Transforming local natural resource conflicts to cooperation in a changing climate: Bangladesh and Nepal lessons     

Parvin Sultana  Paul Michael Thompson  Naya Sharma Paudel  Madan Pariyar  Mujibur Rahman 《Climate Policy》2019,19(6):S94-S106

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, climate change impact discourse has highlighted potential for large scale violent conflicts. However, the role of climate stresses on local conflicts over natural resources, the role of policies and adaptation in these conflicts, and opportunities to enhance cooperation have been neglected. These gaps are addressed in this paper using evidence from participatory action research on 79 cases of local collective action over natural resources that experience conflicts in Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate trends and stresses contributed to just under half of these conflict cases. Nine factors that enable greater cooperation and transformation of conflict are identified. Participatory dialogue and negotiation processes, while not sufficient, changed understanding, attitudes and positions of actors. Many of the communities innovated physical measures to overcome natural resource constraints, underlying conflict, and/or institutional reforms. These changes were informed by improving understanding of resource limitations and indigenous knowledge. Learning networks among community organizations encouraged collective action by sharing successes and creating peer pressure. Incentives for cooperation were important. For example, when community organizations formally permitted excluded traditional resource users to access resources, those actors complied with rules and paid towards management costs. However, elites were able to use policy gaps to capture resources with changed characteristics due to climate change. In most of the cases where conflict persisted, power, policy and institutional barriers prevented community-based organizations from taking up potential adaptations and innovations. Policy frameworks recognizing collective action and supporting flexible innovation in governance and adaptation would enable wider transformation of natural resource conflicts into cooperation.

Key policy insights

• Climate stresses, policy gaps and interventions can all worsen local natural resource conflicts.

• Sectoral knowledge and technical approaches to adaptation are open to elite capture and can foster conflicts.

• Many local natural resource conflicts can be resolved but this requires an enabling environment for participatory dialogue, external facilitation, flexible responses to context, and recognition of disadvantaged stakeholder interests.

• Transforming conflict to greater cooperation mostly involves social and institutional changes, so adaptation policies should focus less on physical works and more on enabling factors such as negotiation, local institutions, knowledge, and incentives.

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Mid-Century Strategies: pathways to a low-carbon future?     

Narayan Gopinathan  Narayan S. Subramanian 《Climate Policy》2019,19(9):1088-1101

Since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, both national and subnational governments have been encouraged to submit Mid-Century Strategies, outlining how they would reach their deep decarbonization goals. However, research on the design and potential of these strategies has been very limited. To address this shortcoming, here we assess 13 such strategies – six national, seven subnational – in a comparative fashion. We find that the energy-economy-climate models underpinning these strategies are generally of high quality, though national jurisdictions generally performed better. However, most strategies are not plausible without significant changes to policy, and the industrial sector in particular presents a major limitation. The strategies are helpful in revealing this gap, but much works remains to be done for plausible mid-century decarbonization trajectories to become a reality. We also find that public input and societal participation in strategy building were a double-edged sword depending on the constellation of domestic preferences.

• Governmental Mid-Century Strategies for deep decarbonization are underpinned by high-quality energy-economy-climate models

• Governments’ proposed strategies require significant new policies, as even among jurisdictions that have an MCS, extant policies are insufficient to achieve deep decarbonization

• No jurisdiction studied has yet put forward a plausible decarbonization policy for the industrial sector.

• Public input and societal participation can be a double-edged sword: they can increase durability of the strategy but also enable opposing forces to mobilize against ambitious changes.

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Implications of Japan’s long term climate mitigation target and the relevance of uncertain nuclear policy     

Diego Silva Herran  Shinichiro Fujimori  Mikiko Kainuma 《Climate Policy》2019,19(9):1117-1131

Achieving long-term climate mitigation goals in Japan faces several challenges, starting with the uncertain nuclear power policy after the 2011 earthquake, the uncertain availability and progress of energy technologies, as well as energy security concerns in light of a high dependency on fuel imports. The combined weight of these challenges needs to be clarified in terms of the energy system and macroeconomic impacts. We applied a general equilibrium energy economic model to assess these impacts on an 80% emission reduction target by 2050 considering several alternative scenarios for nuclear power deployment, technology availability, end use energy efficiency, and the price of fossil fuels. We found that achieving the mitigation target was feasible for all scenarios, with considerable reductions in total energy consumption (39%–50%), higher shares of low-carbon sources (43%–72% compared to 15%), and larger shares of electricity in the final energy supply (51%–58% compared to 42%). The economic impacts of limiting nuclear power by 2050 (3.5% GDP loss) were small compared to the lack of carbon capture and storage (CCS) (6.4% GDP loss). Mitigation scenarios led to an improvement in energy security indicators (trade dependency and diversity of primary energy sources) even in the absence of nuclear power. Moreover, preliminary analysis indicates that expanding the range of renewable energy resources can lower the macroeconomic impacts of the long term target considerably, and thus further in depth analysis is needed on this aspect.

Key policy insights

• For Japan, an emissions reduction target of 80% by 2050 is feasible without nuclear power or CCS.

• The macroeconomic impact of such a 2050 target was largest without CCS, and smallest without nuclear power.

• Energy security indicators improved in mitigation scenarios compared to the baseline.

