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1.
Human driven environmental changes increase the concentrations of polluting reactive compounds in the troposphere, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. These changes lead to biodiversity losses and alter plant physiology and plant-pollinator interactions, essential for pollination services, with potential consequences for agricultural production. Here we used 133 unique sampling events from NW Europe to investigate how air pollution (ozone and nitrogen oxides) and other sources of nitrogen is related to pollinator visitation rate and their contribution to agricultural production, also considering possible interactive effects with landscape quality and pesticide input. We showed that ozone modulates the effect of pesticide exposure and temperature on crop pollinators, increasing the probability of negative impacts on crop pollination. Indeed, when ozone levels are highest, the strength of the effect of pesticide on pollinators is more than double then when ozone levels are intermediate. This indicates that air pollution should be considered in management plans and policies aiming to safeguard biodiversity and promote more sustainable food production practices. 相似文献
2.
Assessments of pesticide impacts globally and holistic policies to address them require accurate pesticide use data, but good use data are difficult to find. For comparable estimates across countries, researchers and policymakers depend upon pesticide use data collected by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). We analyze the FAO database and find declines in data reporting and data quality since 2007. We present a novel method that uses bilateral paired mirror trade statistics and an index of reporter reliability to add, update and/or replace data for 137 countries. The resulting Global Pesticide Use and Trade (GloPUT) database shows pesticide use in low and lower-middle income countries has been substantially underestimated. Over the last decade, global pesticide use grew 20% by volume; use in low-income countries grew by 153% over the same period. GloPUT estimates more accurately reflect social science findings on recent agrichemical supply chain restructuring and agrarian development, which indicate substantial increases in pesticide use. Significant issues with data reporting and quality mean that the impacts of recent changes in pesticide production, availability and adoption were not reflected in the FAO database, and, as a result, neither are they reflected in high profile environmental assessments. 相似文献
3.
A long history of household-level research has provided important local-level insights into climate adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector. It remains unclear to what extent these strategies are generalizable or vary across regions. In this study we ask about three potential key factors influencing farming households’ ability to adapt: access to weather information, household and agricultural production-related assets, and participation in local social institutions. We use a 12-country data set from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to explore the links between these three potential drivers of agricultural change and the likelihood that farmers made farm-associated changes, such as adopting improved crop varieties, increasing fertilizer use, investing in improved land management practices, and changing the timing of agricultural activities. We find evidence that access to weather information, assets, and participation in social institutions are associated with households that have reported making farming changes in recent years, although these results vary across countries and types of practices. Understanding these drivers and outcomes of farm-associated changes across different socio-economic and environmental conditions is critical for ongoing dialogues for climate-resilient strategies and policies for increasing the adaptive capacity of smallholders under climate change. 相似文献
4.
This paper uses the dataset of Pollution Information Transparency Index covering 113 Chinese cities and the period of 2008–2011 to find out what contributes to different levels of environmental information disclosure across Chinese cities and the correlation between cities’ Pollution Information Transparency Indexes and local pollution. We find that cities whose mayors have longer tenures and PhD degrees are likely to release more environmental information. In addition, the higher the number of internet users and income per capita, the closer a city is to Hong Kong, and the lower a city’s unemployment rate, the greater the level of environmental disclosure is. An efficient local legal system is also found to facilitate information disclosure.We also find that in most cases, high Pollution Information Transparency Indexes are associated with lower pollutant levels and more pollution-control investment, suggesting the effectiveness of China’s environmental disclosure in pollution control. Community pressure for a better environment is shown to reinforce the role of environmental disclosure in pollution reduction. We find no evidence that environmental disclosure improves the efficacy of traditional environmental regulation in pollution control. Nevertheless, different aspects of environmental disclosure vary a lot in their effectiveness in pollution reduction and the results here indicate that inducing cities to respond to public information requests is perhaps the most effective method of pollution control in China. 相似文献
5.
Increases in the number of large-scale land transactions (LSLTs), commonly known as ‘land grabbing’ or ‘global land rush,’ have occurred throughout the lower- and middle-income world over the past two decades. Despite substantial and continuing concerns about the negative socio-environmental impacts of LSLTs, trade-off analysis on boosting crop yield and minimizing climate-related effects remains limited. Our study makes use of a global dataset on LSLTs for agricultural production to estimate potential carbon emissions based on different scenarios of land cover change and fertilizer use, as well as potential value of agricultural production on transacted land. We show that, if fully implemented on ∼ 38 M ha of transacted land, 2.51 GtC will be emitted during land conversion, with another 24.2 MtC/year emitted from fertilizer use, assuming farming technology of investors’ origin is adopted on transacted land. Comparison of different combinations of forest protection policies and agricultural intensification levels reveals that enforcing strict deforestation regulation while promoting fertilizer use rate improves the carbon efficiency of agricultural production. Additionally, positive spillovers of investors’ farming technology on existing arable lands of host countries can potentially double their crop yield. Our analyses thus suggest that fostering agricultural intensification and technology spillovers under strict regulation on land allocation to investors to protect forests would allow for boosting agricultural yield while minimizing carbon emissions. 相似文献
6.
