Critical natural capital revisited: Ecological resilience and sustainable development

The maintenance of critical natural capital is an important objective of sustainable development. Critical natural capital represents a multidimensional concept, as it mirrors the different frameworks of various scientific disciplines and social groups in valuing nature. This article revisits the concept of critical natural capital and examines its relation to the concept of ecological resilience. I propose that ecological resilience can help a great deal in specifying the ‘ecological criticality’ of specific renewable parts of the natural capital. More specifically, I suggest that the degree of ecological resilience is inversely related to the degree of threat ecosystems are prone to. The concept of ecological resilience may complement other measures, such as integrity or vulnerability, in estimating the degree of threat specific ecosystems are exposed to. The empirical estimates of ecological resilience add a further criterion in order to build a comprehensive and clear conception of critical natural capital.     

The origins of the concept of ‘foresight’ in science and technology: An insider's perspective

This article explores how the term ‘foresight’ originally came to be used in connection with science and technology by the author and SPRU colleagues in 1983. It analyses how the rationale for its use evolved over time, first providing a ‘catchy’ title for a study (‘Project Foresight’), and then a convenient shorthand for the focus of that study, before eventually coming to formally signify a new approach to looking systematically into the future of science and technology, an inclusive and wide-ranging process that differed appreciably from that of traditional ‘technology forecasting’. The paper reflects on the importance of concepts and terminology in the field of science policy research, providing examples of how an inappropriate term or phrase can damn the prospects of the research having an impact on policy, while a more politically astute use of terminology can greatly enhance the probability of making a significant impact. The paper also examines other early uses of the concept of ‘foresight’ in the United States and Canada at about the same time. In addition, it highlights the conceptual similarities between foresight and la prospective, a novel approach developed in France not just for looking into the future but also for shaping or even ‘constructing’ the future of our choice, an ambitious aspiration that it shares with foresight. This case-study on the origins and early evolution of ‘technology foresight’ illustrates the essential importance of terminology in differentiating key concepts in social sciences (where it sometimes gives rise to unfortunate priority disputes), and particularly in the case of policy research.     

Spatial organization, transport, and climate change: Comparing instruments of spatial planning and policy

Approaching the analysis of climate policies from a spatial organization perspective is necessary for realizing both efficient and effective mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In particular, it allows assessing the potential contribution of specific mechanisms of spatial organization and related spatial planning and policy to climate policy goals. So far, this spatial organization angle of climate policy has hardly received attention in the literature. The main sector significantly contributing to GHG emissions and sensitive to spatial organization and planning is urban transport. A qualitative evaluation of the available spatial organization policy options is provided, on the basis of four standard ‘E criteria’ and a decomposition of CO₂ emissions.     

Promise and shortcomings of a green turn in recent policy responses to the “double crisis”

The paper analyses six international-scale responses to the financial and climate change ‘double crisis’ in order to: review how they define problems and solutions, analyse what underpins the policy choices revealed in these responses (the ‘green turn’), reflect on the implications of the proposed solutions in terms of sustainability and global environmental justice, and to suggest three elements for a paradigm shift towards an ‘alternative’ turn embedded in ecological economics theory. The analysis reveals that responses by leading international organisations continue to appeal to the precepts of neoclassical economy. We argue that from an ecological economics perspective, policy responses under the various labels of green economy, green growth, sustainable growth, green new deal, fall well short of what is needed to fight the environmental crisis and rising inequality across and within countries. The idea of justice and equity that underpins the mainstream approach seems inadequate in terms of sustaining our environmental base and global environmental justice. Based on this critical review, we propose an ‘alternative turn’, centred on three elements of a paradigm shift leading to a new economy where the environmental base and global environmental justice are at the centre of the discourse.     

