Valuing nature in context: the contribution of common-good approaches

We draw on a number of empirical studies undertaken in the UK to show how residents and farmers come to contest scientific approaches to valuing nature as the basis for adjudicating conflicts over protected natural areas. The findings of these studies suggest that a widening of the knowledge base on which the goals and practices of nature conservation are founded, and a more deliberative process of decision making about what nature is important locally, is required if effective conservation partnerships are to be sustained. We offer a common good approach to valuing nature as a means of addressing this problem. A common good approach is based on ethical and moral concerns about nature and expresses these values through a social and political process of consensus building. We illustrate how this common good approach can be used to prioritise issues in a Local Environment Agency Plan. When linked with a method of Stakeholder Decision Analysis this common good approach is capable of building coalitions and a measure of consensus between different interests. It achieves this through a transparent and deliberate process of debate and systematic analysis of values that makes explicit the foundation of different knowledge claims about nature.     

Challenges in global biodiversity conservation and solutions that cross sociology, politics, economics and ecology

The study and practice of conservation biology is inherently interdisciplinary, addresses short and long time-scales and occurs within complex human–natural interfaces. Zoos and aquaria, in partnership with researchers, other non-government organizations, government, industry and educators, are combining knowledge of species and ecosystems with economics, psychology and law to create solutions for conserving biodiversity. From 22 to 25 May, the Conservation Forum of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria was a venue for discussing conservation research, education and interventions, from the scale of villages to global policy.     

When does optional participation allow the evolution of cooperation?

Altruistic punishment has been shown to invade when rare if individuals are allowed to opt out of cooperative ventures. Individuals that opt out do not contribute to the common enterprise or derive benefits from it. This result is potentially significant because it offers an explanation for the origin of large-scale cooperation in one-shot interactions among unrelated individuals. Here, we show that this result is not a general consequence of optional participation in cooperative activities, but depends on special assumptions about cooperative pay-offs. We extend the pay-off structure of optional participation models to consider the effects of economies and diseconomies of scale in public-goods production, rival and non-rival consumption of goods, and different orderings of the pay-offs of freeriding and opting out. This more general model highlights the kinds of pay-offs for which optional participation favours cooperation, and those in which it does not.     

患者参与决策与医学新技术使用行为的关联分析

目的 研究我国医学新技术临床应用中的患者参与决策，分析患者参与决策对患者医学新技术使用行为的关联性及影响。方法 采用横断面设计和分层整群抽样方法，选取上海市、福建省、四川省18家医院临床科室的患者进行调研，调查问卷为自主设计，借鉴国外SDM-Q-9量表，应用LIKERT五分量表赋值进行logistic回归分析等。结果 共调查了来自18家医院临床科室的554名患者，患者SDM-Q-9量表总得分为(34.66±7.314) 分，单条目得分为3.74～3.95分，聚类分析显示，310名（占64.32%）患者的量表得分为“较高”；患者SDM-Q-9得分对患者是否使用医学新技术有统计学意义（P＜0.05），对患者决策满意度有统计学意义（P＜0.05），患者满意度对患者是否使用新技术也有统计学意义（P＜0.05），此三者间两两相关。结论 医学新技术临床应用中患者参与决策的实际有效性仍有待研究；患者参与决策正向影响患者决策满意度，并影响患者是否使用医学新技术。建议加强合理的患者参与，适度把握新技术监管，以提高患者满意度，促进医学技术创新发展与适宜推广。     

WASHING THE CITIZEN: WASHING, CLEANLINESS AND CITIZENSHIP IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE

Participation in the community and citizenship for patients are common ideals that inspire improvements in mental health care. But what is meant by citizenship? Here an analysis is made of washing practices in psychiatric nursing in long-term mental health institutions. Four repertoires of washing are described, each oriented towards a specific notion of citizenship. In the first repertoire, washing is part of individual privacy; the patient is “enacted” as an individual whose authenticity should be respected in order to equip him or her for participation in the community. In the second repertoire, washing is a basic skill; the patient must learn to take care of her body in order to become an independent citizen. In the third repertoire washing is a precondition to citizenship; patients are to be helped to develop their potentials so that they can find their way in the community. In the fourth repertoire, washing is one opportunity among others to develop social relations; the extent and quality of these relations define a citizen. This analysis opens up not the question if, but which type of citizenship should be promoted.     

