Perspectives on Natural Resources in the Global Economy: Polity Series Review

Polity's ‘Resources’ series is a set of scholarly books, each of them dealing with a single resource or resource‐based commodity from a generally global or international perspective. As of this writing, nine books have been published in the series, six of which I review here. The series is a welcome contribution to interdisciplinary and overall critical perspectives on the social and environmental dimensions and implications of the international appropriation, production and exchange of natural resources. While there is no clear disciplinary bent or theoretical foundation running across the volumes, together the books develop a transnational perspective, stressing the linkages between specific sites of appropriation and production, on the one hand, and broader political economic networks of processing, finance, coordination, commercial distribution and social regulation, on the other. The books should serve as valuable references to researchers in academic, government and non‐government institutional settings, but should also prove valuable for undergraduate teaching on contemporary natural resource industries and their social regulation.     

Assessing recreation carrying capacity of the environment attributes based on visitors’ willingness to pay

Recreation carrying capacity (RCC) is one of the most important indictors used in measuring the usage limits for the forest park resources. However, the consensus has not been reached with respect to the RCC’s content and its measuring metrics. In this paper, we attempt to establish a new RCC theoretical framework based on the demand theory of the tourism product characteristics. In the process, the choice experiment and orthogonal design methods are used in questionnaire designs and the conditional Logit model is used for parameter estimates. More than 700 park visitors are surveyed for data collection at the Shenyang National Forest park of Liaoning province in China. The primary park attributes being considered encompass vegetation, coverage, water quality, number of rubbish on the park trail path, admission fees, and congestion. The carrying capacity threshold for each specific attribute is identified.     

基于多情景的景区自然灾害风险评价方法研究——以九寨沟树正寨为例

文章采用参与式地理信息系统(PGIS)技术,模拟景区未来典型自然灾害风险情景,建立典型致灾因子强度与灾害风险情景对应关系;对旅游资源、旅游设施进行分类,分析游客居民景区内时空分布特征,建立致灾因子强度与景区承载体的脆弱性对应关系;最后通过拟合风险曲线,建立景区综合灾损模型并预测出多情景年均损失。综合景区利益相关方可接受风险,基于灾损和防灾成本进行风险决策。案例研究以九寨沟树正景群为例,模拟九寨沟在分别遭遇20、50、100、200、500、1000年一遇6种暴雨情景下引发泥石流的流速、流量和冲击力,建立6种情景泥石流与树正景群脆弱性关系;预测6种情景潜在损失和人员伤亡;结合可接受风险,提出九寨沟树正寨未来自然灾害防灾降险措施。     

自然资源资产管理：理论逻辑与改革导向

研究目的:针对自然资源资产管理的理论诠释不清、改革导向不明、自然资源的资产属性尚未充分体现等问题,本文立足新时代党和国家机构改革背景,分析自然资源资产管理的理论逻辑,明确未来自然资源资产管理的改革方向。研究方法:文献研究法,综合分析法。研究结果:新时代自然资源资产管理应当基于"权利—价值—经营—管理"的理论逻辑体系框架,其中自然资源资产权利应当包含自然资源资产所有权、资格权、使用权和管理权等对象内涵,以完整、明晰和稳定作为权利实现要求;自然资源资产价值显化应当基于生态、经济等价值的全面认知,针对不同资产类型分类采用不同价值评估方法,完善市场培育、价值调节和公平分配机制;自然资源资产经营既要保障粮食安全、生态安全和规避可能风险,又要实现高品质利用,因而应当以底量保安全,以存量、数量、质量、差量和流量保协同,优化完善编制资产负债表;自然资源资产管理则应当打破自然资源资产管理割裂的现状,实现系统统一管理并建立全平台、全过程、全资源和全空间的综合监督机制。研究结论:自然资源资产管理应以"三维立体多权化"、"生态价值具象化"、"安全品质六量化"和"系统监管综合化"为改革导向,以期全面推进未来多维、绿色、高效、安全、品质、有序的自然资源资产管理方式的切实实现。     

