Climate change policy and water resources in the EU and Spain. A closer look into the Water Framework Directive

Climate change effects are becoming evident worldwide, with serious regional and local impacts. The European Union (EU) has launched and developed initiatives and policies that scratch the surface of water resources impacts. This article presents an introduction of the existing environmental policy and more concisely in the areas of climate change and the interactions with water resources. It also addresses main management tools, and plans linked to policies, recent updates on the Science–Policy Interface, highlighting major results from research and development projects. Establishing appropriate policies to tackle climate change impacts on water is essential given the cross-sectorial and flowing nature and the importance of water in all environmental, social and economic sectors. There are still some pending reviews and updates in the current EU policy and its implementation, as well as at the national level in Spain. This article identifies existing gaps, and provides recommendations on how and where reforms could take place and be applied by decision makers in the water policy sector.     

Projected impacts to the production of outdoor recreation opportunities across US state park systems due to the adoption of a domestic climate change mitigation policy

Numerous empirical and simulation-based studies have documented or estimated variable impacts to the economic growth of nation states due to the adoption of domestic climate change mitigation policies. However, few studies have been able to empirically link projected changes in economic growth to the provision of public goods and services. In this research, we couple projected changes in economic growth to US states brought about by the adoption of a domestic climate change mitigation policy with a longitudinal panel dataset detailing the production of outdoor recreation opportunities on lands managed in the public interest. Joining empirical data and simulation-based estimates allow us to better understand how the adoption of a domestic climate change mitigation policy would affect the provision of public goods in the future. We first employ a technical efficiency model and metrics to provide decision makers with evidence of specific areas where operational efficiencies within the nation's state park systems can be improved. We then augment the empirical analysis with simulation-based changes in gross state product (GSP) to estimate changes to the states’ ability to provide outdoor recreation opportunities from 2014 to 2020; the results reveal substantial variability across states. Finally, we explore two potential solutions (increasing GSP or increasing technical efficiency) for addressing the negative impacts on the states’ park systems operating budgets brought about by the adoption of a domestic climate change mitigation policy; the analyses suggest increasing technical efficiency would be the most viable solution if/when the US adopts a greenhouse gas reduction policy.     

A policy review of synergies and trade-offs in South African climate change mitigation and air pollution control strategies

Climate change mitigation and air quality management are mostly addressed separately in South African legal acts and policies. This approach is not always coherent, especially in the context of other serious issues South Africa is facing, such as poverty alleviation. Policies implemented to mitigate climate change might increase negative health affects due to unanticipated outcomes (e.g. increased local air pollution), and these indirect consequences must therefore be taken into account when devising mitigation strategies. However, greenhouse gas mitigation policies can also have co-benefits and positive impacts on local air pollution. An evidence-based approach that takes into account greenhouse gas emissions, ambient air pollutants, economic factors (affordability, cost optimisation), social factors (poverty alleviations, public health benefits), and political acceptability is needed tackle these challenges. A proposal is made that use of an integrated climate/air pollution techno-economic optimising model, such as the Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Synergies (GAINS) model, may provide a rational decision support tool to guide policy makers into effective strategies for combined Climate Change and Air Quality mitigation measures.     

Climate change and human health—what influences the adoption of adaptation programming in the United States public health system?

With growing evidence on how climate change impacts human health, public health agencies should develop adaptation programs focused on the impacts predicted to affect their jurisdictions. However, recent research indicates that public health agencies in the United States have done little to prepare the public for predicted climate change impacts, largely due in response to a lack of resources and priority. This study surveyed Environmental Health (EH) Directors across the United States to determine the extent to which individual level attitudes and beliefs influence the adoption of climate change adaptation programming in a department. The results indicate that an EH Director’s perception of the health risk posed by climate change explained 27% of the variance in the number of climate change impacts being addressed. Furthermore, the study found that environmental attitude and political views made strong, unique contributions in explaining the variance in risk perception. The results provide evidence that individual-level attitudes and beliefs, as well as organizational-level barriers influence the adoption of climate change adaptation programs in public health agencies. As a result, increasing EH Directors’ perception of risk by highlighting the likelihood and severity of localized impacts may increase the adoption of adaptation programming despite existing organizational barriers (e.g., lack of resources). Given the fact that risk perception has been shown to influence behavior across cultures, these findings are also useful for understanding the influence of individual decision makers on public health programming around the world.     