Finding Common Ground for Environmental Decisions: Public Health Principles as a Foundation for Better Choices

The history of environmental decision-making in the United States is primarily one of antagonism, conflict, and litigation. Four sectors of American society are typically at odds over why and how to solve environmental problems—government regulators, businesses proponents, environmental advocates, and members of affected communities. Dissimilar worldviews are at the heart of most environmental disputes, and people in the four sectors tend to have diverse perspectives and philosophies that affect how they interpret and respond to environmental issues. To promote integrated, cost-effective decisions, the public health paradigm (prevention first, intervention second, treatment third), as embodied in the Precautionary Principle and the concept of Sustainable Development, should be mutually adopted as a joint framework for prioritizing solutions to pressing environmental problems. The core public health principle of prevention first is a simple yet powerful tenet that can help foster better environmental choices that are more effective, efficient, and equitable.     

Female productivity and mortality in early-20th-century Taiwan

In late-Qing-dynasty Taiwan (1870-1895), female infanticide and general neglect killed over 15% of young girls. During the early years of Japanese rule (1895-1915), female infanticide was almost completely eliminated and the treatment of girls improved. This paper argues that the increase in the willingness to raise daughters was due to an increase in adult female productivity. Under Japanese rule, female seclusion decreased, female labor market participation greatly increased and the custom of foot-binding was ended. These changes increased the expected value of raising a daughter relative to raising a son.     

Integrated climate sensitive restoration framework for transformative changes to sustainable land restoration

Sustainable land restoration is the key to restore degraded land, halt biodiversity loss, and reinstate ecosystem services for human well‐being. Restoration needs to be planned and conducted with due recognition to growing climate uncertainty with an evolved understanding of the future restoration targets. The present opinion article attempts to provide an overview on an integrated climate sensitive restoration framework that recognizes the local participation in mapping degraded lands, identification of species for supporting species modeling to better understand climate uncertainty. Involvement of citizen science‐based restoration monitoring tools can contribute to big data analytics for ecological monitoring and policy support. The Framework potentially helps in sustainable land restoration by transformative changes for achieving the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), Sustainable Development Goals 15, and addressing the post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. However, to realize success, climate finance mechanisms to drive restoration should be seriously considered for reducing bias and enhancing opportunities of equitable sharing in the era of corruption, authoritarianism, and regulatory capture.     

Diaspora and its discontents: A Caribbean fragment in Toronto in quest of cultural recognition and political empowerment

The essay examines the role of The Ontario Society for Services to the Indo-Caribbean Community [OSSICC], a historic organization that sought to assert the dignity and re-discover the identity of Indo-Caribbean persons as a fragment of the Caribbean diaspora in Toronto, Canada. While it points to the achievement in representing the interests of its members for symbolic cultural recognition, it underscored the limitations in the political arena for empowerment, power sharing, and equality in employment opportunities and for an equitable share of the resources of the state. Further, it describes how the ethnic conflict in the homeland persisted in the new site of the diaspora, about lost opportunities for healing, and about inter-generational discontinuities in the reconstruction of the Caribbean self. On a larger scale, the article is about membership and citizenship in the new homeland of the diaspora, its seductions and betrayals in the new frontier of Canadian multiculturalism.     

Wilderness Restoration: The Paradox of Public Participation

Recent trends in ecological restoration complicate the job of wilderness managers. An emphasis on volunteer participation in restoration designed to foster human/nature relationships often conflicts with the mandate to leave land untrammeled. We frame this conflict as the “participation paradox.” Higgs’ (2003) Nature by Design contains a response to the paradox that includes a strong defense of participatory focal restoration and a related critique of wilderness. After identifying the limitations of Higgs’ arguments, we address the paradox by showing how an appeal to the moral virtues of humility, self‐restraint, and altruism supports a restrictive conception of wilderness and a healing metaphor for wilderness restoration. The virtue‐informed healing metaphor provides an argument for restricting volunteer participation and long‐term restoration projects in wilderness areas. It also identifies the general conditions in which damaged wilderness should be allowed to “heal itself.” The upshot of our approach to the paradox is that some standards for good restoration should be contextualized to land use designations. In particular, the emphasis on participatory restoration is appropriate in humanized landscapes but not in wilderness.