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People-Environment Relationships in Social Development and Transition

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2021) | Viewed by 11306

Special Issue Editors

International Agriculture University, 2 University Street, Kibray District, Tashkent 100140, Uzbekistan
Interests: ecological economics; community agriculture; shared and social values of ecosystem services
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, P.R. China
Interests: Community based management and collective action, Rural environmental treatment and development transition
Graduate Program in Development Economics, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Interests: Ecological economics; socioeconomic development and the environment; environmental communication

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are experiencing a rapidly changing world, with record numbers of people being displaced from their traditional environments, resulting in the disruption and fracture of localized cultural ecosystems and the services that they provide. Key to this process of development and transition is the significant loss of traditions, cultures, and close relationships between human beings and nature. Even though new technologies are making life very different, people–environment relationships form a fundamental role in society. Experience in countries which have made an effort to revitalize their countryside has shown that reshaping people–land and people–water relationships is strongly connected with the efficacy, efficiency, and sustainability of governmental investment. Such relationships are also strongly associated with urban nostalgia, and become an invisible cultural driving force for the flow of capital, technology, and human resources back to rural areas, leading to booming new service economies and the subsequent generation of new forms of cultural ecosystem service.

Therefore, in this Special Issue, authors are encouraged to look into the changing people–environment relationships in different contexts of development and transition, in different regions, and from a range of inter-disciplinary perspectives. In particular, we are trying to explore the mechanisms and processes through which people–environment relationships change, including the identification of key factors, in order to evaluate the subsequent impacts on sustainable development and transition. Efforts are also encouraged which look into potential ways of integrating the emergent reshaped people–environment relationships, and their attendant cultural ecosystem services, generated through the process of rural revitalization, the restructure of rural communities, and the rebuilding of collective actions.

The detailed schedule is as following:

2020/09–2021/01

Announcement and preparation

 

2021/1/31

Deadline for submitting long abstracts (800-1000 words) (optional. Accepted abstracts would be invited to workshops)

 

2021/01–2021/04

Online workshop, presenting and first round selection

By 02/28 | declaration of acceptance for abstracts

1-2 workshops held to for presenting and discussion

Invited scholars and those submitting abstracts

2021/05–2021/07

Receiving submissions (first submitted, first reviewed)

 

2021/07/31

Deadline for submitting manuscripts

 

2021/08

First round peer reviews

 

2021/09

first round Revision

 

2021/10

Second round peer reviews

 

2021/11

Final decisions

 

2021/12

Online publication

 

Prof. Dr. Neil Ravenscroft
Prof. Dr. Pingyang Liu
Prof. Dr. Ely Jose de Mattos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • People–land relationship
  • people–water relationship
  • people–nature relationship
  • people–environment relationship
  • Rural revitalization
  • rural transition
  • rural development
  • Guanxi network
  • community-based management
  • collective action
  • Cultural values
  • social value
  • social-cultural valuation
  • Ecosystem service
  • ecosystem valuation
  • Resource management
  • resource policy
  • sustainable development