Review of drivers and barriers for nuclear power in the UK

There has been resurgence in interest in new nuclear power stations over the last couple of years. The UK Government has taken steps to encourage the private sector to build new stations in the UK, a change in its previous neutral stance toward nuclear power. This paper examines the change in government policy asking what drivers have led to this decision and what barriers were preventing new nuclear power in the past and what barriers are still faced by both government and industry. Three main drivers are discussed: security of energy supply; diminishing energy generation capacity; and climate change. The paper also examines other key factors that play a part in facilitating a shift in government policy, namely economics, public perception and waste management policy. Barriers are identified through examination of public perception, and policy. The changes to the planning system are also discussed. The paper concludes by comparing drivers and barriers for other technologies and contrasting the UK experience with that of other countries.     

Indicators for assessing Indonesia’s Javan rhino National Park vulnerability to climate change

Climate change is already affecting ecosystems in protected forest areas. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted its impacts will accelerate rapidly over the coming decades. The components of vulnerability have been defined as exposure, sensitivity and the capacity to adapt to climate change. Vulnerability, however, is not an easy concept for policy makers, local communities and other affected stakeholders to understand. This paper illustrates the use of participatory processes in understanding climate change adaptation and defines indicators for assessing the vulnerability of the Javan rhino's national park habitat in Indonesia. The processes generated local vulnerability indicators, organised hierarchically as principles, criteria and indicators (PCIs). While vulnerability principles and criteria were pre-determined and globally defined, the indicators were designed to address the local context. We found the PCIs to be practical tools for communicating vulnerability and for multi-stakeholder dialogues on vulnerability to climate change.     

Adaptation policies to increase terrestrial ecosystem resilience: potential utility of a multicriteria approach

Climate change is rapidly undermining terrestrial ecosystem resilience and capacity to continue providing their services to the benefit of humanity and nature. Because of the importance of terrestrial ecosystems to human well-being and supporting services, decision makers throughout the world are busy creating policy responses that secure multiple development and conservation objectives— including that of supporting terrestrial ecosystem resilience in the context of climate change. This article aims to advance analyses on climate policy evaluation and planning in the area of terrestrial ecosystem resilience by discussing adaptation policy options within the ecology-economy-social nexus. The paper evaluates these decisions in the realm of terrestrial ecosystem resilience and evaluates the utility of a set of criteria, indicators, and assessment methods, proposed by a new conceptual multi-criteria framework for pro-development climate policy and planning developed by the United Nations Environment Programme. Potential applications of a multicriteria approach to climate policy vis-à-vis terrestrial ecosystems are then explored through two hypothetical case study examples. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the utility of the multi-criteria approach in the context of other climate policy evaluation approaches, considers lessons learned as a result efforts to evaluate climate policy in the realm of terrestrial ecosystems, and reiterates the role of ecosystem resilience in creating sound policies and actions that support the integration of climate change and development goals.     

Defining response capacity to enhance climate change policy

Climate change adaptation and mitigation decisions made by governments are usually taken in different policy domains. At the individual level however, adaptation and mitigation activities are undertaken together as part of the management of risk and resources. We propose that a useful starting point to develop a national climate policy is to understand what societal response might mean in practice. First we frame the set of responses at the national policy level as a trade off between investment in the development and diffusion of new technology, and investment in encouraging and enabling society to change its behaviour and or adopt the new technology. We argue that these are the pertinent trade-offs, rather than those usually posited between climate change mitigation and adaptation. The preference for a policy response that focuses more on technological innovation rather than one that focuses on changing social behaviour will be influenced by the capacity of different societies to change their greenhouse gas emissions; by perceived vulnerability to climate impacts; and by capacity to modify social behaviour and physical environment. Starting with this complete vision of response options should enable policy makers to re-evaluate the risk environment and the set of response options available to them. From here, policy makers should consider who is responsible for making climate response decisions and when actions should be taken. Institutional arrangements dictate social and political acceptability of different policies, they structure worldviews, and they determine the provision of resources for investment in technological innovation and social change. The importance of focussing on the timing of the response is emphasised to maximise the potential for adjustments through social learning and institutional change at different policy scales. We argue that the ability to respond to climate change is both enabled and constrained by social and technological conditions. The ability of society to respond to climate change and the need for technological change for both decarbonisation and for dealing with surprise in general, are central to concepts of sustainable development.     

