Climate change decision-making: science, policy and economics

The threat of global climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to humanity. Although climate change is potentially important, it is crucial to recognise also that (especially for the developing countries) there are a number of other priorities that affect human welfare more immediately - such as hunger and malnutrition, poverty, health, and pressing local environmental issues. In this context, predictions about climate change, its impacts, and the costs of mitigation are important for the policy-making dimension, because climate change issues reside within broader questions about sustainable development. One major objective of human development is sustainability, and the pursuit of greater precision in climate prediction can help with progress toward this goal.     

Climate policy in India: what shapes international, national and state policy?

At the international level, India is emerging as a key actor in climate negotiations, while at the national and sub-national levels, the climate policy landscape is becoming more active and more ambitious. It is essential to unravel this complex landscape if we are to understand why policy looks the way it does, and the extent to which India might contribute to a future international framework for tackling climate change as well as how international parties might cooperate with and support India's domestic efforts. Drawing on both primary and secondary data, this paper analyzes the material and ideational drivers that are most strongly influencing policy choices at different levels, from international negotiations down to individual states. We argue that at each level of decision making in India, climate policy is embedded in wider policy concerns. In the international realm, it is being woven into broader foreign policy strategy, while domestically, it is being shaped to serve national and sub-national development interests. While our analysis highlights some common drivers at all levels, it also finds that their influences over policy are not uniform across the different arenas, and in some cases, they work in different ways at different levels of policy. We also indicate what this may mean for the likely acceptability within India of various climate policies being pushed at the international level.     

Science–policy processes for transboundary water governance

In this policy perspective, we outline several conditions to support effective science–policy interaction, with a particular emphasis on improving water governance in transboundary basins. Key conditions include (1) recognizing that science is a crucial but bounded input into water resource decision-making processes; (2) establishing conditions for collaboration and shared commitment among actors; (3) understanding that social or group-learning processes linked to science–policy interaction are enhanced through greater collaboration; (4) accepting that the collaborative production of knowledge about hydrological issues and associated socioeconomic change and institutional responses is essential to build legitimate decision-making processes; and (5) engaging boundary organizations and informal networks of scientists, policy makers, and civil society. We elaborate on these conditions with a diverse set of international examples drawn from a synthesis of our collective experiences in assessing the opportunities and constraints (including the role of power relations) related to governance for water in transboundary settings.     

Climate change and the adaptability of agriculture: a review

The assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture has emerged as a recognizable field of research over the past 15 years or so. In a relatively short period, this area of work has undergone a number of important conceptual and methodological developments. Among many questions that have been debated are the adaptability of agriculture to climate change and the importance of land management adjustments in reducing the adverse effects of climate change. In turn, this latter focus has spawned a discussion regarding the nature of adaptation and the ability of agriculture to respond to sudden and rapid climatic changes. In this paper we present an overview of this debate. It is argued that the first generation of climate change impact studies generally ignored the possibility that agriculturalists may adjust their farming practices in order to cope with climate change or to take advantage of new production opportunities. This conceptual oversight has been largely eliminated over the past five years or so. However, questions remain surrounding the likelihood that various adaptive strategies will actually be deployed in particular places. In this paper, we stress the importance of studying adaptation in the context of decision-making at the individual farm level and beyond.     

Climate Change and the Adaptability of Agriculture: A Review

ABSTRACT

The assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture has emerged as a recognizable field of research over the past 15 years or so. In a relatively short period, this area of work has undergone a number of important conceptual and methodological developments. Among many questions that have been debated are the adaptability of agriculture to climate change and the importance of land management adjustments in reducing the adverse effects of climate change. In turn, this latter focus has spawned a discussion regarding the nature of adaptation and the ability of agriculture to respond to sudden and rapid climatic changes. In this paper we present an overview of this debate.

It is argued that the first generation of climate change impact studies generally ignored the possibility that agriculturalists may adjust their farming practices in order to cope with climate change or to take advantage of new production opportunities. This conceptual oversight has been largely eliminated over the past five years or so. However, questions remain surrounding the likelihood that various adaptive strategies will actually be deployed in particular places. In this paper, we stress the importance of studying adaptation in the context of decision-making at the individual farm level and beyond.     