产业集聚、产业多样化与城市经济韧性关系研究

2008年金融危机对全球多个国家经济发展造成巨大冲击,我国许多沿海外向型城市面临国外订单需求不足、行业内人才流失以及厂房闲置等问题,体现出城市经济韧性能力的重要性。针对不同城市在面对外部冲击时表现出的城市经济韧性能力差异,重点研究产业集聚、产业多样化与城市经济韧性之间的关系,并将产业多样化划分为产业相关多样化和产业无关多样化,运用基准回归和稳健性检验分析两种划分对城市经济韧性的影响。结果表明,产业集聚与城市经济韧性之间呈U型关系,产业相关多样化与城市经济韧性之间呈倒U型关系,产业无关多样化与城市经济韧性呈倒U型关系。最后从破除区域间分权壁垒角度提出政策建议。     

A systems approach to policy analysis and development planning: Construction sector in the Turkish 5-year development plans

In this study, we propose a new model for systems analysis ‘of’ policy and systems analysis ‘for’ policy with the example of construction sector in the Turkish 5-year development plans.Our proposed model—integrated development management model (IDMM)—is conceptually based on the principles of systems thinking and integrated management approach.We present and discuss the results of our work in which we extracted all construction-related policies and strategies from eight 5-year development plans and analyzed them using the IDMM. In the light of the analyses, we give several answers to the question: “Why did the development plans fail to meet their targets in Turkey?” We propose that any development plan has to have claritas-unitas-integritas-consonantia between the management levels (normative, strategic, and operational) and components (goals, structures, and behavior) of IDMM.The paper is the first work that brings the concepts of development planning and foresight together. In a complementary stance, the time of integrating foresight and development planning has come.     

Scenarios and creativity: Thinking in new boxes

To be creative and make change happen, leaders must do more than simply ‘think outside the box’, as the traditional business manuals suggest, using the popular American expression. After all, the space outside the box is infinitely expansive. Moreover, there can be no guarantee that a solution to the problem will be found. The answer: ‘Think in new boxes.’ This requires developing the right new box; in other words, useful new models, a helpful new approach to a problem. That is the real art of practical creativity. This short article outlines the approach (Thinking in New Boxes) and its application to classic scenario planning with a few examples. The authors also present the ‘Expressway to Scenarios’, an approach that wins in impact and practicality what it loses in deep analysis, by having top executives involved in key steps.     

Local community reaction to the ‘no-take’ policy on fishing in the Tsitsikamma National Park, South Africa

Fishing in the Tsitsikamma National Park has officially been halted since 2001. However, the desire to fish in the Marine Protected Area remains high among the local communities in Tsitsikamma. This has led to illegal fishing practices in the park. Consequently, the reaction of the local communities was measured using semi-structured questionnaires, informal interactions, personal observations, and through a key informant workshop that was organized in the Tsitsikamma National Park. It was found that responses from local communities to fishing within the park were defined by their residence status, ethnicity, gender, income, and educational level. There is a general understanding by local communities that the purpose of the Tsitsikamma National Park is to conserve nature within its boundaries. However, there is a mismatch in the understanding of the term ‘conservation’ between the local communities and conservation officials of the South African National Parks (SANParks). Local communities consider conservation to include sustainable utilization while conservation officials from the practice pursue absolute protection of the marine fisheries resources. The majority of local communities in Tsitsikamma resent this SANParks ‘no-take’ policy on fishing. They would like access to the fisheries resources in the Tsitsikamma National Park for both subsistence and recreational purposes.     

A natural experiment for identifying the impact of ‘natural’ trade barriers on exports

The paper investigates the relative importance of trade policy and ‘natural’ sources of export taxation in Malawi, a landlocked African economy. These sources of export taxation are in turn used to explore how export supply would respond to trade liberalisation as opposed to measures which lower other international trade costs. The findings indicate that trade policy barriers are now only a limited source of ‘true’ export taxation and that trade policy reform needs to be complemented with reforms to reduce international trade, including transport, costs.     

Can corporate social responsibility resolve the sanitation question in developing Asian countries?

