Climate change, sea level rise and integrated coastal zone management: An IPCC approach

Expansion of economic activities, urbanisation, increased resource use and population growth are continuously increasing the vulnerability of the coastal zone. This vulnerability is now further raised by the threat of climate change and accelerated sea level rise. The potentially severe impacts force policy-makers to also consider long-term planning for climate change and sea level rise. For reasons of efficiency and effectiveness this long-term planning should be integrated with existing short-term plans, thus creating an Integrated Coastal Zone Management programme. As a starting point for coastal zone management, the assessment of a country's or region's vulnerability to accelerated sea level rise is of utmost importance. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed a common methodology for this purpose. Studies carried out according to this Common Methodology have been compared and combined, from which general conclusions on local, regional and global vulnerability have been drawn, the latter in the form of a Global Vulnerability Assessment. In order to address the challenge of coping with climate change and accelerated sea level rise, it is essential to foresee the possible impacts, and to take precautionary action. Because of the long lead times needed for creating the required technical and institutional infrastructures, such action should be taken in the short term. Furthermore, it should be part of a broader coastal zone management and planning context. This will require a holistic view, shared by the different institutional levels that exist, along which different needs and interests should be balanced.

公共政策制定程序对政策可接受性的影响

This research addresses the problems of public policy-making procedures. In conducting our research, we considered public policy as the allocation or reallocation of interests or resources among different members of the public. Due to limited resources, administrations should trade off all interests among different segments of society when formulating a policy. Unfortunately, in recent years there have been several mass conflicts with administration of public policy. This infers that some people’s interests were ignored or harmed by certain policies. According to the theory of procedural justice, people may accept the unexpected result if they consider the procedure is just. This research hypothesizes that there are certain problems in current policy-making procedures and that improving these procedures may make policies more acceptable. A pilot study was conducted by interviewing ten scholars from a range of disciplines. The interview record transcripts were coded by three analysts. The results indicate that: 1) Most of the scholars criticized current public policies as lacking sensitivity to public issues; 2) Most of them considered that current public policies do not resolve problems effectively; and 3) They all considered that psychology research may enhance awareness of public issues and improve the effectiveness of policy. In study 2, the procedure of public policy was tracked and compared with a social survey. The Beijing government would like to increase the taxi fare rate to cope with the rising price of petroleum. Although the majority of delegates in a hearing of witnesses supported the policy consideration, the social survey of 186 residents and 63 taxi drivers indicated that both of them oppose the consideration. The findings indicate that the hearing of witnesses was not able to delegate the opinions of the public, resulting in the policy failing to resolve the problem. Study 3 was a nonequivalent control group quasi-experiment. Visitors of two Internet Website were chosen as subjects for original photo games. For the experiment group, visitors were invited to express their desires and suggestions on the game rules for one week, and then declare rules referencing the suggestions before starting the game. Meanwhile, the control group simply declared the rules at the beginning of the game. Compared with the two games during 23 days, the experiment group submitted more photos than the control group. The results of this research imply that, the good will of policy makers is not enough to make a policy effective. Surveys on public attitudes at the beginning of the policy-making process can allow policy makers to better determine public issues, assess the tradeoff of public interests, help ensure policies are more acceptable, and help foster a harmonious society. The authors of this research suggest that psychology research should take more social level problems into account in the policy-making process.