Global change: state of the science

Only recently, within a few decades, have we realized that humanity significantly influences the global environment. In the early 1980s, atmospheric measurements confirmed basic concepts developed a decade earlier. These basic concepts showed that human activities were affecting the ozone layer. Later measurements and theoretical analyses have clearly connected observed changes in ozone to human-related increases of chlorine and bromine in the stratosphere. As a result of prompt international policy agreements, the combined abundances of ozone-depleting compounds peaked in 1994 and ozone is already beginning a slow path to recovery. A much more difficult problem confronting humanity is the impact of increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on global climate. The processes that connect greenhouse gas emissions to climate are very complex. This complexity has limited our ability to make a definitive projection of future climate change. Nevertheless, the range of projected climate change shows that global warming has the potential to severely impact human welfare and our planet as a whole. This paper evaluates the state of the scientific understanding of the global change issues, their potential impacts, and the relationships of scientific understanding to policy considerations.     

Questioning complacency: climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in Norway

Most European assessments of climate change impacts have been carried out on sectors and ecosystems, providing a narrow understanding of what climate change really means for society. Furthermore, the main focus has been on technological adaptations, with less attention paid to the process of climate change adaptation. In this article, we present and analyze findings from recent studies on climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in Norway, with the aim of identifying the wider social impacts of climate change. Three main lessons can be drawn. First, the potential thresholds and indirect effects may be more important than the direct, sectoral effects. Second, highly sensitive sectors, regions, and communities combine with differential social vulnerability to create both winners and losers. Third, high national levels of adaptive capacity mask the barriers and constraints to adaptation, particularly among those who are most vulnerable to climate change. Based on these results, we question complacency in Norway and other European countries regarding climate change impacts and adaptation. We argue that greater attention needs to be placed on the social context of climate change impacts and on the processes shaping vulnerability and adaptation.     

Between uncertainty and hope: Young leaders as agents of change in sustainable small-scale fisheries

The path to sustainable small-scale fisheries (SSF) is based on multiple learning processes that must transcend generational changes. To understand young leaders from communities with sustainable SSF management practices in Mexico, we used in-depth interviews to identify their shared motivations and perceptions for accepting their fishing heritage. These possible future decision-makers act as agents of change due to their organizational and technological abilities. However, young people are currently at a crossroads. Many inherited a passion for the sea and want to improve and diversify the fishing sector, yet young leaders do not want to accept a legacy of complicated socioenvironmental conditions that can limit their futures. These future leaders are especially concerned by the uncertainty caused by climate change. If fishing and generational change are not valued in planning processes, the continuity of fisheries, the success of conservation actions, and the lifestyles of young fishers will remain uncertain.Graphical abstract Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-021-01639-2.     

The forest frontier in the Global South: Climate change policies and the promise of development and equity

Halting forest loss and achieving sustainable development in an equitable manner require state, non-state actors, and entire societies in the Global North and South to tackle deeply established patterns of inequality and power relations embedded in forest frontiers. Forest and climate governance in the Global South can provide an avenue for the transformational change needed—yet, does it? We analyse the politics and power in four cases of mitigation, adaptation, and development arenas. We use a political economy lens to explore the transformations taking place when climate policy meets specific forest frontiers in the Global South, where international, national and local institutions, interests, ideas, and information are at play. We argue that lasting and equitable outcomes will require a strong discursive shift within dominant institutions and among policy actors to redress policies that place responsibilities and burdens on local people in the Global South, while benefits from deforestation and maladaptation are taken elsewhere. What is missing is a shared transformational objective and priority to keep forests standing among all those involved from afar in the major forest frontiers in the tropics.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-021-01602-1.     

High Arctic ecosystem states: Conceptual models of vegetation change to guide long-term monitoring and research