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 258 KiB  
Article
A Study of the Mechanism of Community Participation in Resilient Governance of National Parks: With Wuyishan National Park as a Case
by Shuiguang Chen, Xiaoxia Sun and Shipeng Su
Sustainability 2021, 13(18), 10090; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su131810090 - 09 Sep 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2572
Abstract
A community can serve as a force that pushes national parks to realize sustainable development, while community participation is critical to the relationship between national park protection and community development. Therefore, the present study explored the community’s participation in the construction of Wuyishan [...] Read more.
A community can serve as a force that pushes national parks to realize sustainable development, while community participation is critical to the relationship between national park protection and community development. Therefore, the present study explored the community’s participation in the construction of Wuyishan National Park (hereinafter referred to as the Park) by means of case analysis and qualitative research. The research outcomes showed that the community’s participation was led by the authorities, which is a typical example of “passive participation”. In addition, the governing body of the Park and its communities did not form a sound organization that enabled them to manage and protect the Park in concerted efforts. In other words, they did not work well together, and had not yet established an effective community participation mechanism. Moreover, there were three major problems about the community’s participation in the Park’s governance: The community lacked the ability to take part in it, its participation took limited forms, and it displayed little initiative in the participation. To solve these problems, the present research proposes four mechanisms to improve community participation regarding technological, structural, social, and institutional resilience, i.e., intelligent guidance mechanism, nested organization mechanism, social mobilization mechanism, and institutional guarantee mechanism, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue People-Environment Relationships in Social Development and Transition)
12 pages, 2165 KiB  
Article
Pesticide and Toxic Metal Pollution in Waters, Fish and Wild Animals in Vojvodina, Serbia
by Stanislav Sabo, Saša Vukmirović, Jan Suđi, Peter Juriš, Zdenko Tomić, Sanja Bjelović, Ljiljana Tomić and Ana Sabo
Sustainability 2021, 13(17), 9809; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13179809 - 01 Sep 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2479
Abstract
High concentrations of pesticides and toxic metal pollutants in the environment, often present in surface waters in nature, can accumulate in wild animals and are a significant public health concern. Serbia is a moderately developed, south European country in transition, with a long [...] Read more.
High concentrations of pesticides and toxic metal pollutants in the environment, often present in surface waters in nature, can accumulate in wild animals and are a significant public health concern. Serbia is a moderately developed, south European country in transition, with a long tradition in agriculture, particularly in the northern part, Vojvodina. Our study aimed to assess the presence of pesticides and to measure concentrations of toxic metals in the district of Backi Petrovac, Vojvodina. Water samples were analyzed from canals, ditches, fish from the canals and wild animals caught in the Backi Petrovac district. We identified nine pesticides in water samples. Of all detected pesticides, one was a hormonal disruptor. There were no pesticides in animals, fish and organs in a concentration above the limit of detection (LOD) in observed periods. The concentrations of toxic metals detected in superficial water (Cd, Pb, Hg, As, Mn, Cu) were below the permitted limits, as well as the concentrations of Cd, Pb, Hg, As and Mn in the whole bodies of fish. Concentrations in kidneys and livers of wild animals (rabbit and roe deer) were below the permitted limits, with the exception of cadmium, whose concentrations in some animal samples were above the permitted limit. Based on the obtained results, we concluded that in the developed agricultural region unencumbered by heavy industry, pollution by pesticides and heavy metals can be controlled. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue People-Environment Relationships in Social Development and Transition)
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16 pages, 5508 KiB  
Article
Spatio-Temporal Change of Land Use in a Coastal Reclamation Area: A Complex Network Approach
by Caiyao Xu, Lijie Pu, Fanbin Kong and Bowei Li
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 8690; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13168690 - 04 Aug 2021
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 1780
Abstract
Coastal ecological protection and restoration projects aimed to restore and recover the ecological environment of coastal wetland with high-intensity human reclamation activity, while the integrity of the coastal wetland system with human reclamation activity and the ability of individual land use types to [...] Read more.
Coastal ecological protection and restoration projects aimed to restore and recover the ecological environment of coastal wetland with high-intensity human reclamation activity, while the integrity of the coastal wetland system with human reclamation activity and the ability of individual land use types to control the overall system were not fully considered. In this study, a six-stage land use conversion network was constructed by using a complex network model to analyze coastal land use dynamic changes in the coastal reclamation area located in eastern China from 1977 to 2016. The results showed that land use types had gradually transformed from being dominated by natural types to artificial types, and the speed of transformation was accelerating. The proportion of un-reclaimed area decreased from 93% in 1977 to 46% in 2007, and finally fell to 8% in 2014 and 2016. Tidal flat and halophytic vegetation were the main output land use types, while cropland, woodland and aquaculture pond were the main input land use types. Cropland had the highest value of betweenness centrality, which played a key role in land use change from 1992 to 2014. The land use system of the coastal reclamation area was the most stable in 2002–2007, followed by 1984–1992, and the most unstable in 2007–2014. The Chinese and local government should carry out some measures to improve the land use in coastal wetland ecosystems, including the allocation and integration of land use for production space, living space, and ecological space, and develop multi-functionality of land use to realize the coastal high-quality development and coastal ecological protection and restoration. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue People-Environment Relationships in Social Development and Transition)
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14 pages, 2576 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of the Implementation Effect of the Ecological Compensation Policy in the Poyang Lake River Basin Based on Difference-in-Difference Method
by Yu Lu, Fanbin Kong, Luchen Huang, Kai Xiong, Caiyao Xu and Ben Wang
Sustainability 2021, 13(15), 8667; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13158667 - 03 Aug 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3581
Abstract
Watershed environments play an important supporting role in sustainable high-quality economic development in China, but they have been deteriorating. In order to solve environmental problems in the Poyang Lake River Basin brought about by economic development, the Jiangxi Provincial Government promulgated relevant river [...] Read more.
Watershed environments play an important supporting role in sustainable high-quality economic development in China, but they have been deteriorating. In order to solve environmental problems in the Poyang Lake River Basin brought about by economic development, the Jiangxi Provincial Government promulgated relevant river basin protection policies in 2015. However, after several years of this policy, the specific effects of its implementation are a matter of general concern to the government and academic circles. After years of policy implementation, the implementation effect of the watershed ecological compensation policy needs to be evaluated. Based on 4248 observations from the Jiangxi and Hunan Provinces, we adopt the difference-in-difference method to analyze the impact of the ecological compensation policy on the Poyang Lake River Basin. The empirical results show that the ecological compensation policy has a significant effect on water-quality improvement. Water quality in the upstream area is better than that in the downstream area; areas with small administrative areas have a smaller population, which in turn leads to better water quality in the river basin; and the higher the per capita GDP, the worse the water quality. Our results highlight the need for the following policy improvements: ecological priority, customizing measures to local conditions, tracing the main body, and strengthening supervision. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue People-Environment Relationships in Social Development and Transition)
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