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The Atmosphere of an Ecological Civilization: A Study of Ideology, Perception and Action in Chengdu, China
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... While most studies of sustainable urban renewal include Euro-American case studies, in order for us to construct more robust theoretical understandings of human interaction with their urban environment we will require more case studies where illiberal means of governing the environment (Sonnenfeld and Taylor 2018) are more common. Moreover, environmentalism in China is not solely the result of globalization (Weller 2006) giving us an opportunity to study a diverse cultural understanding of ecology and conservation, which one of us has explored elsewhere in more detail for the city of Chengdu (Schmitt 2016). In this study of Ecological Housing Estate projects in Chengdu, we aim to uncover if residents benefit from practices of sustainable urban renewal or if these are simply examples of an urban sustainability fix. ...
... scored below the large influence rating. While there is some variation in perception that can be explained by the socio-economic background of our informants (Schmitt 2016), here we are primarily interested in whether or not there is a difference in the way residents of an Ecological Housing Estate and residents of a Regular ...
This article draws from a mixed-methods approach to explore the relationship between sustainable urban renewal projects and the way Chinese urban residents perceive and act upon the environment. We examine sustainable urban renewal projects in the city of Chengdu, called Ecological Housing Estate projects. By collaborating with nongovernmental organizations and local officials, we used a two-step process, including collecting freelists and semi-structured interviews, to design a survey instrument used to interview 245 households in three Ecological Housing Estates and four Regular Housing Estates in Chengdu. Our findings demonstrate how recycling practices are reinforced by the Ecological Housing Estate projects but also explain why the rainwater collection aspect of the projects are not well matched with existing household water conservation practices. We argue that integrating mixed-methods research into the design of a sustainable urban renewal project will help mitigate the potential that projects will develop similar kinds of urban sustainable fixes.
... For a region, the analysis and study of the evolution pattern and regional differences of the comprehensive development level of regional HHN in time and space can facilitate the identification of development shortcomings and promote comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development. Currently, there are increasing interests in the construction of an evaluation index system from the perspective of sustainable development, including the ecological carrying capacity obtained through the ecological footprint method [15,16] and quantitative analysis to evaluate the degree of impact of human activities on the ecological environment through pressure-state-response (PSR) and drive-state-response (DSR) models [14,17,18]. To assess HHN level comprehensively and systematically, indicator systems were performed from multiple dimensions and had been conducted at the national, provincial, municipal and economic belt levels [19][20][21][22]. ...
... 21. yüzyılın insanlık için önemli problemlerinden biri de doğal kaynakların sürdürülebilir kullanımı olmuştur (Pan, 2015;Schmitt, 2016;Gare, 2017). Hızla artan dünya nüfusu, plansız kentleşme ve sanayileşme, altyapı yatırımları, tarımda kimyevi gübre ve ilaçların yaygın kullanımı ve insan yaşamına giren pek çok yenilik, beraberinde doğal kaynakların hızla tüketilmesini, hava ve su kirliliği gibi pek çok çevre sorununu beraberinde getirmiştir. ...
Bu çalışmada, ülkemizde deniz kaplumbağalarının yuvalama alanı olarak koruma altında olan Belek Özel Çevre Koruma Bölgesindeki yüzey sularının uzun yıllar periyodundaki kalite değişimlerinin değerlendirilmesinde istatistiksel metotların kullanımı hedeflenmiştir. Çalışma kapsamında 2005-2020 yılları arasında (15 yıl) koruma alanı içinde yer alan yüzeysel su kaynaklarına ait su kalitesi analiz sonuçları değerlendirilmeye alınmıştır. Yüzeysel su kalitesinin sınıflandırılmasında ülkemizde yürürlükte olan Yerüstü Su Kalitesi Yönetmeliği standart değerleri çerçevesinde fiziko-kimyasal ve biyolojik parametre verileri analiz edilmiş ve su kalite sınıfları belirlenmiştir. Verilerin değerlendirilmesinde çok değişkenli istatistiki yöntemlerden Kümeleme Analizi metodolojisi kullanılmıştır. Kümeleme analizi sonucunda istatistiksel manada anlamlı üç küme tespit edilmiştir. Yerüstü Su Kalitesine göre yapılan kalite sınıflandırması ve Hiyerarşik Kümeleme Analizi benzerlik göstermiştir. Oluşan kümeler neticesinde genel su kalitesi durumunun; Acısu Deresi’nin II. Sınıf (İyi Kalite), Köprüçay Deresi’nin I. Sınıf (Çok İyi Kalite), Sarısu Deresi’nin I. Sınıf (Çok İyi Kalite), Kömürcüler Deresi’nin II. Sınıf (İyi Kalite) ve Ilıca Deresi’nin III. Sınıf (Orta Kalite) olduğu çalışmalar sonunda görülmüştür. İstatistiki değerlendirmede kullanılan Temel Bileşenler Analizine göre dört faktör belirlenmiş, toplam varyansın % 91,04’ünü açıklamıştır. Sadece birinci faktör toplam varyansın % 59’unu açıklamaktadır. Özdeğeri en fazla olan değişkenlerin; Toplam Koliform, Toplam Kjehldal Azotu, Fekal Koliform, Toplam Azot, Toplam Fosfor olduğu temel bileşenler analiz sonuçlarına göre açıklanmıştır. Genel manada kirleticilerin turizm tesisleri, evsel kaynaklı kirleticiler ve yoğun tarımsal faaliyetlerden kaynaklandığı öngörülmektedir. Çalışma sonucunda istatistiksel olarak belirlenen faktör parametrelerin sahadaki su kalitesi izleme çalışmalarında öncelikli olarak kullanılabilecek parametreler olduğu belirlenmiştir.
