Mining Site Reclamation Planning Based on Land Suitability Analysis and Ecosystem Services Evaluation: A Case Study in Liaoning Province, China

Restoration of the degraded ecosystem is a global priority for achieving sustainable development. Although increasing ecosystem service is an important goal of ecological restoration, it is rarely used to inform mine reclamation. This study proposed a reclamation strategy that incorporated land suitability analysis and ecosystem service evaluation for a mining site in Liaoning Province, China. We assessed the land suitability for three reclamation alternatives and identified suitable land uses for each location by comparing their suitability levels. For areas that were suitable for multiple land uses with the same suitability level, the future land uses cannot be identified by land suitability analysis alone, and we employed ecosystem services evaluation to determine the optimal reclamation strategy. The results showed that forest could be restored throughout the entire mining site, agricultural land were most suitable in the western and southern parts, and developed land were in northern parts that were closer to roads and city centers. Our study showed that a large mining site can be reclaimed to different land uses and provided a practical framework for integrating ecosystem services into mine reclamation

Empirical Analysis of Mongolia's Carbon Emission Factors Based on Kaya Identity

This research is an empirical analysis of Mongolia’s carbon emission factors, it identifies the relationship between carbon emission and factors of this emission, by analysing greenhouse effect and its function, also introducing the concept of ecological load capacity and using grey system theory.  The result shows that the consumption of energy has the most important effect on carbon emission in Mongolia; there are other factors such as population, household final consumption expenditure, GDP and gross fixed capital formation. The challenge for government to balance the economic development and environment protection, carbon emission can be reduced but that needs an entire commitment and hard work of both government and people. The results from this study contribute to a more in-depth understanding of the carbon emissions status in magnolia and serves as reference when launching region-based emissions mitigation policies. Keywords: Carbon Emissions; Kaya Identity; Grey System; Mongolia

Celebrating Economies of Change: Brave Visions for Inclusive Futures

This issue has been inspired by a path-breaking conference held by the Canadian Society for Ecologi-cal Economics (CANSEE), which took place this past May 2019 in Waterloo, Ontario. Entitled Engaging Economies of Change, the conference aimed to ex-pand existing research networks in the economy-environment nexus by building connections beyond the academy in order to meaningfully engage with the practicalities of building and implementing change. This issue captures the rich content shared during the event, as well as descriptions of the pro-cesses and efforts made to create a welcoming and respectful space where academics and community activists could build alliances and discuss common challenges. The conference organizers – all graduate students and activists themselves -- called this ‘building a brave space’.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Assembling a Blue Economy moment? Geographic engagement with globalizing biological-economic relations in multi-use marine environments

In the 2010s, the Blue Economy' has been widely advocated by a spectrum of interests as a strategy to save the world's oceans and water. This article explores what the Blue Economy moment is and how geographers can engage with it. It acknowledges recent efforts by geographers to understand Blue Economy but goes further by outlining the European Union's Blue Economy programmes and by discussing these in relation to recent agenda setting in marine science. We argue that in spite of apparent convergence on this goal, the Blue Economy imaginary disciplines disparate knowledge for economic projects, when the planetary reality is that every economic project is axiomatically a biological project, with some economic aspects. In this context, the article outlines how assemblage thinking could be relevant to a human geography engagement with Blue Economy and what this could like, and how a relational conception of Blue Economy helps advance understanding. Finally, we discuss the difficulties and potential for human geographers to be genuinely enactive given the disciplinary framings that have already been assumed or imposed through Blue Economy. This last is highlighted by discussing engagement in a particular New Zealand Blue Economy initiative. Rather than either promoting or critiquing Blue Economy, we encourage informed and critical engagement with Blue Economy by geographers

Indigenous Bio-cultural Conservation, and blue justice

Preprin

Dry Port Terminal Location Selection by Applying the Hybrid Grey MCDM Model

Globalization and decentralization of production generate the intensive growth of goods and transport flows, mostly performed by the maritime transport. Ports, as the main nodes in the global logistics networks, are becoming congested, space for their expansion limited, and traffic in their hinterland congested. As a solution to these and many other hinterland-transport-related problems stands out the development of dry port (DP) terminals. Selection of their location is one of the most important strategic decisions on which depends their competitiveness in the market and the functionality of the logistics network. Accordingly, the evaluation and selection of locations for the development of the DP in accordance with the requirements of various stakeholders is performed in this paper, as a prerequisite for the establishment of an ecological, economic, and socially sustainable logistics network in the observed area. To solve this problem, a new hybrid model of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) that combines Delphi, AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process), and CODAS (Combinative Distance-based Assessment) methods in a grey environment is developed. The main contributions of this paper are the defined model, the problem-solving approach based on finding a compromise solution, simultaneous consideration of the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of the DP concept and its implementation in the regional international markets. The applicability of the approach and the defined MCDM model is demonstrated by solving a real-life case study of ranking the potential DP locations in the Western Balkans region. Based on the obtained results, it is concluded that in the current market conditions, it would be most realistic to open three DP terminals, in Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Belgrad