Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

At present stage, i.e. in the third millennium humanity is at transitional stage of civilization’s development. The transition is extremely uneven all over the world, and especially in mountainous regions. It aggravates already existing contradictions and complicates the problem of transition to sustainable development of nature and society.

The paper examines the general provisions relevant to mountain protection in China environmental law in terms of substantive rules, procedural rules and institutional mechanisms. It also reviews some implementation regulations and procedures, and other basic laws relevant to the mountain protection. The results reveal that the China environmental law contains most substantive norms relevant to mountain protection. However, it lacks of a comprehensive legal instrument and relevant procedural norms necessary to support the integrated mountain protection and management. As for the institutional mechanisms, it adopts the administration by various departments rather than by a unified administration institution. Such mechanisms are inappropriate to the required integrated mountain protection and management. These findings suggest that the legal framework of environmental protection and management has been established and environmental law can generally apply to the mountain protection and management. However, a specific regulation should be formulated in light of integrated mountain protection and management. In particular, the regulation should be formulated in consideration of good governance and by integrated approach, emphasizing the issues with which China is recently confronted and should deal.

The complicated social-economic and political situation has brought about an abrupt deterioration of the natural environment in Georgia for the last decades. At present, 4.5 million ha of the territory of Georgia is under the threat of dangerous elemental processes. As a result of activation of the exogenous processes, stipulated by the same factors, 5% of arable lands are withdrawn yearly from agricultural turnover, and 50% is affected by erosion. Under the impact of anthropogenic factors, about 100-130 t/ha of fertile soil layer of arable lands is annually washed-out in Eastern Georgia and about 150-160 t/ha in Western Georgia. The total number of mudflow basins in Georgia exceeds 2.7 thousand. The peculiarity of mountain relief and climate has stipulated not only the presence of various landscapes, but also a high level of biodiversity within the organic world of Georgia. A successful solution of the problem of balanced development and the conservation of biodiversity depends on two main factors - influence of elemental-destructive processes and anthropogenic impact, which are directly bound with each other.

The analysis of nature reservations framework in Northern Eurasia steppe zone is done. New approaches to the forming of a conserved nature territories network in the steppe zone are offered. The necessity of organizing a natural park to the Przhevalsky horse re-acclimatization in Orenburg region is substantiated.

The digital landscape model consisting of natural landscape map, DEM and three historical land use maps (1829-40, 1935-38, 2002) has been applied to identify general and local tendencies in the land use development under different natural conditions in the mountainous area on the Czech-German border. Regardless to different starting points, and economic and social causes driving the land use changes, the natural background plays the decisive role in the final detail allocation of human activities in the study territory and supports the convergence of land use pattern in the present time.

Based on the practical experience in the Rhön biosphere reserve (=biosphere territory), which covers parts of three federal states in Germany, mechanisms and strategies for sustainable development beyond administrative boundaries are demonstrated and examples for trilateral cooperation are given. Based on this, recommendations for the further development of the Altai region as a transboundary biosphere territory are derived. Success or failure of a biosphere territory depends especially on the local people, as they need to decide on and take action for their own sustainable future on the regional level.

This paper outlines the links between the environmentally sustainable use of land and water resources and sustainable economic development, including poverty reduction. In many parts of the world the degradation of land and water resources is worsening while the social and economic conditions of people are not being improved. In some parts of the world, both poverty and environmental degradation are increasing. One reason for this is the perception held by some that the sustainable management of the environment and economic development are competing priorities. While there are specific cases where measures to end environmentally unsustainable actions will restrict human use of environmental resources in the short term, over the long term environmentally unsustainable land and water use will reduce the social and economic benefits to humans provided by the environment. Thus, the environment should not be treated as a competitor but as a core component of the natural resource base of human social and economic development. The paper provides specific examples relevant to the Altai region to illustrate the nature of the link between environment and development, including poverty reduction. It also outlines aspects relevant to regional security and provides elements for environmentally and economically sustainable land management.

Results of preliminary assessment of forests in the Russian part of the ecoregion, pasture lands in the Western Mongolia and Katun river watershed in the North of Altai Mountains are outlined in the paper. High North – South contrasts in natural, socio-economic and other conditions across the natural, administrative and state boundaries of the region have been revealed in the process of the research. They could be regarded as some particular phenomenon usually existing on large interregional or intercontinental frontiers. Those interregional contrasts would cause effects on the future health of natural systems in the ecoregion.

The article describes the territories of Altai Mountains (by example of the Republic of Altai): population structure, national-ethnic composition, naturalclimatic conditions, and social-economic level of development, state structure and economic/nature protection activity. An analysis of the establishment and development of the Transboundary Biosphere Territory “Altai” is given. A consideration of advantages and limitation, problems and perspectives of organization is discussed.

Landscape planning has been established in Germany as a legal instrument in the early 1970ies. Because of its federal structure, 16 different systems of landscape planning have been developed in Germany. In spite of that, there does exist generally accepted tasks of landscape planning according to article 13 German Federal Nature Protection Act. What are the main tasks? Landscape planning has to support the realization of nature conservation goals and principles, to draw requirements and measures of nature conservation and landscape management, and to give reasons and arguments for these requirements and measures. In the last years the question concerning the effectiveness of planning instruments became more and more important in Germany. Thus, at Berlin University of Technology several research projects concerning this topic have been carried out. By means of statistical methods significant effects of landscape plans have been proved. The most important factors for succeeding of landscape planning have been isolated, too.