustainable tendencies. This article explicates how Shakespeare’s allegories invite to quests for ‘values worthy of pursuit’, grounded upon a similar immanent cyclical pattern of value orientations, moving from and to the centre of Shakespeare’s works. Holding up the allegorical mirror to contemporary sustainability challenges, Shakespeare’s works anticipate sustainability narratives for society at large and its individual actors. The results of this research are highly relevant in the contemporary debates on the ‘erosion’ of European values, as it demonstrates how to identify sustained European value patterns and how to build on these patterns in relation with contemporary questions of sustainability.     

银行可持续发展:寻求金融创新与风险管理的适度平衡

在宏观经济面临的不确定性越来越大、宏观调控政策日趋频繁的复杂环境下,商业银行要想持续、稳健发展就必须加大金融创新的力度.但金融创新在为银行拓展新的经营空间、创造利润的同时也引致了新的风险.本文论述了商业银行金融创新的发展方向并对金融创新的风险点进行了识别和分析,认为当前的银行业改革必须在金融创新与风险管理之间寻求适度的平衡,这在金融全面开放的后WTO时代,对于推动银行业实施战略转型从而实现可持续发展具有重要的意义.     

商品期货价格期限结构隐含交易策略信息的实证研究

本文采用静态和滚动主成分分析的方法对最具代表性的9个品种商品期货价格期限结构进行了分析,得出我国商品期货价格期限结构变动的3个主要特征:曲线的平移、斜率的变化以及曲率的变化。在揭示不同变动方式的信息价值的基础上,本文提出多头、多头或者空头、多空平衡3种交易策略,并通过构建两个商品组合与基准持有策略收益进行了比较分析。结果表明,基于商品期货价格期限结构的隐含信息而构建的交易策略收益显著超过基准持有策略的收益。这对于交易者制定正确的交易策略具有重要的意义。     

我国高校人力资源管理研究

目前由于大多数高校仍未摆脱传统人事管理的束缚,在人力资源的管理过程中还存在着一些不容忽视的问题,不能满足国家和时代发展的需要。因此,有必要加强高校人力资源管理的理论与实践研究,在丰富和完善人力资源管理理论的同时,促进高校健康发展,奠定国家可持续发展的基础。     

现货市场波动与商品期货合约定价

通过构建商品期货合约定价模型,证明商品期货合约价格由资本市场系统风险溢价和标的现货市场特有(非市场)风险溢价两个部分构成.商品期货市场价格影响标的商品期货价格的前提条件是存在足够多的参与商品期货市场的交易者.当标的商品现货市场需求增加.在预期商品期货合约价格为正值的情况下,都将会使商品期货合约的价格上升,扩大交易风险并增加多头收益.相反,在预期商品期货合约价格为负值的情况下,需求增长引起初级产品价格上升将使商品期货合约价格的绝对值下降,减少交易风险和引起多头损失.如果标的商品现货市场需求减少,在预期商品期货合约价格为正值的情况下,将引起商品期货合约的价格下降,减少交易风险并降低空头损失.相反,在预期商品期货合约价格为负值的情况下,商品期货合约价格的绝对值增加,扩大交易风险和增加空头收益.     

我国商业银行宏观压力测试研究——基于四类银行的SUR模型

本文以不良贷款率作为评估银行主要风险的指标,建立SUR模型对我国国有商业银行、股份制银行,城市商业银行和农村商业银行四类银行进行了宏观压力测试。通过构建房价下跌和物价上涨的极端情景,运用蒙特卡洛模拟方法得到宏观经济因素冲击下四类银行的贷款损失分布,结果表明在设定的压力情景下,四类银行的贷款损失率都有不同程度的上升,国有商业银行的稳健性最好,而城市商业银行表现相对较差。