Vegetation change has consequences for terrestrial ecosystem structure and functioning and may involve climate feedbacks. Hence, when monitoring ecosystem states and changes thereof, the vegetation is often a primary monitoring target. Here, we summarize current understanding of vegetation change in the High Arctic—the World’s most rapidly warming region—in the context of ecosystem monitoring. To foster development of deployable monitoring strategies, we categorize different kinds of drivers (disturbances or stresses) of vegetation change either as pulse (i.e. drivers that occur as sudden and short events, though their effects may be long lasting) or press (i.e. drivers where change in conditions remains in place for a prolonged period, or slowly increases in pressure). To account for the great heterogeneity in vegetation responses to climate change and other drivers, we stress the need for increased use of ecosystem-specific conceptual models to guide monitoring and ecological studies in the Arctic. We discuss a conceptual model with three hypothesized alternative vegetation states characterized by mosses, herbaceous plants, and bare ground patches, respectively. We use moss-graminoid tundra of Svalbard as a case study to discuss the documented and potential impacts of different drivers on the possible transitions between those states. Our current understanding points to likely additive effects of herbivores and a warming climate, driving this ecosystem from a moss-dominated state with cool soils, shallow active layer and slow nutrient cycling to an ecosystem with warmer soil, deeper permafrost thaw, and faster nutrient cycling. Herbaceous-dominated vegetation and (patchy) bare ground would present two states in response to those drivers. Conceptual models are an operational tool to focus monitoring efforts towards management needs and identify the most pressing scientific questions. We promote greater use of conceptual models in conjunction with a state-and-transition framework in monitoring to ensure fit for purpose approaches. Defined expectations of the focal systems’ responses to different drivers also facilitate linking local and regional monitoring efforts to international initiatives, such as the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program.     

What determines the current presence or absence of permafrost in the Torneträsk region, a sub-arctic landscape in northern Sweden?

In a warming climate, permafrost is likely to be significantly reduced and eventually disappear from the sub-Arctic region. This will affect people at a range of scales, from locally by slumping of buildings and roads, to globally as melting of permafrost will most likely increase the emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, which will further enhance global warming. In order to predict future changes in permafrost, it is crucial to understand what determines the presence or absence of permafrost under current climate conditions, to assess where permafrost is particularly vulnerable to climate change, and to identify where changes are already occurring. The Tornetr?sk region of northern sub-Arctic Sweden is one area where changes in permafrost have been recorded and where permafrost could be particularly vulnerable to any future climate changes. This paper therefore reviews the various physical, biological, and anthropogenic parameters that determine the presence or absence of permafrost in the Tornetr?sk region under current climate conditions, so that we can gain an understanding of its current vulnerability and potential future responses to climate change. A patchy permafrost distribution as found in the Tornetr?sk region is not random, but a consequence of site-specific factors that control the microclimate and hence the surface and subsurface temperature. It is also a product of past as well as current processes. In sub-Arctic areas such as northern Sweden, it is mainly the physical parameters, e.g., topography, soil type, and climate (in particular snow depth), that determine permafrost distribution. Even though humans have been present in the study area for centuries, their impacts on permafrost distribution can more or less be neglected at the catchment level. Because ongoing climate warming is projected to continue and lead to an increased snow cover, the permafrost in the region will most likely disappear within decades, at least at lower elevations.     

Adapting air quality management for a changing climate: Survey of local districts in California

Air quality can be affected by weather and thus is sensitive to a changing climate. Wildfire (influenced by weather), consecutive high temperature summer days, and other extreme events are projected to become more severe and frequent with climate change. These may create challenging conditions for managing air quality despite policy targets to reduce precursor and pollutant emissions. Although extreme events are becoming more intense and interest in climate adaptation is increasing among public health practitioners, little attention in scholarly literature and policy covers climate adaptation for air quality governance. Understanding the management and managers’ perspectives at the local level provides insight about the needs for climate adaptation, including their adaptation status, perspectives, responsibilities, and roles. This study explores local manager perspectives and experiences of managing air quality within a changing climate as one puzzle piece to understand the gap in climate adaptation within the air quality sector. A broader goal is to contribute to the discussion of developing a multi-jurisdictional vision for reducing the impacts of air quality in a changing climate. In 2016 local air quality district managers in California were invited to participate in an online survey of 39 questions focused on extreme event impacts on air quality. The questionnaire focused on present air quality threats and extreme event challenges, adaptation status and strategies, adaptive capacities, perceived barriers to adaptation, and jurisdictional responsibilities and roles. Over 85 percent of the 35 local air districts in California participated in the survey, which represents 80 percent of the state’s population. High awareness and knowledge of climate change among local managers indicates they are ready to adopt and take action on policies that would support climate adaptation, but barriers reported suggests they may need policies and adequate funding to take action and make necessary changes.