To respond to climate impact, poor agricultural households in less developed regions rely on different types of assets that define their overall adaptive capacity (AC). However not all assets build capacity equally. In this study we argue that building AC requires a combination of interventions that address not only climate-related risks (specific capacity) but also the structural deficits (e.g., lack of income, education, health, political power) (generic capacity) that shape vulnerability. Focusing on rainfed agriculture in NE Brazil, we investigate how households leverage and combine generic and specific capacities to reduce vulnerability. Particularly we explore: 1) the relative importance of different kinds of capacity in shaping vulnerability on these households and 2) how the level of generic capacities (particularly as a result of Brazil’s anti-poverty program Bolsa Família) influences the adoption of specific ones. We find that both kinds of capacity matter, as relatively higher levels of generic capacity (in terms of income in general, and climate-neutral income specifically) are associated with higher levels of specific capacity (irrigation). In addition we find that while Bolsa Família has been positive in increasing income, it has not been sufficient to manage the risk of food insecurity during drought events, suggesting a 'poverty trap' in which families are constantly coping with drought but failing to overcome the conditions that make them vulnerable. Our findings indicate that in order to decrease climate vulnerability of poor agricultural households, development interventions, such as anti-poverty programs, have to go beyond cash transfer and should incorporate risk management policies that enhance synergies between generic and specific capacities. 相似文献
7.
David R. Kanter 《Climatic change》2018,147(1-2):11-21
The current national commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement fall short of what is needed to stay below a 2 °C increase in global average temperature. One approach that has been proposed to close this ambition gap is the building blocks strategy, which aims to encourage initiatives focused on non-climate actions that can deliver a climate benefit. A key option under this framework is reducing global nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen pollution—driven largely by the inefficient use of synthetic fertilizer and manure—is one of the most important environmental issues of the twenty-first century, not least because of its climate impacts. Ambitiously mitigating nitrogen pollution could avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 5–10% of the remaining allowable emissions consistent with the 2 °C target. However, the climate benefits would be a minor component of the overall environmental benefits of reducing nitrogen pollution, which would come mainly from avoided water and air pollution. The fact that these benefits would accrue mostly at local scales is especially important for countries like the United States, marked by a shift toward “economic nationalism.” In these countries, the most politically viable climate actions will likely be ones that produce local benefits as great, if not greater, than those achieved internationally. This is also likely to be true in countries like China, where local nitrogen-related issues such as air and water pollution remain major national priorities. Nevertheless, there are several challenges that could stand in the way of improved nitrogen management being a successful building block: integrated nitrogen management solutions that reduce the risk of pollution swapping need to be developed, the policy challenges related to changing and monitoring farmer behavior need to be addressed, and nitrogen’s role as an essential agricultural input needs to be respected. A better understanding of these challenges could also help policy-makers develop viable climate mitigation strategies across the entire agricultural sector. 相似文献
8.
This paper considers how farmers perceive and respond to climate change policy risks, and suggests that understanding these risk responses is as important as understanding responses to biophysical climate change impacts. Based on a survey of 162 farmers in California, we test three hypotheses regarding climate policy risk: (1) that perceived climate change risks will have a direct impact on farmer's responses to climate policy risks, (2) that previous climate change experiences will influence farmer's climate change perceptions and climate policy risk responses, and (3) that past experiences with environmental policies will more strongly affect a farmer's climate change beliefs, risks, and climate policy risk responses. Using a structural equation model we find support for all three hypotheses and furthermore show that farmers’ negative past policy experiences do not make them less likely to respond to climate policy risks through participation in a government incentive program. We discuss how future research and climate policies can be structured to garner greater agricultural participation. This work highlights that understanding climate policy risk responses and other social, economic and policy perspectives is a vital component of understanding climate change beliefs, risks and behaviors and should be more thoroughly considered in future work. 相似文献
9.