传统自然资源利用伦理与可持续发展

自然资源利用伦理与可持续发展密切相关。传统文化中的自然资源利用伦理主张人类要仁爱自然万物,在利用自然资源时,必须遵循用物有节、取物有时等原则,保持人口与自然资源的平衡。这些对当今社会可持续发展战略的实施有一定的借鉴意义。     

县域内耕地资源质量及其生产能力的相关性研究--以佛山市农用地分等为例

利用佛山市农用地分等的成果,通过对水田、旱地自然质量等指数和利用等指数与实际标准粮产量的相关性分析来研究县域内耕地自然质量、利用水平对耕地生产能力的影响.得出了耕地自然质量、利用水平对耕地生产能力的影响程度,发现两者对耕地生产能力的重要程度相当.     

Alternatives to local content requirements in resource-rich countries

This paper discusses whether and to what extent resource-rich developing countries should introduce local content policies, i.e. requirements to include local inputs in petroleum extraction activities of multinational corporations. We argue that local content needs to be seen as a public expenditure question, since local content requirements increase multinational costs, and hence reduce the taxes which can be extracted from these companies. This implies that there are opportunity costs in imposing local content requirements, since the forgone taxes can be used in others ways which could potentially do more to improve development prospects. Moreover, past experiences of resource-rich developing countries suggest that local content policies can exacerbate key problems of patronage and rent-seeking which resource rents generate, increasing the chance that the resource wealth will prevent rather than help development. These arguments suggest that an optimal local content policy in the context of flawed institutions is a more limited one than those typically pursued by developing countries with recently discovered petroleum reserves. Using qualitative data from Tanzania, a country with recent discoveries of substantial natural gas deposits, we analyze why local content tends to become such a central issue in debates and policy processes, despite its potentially problematic aspects.     

Is there decentralization in North Korea? Evidence and lessons from the sloping land management program 2004–2014

In the 1990s, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) suffered from severe food shortages and large-scale deforestation, which triggered a stage of rural conservation reform. Since 2004, with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), North Korea’s Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection (MoLEP) has implemented a Sloping Land Management Program (SLMP). The SLMP established sloping land user groups and granted these groups the right to use marginal land for agroforestry development. This devolution of land rights from state control onto local groups is a landmark in North Korea, and this decentralization initiative has now expanded to over eight counties to involve thousands of households. It has also led to the launch of a National Agroforestry Policy and Strategy. Drawing from both qualitative and quantitative data collected from 2008 to 2014, this paper documents the process and effects of the SLMP. It argues that the decentralization reform in land management has contributed to not only food security with increased food crop diversity and productivity, but also notably forest recovery through an expansion of tree plantations and agroforestry practices on degraded sloping lands. However, an insufficient power transfer in the form of a lack of timber rights granted to the local user groups has hampered the effectiveness of the SLMP. There are also institutional and geopolitical challenges that are limiting further scaling-up of land-use decentralization across the country. The policy implication calls for more international investment as well as national land-use policy reforms in order to promote and facilitate further decentralization of sloping land management and to secure greater use rights for sloping land user groups.     

环境与自然资源经济学研究的新趋势

在总结欧美发达国家环境与自然资源经济学研究成果的基础上,系统地论述了本学科研究的新课题和发展趋势。不确定性问题研究及新理论工具的引入将是本学科理论创新的焦点：环境与资源价值评估主要集中于发展新的方法和检验假设;资源经济学研究,将把生态效益、环境效益、政策法规引入资源开发模型;经济增长与环境、资源的相互关系,将成为重要的研究课题;应用研究与交叉学科研究将成为本学科未来发展的主题。     

天然林保护工程绩效评价:现状、问题与研究展望

天然林保护工程实施绩效评价是优化工程宏观决策机制的基础.本文回顾了公共财政支出项目绩效评价的理论基础,天然林保护工程绩效评价研究现状、评价实践,分析天然林保护工程绩效评价研究和实践过程中存在的主要问题,提出了天然林保护工程绩效评价进一步研究的重点以及需要解决的机制问题.