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Small-scale bio-energy projects have been launched in rural areas of China and are considered as alternatives to fossil-fuel energy. However, energetic and environmental evaluation of these projects has rarely been carried out, though it is necessary for their long-term development. A village-level biomass gasification project provides an example. A hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) of its total nonrenewable energy (NE) cost and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is presented in this paper. The results show that the total energy cost for one joule of biomass gas output from the project is 2.93 J, of which 0.89 J is from nonrenewable energy, and the related GHG emission cost is 1.17 × 10−4 g CO2-eq over its designed life cycle of 20 years. To provide equivalent effective calorific value for cooking work, the utilization of one joule of biomass gas will lead to more life cycle NE cost by 0.07 J and more GHG emissions by 8.92 × 10−5 g CO2-eq compared to natural gas taking into consideration of the difference in combustion efficiency and calorific value. The small-scale bio-energy project has fallen into dilemma, i.e., struggling for survival, and for a more successful future development of village-level gasification projects, much effort is needed to tide over the plight of its development, such as high cost and low efficiency caused by decentralized construction, technical shortcomings and low utilization rate of by-products.

Ecological and environmental protection is the core content of ecotourism development. A quantitative evaluation of the effects of ecotourism environmental protection (hereinafter referred to as EEP) measures on protected areas is conducive to a deeper understanding of the key issues related to ecotourism development in China, thus providing the theoretical basis for formulating the relevant national policies of sustainable ecotourism development in China. This paper first discusses the evaluation index system and then establishes an index evaluation model of EEP measures and their effects on protected areas. Using surveys of more than 1110 protected areas in 27 provinces (autonomous regions or municipalities), we evaluated the EEP measures and their effects from a quantitative and spatial perspective. The completeness of EEP measures for Chinese protected areas was moderately effective, and the implementation status of the protection measures varied with the protection region. The effectiveness of EEP measures in different provinces and regions showed significant differences. The effectiveness decreased from east to west. The evaluation index values of the environmental protection measures displayed a high correlation with the effects of environmental protection on protected areas. The ecological protection measures should be further improved and strengthened according to their regional differences during ecotourism development.

The Upper Yangtze River Basin comprises a densely-populated agricultural region with mountainous and hilly landforms. Intensive cultivation has been extended onto steep hillslopes, which constitute the principal source area for sediment production. Soil conservation on sloping arable lands is thus of utmost priority for persisting sustainable agricultural production and maintaining sound ecosystem services. Although there have been many soil conservation techniques, either promoted by the government or adopted by local farmers, the practiced area was very limited relative to the total area affected by soil erosion. This paper attempts to introduce four popular soil conservation measures on sloping arable lands in this region to enhance a broader scale of implementation, including hedgerow buffers, level trenches, sloping terraces and limited downslope tillage. These practices, although developed from local farmers’ indigenous knowledge for productive purposes, have well conformed to our contemporary understanding of soil erosion processes on sloping landscape affected by human disturbances, were of sound suitability to regional manual tillage agriculture and more trade-off-efficient on rill prevention, runoff harvest and nutrient management.

In this paper, petroleum product (mainly petrol and diesel) consumption in the transportation sector of China is analyzed. This was based on the Bayesian linear regression theory and Markov Chain Monte Carlo method (MCMC), establishing a demand-forecast model of petrol and diesel consumption introduced into the analytical framework with explanatory variables of urbanization level, per capita GDP, turnover of passengers (freight) in aggregate (TPA, TFA), and civilian vehicle number (CVN) and explained variables of petrol and diesel consumption. Furthermore, we forecast the future consumer demand for oil products during “The 12th Five Year Plan” (2011–2015) based on the historical data covering from 1985 to 2009, finding that urbanization is the most sensitive factor, with a strong marginal effect on petrol and diesel consumption in this sector. From the viewpoint of prediction interval value, urbanization expresses the lower limit of the predicted results, and CVN the upper limit of the predicted results. Predicted value from other independent variables is in the range of predicted values which display a validation range and reference standard being much more credible for policy makers. Finally, a comparison between the predicted results from autoregressive integrated moving average models (ARIMA) and others is made to assess our task.

Research on the nexus between energy consumption and economic growth is a fundamental topic for energy policy making and low-carbon economic development. Russia proves the third largest energy consumption country in the world in recent years, while little research has shed light upon its energy consumption issue till now, especially its energy–growth nexus. Therefore, this paper empirically investigates the dynamic nexus of the two variables in Russia based on the state space model. The results indicate that, first of all, Russia's energy consumption is cointegrated with its economic growth in a time-varying way though they do not have static or average cointegration relationship. Hence it is unsuitable to merely portrait the nexus in an average manner. Second, ever since the year of 2000, Russia's energy efficiency has achieved much more promotion compared with that in previous decades, mainly due to the industrial structure adjustment and technology progress. Third, among BRIC countries, the consistency of Russia's energy consumption and economic growth appears the worst, which suggests the complexity of energy–growth nexus in Russia. Finally, there exists bi-directional causality between Russia's energy consumption and economic growth, though their quantitative proportional relation does not have solid foundation according to the cointegration theory.

Public involvement is critical to the successful implementation of reclaimed water reuse programs. Based on the participatory research method, we studied the attitudes of the stakeholders who are involved in reclaimed water reuse in Beijing, China. Results showed that the general public’s knowledge on water resources was poor, while their awareness on reclaimed water reuse was high. The general public showed a strong acceptance of non-contact and non-potable reclaimed water reuse, but their acceptance of the three major water reuse types of river water supplement, park water supplement, and agriculture irrigation was not high. The beneficial use of reclaimed water was admired by water resource managers, industrial sectors, and researchers, and these stakeholders strongly supported the advancement of reclaimed water reuse. However, some of the stakeholders showed concerns about the potential risks from reclaimed wastewater reuse. Among them, risks from waste water treatment facilities were the biggest concern. Stakeholders’ perception of reclaimed water was influenced by their social-economic attributes. This study will enrich the current survey findings on public perception of reclaimed water reuse, particularly in developing countries.

The mainland of China’s rapid pace of industrialization and trade expansion have led many to ask whether its ever-increasing demand for resources can be met without disruption to economic stability and growth in the country and the world as a whole. The article examines the experience of growth in resource demand and the associated pressure on global markets from Japan, Taiwan Province of China and Korea during their periods of sustained, rapid economic growth for periods in the second half of the twentieth century. It seeks to draw lessons for the twenty-first century. The article points out that because of its size the mainland of China may cause the resources boom, associated with the later decades of its period of sustained rapid growth, to raise the prices of resource-intensive products by a large amount, not for a few years, but for several decades. This will have important implications for economic development and the distribution of incomes within and between all countries, and on power relations between states in the Asia-Pacific and throughout the global community.