What drives the development of climate policy? Brazil, China, and India have all changed their climate policies since 2000, and single-case analyses of climate policymaking have found that all three countries have had climate coalitions working to promote climate policies. To what extent have such advocacy coalitions been able to influence national policies for climate-change mitigation, and what can explain this? Employing a new approach that combines the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) with insights from comparative environmental politics and the literature on policy windows, this paper identifies why external parameters like political economy and institutional structures are crucial for explaining the climate advocacy coalitions’ ability to seize policy windows and influence policy development. We find that the coalitions adjust their policy strategies to the influence-opportunity structures in each political context—resulting in confrontation in Brazil, cooperation in China, and a complementary role in India. 相似文献
10.
Many developed countries in Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol have been able to report decreasing emissions, and some have officially fulfilled their CO2 reduction commitments. This is in part because current reporting and regulatory regimes allow these countries to displace emissions intensive production offshore. Using a new highly detailed account of emissions embodied in international trade we investigate this phenomenon of emissions leakage. We independently confirm previous findings that adjusting for trade, developed countries emissions have increased, not decreased. We find that the sectors successfully holding or lowering their domestic emissions are often the same as those increasing their imports of embodied CO2. We also find that the fastest growing flow paths of embodied CO2 largely originate outside the Kyoto Annex B signatory nations. Finally, we find that historically the same phenomenon of emissions displacement has already occurred for air pollution, with the result that despite aggressive legislation in major emitters total global air pollution emissions have increased. If regulatory policies do not account for embodied imports, global emissions are likely to rise even if developed countries emitters enforce strong national emissions targets. 相似文献
11.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are described as integrated and indivisible, where sustainability challenges must be addressed across sectors and scales to achieve global-level sustainability. However, SDG monitoring mostly focuses on tracking progress at national-levels, for each goal individually. This approach ignores local and cross-border impacts of national policies and assumes that global-level progress is the sum of national, sector-specific gains. In this study, we investigate effects of reforestation programs in China on countries supplying forest and agricultural commodities to China. Using case studies of rubber and palm oil production in Southeast Asian countries, soy production in Brazil and logging in South Pacific Island states, we investigate cross-sector effects of production for and trade to China in these exporting countries. We use a three-step multi-method approach. 1) We identify distal trade flows and the narratives used to justify them, using a telecoupling framework; 2) we design causal loop diagrams to analyse social-ecological processes of change in our case studies driven by trade to China and 3) we link these processes of change to the SDG framework. We find that sustainability progress in China from reforestation is cancelled out by the deforestation and cross-sectoral impacts supporting this reforestation abroad. Narratives of economic development support commodity production abroad through unrealised aims of benefit distribution and assumptions of substitutability of socio-ecological forest systems. Across cases, we find the analysed trade supports unambiguous progress on few SDGs only, and we find many mixed effects – where processes that support the achievement of SDGs exist, but are overshadowed by counterproductive processes. Our study represents a useful approach for tracking global-level impacts of national sustainability initiatives and provides cross-scale and cross-sectoral lenses through which to identify drivers of unsustainability that can be addressed in the design of effective sustainability policies. 相似文献
12.
Climate change is likely to adversely affect many countries throughout the world, but the responses of different countries to this threat vary widely. Attempts to explain the differences in countries’ mitigative policies have been largely deficient. This study seeks to assess the degree to which vulnerability may improve the level of explanation of adopted mitigation policies, studying over 90 countries between 1990 and 2011. Vulnerability is defined to be comprised of two basic factors: impacts (expected damages due to climate change) and adaptive capacity (the ability to adjust to these damages). As there may be a gap between declared and implemented policies, these components of mitigation policy are examined separately. In addition, other variables which mediate between these ‘extreme ends’ of mitigation policies are tested.The effect of vulnerability on climate change mitigation policies is examined by multiple regressions, incorporating a wide range of control variables. The results indicate that climate impacts do not affect mitigation policies. Adaptive capacity has a positive effect on the level of declared policy, but this effect becomes insignificant once implemented policy is examined. However, other tests suggest a possible transition from declarations to actions by high adaptive capacity countries. This finding suggests that high adaptive capacity countries do not view mitigation and adaptation as substitutes. Further analyses indicate that the insignificancy of impacts is caused by the uncertainty in their assessment. 相似文献
13.
