Scenario analysis of perspective change to support climate adaptation: lessons from a pilot study on Dutch river management

Climate adaptation is a complex task surrounded by uncertainty. To support climate adaptation policies, a new scenario approach is pursued to explore possible discontinuous future developments of societal perspectives on climate adaptation issues. The scenario approach was tested for a case study on Dutch river management. In a series of scenario development workshops, a select group of stakeholders explored the perspectives on the management of the River Meuse in the past, present, and future. The process was supported by an analytical perspectives mapping tool to illustrate and analyze the development of perspectives over time. The process and analytical tools contributed to insight into the drivers of perspective change for the case study at hand. Moreover, the stakeholders highlighted the potential of the approach for water management policy for creating awareness about the plurality of perspectives and the dynamics of perspective change, monitoring perspectives and perspective change as part of a flexible policy approach, and anticipating on the occurrence of shock events. Further work is required to better represent the social dynamics of perspectives change, to better empirically ground the perspective change model, and to apply integrated water models in the scenario development process to assess water–society interactions.     

Mid-21st century climate and weather extremes in Cyprus as projected by six regional climate models

We present climate change projections and apply indices of weather extremes for the Mediterranean island Cyprus using data from regional climate model (RCM) simulations driven by the IPCC A1B scenario within the ENSEMBLES project. Daily time-series of temperature and precipitation were used from six RCMs for a reference period 1976–2000 and for 2026–2050 (‘future‘) for representative locations, applying a performance selection among neighboring model grid-boxes. The annual average temperatures of the model ensemble have a ±1.5°C bias from the observations (negative for maximum and positive for minimum temperature), and the models underestimate annual precipitation totals by 4–17%. The climatological annual cycles for the observations fall within the 1σ range of the 6-model average, highlighting the strength of using multi-model output. We obtain reasonable agreement between models and observations for the temperature-related indices of extremes for the recent past, while the comparison is less good for the precipitation-related extremes. For the future, the RCM ensemble shows significant warming of 1°C in winter to 2°C in the summer for both maximum and minimum temperatures. Rainfall is projected to decrease by 2–8%, although this is not statistically significant. Our results indicate the shift of the mean climate to a warmer state, with a relatively strong increase in the warm extremes. The precipitation frequency is projected to decrease at the inland Nicosia and at the coastal Limassol, while the mountainous Saittas could experience more frequent 5–15 mm/day rainfall. In future, very hot days are expected to increase by more than 2 weeks/year and tropical nights by 1 month/year. The annual number of consecutive dry days shows a statistically significant increase (of 9 days) in Limassol. These projected changes of the Cyprus climate may adversely affect ecosystems and the economy of the island and emphasize the need for adaptation strategies.     

Drivers that help adopting stabilised earth construction to address urban low-cost housing crisis: an understanding by construction professionals

Addressing urban housing crisis is an enormous challenge for most of the countries due to the increasing cost of the building material. Therefore, affordable alternative building material can make a breakthrough to the urban housing crisis. In the light of current success of stabilised earth construction in urban low-cost housing, it is important to find out the potential drivers that can help to adopt this building material. This paper aims to identify and highlight these drivers from the method of literature review and validates through a Delphi technique.     

Sustaining water supply through a phased community management approach: lessons from Ghana’s “oats” water supply scheme

Water sector reforms in Ghana and in other developing countries resulted in the adoption of the community management approach for water systems in an effort to ensure better management and service delivery. However, community management is also plagued internal differences, paucity of technical skills, and insufficient management experience. This article presents a case study of a successful community management system in Ghana that utilized a two-phase comanagement period before a full transfer of management responsibilities to the four communities. The first phase of 3 months was a more intensive comanagement system under which the communities teamed up with public agencies and a private firm to manage the water system. This enabled the communities to acquire hands-on management experience and also tap needed skills from external agencies before a second phase of 3 months characterized by gradual withdrawal of private agency support, and a simultaneous measured assumption of higher responsibilities by the communities. Communities thereafter assumed full management responsibility of the water system and have since then posted significant successes in financial management and operations of the system such that some profits have been generated, there is regular water supply and the system operates without major technical hitches. This strategy illustrates the fact that successful community management system is possible if local capacity is adequately strengthened with external support prior to assumption of full community control of water supply systems, and if assumption of responsibilities is pursued gradually.     

