摘要
1987年世界环境与发展委员会的报告中要求进行全球性的风险评估项目,以支持和扩大联合国环境规划署的工作。本文主要报告了集中在美国克拉克大学进行的一项国际性研究项目。该项目研究了分布在世界不同区域的9个地区在过去50～70年里不断增强的环境风险的原因和后果。这9个地区分别是:亚马孙、东南亚的东巽他地区、肯尼亚东南部的乌坎巴尼地区、尼泊尔中部山区、中国的鄂尔多斯高原、咸海、美国南部高地平原、墨西哥城区和北海。作者从临界状态的概念及其还在完善中的定义和环境受威胁的地区分类着手论述。对9个地区均组建了研究小组并进行了研究。在本文中,作者回顾了研究中所应用的概念和方法的制定以及在已获得的重要研究结果。研究人员认为,在研究地区迅速增大的环境退化速率与社会对此反应迟缓之间存在越来越大的脱节,存在着环境退化的威胁、后代选择权的丧失,以及在取代资源利用和减轻风险方面的代价日益增大的问题。
In its 1987 report, the World Commission on Environment and Development called for a global risk-assessment program to buttress and extend the work of the United Nations Environment Programme. This article reports on an international project centered at Clark University in the United States that has explored the causes and consequences of growing environmental risk over a 50-70 year period in nine regions distributed throughout the world. The nine regions are: Amazonia, the Eastern Sundaland region of southeast Asia, the Ukambani region of southeastern Kenya, the Nepal Middle Mountains, the Ordos Plateau of China, the Aral Sea, the southern High Plains of the United States, the Mexico City region, and the North Sea. The authors begin by considering the notion of criticality, and developing definitions and a classification of environmentally threatened regions. Research teams were assembled for all nine regions and studies conducted. In this article, the authors review the development of concepts and methods used in these studies and the major cross-cutting findings that emerged. They argue that a growing disjunctive exists in the studied regions between the rapid rates of environmental degradation and the slow pace of societal response, threatening environmental impoverishment and loss of options for future generations and escalating costs of substitution in resource use and risk mitigation efforts.