Implications: Downscaled global climate models project an increasing severity and frequency of extreme events. In the southwestern United States, these include wildfire, heat events, and dry periods, among others, all of which can place an extra burden on air quality managers and emitters to achieve air quality standards even as they reduce emissions. Despite climate change presenting increasing challenges to meet air quality standards, in the southwestern United States, policy and action to mitigate these impacts have been surprisingly absent. California presents a valuable case study on the topic because of its historic leadership in air quality management for the United States and also because of its initiatives in combating climate change. Yet still we found that adaptation has not been incorporated into air quality management thus far, but local managers seem sufficiently knowledgeable and willing.     

Path Dependencies and Path Change in Complex Fields of Action: Climate Adaptation Policies in Germany in the Realm of Flood Risk Management

The spatial and temporal repercussions of climate change are of an extremely complex nature. Coping with climate change is, first and foremost, a challenge to political decision making and, considering the long-term effects of the climate system, to planning. However, there have never been more doubts that the political-administrative system is able to meet these requirements. Although much evidence has been put forward in favor of such skepticism, sometimes, it is dangerous to overstate the existing limits. Drawing on two case studies in the area of flood risk management in Germany, the article illustrates how and why significant path change came about. In both cases, the state proved to still being a pivotal actor, due to a number of functions that cannot be assumed by other actors. However, other actor groups—such as actors from science, the media, NGOs, and citizen groups—play a significant role as well by providing relevant expertise and influencing the public discourse, thus mobilizing significant political pressure.     

Operationalizing ecosystem service bundles for strategic sustainability planning: A participatory approach

The ecosystem service concept is recognized as a useful tool to support sustainability in decision-making. In this study, we collaborated with actors in the Helge å catchment, southern Sweden, in an iterative participatory ecosystem service assessment. Through workshops and interviews, we jointly decided which ecosystem services to assess and indicators to use in order to achieve a sense of ownership and a higher legitimacy of the assessment. Subsequently, we explored the landscape-level interactions between the 15 assessed services, and found that the area can be described using three distinct ecosystem service bundles. The iterative, participatory process strengthened our analysis and created a shared understanding and overview of the multifunctional landscape around Helge å among participants. Importantly, this allowed for the generated knowledge to impact local strategic sustainability planning. With this study, we illustrate how similar processes can support local decision-making for a more sustainable future.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01378-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

The sustainable management and protection of forests: analysis of the current position globally

The loss of forest area globally due to change of land use, the importance of forests in the conservation of biodiversity and in carbon and other biogeochemical cycles, together with the threat to forests from pollution and from the impacts of climate change, place forestry policy and practice at the center of global environmental and sustainability strategy. Forests provide important economic, environmental, social, and cultural benefits, so that in forestry, as in other areas of environmental policy and management, there are tensions between economic development and environmental protection. In this article we review the current information on global forest cover and condition, examine the international processes that relate to forest protection and to sustainable forest management, and look at the main forest certification schemes. We consider the link between the international processes and certification schemes and also their combined effectiveness. We conclude that in some regions of the world neither mechanism is achieving forest protection, while in others local or regional implementation is occurring and is having a significant impact. Choice of certification scheme and implementation of management standards are often influenced by a consideration of the associated costs, and there are some major issues over the monitoring of agreed actions and of the criteria and indicators of sustainability. There are currently a number of initiatives seeking to improve the operation of the international forestry framework (e.g., The Montreal Process, the Ministerial Convention of the Protection of Forests in Europe and European Union actions in Europe, the African Timber Organisation and International Tropical Timber Organisation initiative for African tropical forest, and the development of a worldwide voluntary agreement on forestry in the United Nations Forum on Forests). We suggest that there is a need to improve the connections between scientific understanding, policy development, and forestry practice, and also the cooperation between the various international initiatives and processes, so that the international framework is more effective and its influence is extended geographically.     