Global economic implications of alternative climate policy strategies

This paper investigates the world economic implications of climate change policy strategies, and particularly evaluates the impacts of an implementation of clean development mechanisms (CDM), joint implementation (JI) and emissions trading with a world integrated assessment model. Of special interest in this context are welfare spill over and competitiveness effects resulting from diverse climate policy strategies. This study elaborates and compares multi-gas policy strategies and explores the impacts of sink inclusion. We furthermore examine the economic impacts on all world regions of the USA’s non-cooperative, free rider position resulting from its recent isolated climate policy strategy decision.It turns out that CDM and JI show evidence of improvement in the economic development in host countries and increase the share of new applied technologies. The decomposition of welfare effects demonstrates that the competitiveness effect (including the spill over effects from trade) have the greatest importance because of the intense trade relations between countries. Climatic effects will have a significant impact within the next 50 years, will cause considerable welfare losses to world regions and will intensify if nations highly responsible for pollution like the USA do not reduce their emissions.     

Negotiating future climates for public policy: a critical assessment of the development of climate scenarios for the UK

Climate scenarios serve a number of functions in helping society manage climate change—pedagogic, motivational or practical (for example, in engineering design, spatial planning and policy development). A variety of methodologies for scenario construction have been experimented with, all of them to a greater or lesser extent depending on the use of climate models. Yet the development of climate scenarios involves much more than climate modelling. The process of scenario development is one of negotiation between relevant stakeholders—funding agencies, policy communities, scientists, social actors and decision-makers in a variety of sectors. This process of negotiation is illustrated through an analysis of four generations of UK climate scenarios—published in 1991, 1996, 1998 and 2002. Using ideas from science and technology studies and the sociology of scientific knowledge to guide our analysis, we reveal complex relationships between the interests of UK science, policy and society. Negotiating climate scenarios involves compromise between the needs of policy, science and decision-maker in relation to, for example, the selection of the development pathway(s) and emissions scenario(s), the choice of climate model(s), the assessment and communication of uncertainty and the presentational devices used. These insights have a significant bearing on the way in which climate scenarios should be viewed and used in public discourse, strategic planning and policy development.     

气候变化对中国黄淮海农业区小麦生产影响模拟研究

研究首先利用1980-2000年黄淮海农业区10个站点的农业数据对CER ES-W heat动态机理作物模型进行详细的验证,然后将CERESW-heat模型与两个全球气候模式(G ISS和H adley)结合,同时考虑到CO2对小麦的直接施肥作用,模拟了黄淮海农业区10个站点在IPCC SR ES A 2和B2两个气候情景下雨养和灌溉小麦产量和水分利用的变化趋势。得到如下结论:在不考虑CO2直接肥效的情况下,黄淮海农业区雨养小麦全面减产,空间分布特点是西部减产幅度大,东部减产幅度小;在充分灌溉的情况下,灌溉小麦产量维持了现有水平,但灌溉水量增加。因此,在未来该地区水资源短缺的情况下,如何合理利用有限的水资源将成为黄淮海农业区主要面临的问题。在考虑CO2直接肥效的情况下,雨养和灌溉小麦产量都全面增产,雨养小麦的增产幅度明显偏高,灌溉小麦约增产10%～30%,但CO 2的肥效能否充分实现还需要进一步研究证明。     

Gaps in provincial decision-maker’s perception and knowledge of climate change adaptation in China

The perspectives and knowledge of decision makers, especially those at the provincial level, have great impact on the progress of climate change adaptation in China. Therefore, identifying knowledge gaps and enhancing climate adaptation awareness of decision makers at that level is very important. Based on this aim, we conducted a survey of climate change adaptation awareness among 85 administrative and management personnel from governmental departments responsible for climate change adaptation planning in five provinces. Study findings revealed that over half of respondents have knowledge of climate change adaptation measures, but the extent of understanding varied across different adaptation aspects and regions. Among the different aspects, understanding of measures related to human health protection was the lowest. A large majority of respondents indicated an eagerness to obtain knowledge and information about climate change adaptation, but the main barrier is a lack of training and learning material. When making adaptation plans or policies, the greatest obstacle expressed was a funding shortage. Information generated from this study can provide direction and guidance for training and educating provincial decision makers in order to improve the levels of adaptation planning and policy making.     