... Ecological civilization works as a socio-technical imaginary(Jasanoff and Kim 2009;Hansen, Li, and Svarverud 2018) that presents the task of reconciling human welfare and environmental flourishing as national destiny, and as a rubric encompassing initiatives in practically every realm of environmental policy. Others have examined the genealogy and impacts of ecological civilization projects, showing that policies linked to ecological civilization have had substantial effects on environmental conditions, that these effects are varied and incomplete, and that ecological civilization discourse and policy stand in dynamic tension with other party-state imperatives (e.g.Geall and Ely 2018;Goron 2018;Hansen, Li, and Svarverud 2018;Schmitt 2016 ...
Debates about whether authoritarian or democratic environmental governance have the capacity to weather the present crises tend to gloss over variation across and within regimes. Authoritarian environmental governance plays out in diverse ways; comparing across contexts can help us understand its varying outcomes. Drawing on James C. Scott’s characterization of authoritarian high modernism, I identify four dimensions along which projects of authoritarian environmental governance vary: from maximizing to optimizing desired outputs, from thin to thicker simplifications, from rigidity to constrained flexibility, and from direct coercion to cultivating compliance. Together, they comprise a phenomenon we might call authoritarian elaboration, departing from the rigidity and simplification Scott describes. I review evidence from a variety of environmental projects in China to demonstrate how authoritarian elaboration occurs in practice. Examining the reasons behind what we might call harder and softer approaches to environmental governance, as well as their impacts on people and environments, I propose hypotheses on variation in governance practices and suggest approaches to studying them.
... First, as far as the connotation of ecological civilization is concerned, scholars have conducted research on it as an ideology, a political framework, a plan, and a vision (Schmitt 2016;Delman 2018;Hansen, Li, and Svarverud 2018;Gare 2012). The United Nations describes ecological civilization as "an ethic and ideology for achieving harmonious coexistence and sustainable development between humans, nature, and society, reflecting civilizational progress" (Alakbarov and Lawrence 2015;Huang 2017). ...
Ecological civilization construction is an important dimension to achieve high-quality economic development. This paper evaluates the eco-efficiency improvement effect of China’s ecological civilization pilot zone policy utilizing the synthetic control method (SCM) differences-in-differences method (DID) and examines the influence mechanism of ecological civilization pilot zones on eco-efficiency in the light of the environmental pollution penalty, green technological innovation, and environmental publicity and education. The study results indicate that the construction of the ecological civilization pilot zone policy has substantially boosted eco-efficiency in the pilot areas, with the strongest boosting effect on eco-efficiency in Fujian province, followed by Guizhou province, and not significantly on eco-efficiency in Jiangxi province. Further, this paper also reveals that the construction of ecological civilization pilot zones has effectively contributed to eco-efficiency through channels such as strengthening the environmental pollution penalty, stimulating green technological innovation, and broadening environmental publicity and education.
... The Chinese government articulates the causes of and the solutions to environmental degradation in terms of another narrative, namely that of ecological civilization. As argued by Schmitt (2016), the narrative of ecological civilization is an attempt by the Communist Party to place the concept of sustainable development within a more culturally salient environmental ideology. It does so by integrating the sustainability framework with Marxist ideology, Confucian thought and foundational concepts of Chinese political ideology, such as the Three Represents. ...
The paper takes a critical view of the narrative of sustainable development and argues that three different environmental narratives – ecomodernism, environmental authoritarianism, and degrowth – are now providing alternative problem-solving accounts of environmental governance. The paper analyses the three narratives according to a common set of categories. Furthermore, it argues that these three narratives are bringing again to scholarly attention debates – over the limits to growth, the limits to technological innovation, and the potential limits of democracy in guiding environmental politics – which, at the end of the last century, had been effectively defused by the hegemonic sustainable development narrative. Finally, the paper explores the significance of the resurgence of these debates for environmental politics.