Steven K. Rose Richard Richels Steve Smith Keywan Riahi Jessica Strefler Detlef P. van Vuuren 《Climatic change》2014,123(3-4):511-525
Climate policies must consider radiative forcing from Kyoto greenhouse gases, as well as other forcing constituents, such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone that result from air pollutants. Non-Kyoto forcing constituents contribute negative, as well as positive forcing, and overall increases in total forcing result in increases in global average temperature. Non-Kyoto forcing modeling is a relatively new component of climate management scenarios. This paper describes and assesses current non-Kyoto radiative forcing modeling within five integrated assessment models. The study finds negative forcing from aerosols masking (offsetting) approximately 25 % of positive forcing in the near-term in reference non-climate policy projections. However, masking is projected to decline rapidly to 5–10 % by 2100 with increasing Kyoto emissions and assumed reductions in air pollution—with the later declining to as much as 50 % and 80 % below today’s levels by 2050 and 2100 respectively. Together they imply declining importance of non-Kyoto forcing over time. There are however significant uncertainties and large differences across models in projected non-Kyoto emissions and forcing. A look into the modeling reveals differences in base conditions, relationships between Kyoto and non-Kyoto emissions, pollution control assumptions, and other fundamental modeling. In addition, under climate policy scenarios, we find air pollution and resulting non-Kyoto forcing reduced to levels below those produced by air pollution policies alone—e.g., China sulfur emissions fall an additional 45–85 % by 2050. None of the models actively manage non-Kyoto forcing for climate implications. Nonetheless, non-Kyoto forcing may be influencing mitigation results, including allowable carbon dioxide emissions, and further evaluation is merited. 相似文献
14.
Swidden (also called shifting cultivation) has long been the dominant farming system in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA). Today the ecological bounty of this region is threatened by the expansion of settled agriculture, including the proliferation of rubber plantations. In the current conception of REDD+, landscapes involving swidden qualify almost automatically for replacement by other land-use systems because swiddens are perceived to be degraded and inefficient with regard to carbon sequestration. However, swiddening in some cases may be carbon-neutral or even carbon positive, compared with some other types of land-use systems. In this paper we describe how agricultural policies and institutions have affected land use in the region over the last several decades and the impact these policies have had on the livelihoods of swiddeners and other smallholders. We also explore whether incentivizing transitions away from swiddening to the cultivation of rubber will directly or reliably produce carbon gains. We argue that because government policies affect how land is used, they also influence carbon emissions, farmer livelihoods, environmental services, and a host of other variables. A deeper and more systematic analysis of the multiple consequences of these policies is consequently necessary for the design of successful REDD+ policies in MMSEA, and other areas of the developing world. REDD+ policies should be structured not so much to ‘hold the forest boundary’ but to influence the types of land-use changes that are occurring so that they support both sustainable livelihoods and environmental services, including (but not limited to) carbon. 相似文献
15.
Hongli Feng Lyubov A. Kurkalova Catherine L. Kling Philip W. Gassman 《Climatic change》2007,80(1-2):91-107
This study investigates the carbon sequestration potential and co-benefits from policies aimed at retiring agricultural land
in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, a large, heavily agricultural area. In addition to empirically measuring environmental
co-benefits, we also compute economic transfers, which have sometimes been referred to as a co-benefit. Very little empirical
work measuring the potential magnitude of these transfers has previously been undertaken. We compare and contrast alternative
targeting schemes. We find that there are considerable amount of co-benefits and transfers and that the geographic distribution
of co-benefits and transfers varies significantly with the specific benefit targeted. This implies that policy design related
to targeting can have very important implications for both environmental conditions and income distributions in sub-regions.
Issues related to policy design in the presence of co-benefits are considered.
Senior authorship is shared equally between the first two authors.
All views are those of the authors and not necessarily the funding agencies. 相似文献
16.
There is mounting evidence that major improvements in environmental quality in high-income countries over the past decades may have been achieved to a large degree through relocation of environmental impacts of consumption to other, usually poorer countries. While political and academic debates on appropriate policy interventions to address this challenge are gaining ground, we still know rather little about the drivers of international environmental impact shifting, other than international trade flows per se. We address this issue by focusing on the effects of economic inequality and political factors. We argue that income inequality between and within countries as well as variation in political institutions, environmental clauses in preferential trade agreements (PTAs), and participation in international environmental treaties could be important drivers or mitigators of environmental impact shifting between countries. We use novel panel data on five types of environmental impact flows between country dyads (187 countries, 1990–2015) to assess these arguments. We find that richer countries and countries with higher domestic economic equality tend to be the “outsourcers”, and poorer, domestically more unequal countries the “insourcers” of environmental impacts. Discrepancies in democracy levels aggravate the outsourcing from more equal to more unequal societies. In turn, environmental clauses in PTAs have a mitigating effect on environmental impact shifting, but participation in international environmental agreements has no such effect. Our findings highlight the need for green economy policies that reduce environmental footprints of consumption not only within high-income democracies, but also make their global supply chains more sustainable. 相似文献
17.