On integration of policies for climate and global change

Currently envisaged mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions will be insufficient to appreciably limit climate change and its impacts. Adaptation holds the promise of ameliorating the impacts on a small subset of systems being affected. There is no question that both will be needed. However, climate change is only part of a broader multi-stress setting of global through to local changes. Privileging climate related policies over other concerns leads to tragic outcomes. Climate policies need to be designed for and integrated into this broader and challenging context. This paper focuses on placing climate change within the broader context of global change and the importance of aligning climate policy objectives with the myriad other policies that still need to be implemented if our primary goal is improving human welfare rather than limiting our focus to climate change and its impacts.     

Climate change scenarios to facilitate stakeholder engagement in agricultural adaptation

To prepare agricultural systems for climate change, scientists need to be able to effectively engage with land managers and policy makers to explore potential solutions. An ongoing challenge in engagement is to distil the complexity of climate-change-management-change interactions in agro-ecological systems to identify responses that are most important for adaptation planning. This paper presents an approach for selecting climate change scenarios to provide a focal point for engaging with stakeholders to evaluate adaptation options and communicate assessment outcomes. We illustrate how scenarios selected with the approach can be used by evaluating climate change impacts and an adaptation option for livestock industries in the north-east Australian rangelands. Climate change impacts on forage production, animal liveweight gain and soil loss are found to track projected climate changes in four pasture communities; increasing by up to 50% and declining by up to 110% in response to doubled atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO₂), 4°C warming, and +20% to ?40% changes in mean annual rainfall. The effectiveness of reducing grazing pressure as an adaptation option shows a similar response; resulting in higher forage production (up to 40%), animal liveweight gains (up to 59%) and gross margins (up to 40%), and reduced soil erosion (down by 91%) per hectare relative to the baseline management. The results show that a few key scenarios may be selected to represent the range of global climate model (GCM) projections for use in assessing and communicating impacts and adaptation; simplifying the assessments and allowing limits to the effectiveness of adaptation options to be explored. The approach provides a framework for capturing and communicating trends in climate change impacts and the utility of options, which are required for successful engagement of stakeholders in finding viable adaption responses.     

Nuclear power and post-2012 energy and climate change policies

At present there is no binding agreement (at a global level) to address the risk of anthropogenic climate change after 2012. Disagreements abound with respect to a post-2012 climate change agreement, on issues such as economic development, policy criteria, environmental effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, equity, dynamic flexibility, complementarity, enforceability and so on. One such disagreement is whether or not nuclear power should play a role in a post-2012 climate change agreement. This qualitative analysis explores the conditions under which nuclear power could contribute to addressing climate change in post-2012 architectures. It reveals that – given the right framework conditions – some architectures, like ‘cap and trade’ regimes or ‘policies and measures’ can improve the competitiveness of nuclear power plants, while others are unlikely to provide incentives for nuclear energy development in the short to medium term, such as adaptation and technology cooperation. Overall, the study concludes that post-2012 climate change policy should aim at providing policy flexibility without compromising technology flexibility. For example, the provision of long-term commitment periods has the potential to enable better investments in existing low-carbon technologies but stifle the policy flexibility that political decision makers are often keen to retain so that they can respond more quickly to new scientific evidence or advances in clean technology development.     

Socio-economic impacts of climate change on rural United States

Directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, climate change will affect all sectors and regions of the United States. The impacts, however, will not be homogenous across regions, sectors, population groups or time. The literature specifically related to how climate change will affect rural communities, their resilience, and adaptive capacity in the United States (U.S.) is scarce. This article bridges this knowledge gap through an extensive review of the current state of knowledge to make inferences about the rural communities vulnerability to climate change based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios. Our analysis shows that rural communities tend to be more vulnerable than their urban counterparts due to factors such as demography, occupations, earnings, literacy, poverty incidence, and dependency on government funds. Climate change impacts on rural communities differs across regions and economic sectors; some will likely benefit while others lose. Rural communities engaged in agricultural and forest related activities in the Northeast might benefit, while those in the Southwest and Southeast could face additional water stress and increased energy cost respectively. Developing adaptation and mitigation policy options geared towards reducing climatic vulnerability of rural communities is warranted. A set of regional and local studies is needed to delineate climate change impacts across rural and urban communities, and to develop appropriate policies to mitigate these impacts. Integrating research across disciplines, strengthening research-policy linkages, integrating ecosystem services while undertaking resource valuation, and expanding alternative energy sources, might also enhance coping capacity of rural communities in face of future climate change.     