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Shallow landslide susceptibility assessment under future climate and land cover changes: A case study from southwest China     

《地学前缘(英文版)》2023,14(4):101542

There is no doubt that land cover and climate changes have consequences on landslide activity, but it is still an open issue to assess and quantify their impacts. Wanzhou County in southwest China was selected as the test area to study rainfall-induced shallow landslide susceptibility under the future changes of land use and land cover (LULC) and climate. We used a high-resolution meteorological precipitation dataset and frequency distribution model to analyse the present extreme and antecedent rainfall conditions related to landslide activity. The future climate change factors were obtained from a 4-member multi-model ensemble that was derived from statistically downscaled regional climate simulations. The future LULC maps were simulated by the land change modeller (LCM) integrated into IDRISI Selva software. A total of six scenarios were defined by considering the rainfall (antecedent conditions and extreme events) and LULC changes towards two time periods (mid and late XXI century). A physically-based model was used to assess landslide susceptibility under these different scenarios. The results showed that the magnitude of both antecedent effective recharge and event rainfall in the region will evidently increase in the future. Under the scenario with a return period of 100 years, the antecedent rainfall in summer will increase by up to 63% whereas the event rainfall will increase by up to 54% for the late 21st century. The most considerable changes of LULC will be the increase of forest cover and the decrease of farming land. The magnitude of this change can reach + 22.1% (forest) and –9.2% (farmland) from 2010 until 2100, respectively. We found that the negative impact of climate change on landslide susceptibility is greater than the stabilizing effect of LULC change, leading to an over decrease in stability over the study area. This is one of the first studies across Asia to assess and quantify changes of regional landslide susceptibility under scenarios driven by LULC and climate change. Our results aim to guide land use planning and climate change mitigation considerations to reduce landslide risk.  相似文献   

A simplified hindcast method for the estimation of extreme storm surge events in semi-enclosed basins     

《Applied Ocean Research》2019

Human presence, coastal erosion, and tourism activities are increasing the attention to coastal flooding risk. To perform risk assessments, long time series of observed or hindcast wave parameters and tide levels are then necessary. In some cases, only a few years of observation are available, so that observed extreme data are not always representative and reliable. A hindcast system aimed to reconstruct long time series of total tide levels may be of great help to perform robust extreme events analysis and then to protect human life, activities as well as to counteract coastal erosion by means of risk assessments. This work aims to propose a simplified method to hindcast storm surge levels time series in semi-enclosed basins with low computational costs. The method is an extension of a previous work of some of the authors and consists of a mixed approach in which the estimation of storm surge obtained by using the theory of linear dynamic system is corrected by using a statistical method. Both steps are characterized by low computational costs. Nevertheless, the results may be considered reliable enough also in view of the simplicity of the approach. The proposed method has been applied to the Manfredonia case study, a small village located in the Southern Adriatic Italian coast and often prone to coastal flooding events. The comparison of extreme events estimated on the basis of hindcast levels time series is satisfactorily similar to those estimated on the basis of observed tide series.  相似文献   

Covering Wildfires: Media Emphasis and Silence after the Carlton and Okanogan Complex Wildfires     

Alissa Cordner  Eliana Schwartz 《社会与自然资源》2019,32(5):489-507

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Climate change in news media across the globe: An automated analysis of issue attention and themes in climate change coverage in 10 countries (2006–2018)     

《Global Environmental Change》2021

Climate change poses a challenge to countries across the world, with news media being an important source of information on the issue. To understand how and how much news media cover climate change, this study compares coverage in ten countries from the Global North and the Global South between 2006 and 2018 (N = 71,674). Based on a panel analysis, we illustrate that news media attention varies across countries and is often associated with political, scientific, and (partly) societal focusing events. Based on an automated content analysis, we also find that news media do not only cover ecological changes or climate science, but that they focus predominantly on the societal dimension of climate change: They emphasize how humans are aware of, affected by, battle, or cause climate change. Overall, the study illustrates important differences between the Global North and the Global South. While countries from the Global North cover climate change more frequently, countries from the Global South focus more on its challenges and implications for society at large, i.e., the societal dimension of climate change.  相似文献   

Last interglacial vegetation and climate history from the Portuguese coast          下载免费PDF全文

T. A. MINCKLEY  J. A. HAWS  M. M. BENEDETTI  S. C. BREWER  S. L. FORMAN 《第四纪科学杂志》2015,30(1):59-69

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Towards a moral socio-environmental economy: A reconsideration of values     

《Geoforum》2015

In this intervention article I contribute to discussions of moral economy by arguing that scholars should reconsider the nature of value. Neoliberalism considers only exchange value. As a consequence neoliberal policies try to manage problems such as climate change with economic systems and instruments that are mis-calibrated to the material realities they are meant to represent. Value has spatial and temporal characteristics. Recognizing the spatial and temporal dynamics of value leads to new means of resource valuation, such as extending the time-frame of instruments and changing the nature of privatization. In conclusion, I argue for the need for new theories of use value.  相似文献   

The role of moral economy in two British Columbia fisheries: Confronting neoliberal policies     

《Marine Policy》2015

What have been the moral values and practices allowing equitable economic opportunities and a sense of fairness in North American small-scale fisheries? How have these “moral economies” been affected by neoliberal policies with their emphasis on efficiency, rational self-interest, and wealth accumulation? Focusing especially on the salmon and halibut fisheries in British Columbia, Canada, this discussion summarizes key findings on the manner in which small-scale fisheries and their moral practices tend to be marginalized and undervalued under neoliberal regimes. The paper considers the value of these moral economies for promoting social, economic, and ecological welfare as grounds for the expansion of small-scale fisheries.  相似文献