Chinese Journal of Urban and Environmental Studies

Chinese cities are characterized with administrative hierarchy. According to administrative hierarchy and government seat, Chinese cities can be divided into seven levels including municipality, vice-provincial city, general provincial capital, general prefecture-level city, county-level city, county town, and general designated town. As the analysis result shows, urban scale and growth is closely related to their administrative hierarchy, and with the upgrading of administrative hierarchy, both the urban population and land scale present a tendency of exponential increase. From the perspective of population and land scale growth, cities with higher administrative hierarchy grow faster than those with lower administrative hierarchy. The differentiation of urban scale and growth is greatly influenced by administration-center bias of governmental resource allocation because cities with different administrative hierarchies make diverse administrative power, resource allocation and institutional arrangement. Under the existing urban system, administration-center bias is also a kind of metropolis bias, and both of them reinforce each other which lead to overexpansion of cities with higher administrative hierarchy and the failure of the policy of urban scale control. To promote the harmonious development of small towns and cities, medium and large cities, we should radically change the administration-center bias in resource allocation, weaken the influence of administrative hierarchy, control the urban scale according to comprehensive carrying capacity and stimulate the development of economy strong town through focusing power expansion to impulse the equality of intercity development and interest equality.

The growing and formation of urban cluster should be conditioned by the economic, social, cultural, natural, and other various complicated factors under a certain law. The growing mechanism of urban cluster, named as the NDESR Mechanism Model in this paper, has been creatively built, based on the key research ideas and methodology from Fishbone-Cause and Effect Diagram and System Dynamics. The model consists of five main sets, including the congenital conditions (called as Natures), the drivers (called as Drivers), the mechanism functions (called as Effects), the present situation and tendency (called as States), and the responses from human (called as Responses), in which the merging effects of factor mobility, the coupling effects of industrial division, the flexibility effects of knowledge accumulation, and the symbiotic effects of city scale expansion are the key function mechanisms that drive the urban cluster to senior evolution.

In September 2013, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (WGI AR5). Based on the latest observational data and research literatures since the publication of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007, this report comprehensively assesses the research progress in the field of climate change, providing significant scientific basis for international community to deeply understand and address the climate change. This paper introduces the core conclusions of WGI AR5, and illustrates Chinese scientific community's contribution to this report, meanwhile, gives a brief analysis of China's advantages and disadvantages in the field of climate change science through analyzing this report.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Working Group II contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (WGII AR5) IPCC Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability in March 2014. This paper introduces and interprets this report, making well organization of the main conclusions, analyzing the new enlightenment to China's response to climate change. WGII AR5 focuses on the assessment and management of climate change risks. According to the latest scientific literature and evidences, this report elaborates climate change's broader impacts on water resource, food production, and other natural and human social systems since 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Via the assessment of different areas, regions, and key risks in the future, the report indicates the risk level of climate change faced with the globe under different temperature rise; aiming at risk management, the report emphasizes the significance of promoting and establishing the sustainable development society with recovery capacity through adaptation and mitigation of climate change. As an important scientific basis for international community to recognize and cope with climate change, the publication of IPCC AR5 one after another will have a significant influence on Durban Platform negotiations on post-2020 international climate regime which have been in a difficult stage, and the 2014 United Nations climate change summit [IPCC. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Impact Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press].

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its latest research Working Group III Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (WGIII AR5) on April 2014. This report is designated to provide approaches to limit temperature rise below 2°C based upon reviews of latest literatures in this terrain. It offers comprehensive review on principles and conceptual frameworks of climate change mitigation, trends in stocks and flows of greenhouse gases and their drivers, mitigation targets and pathways, sectoral reduction potential and costs, international institutions on climate change mitigation, national and sub-national policies, climate finance, and other related issues. The report, contributed by WGIII, systematically analyzes these questions and assesses principals, framework problems, historic trajectories, future emission budgets and pathways, sectoral reduction targets and feasibilities, and national, sub-national, and international policies, and finance demands upon which to achieve the target to limit temperature rise within 2°C. These contents make the report a critical venue of international society to vie for political influences through social sciences, natural sciences, and other disciplines. This paper provides preliminary analysis upon main conclusions of the report and their policy interpretations, in order to deliver better technical support for climate negotiations in next stage and advancing relevant domestic works.

The purpose of the paper is to discuss the stipulated conditions imposed at the time of grant of environment clearance from the perspective of implementation of compliance in case of construction projects in India. Conditions as imposed on 40 different building and construction projects in India from 2008 to 2013 are studied and evaluated and for a ready reference a sample of 14 representative project types is given in the paper. Based on the evaluation, we conclude that the laid down conditions are general in nature and more or less same irrespective of the location or type of the project may be an educational institute, hospital, office, hotel, group housing, bus terminus, or multiplex and whether it graded platinum or bronze in rating or ungraded. The impacts of the project nowhere find a mention in the stipulated conditions and thus there is no correlation between the conditions imposed and the baseline environment parameters. There is a dire need to rework the stipulated conditions itself on the lines of environment management plan proposed by the project proponent including setting apart the cost of implementation, if an effective compliance as envisaged by Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India is to be achieved.

Facing up to the global warming, China has addressed great efforts on low carbon development. Since the year 2010, it has issued two batches of low carbon pilots. However, not all the pilots produced satisfactory outcomes as expected, while a less developed pilot city, Guangyuan got a reassuring result which was considered as a surprise. How do we explain this surprise? Could a less developed city solve its CO₂ emission dilemma while pursuing the industrialization and urbanization? Using sequential game and multi-case comparison, this paper tries to examine the main drivers of Guangyuan's low carbon initiative and the determinants of its achievement. The analysis shows that Guangyuan had no advantages in low carbon potential compared with its reference cities, while the low carbon surprise was due to its strong political willingness and leadership, an effective multi-level governance network and a low carbon oriented evaluation system for local officials. It demonstrates that a less developed city could solve the CO₂ emission dilemma while seeking its economic growth; technical level, fund, and human resources are important but not dominant; to ensure the implementation of low carbon policies, meeting low carbon objectives should be taken full consideration into the evaluation system for local officials.

Livelihood is fundamental for rural families. A good livelihood model can help to increase the happiness of peasants and promote local harmonious development. During the process of urbanization, peasant livelihood is changing constantly. In rural tourism areas, tourism is a strong force for the development of urbanization, and the research of peasant livelihood is especially important. Based on the basic sustainable livelihood theoretical framework, this paper classifies the peasants in Jixian (a county in Tianjin) tourism areas into four types, including working household, tourism household, part-time tourism household, and part-time non-tourism household, to conduct a comprehensive analysis on livelihood capital, livelihood strategy and livelihood outcome by integrating the questionnaire, interview, observation statistical analysis, GIS and data analysis. We draw the following conclusions. First, during the development of rural tourism, there are hierarchy differences in the livelihood capital among different types of peasant households, and the disparity is increasing. The tourism household shows evidence of the best livelihood capital followed by the part-time tourism household, the part-time non-tourism household, and finally the employee household respectively. Second, the livelihood strategy of Jixian households shows a diversity which is dominated by tourism livelihood. However, because the tourism household and part-time tourism households show outstanding advantage in their livelihood strategy that will be constantly imitated by other peasants, which will lead to an increasing professionalization and specialization in rural tourism. Third, according to the comparative analysis, tourism household and part-time tourism household show a livelihood outcome which is wealthier, provides leisure, and of high-quality living standards. Therefore, the livelihood outcome can be improved obviously by following the professional tourism livelihood model through relying on the local tourism resources rather than following the external diverse livelihood model.