《Climate Policy》2001,1(2):251-268
The objective of this paper is to show that the investments through the clean development mechanism (CDM) can exert a leverage effect to (i) make attractive to developing countries non-binding commitments and the adoption of national policies and measures; this comes as a guarantee of non-conditionally of the mechanism to strictly environmental concerns and (ii) create a flow of additional investments and technological transfer from Annex B countries to non-Annex B countries.The Indian power sector has been chosen as an example of a sector where institutional barriers, market imperfections, and tariff distortions create a great space for Pareto improvements and leave an important potential for no-regret measures: technological transfer, air conditioned systems, transport infrastructures and removal of subsidies on consumption.This paper presents a micro-economic formalisation on (i) the evolution of profitability of current emitting technologies used in the power sector under the adoption of national policies and measures and (ii) the impact on renewable energy technologies competitiveness of emission credits in the context of CDM. This formalisation has been developed to enable quantitative simulation. A first exercise using the Markal model (used in 77 countries) on the electric sector in India enabled us to simulate the leverage effect of emission credits on additional incomes taken as a proxy for development. 相似文献
18.
Migration and climate change are two of the most important challenges the world currently faces. They are connected as climate change may stimulate or hinder migration. One of the sectors strongly affected by climate change is agriculture, which is the source of income for most of the world's poor. Climate change may affect agricultural productivity and hence migration because of its impact on average temperatures and rainfall and because it increases the frequency and intensity of weather shocks. In this paper we use data on 108 countries from 1960 to 2010 to analyze the relationship between weather variations, changes in agricultural productivity and international migration. We find that negative shocks to agricultural productivity caused by climate fluctuations significantly increase emigration from developing countries, an especially strong impact in poor countries but less so in middle income countries. These results are robust to the definitions of the poor country sample, and to several checks and alternative explanations suggested by the literature. Importantly, our results point to a causal interpretation of the agricultural channel to explain the climate change-migration nexus. 相似文献
19.
National ‘green growth’ strategies, which aim at decoupling economic development from adverse environmental impacts, have become a new paradigm for policymakers in developing countries. Many green growth strategies are based on policy instruments designed to incentivize the domestic deployment of relatively mature clean technologies and aim at fostering the formation of a local industry to develop and produce these technologies. While the empirical evidence on the localization effect of such policies in developing countries is mixed, there is a dearth of research systemically analyzing how differences between technologies affect patterns of localization, which could explain the observed variance. We address this gap and develop a typology which distinguishes four types of technologies requiring different types of capabilities. We do so by combining insights from the literature on technology transfer and catching-up of industries with insights from the literature on patterns of innovation across the technology life- cycle. We apply this typology to the case of low-emission development strategies and four exemplary low-carbon technologies, namely small and micro hydro power, wind turbines, electric cars, and solar cells, in order to analyze capability requirements, innovation patterns, and the effect of past deployment policies on industry localization. We synthesize these case studies and derive a heuristic to anticipate the localization effects of deployment policies for different types of technologies in countries with varying income levels. We argue that the heuristic can serve as starting point for policymakers aiming at clean technology industry localization. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible technology-specific green growth strategies for developing countries with different income levels and for international institutions supporting green growth. 相似文献
20.
The role of agriculture in the context of climate change is a complex issue. On the one hand, concerns about food security highlight the need to prioritize adaptation; on the other hand, the target of the Paris Agreement (keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C) cannot be achieved without a significant decrease in agricultural emissions. Various analyses of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted under the Paris Agreement show how countries intend to prioritize the needs for adaptation and mitigation in the agricultural sector. This paper focuses on 46 countries that contribute 90% of global agricultural emissions and asks how they are addressing the agricultural sector in their climate mitigation policies. It takes into account that conditions and circumstances in countries vary significantly but might also indicate similar patterns. The analysis is based on information provided by countries in their NDCs, as well as their Biennial Reports (BRs) or Biennial Update Reports (BURs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It further includes data on national agricultural emissions. By applying a mixed methods approach, which combines qualitative content analysis and comparative cluster analysis, we find that countries vary in their progress on agriculture and climate mitigation for many different reasons. These reasons include the national perception of the problem, divergent starting points for climate policy, particularities of the agricultural sector and, correspondingly, the availability of cost-effective mitigation technologies.
Key policy insights
While for many countries the NDCs signify the beginning of their climate policy, UNFCCC biennial reports can be used to learn more about the policies that countries have already implemented.
Mitigation action in the agricultural sector is emphasized most prominently in cases where co-benefits are possible and production is not impacted negatively.
Policies and measures in the agricultural sector often do not align with the UNFCCC system of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). In addition to improving MRV-systems, it seems equally important to exchange national experiences with implemented measures and policies.
The Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture could take into account the problem of different definitions of sector boundaries and thus the importance of different mitigation measures.