The existing state of sanitation in developing Asian countries fails to deliver a level of service that is adequate for meeting the human right to a standard of living consistent with dignity and health, or for sustaining the capacity for future generations to have access to clean water resources and healthy ecosystems. We argue that translating the current neo-centralised technologies and institutional arrangements mainstreamed by industrialised countries would not resolve the problem in the context of developing countries. Instead it is necessary to ‘leap frog’ to the emerging technological and institutional arrangements that are responsive to current needs and contexts and to potential risks. The sustainability focus and often decentralised technologies of this emergent stage in sanitation present many opportunities for new actors to enter the urban sanitation industry. At the same time, there are many barriers to entry, particularly from the perspective of conventional business management focused on increasing shareholder value.We propose that perspectives from the corporate social responsibility discourse have the potential to provide both the ‘pull’ for seizing the business opportunity for profit while serving social needs, and the ‘push’ to overcome the barriers in order to serve a wider social purpose for corporations. The wealth of nations, at least as reported in ubiquitous GDP terms, has greatly increased through the activities of corporations driven by a profit motive; but the increased poverty, injustice and ecosystem degradation that have resulted from economic activity suggest that corporations perhaps ought to have regard for broader concerns beyond shareholder value. We explore how the alternative relational view of a corporation, as a metaphorical person within society who adopts a moral code consistent with both Buddhist economics and Adam Smith's philosophy, may facilitate profitable corporations that provide better economic, ecological and social outcomes in serving the need for sustainable sanitation services in developing Asian countries.     

Proposed changes to the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare: An application to Belgium

This paper presents the results of a Belgian case study on the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW). The index is first compiled using the standard methodology applied in other international studies. Owing to the short period in which Belgium's ‘traditional’ ISEW has recently declined, it is not possible to draw any solid conclusion regarding Max-Neef's ‘threshold hypothesis’. After a brief review of the criticism that the ISEW has attracted over the years, the paper then explains and discusses the rationale for omitting the ‘net capital growth’ and ‘change in net international investment position’ items. It is argued that these items do not comply with the theoretical foundation underpinning the ISEW. The paper also puts forward new valuation methods for several items within the index: the escalation factor in the valuation of natural capital depletion is dropped, long-term environmental damage is valued using a stock-based approach and considerably more government expenditures are considered to be non-defensive. The results of the ‘revised’ ISEW show significant improvements in sustainable economic welfare over the entire study period. These findings are not in line with the ‘threshold hypothesis’. Finally, the paper offers some guidelines for communicating about the ISEW — namely that (a) all methodological assumptions should be made explicit and (b) all raw (unadjusted) data used should be included in any final ISEW report so as to enable the reader to make his or her own assessment about the assumptions the researcher has employed.     

Dynamic modeling of environmental amenity-driven migration with ecological feedbacks

Environmental amenity-driven migration presents a double-edged sword to policy makers concerned with both economic and ecological sustainability. Clearly the protection of environmental amenities is important, but what is the right balance between ecosystem protection and regional economic processes that simultaneously respond to and degrade ecological resources? We consider this question in the context of households that are attracted to a region by urban and lake amenities and a lake ecosystem that becomes degraded by land development. An analytical expression for the time evolution of population is derived from households' and firms' optimizing behaviors. Numerical methods with phase plane diagrams are used to study the steady state and transient dynamics of the resulting population-phosphorus coupled system. The system is found to be bi-stable under a range of parameter values with one attractor corresponding to a desired “balanced” economy-ecology state and the other to a very small population base with fully restored ecology. We examine the dynamics and quantify the resilience of the system in and away from the balanced steady state using phase plane diagrams that demarcate the two domains of attraction. Economic-ecological interactions fundamentally alter regional economic dynamics and influence the resilience of the balanced domain of attraction. For example, a one percent increase in the loadings coefficient associated with residential land development generates a three percent decline in the resilience of the balanced state. We find that economic feedbacks often increase system resilience. Initial increases in the attraction of urban amenities spur greater population growth that increases the resilience of the balanced state. In addition, price feedbacks that arise from capitalized (dis)amenities increase the resilience of the system to bad ecological shocks.     