The four major countries of East Asia—China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—form one of the most densely populated regions on earth, and through the course of the late 20th and early 21st centuries the region experienced some of its fastest economic growth, propelled by the policies of state-led developmentalism. As a result of this density and these policies, the four countries in turn became some of the most environmentally degraded. As each achieved middle-to-high income status, however, the populace and then the regime in each country realized that they could not sustain either rapid economic growth or popular legitimacy without addressing the environmental consequences of this fast growth. The four states thus changed their fundamental economic policies from pure developmentalism to what we call eco-developmentalism, an attempt to reconcile economic prosperity with environmental sustainability. Although success so far has been mixed, this turn to eco-developmentalism has allowed these states to claim world leadership in mitigating environmental degradation.
En un contexto de crecientes enfrentamientos entre Estados Unidos y la República Popular China, esta vive transformaciones sobre la forma de transmitir y ejercer el poder. El poder ha crecido en verticalidad y centralización al líder, Xi Jinping. Además de las razones de ello, además de las internas, residen en que en Beijing han considerado la necesidad de prepararse para la guerra.
Sin embargo, la institucionalidad no ha desaparecido. Considerada
así misma como una nación moderadamente próspera, país en desa-
rrollo, la cooperación permanece como una de sus herramientas
importantes para acumular poder global.
Para contribuir al estudio de cómo China se construye como poder, describimos los orígenes, estructura y funcionamiento del aspecto institucional para diseñar y poner en marcha las políticas de cooperación. Además, explicamos los componentes ideaciona-les que dan forma a la cooperación. Posteriormente, describimos algunos de los campos preferidos para ofrecer cooperación y ofrecemos un mapa de la distribución espacial de la misma.
The concept arising from the relationship between organization, society, and environment is green management. Ensuring sustainability by redesigning business processes is a fundamental activity based on constantly and rapidly changing environmental conditions in an open system with the effect of globalization. Thus, designing future organizations will strengthen by applying environmental policies. One of the conditions to achieve corporate success is green management policies. Putting green management policies into practice is essential and valuable for the future vision of an organization. The organization will set its corporate goals and subgoals in line with this vision. Moreover, the organization will be able to increase competitive capacity by standing out amongst the competitors in favor of performance arising from these policy implementations. This study, for this purpose, scrutinized the contributions of green management policies to the success of organizations.
There is much we can learn about conservation from native peoples, says Gene Anderson. While the advanced nations of the West have failed to control overfishing, deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, and a host of other environmental problems, many traditional peoples manage their natural resources quite successfully. And if some traditional peoples mismanage the environment--the irrational value some place on rhino horn, for instance, has left this species endangered--the fact remains that most have found ways to introduce sound ecological management into their daily lives. Why have they succeeded while we have failed? In Ecologies of the Heart, Gene Anderson reveals how religion and other folk beliefs help pre-industrial peoples control and protect their resources. Equally important, he offers much insight into why our own environmental policies have failed and what we can do to better manage our resources. A cultural ecologist, Gene Anderson has spent his life exploring the ways in which different groups of people manage the environment, and he has lived for years in fishing communities in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Tahiti, and British Columbia--as well as in a Mayan farmtown in south Mexico--where he has studied fisheries, farming, and forest management. He has concluded that all traditional societies that have managed resources well over time have done so in part through religion--by the use of emotionally powerful cultural symbols that reinforce particular resource management strategies. Moreover, he argues that these religious beliefs, while seeming unscientific, if not irrational, at first glance, are actually based on long observation of nature. To illustrate this insight, he includes many fascinating portraits of native life. He offers, for instance, an intriguing discussion of the Chinese belief system known as Feng-Shui (wind and water) and tells of meeting villagers in remote areas of Hong Kong's New Territories who assert that dragons live in the mountains, and that to disturb them by cutting too sharply into the rock surface would cause floods and landslides (which in fact it does). He describes the Tlingit Indians of the Pacific Northwest, who, before they strip bark from the great cedar trees, make elaborate apologies to spirits they believe live inside the trees, assuring the spirits that they take only what is necessary. And we read of the Maya of southern Mexico, who speak of the lords of the Forest and the Animals, who punish those who take more from the land or the rivers than they need. These beliefs work in part because they are based on long observation of nature, but also, and equally important, because they are incorporated into a larger cosmology, so that people have a strong emotional investment in them. And conversely, Anderson argues that our environmental programs often fail because we have not found a way to engage our emotions in conservation practices. Folk beliefs are often dismissed as irrational superstitions. Yet as Anderson shows, these beliefs do more to protect the environment than modern science does in the West. Full of insights, Ecologies of the Heart mixes anthropology with ecology and psychology, traditional myth and folklore with informed discussions of conservation efforts in industrial society, to reveal a strikingly new approach to our current environmental crises.