Complementarity between mitigation and adaptation: the water sector

The water cycle, a fundamental component of climate, is likely to be altered in important ways by climate change. Climate change will most likely worsen the already existing water related problems. Then the question is how should policy makers respond to this dilemma. Climate change mitigation, through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction and sequestration is not a sufficient response. Adaptation will also need to feature as a response strategy. Mitigation and adaptation need to be viewed as complementary responses to climate change. Complementarity between adaptation and mitigation in the water sector will be addressed in this paper. The paper will also outline the main impacts of climate change on water resources and identify those areas that are most dependent and vulnerable to hydrological systems (e.g., hydroelectric systems, irrigation, agriculture) and any changes thereof resulting from climate change. It will aim to assess the impact of water demand and water use, with a view to identifying the main relationships between mitigation and adaptation in the water sector and the means through which individual mitigation and adaptation actions can potentially interact with each other for the benefit of the water sector as a whole. It will also explore the implications of climate change on the management of water resources. Adaptation and mitigation options would be considered in the context of their socio-economic and environmental impacts and their contribution to sustainable development. A brief evaluation of how this information can be directly used for planning purpose will also be presented.

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Adapting to climate change: reducing water-related risks in Europe – EU policy and research considerations

Climate change impacts on the hydrological cycle, e.g. leading to changes of precipitation patterns, have been observed over several decades. Higher water temperatures and changes in extremes hydrometeorological events (including floods and droughts) are likely to exacerbate different types of pressures on water resources with possible negative impacts on ecosystems and human health. In addition, sea-level rise is expected to extend areas of salinisation of groundwater and estuaries, resulting in a decrease of freshwater availability for humans and ecosystems in coastal areas. Furthermore, climate-related changes in water quantity and quality are expected to affect food availability, water access and utilisation, especially in arid and semi-arid areas, as well as the operation of water infrastructure (e.g. hydropower, flood defences, and irrigation systems). This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue of Environment Science & Policy dealing with climate change impacts on water-related disasters. It provides a brief background about relevant EU water policies and examples of EU-funded research trends which illustrate on-going efforts to improve understanding and modelling of climate changes related to the hydrological cycles at scales that are relevant to decision making (possibly linked to policy).     

Climate Science and Climate Policy: Improving the Science/Policy Interface

The development of an international climate policy builds on national policy perspectives. These depend on the perceived risks of climate change, socioeconomic and cultural characteristics of the nations and regions involved, and the technical feasibility of policy measures. Scientific and technological research supports the policy making process about these issues. The perspectives of the scientific community and the policy makers differ and as a consequence communication is often troublesome. The construction and utilization of knowledge under such circumstances can only be effective if all parties involved engage in a continuous dialogue about causes, effects, impacts and responses. This paper describes a project carried out in the Netherlands. It has as its major objective the articulation of a variety of perceptions and positions related to climate change. As a result of the project, policy actors produced five policy options and formulated research questions. The policy options are linked in the framework of a policy life cycle. Research questions focus on the risks of climate change and on feasible social, economic, cultural and technological responses to it. As to the policy options, striving for common means appears to be more promising than pursuing shared goals and philosophies.     

The perceived psychological distance of climate change impacts and its influence on support for adaptation policy

Factors influencing support for climate mitigation policy in the United States are well researched, however, research regarding individuals’ support for climate adaptation policy is relatively sparse. This study explores how an individual’s perception of climate change impacts may influence their support for adaptation actions. Results of a survey of the U.S. public (n = 653) indicates that individuals who believe climate change impacts are unlikely to happen or will primarily affect other people in other places are less likely to be concerned about climate change impacts and less likely to support climate adaptation. However, an individual’s support for climate change adaptation measures is not influenced by their perception of when climate change impacts will occur even when taking into account concern for climate impacts. Critical for policy-makers, a belief that climate adaptation measures will not be effective attenuates the relationship between psychological distance, concern for climate change impacts, and adaptation policy measures. Our results indicate that to effectively communicate about climate change, policy-makers should emphasize that: (i) climate change impacts are occurring, (ii) that their constituents are being affected now, or will be in the future, and (iii) communicate that adaptation measures can be effective in addressing risks associated with climate change impacts.