Barriers to plantation activities in different agro-ecological zones of Southern India

This paper analyses environmental and socio-economic barriers for plantation activities on local and regional level and investigates the potential for carbon finance to stimulate the increased rates of forest plantation on wasteland, i.e., degraded lands, in southern India. Building on multidisciplinary field work and results from the model GCOMAP, the aim is to (1) identify and characterize the barriers to plantation activities in four agro-ecological zones in the state of Karnataka and (2) investigate what would be required to overcome these barriers and enhance the plantation rate and productivity. The results show that a rehabilitation of the wasteland based on plantation activities is not only possible but also anticipated by the local population and would lead to positive environmental and socio-economic effects at a local level. However, in many cases, the establishment of plantation activities is hindered by a lack of financial resources, low land productivity and water scarcity. Based on the model used and the results from the field work, it can be concluded that certified emission reductions such as carbon credits or other compensatory systems may help to overcome the financial barrier; however, the price needs to be significantly increased if these measures are to have any large-scale impact.     

Social cost of environmental pollution and application of counter measures through clean development mechanism: in the context of developing countries

The developing countries i.e., the non-Annex-I countries (parties to the Kyoto Protocol but not responsible to any reduction target yet) in the Kyoto Protocol whose economies are in transition are also allowed to reduce GHG emissions. Among these, the countries that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol may be benefited from CDM projects to promote sustainable development. The developed countries i.e., the Annex-I countries (that have signed the Kyoto Protocol & are responsible to have specific GHG emission reduction target) or the investing countries, in return, have privilege to purchase CER credits (in units equivalent to one tonne of CO₂ gas emission reduction) to meet the emission target as specified in the Kyoto Protocol. The key step in understanding about CDM is to grasp the concept of “baseline” and “additionality”. The “Baseline” is the emissions level that would have existed if a CDM project had not happened. The feature of an approved CDM project is that the planned reductions would not occur without the additional incentive provided by emission reduction credits; this concept is known as “Additionality”. According to environmental additionality concept, baseline emission minus project emission is equal to emissions reduction. “Investment Additionality,” ultimately rejected during negotiation of the “Marrakech Accords” and “Financial Additionality,” are the two important concepts. The concept of trading of CER matches to the idea of Pigovian tax (equal to the negative externality and which is considered one of the “traditional” means of bringing a modicum of market forces) in Economics, making pollution more costly to the polluter, as the polluters have negative cost since they save money by polluting; hence, there are supposed negative externalities associated with the market activity. Economic theory predicts that in an economy where the cost of reaching mutual agreement between parties is high and where pollution is diffuse, Pigovian tax will be an efficient way to promote the public interest and will lead to an improvement of the quality of life measured by the Genuine Progress Indicator and other human economic indicators, as well as higher gross domestic product growth. We can seek a level of pollution such that the marginal savings (MS) to one polluting unit from pollution (−MC) is equal to marginal damage (MD) from pollution over the entire population, since pollution is a public bad i.e., MS (x*) = ∑MD_i (x*) where ∑D_i (x) is the total damage. Though the responsibility of reduction in emission does not lie on the non-Annex-I countries, still effort of maintaining global emission balance can be expected equally from developed and developing countries. The responsibilities of Kyoto Protocol are (a) to reduce global GHG emissions, (b) to bring about sustainable development in the developing countries lie on above two groups since its effect on February 16, 2005. Different polluters have different costs of pollution control. The least costly way of controlling pollution from various sources that reflects different costs of pollution control making the set of environmental regulations to achieve the emission target at the lowest cost makes the regulation cost-effective. Though efficiency is not attainable for many regulations, cost-effectiveness is attainable.     