Atmospheric composition change – global and regional air quality

Air quality transcends all scales with in the atmosphere from the local to the global with handovers and feedbacks at each scale interaction. Air quality has manifold effects on health, ecosystems, heritage and climate. In this review the state of scientific understanding in relation to global and regional air quality is outlined. The review discusses air quality, in terms of emissions, processing and transport of trace gases and aerosols. New insights into the characterization of both natural and anthropogenic emissions are reviewed looking at both natural (e.g. dust and lightning) as well as plant emissions. Trends in anthropogenic emissions both by region and globally are discussed as well as biomass burning emissions. In terms of chemical processing the major air quality elements of ozone, non-methane hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides and aerosols are covered. A number of topics are presented as a way of integrating the process view into the atmospheric context; these include the atmospheric oxidation efficiency, halogen and HO_x chemistry, nighttime chemistry, tropical chemistry, heat waves, megacities, biomass burning and the regional hot spot of the Mediterranean. New findings with respect to the transport of pollutants across the scales are discussed, in particular the move to quantify the impact of long-range transport on regional air quality. Gaps and research questions that remain intractable are identified. The review concludes with a focus of research and policy questions for the coming decade. In particular, the policy challenges for concerted air quality and climate change policy (co-benefit) are discussed.     

Enhancing and expanding intersectional research for climate change adaptation in agrarian settings

Most current approaches focused on vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation to climate change frame gender and its influence in a manner out-of-step with contemporary academic and international development research. The tendency to rely on analyses of the sex-disaggregated gender categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’ as sole or principal divisions explaining the abilities of different people within a group to adapt to climate change, illustrates this problem. This framing of gender persists in spite of established bodies of knowledge that show how roles and responsibilities that influence a person´s ability to deal with climate-induced and other stressors emerge at the intersection of diverse identity categories, including but not limited to gender, age, seniority, ethnicity, marital status, and livelihoods. Here, we provide a review of relevant literature on this topic and argue that approaching vulnerability to climate change through intersectional understandings of identity can help improve adaptation programming, project design, implementation, and outcomes.     

Global climate change: The quantifiable sustainability challenge

Population growth and the pressures spawned by increasing demands for energy and resource-intensive goods, foods, and services are driving unsustainable growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Recent GHG emission trends are consistent with worst-case scenarios of the previous decade. Dramatic and near-term emission reductions likely will be needed to ameliorate the potential deleterious impacts of climate change. To achieve such reductions, fundamental changes are required in the way that energy is generated and used. New technologies must be developed and deployed at a rapid rate. Advances in carbon capture and storage, renewable, nuclear, and transportation technologies are particularly important; however, global research and development efforts related to these technologies currently appear to fall short relative to needs. Even with a proactive and international mitigation effort, humanity will need to adapt to climate change, but the adaptation needs and damages will be far greater if mitigation activities are not pursued in earnest. In this review, research is highlighted that indicates increasing global and regional temperatures and ties climate changes to increasing GHG emissions. GHG mitigation targets necessary for limiting future global temperature increases are discussed, including how factors such as population growth and the growing energy intensity of the developing world will make these reduction targets more challenging. Potential technological pathways for meeting emission reduction targets are examined, barriers are discussed, and global and U.S. modeling results are presented that suggest that the necessary pathways will require radically transformed electric and mobile sectors. While geoengineering options have been proposed to allow more time for serious emission reductions, these measures are at the conceptual stage with many unanswered cost, environmental, and political issues.

Implications:?This paper lays out the case that mitigating the potential for catastrophic climate change will be a monumental challenge, requiring the global community to transform its energy system in an aggressive, coordinated, and timely manner. If this challenge is to be met, new technologies will have to be developed and deployed at a rapid rate. Advances in carbon capture and storage, renewable, nuclear, and transportation technologies are particularly important. Even with an aggressive international mitigation effort, humanity will still need to adapt to significant climate change.     

Consequence of altered nitrogen cycles in the coupled human and ecological system under changing climate: The need for long-term and site-based research

Anthropogenically derived nitrogen (N) has a central role in global environmental changes, including climate change, biodiversity loss, air pollution, greenhouse gas emission, water pollution, as well as food production and human health. Current understanding of the biogeochemical processes that govern the N cycle in coupled human–ecological systems around the globe is drawn largely from the long-term ecological monitoring and experimental studies. Here, we review spatial and temporal patterns and trends in reactive N emissions, and the interactions between N and other important elements that dictate their delivery from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems, and the impacts of N on biodiversity and human society. Integrated international and long-term collaborative studies covering research gaps will reduce uncertainties and promote further understanding of the nitrogen cycle in various ecosystems.