Making green discourses matter in policy-making: Learning from discursive power struggles within the policy area of car taxation

This paper is about stability and change in the policy-making discourse of a traditional neoclassical policy area, the area of car taxation. Stability is here related to the unquestioned continuation of a traditional neoclassical economics perspective in policy-making, whereas change is related to the introduction and impact of environmental concerns. The aim of the paper is to investigate, what makes green discourses matter in traditional policy-making. It is based on an in-depth study of policy-making processes related to car taxation in two environmental front-runner countries, Sweden and Denmark.Making green discourses matter in policy-making is an important contemporary environmental challenge. Therefore, as Tian Shi argues, we need more research into the institutional setting of the policy-making process. Ecological economics as a policy science has to have a broad understanding of the political economic nature of the policy process. Taking this standpoint as the point of departure, the paper seeks to uncover questions such as, what is the policy-making reality in which Swedish and Danish green discourses have to make a difference? How do existing neoclassical regimes react, when green actors attempt to influence policy-making from an environmental point of view? And to what extent can green discourses actually have an impact on the policy world within the area of car taxation?The paper concludes that the traditional neoclassical economic discourse is particularly robust and resistant against alternative green discourses. Stability rather than change is the dominating picture. This does not imply that environmental concerns will not be taken into account in the future. Rather it implies that only the changes, which keep up the existing order, or enhance the narrow power-related interests of the dominating actors, will materialise more or less easily. The rest is a power struggle in which timing, coalition-building, persistence and thorough knowledge about the field in question is of importance. In this struggle change agents will also benefit from the ability to rethink dominating ways of thinking and doing in an environmentally benign way. A rethinking that is based on environmental values while at the same time holding positive visions that are ‘compatible’ with the existing dominating discourse.     

Exploring sustainability transitions in the electricity sector with socio-technical pathways

This paper analyses sustainability transitions in the electricity system, using recent theories on socio-technical pathways. The paper describes three possible transition pathways and indicates the implications for (grid) infrastructures. The ‘transformation pathway’ is characterised by a further hybridization of the infrastructure; in the ‘reconfiguration pathway’, internationalisation and scale increase in renewable generation lead to the emergence of a ‘Supergrid’. The ‘de-alignment and re-alignment pathway’ is dominated by distributed generation and a focus on more local infrastructures. We suggest that this pathway, which involves a major restructuring of the electricity system, is less likely than the other two. The de-alignment and re-alignment pathway is therefore more dependent on external developments and/or strong policy interventions. All pathways, however, require major investments in infrastructure and innovative technologies.     

Community foresight for urban sustainability: Insights from the Citizens Science for Sustainability (SuScit) project

A key strength of backcasting is arguably the emphasis it places upon envisaging longer-term distant futures, allowing participants and users to think beyond incremental changes in their current lived experience and to embrace the more radical and disruptive socio-technical changes which may be necessary to deliver sustainability. In so doing, however, backcasting may run the risk of obscuring significant differences in current lived experience, negating alternative problem framings and normatively derived views of what constitutes sustainability. This paper reports an innovative UK attempt to develop an inclusive ‘bottom-up’ community foresight process for urban sustainability research. Unlike most backcasting studies, the methodology was initially grounded in an exploration of the community participants' current lived experience and understandings of sustainability. Given the particular purpose of the study the primary outcome from the work was structured around the articulation of a ‘community-led’ agenda for urban sustainability research, rather than an explicit normative vision and transition pathway. However, the methodology could easily be adapted for use in other contexts, and showed potential to contribute to the formation of local ‘transition arenas’: facilitating network formation and building capacity for local sustainability initiatives and experiments.     

