Nationalist Backlash Against Foreign Climate Shaming

Should international pro-climate actors speak up against climate rogues, or do foreign critics risk igniting nationalist backlash against global environmental norms and institutions? We explore naming and shaming dynamics in global climate politics by fielding survey experiments to nationally representative samples in Brazil. Our results show that nationalism moderates public reactions to foreign climate shaming: individuals who are highly attached to their nation are more likely to reject international criticism than their lowly attached peers. Yet, we also find that nationalist publics express little support for virulent defiance against foreign critics. Our findings hold irrespective of the source of criticism and the nature of the critical message. These results sound a cautionary note on the belief that liberal internationalists should tread carefully so as not to unadvisedly unleash nationalist pushback. Foreign climate criticism may bump up against nationalist sentiment in climate rogues, but it will not necessarily fuel an all-out backlash against the global environmental regime.

URBAN SPACES WITH FOUNTAINS: NOISE AND ENVIRONMENTAL REGIME FORMATION REGULARITY

The article highlights the problem of loss of the ability to solve design problems by the modern creators of the settlements based on knowledge of the functional structure of the object, demands of potential consumers, taking into account the features of the object’s location in the selected area, while creating a safe, reliable and comfortable environment able to implement functions for which it is intended. Guided by the specialized publications in the field of the liquid and gas hydraulics and mechanics, the author considers and describes in detail the water flows and their impact on space characteristics, including options for the contribution of hydraulic noise to space acoustics, taking into account human perception, and options for contribution of the atmospheric air temperature and humidity variability to the thermal balance of the city residents. The parameters of buildings are identified, the change of which affects the change of space characteristics. The regularities of the impact of fountains during operation on the space noise and ecological regime formation, which will provide consumer needs and comfortable conditions necessary for a positive physical perception of space, are determined. The results of the study will be used as a reference material in the development of graphic models and techniques of the architectural and planning arrangement of urban spaces with fountains, which, being perfectly integrated into the urban fabric will ensure sustainable development of the spaces with fountains over time.

Economic Incentive to Ignore the Environment

The world environmental regime has influenced government policy and improved environmental conditions around the globe, but its influence on governance is sometimes decoupled from, or loosely connected with, actual practice. This article examines the influence of the environmental regime on foreign aid and proposes that economic incentive, in the form of FDI, is a source of decoupling between aid donors’ stated environmental goals and actual aid commitments. Using a three-dimensional panel design (donor × recipient × year), I test allocations of environmental protection and fossil fuel aid in a two-stage process where first the aid recipient is chosen, and then the aid amount. I find that although donor and recipient environmental regime integration are associated with higher likelihood of exchanging environmental aid, other factors (donor/recipient GDP, recipient democracy, etc.) determine the amount of aid. Regime integration does not reduce the likelihood of exchanging fossil fuel aid, but donor regime integration is associated with giving less fossil fuel aid, contingent on the donor’s level of FDI in the recipient nation. I conclude that the world environmental regime and the global economy exert contradictory pressures on aid organizations that result in policy–practice decoupling. The world environmental regime, therefore, has only been partially successful in improving foreign aid, and its effect is constrained by donors’ economic incentive to ignore environmental norms.

Mapping metabolic activity at single cell resolution in intact volcanic fumarole sediment

ABSTRACT Interactions among microorganisms and their mineralogical substrates govern the structure, function and emergent properties of microbial communities. These interactions are predicated on spatial relationships, which dictate metabolite exchange and access to key substrates. To quantitatively assess links between spatial relationships and metabolic activity, this study presents a novel approach to map all organisms, the metabolically active subset and associated mineral grains, all while maintaining spatial integrity of an environmental microbiome. We applied this method at an outgassing fumarole of Vanuatu's Marum Crater, one of the largest point sources of several environmentally relevant gaseous compounds, including H2O, CO2 and SO2. With increasing distance from the sediment-air surface and from mineral grain outer boundaries, organism abundance decreased but the proportion of metabolically active organisms often increased. These protected niches may provide more stable conditions that promote consistent metabolic activity of a streamlined community. Conversely, exterior surfaces accumulate more organisms that may cover a wider range of preferred conditions, implying that only a subset of the community will be active under any particular environmental regime. More broadly, the approach presented here allows investigators to see microbial communities ‘as they really are’ and explore determinants of metabolic activity across a range of microbiomes.

When Do International Treaties Matter for Domestic Environmental Legislation?

While thousands of international treaties have been concluded, it remains unclear whether they have been implemented. This article investigates the relationship between the conclusion of environment-related international treaties and the adoption of domestic environmental legislation. Thanks to data sets that are considerably more comprehensive and fine-grained than those previously used, we can analyze the direct link to environmental legislation rather than the less direct link to environmental outcomes. Moreover, we can disaggregate for specific environmental issue areas. Our results suggest a positive relationship between domestic environmental legislation with both international environmental agreements and preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with environmental provisions. This link is more robust for PTAs, mostly present in developing countries, more pronounced before rather than after the treaties’ entry into force, and shows significant variation depending on the issue area. These findings contribute to the literature on environmental regime effectiveness and the domestic impact of treaties.

Global Environmentalism and the World-System: A Cross-National Analysis of Air Pollution

Ambient air pollution represents a global health crisis, leading to 7 million annual deaths worldwide. The rise of a “global environmental regime” manifests in the widespread adoption of environmental policies and laws to reduce ambient air pollution, but debate remains whether they have any effect. Scholars argue that the relationship between the global environmental regime and air pollution depends on the penetration of the global environmental regime. In this analysis, I argue that the relationship between the global environmental regime and air pollution levels is contingent on a country’s position in the world-system. Using fixed effects panel analyses of 144 countries from 1990 to 2010, I find embeddedness in the global environmental regime does predict lower national air pollution levels. This effect, however, is smaller in semi-peripheral and peripheral countries. These findings contribute to an emerging body of scholarship integrating world society and world systems approaches in the study of the environment.