Socioeconomic development and vulnerability to land degradation in Italy

In recent years, the surface area affected by land degradation (LD) has significantly increased in southern European regions where the socioeconomic development has been proposed as a basic factor underlying the degree of vulnerability to LD. This paper investigates the correlation between several socioeconomic indicators and the level of vulnerability to LD in Italy, expressed as changes (1990–2000) in a composite index of land vulnerability (ΔLVI). The analysis was carried out over 784 local districts. The impact of per capita value added, agricultural intensity, industrial and tourism concentration, and urban growth was separately tested on ΔLVI. Results indicate that a lower district value added, crop intensification, irrigation, and the level of land vulnerability to degradation are strongly associated with the increasing level of land vulnerability over time, highlighting the role of the socioeconomic development as a main process underlying LD. In this framework, spatially equitable sustainable development may represent the effective strategy to mitigate the detrimental effects of economic growth and regional disparities on Mediterranean LD.     

An integrated assessment of climate change impacts for Greece in the near future

Climate changes in the Mediterranean region, related to a significant increase in temperature and changes in precipitation patterns, can potentially affect local economies. Agriculture and tourism are undoubtedly the most important economic sources for Greece and these may be more strongly affected by changing future climate conditions. Climate change and their various negative impacts on human life are also detected in their environment; hence this study deals with implications, caused by changing climate, in urban and forest areas. Potential changes for the mid-twenty-first century (2021–2050) are analysed using a high-resolution regional climate model. This paper presents relevant climatic indices, indicative for potential implications which may jeopardise vital economic/environmental sectors of the country. The results provide insights into particular regions of the Greek territory that may undergo substantial impacts due to climate change. It is concluded that the duration of dry days is expected to increase in most of the studied agricultural regions. Winter precipitation generally decreases, whereas an increase in autumn precipitation is projected in most areas. Changing climate conditions associated with increased minimum temperatures (approximately 1.3°C) and decreased winter precipitation by 15% on average suggest that the risk for forest fires is intensified in the future. In urban areas, unpleasantly high temperatures during day and night will increase the feeling of discomfort in the citizens, while flash floods events are expected to occur more frequently. Another impact of climate change in urban regions is the increasing energy demand for cooling in summer. Finally, it was found that continental tourist areas of the Greek mainland will more often face heatwave episodes. In coastal regions, increased temperatures especially at night in combination with high levels of relative humidity can lead to conditions that are nothing less than uncomfortable for foreigners and the local population. In general, projected changes associated with temperature have a higher degree of confidence than those associated with precipitation.     

A context-inclusive approach to support energy policy formulation and evaluation

Observing the many and varied reactions to the Kyoto Protocol, it becomes clear that different governments find themselves in different contexts that eventually direct them toward taking dissimilar positions on energy issues. This paper, through five integrated studies, investigates whether contextualizing energy issues is (are) relevant to support energy policy formulation and evaluation and provides insights into how to operationalize the contextualization. Instead of considering the most widely accepted tools currently used to assess and evaluate energy policy, this research proposes the utilization of a holistic framework that incorporates social, economic and environmental factors as well as their relations to the energy sector to better contextualize global, regional and national energy issues. This framework, which accounts for feedback loops, delays and non-linearity, is applied to case studies to investigate the longer-term performance of selected energy policies. Results of the study indicate the likely emergence of various unexpected side effects and elements of policy resistance over the medium and longer term due to the interrelations existing between energy and society, economy and environment. Furthermore, while side effects and unintended consequences may arise both within the energy sector and in the other sectors, they simultaneously influence society, economy and environment.     

Ecosystem services and hydroelectricity in Central America: modelling service flows with fuzzy logic and expert knowledge

Because ecosystem services are generally not produced and used in the same place, their assessment should consider the flows of services from ecosystems to users. These flows depend on the characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems and users, the spatial relationships between them, and the presence of filters or barriers between ecosystems and users. The objective of this paper is to map the ecosystem services provided to the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan hydroelectric sectors, which are crucial sectors for national sustainable development and depend directly on hydrological ecosystem services. The paper presents an approach for modelling the flows of multiple services from diverse ecosystems to diverse users through different kinds of filters in a landscape. The approach uses expert knowledge and fuzzy numbers to handle uncertainties. The analyses for Costa Rica and Nicaragua show how the approach helps identify priority areas for the conservation and restoration of forests for the services they provide to the hydroelectric sector. As such, it is a useful tool for defining spatially targeted policies for the conservation of ecosystem services and for involving the users of ecosystem services in ecosystem management.