Climate-change adaptation: The role of fiscal policy

Climate change and natural disasters have important consequences on fiscal sustainability, especially for developing countries with limited financial resources and underdeveloped institutions. The paper contributes to shed light on the role of fiscal policy in climate-change adaptation, which aims at containing the economic damage of climate change. We use an overlapping generations (OLG) model for a small open economy in which adaptation reflects the extent to which public policies reduce the negative influence of climate change on the capital depreciation rate. Adaptation includes both preventive measures, i.e. investment in infrastructure, and remedial measures, i.e. post-disaster relief and reconstruction. Through model simulations we assess the costs and benefits of both remedial and preventive actions. We find that preventive intervention leads to higher GDP growth rates than either taking no action or waiting until remedial action is necessary. However, the evidence shows that, due to high costs of early adaptation and budgetary constraints, countries tend to focus on late corrective actions, also relying on international assistance. Given the expected increase in climate-related risks, a comprehensive strategy including both preventive and corrective actions would be desirable to strengthen resilience to shocks and alleviate the financial constraints, which particularly affect small countries.     

Towards Sustainable and Democratic Urban Transport: Constructivism,Planning and Policy

This paper takes a constructivist technology studies approach to understand the changing shape of transport and mobility, tracing in particular the growing importance of discourses around sustainability and democratic involvement in transport and urban planning as well as in wider public debate. The concept of sociotechnical frames is used to capture the interaction between the technical, social and cultural dimensions of transport and mobility; sociotechnical change comes about when these different elements begin to pull apart from each other. In light of this framework, the paper examines shifts within the sociotechnology of transport and mobility since the late 1980s and draws on a case study of a controversial development dispute in the UK to examine how notions of sustainability and public involvement are constructed within local contexts. The case study highlights especially issues around the relative power to bring about change of different actors within a frame.     

An architectural framework for roadmapping: Towards visual strategy

Since the first application of technology roadmapping in the late 1970s to support integrated product-technology planning, roadmapping concepts and techniques have been widely adopted at product, technology, company, sector and policy levels. The roadmapping approach is flexible and scalable, and can be customized to suit many different strategic and innovation contexts. However, this demands careful planning and design, including consideration of roadmap structure, process and participation.This paper explores the issues of how to design and architect roadmaps and roadmapping processes, which is crucial if the approach is to provide a framework for supporting effective dialogue and communication within and between organizations. The structure of the roadmap, and the process for developing and maintaining the roadmap, should be designed to serve the purpose for which the activity is intended to satisfy, providing a ‘common language and structure' for both development and deployment of strategy.     

Risk management instruments for debt driven conservation efforts: The case of India's Project Tiger

Project Tiger has been India's premier case of conservation success. Since mid 1990s select Project Tiger Reserves in India were chosen for intensive funding by the Global Environment Facility, the International Development Agency (IDA) and the Government of India under the ‘India Eco-Development Project’. This project marked a modest shift towards debt based funding. The GEF Project has become a benchmark for tiger conservation in India both in terms of management outcomes and scale and scope of funding. However in the absence of large-scale budgetary support or self-generating income flows, it becomes difficult for the GEF type of project to be replicated in other tiger reserves of the country. Debt instruments hold promise as enablers of conservation finance. The paper proposes issue of ‘tiger bonds’ to meet the financial requirements of tiger reserves. Though attractive as a debt instrument, a ‘tiger bond’ could nevertheless entail interest rate and default risks.Bioprospecting activities form good revenue sources for tiger reserves to pay off their debts. However bioprospecting activities do not provide assured returns to tiger reserves. Pharmaceutical companies that prospect for genetic resources and practice ‘real options’ approach to R&D investment planning, adopt multi-phased investment systems and sequential searches that gives them the flexibility to abandon R&D projects. From the point of view of genetic resource providing entities like Project Tiger Reserves, the ‘postponement value’ generated by real options, enables a drug company to tap substitutes for the genetic resources that form the subject matter of bioprospecting contracts. To obviate possible repayment risks by tiger reserves, the paper advocates the institution of ‘put bonds’ as a risk management tool for Project Tiger Reserves in order to hedge themselves against loan defaults arising from possible loss in bioprospecting income. The paper also brings out the mechanics of the issue of tiger bonds in the Indian context. It is argued that a put bond not only hedges default risks but would also aid ‘value discovery’ and payment for ecosystem services as far as the Project Tiger Reserves of India are concerned.