African voters indicate lack of support for climate change policies

Will African voters support climate change policies? By 2020, the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund intends to provide tens of billions of dollars per year to African nations to support climate adaptation and mitigation policies. It is widely assumed that African citizens will support implementation of these climate policies. We observe the opposite result. In this article – across two experimental studies – we find evidence that Sub-Saharan African politicians who commit to climate change policies may lose electoral support. Electorally important swing voters with weak party affiliations are least likely to support party statements about climate change. Interviews with standing elected officials from Malawi and South Africa corroborate our experimental findings. The combined results suggest voter preferences may hinder the successful implementation of climate change policy in Sub-Saharan African democracies.     

Resilience of stocking capacity to changing climate in arid to Mediterranean landscapes

Small livestock is an important resource for rural human populations in dry climates. How strongly will climate change affect the capacity of the rangeland? We used hierarchical modelling to scale quantitatively the growth of shrubs and annual plants, the main food of sheep and goats, to the landscape extent in the eastern Mediterranean region. Without grazing, productivity increased in a sigmoid way with mean annual precipitation. Grazing reduced productivity more strongly the drier the landscape. At a point just under the stocking capacity of the vegetation, productivity declined precipitously with more intense grazing due to a lack of seed production of annuals. We repeated simulations with precipitation patterns projected by two contrasting IPCC scenarios. Compared to results based on historic patterns, productivity and stocking capacity did not differ in most cases. Thus, grazing intensity remains the stronger impact on landscape productivity in this dry region even in the future.     

Learning about climate change solutions in the IPCC and beyond

There has been much debate about the assessment process of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Yet two of the most fundamental challenges that directly threaten the ability of the IPCC to fulfill its mandate have been largely neglected so far. Firstly, the magnitude and rapid expansion of the climate change literature makes it increasingly impossible for the IPCC to conduct comprehensive and transparent assessments without major innovations in assessment practices and tools. Secondly, the structure, organization and scientific practices across the social sciences and humanities prohibit systematic learning on climate change solutions and increasingly limit the policy-relevance of IPCC assessments. We highlight the need for responses along three avenues to prepare the IPCC for continued success in the future: 1) IPCC assessments must make better use of big-data methods and available computational power to assess the growing body of literature and ensure comprehensiveness; 2) systematic review practices need to be enshrined into IPCC procedures to ensure adequate focus and transparency in its assessments; 3) a synthetic research culture needs to be established in the social sciences and humanities in order to foster knowledge accumulation and learning on climate solutions in the future. As policymakers become more interested in understanding solutions, the future prospects of global environmental assessment enterprises will depend heavily on a successful transformation within the social sciences and humanities towards systematic knowledge generation. This article is part of a special issue on solution-oriented Global Environmental Assessments.     

A multiple timescales approach to assess urgency in adaptation to climate change with an application to the tourism industry

As climate change adaptation is increasingly discussed and becoming a mainstream concept, different types of users are asking themselves if and when they should develop an adaptation strategy, often not knowing where to begin. Climate experts, on the other hand, have access to an enormous amount of data that could be useful to users but often do not know how to translate it into something practical. Both users and experts can be linked through two timescales, the system lifespan and climate vulnerability. While the system lifespan relies on the user’s estimation of his planning timeframe, the climate vulnerability is estimated from climate model projections and observations. We propose a simple tool to relate user and climate expert knowledge by combining the two timescales. To be reliable, the interconnection implies a dialogue to first identify what sensitive climate variable will impact the system and subsequently the extent of the impact. Climate data can then be used to identify, with the use of a simple graph, how sensitive a system is likely to be and help users position themselves about the urgency of adaptation. The concept has been successfully presented and applied to the tourism industry, notably the ski industry, which is showcased in this paper.     

Persuasiveness,importance and novelty of arguments about Carbon Capture and Storage

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a promising technology for reducing carbon emissions, but the public is often reluctant to support it. To understand why public support is lacking, it is crucial to establish what citizens think about the arguments that are used by proponents and opponents of CCS. We determined the persuasiveness, importance and novelty of 32 arguments for and against CCS using a discrete choice experiment in which respondents made consecutive choices between pairs of pro or con arguments. We used latent class models to identify population segments with different preferences. The results show that citizens find arguments about climate protection, which is the primary goal of CCS, less persuasive than other arguments, such as normative arguments (for example ‘a waste product such as CO₂ should be disposed of properly’) or arguments about benefits of CCS for energy production and economic growth. This discrepancy complicates communication that aims to convince citizens of the benefits of CCS for climate protection.     

Boundary work in climate policy making in Brazil: Reflections from the frontlines of the science-policy interface

Despite challenges to the authority and legitimacy of science as a neutral representation of the world, expert advisors are playing an increasingly central role in environmental policy-making in both the Global North and South. This article explores the science-policy interface, based on the experience of the main author as a scientist and policy-maker at FEAM, a state-level environmental agency in Brazil. Contributing to the literature on boundary objects and organizations, the article details the practices necessary to manage the relationship between political and scientific norms in the development of the regional Climate and Energy Plan (CEP) for the state of Minas Gerais. To sustain the role of FEAM as a boundary organization mediating between political and scientific demands, a team of scientists and policy-makers had to perform different types of boundary work in a closely connected manner. It was necessary to actively frame climate change as an economic problem, and structure its solution in terms of mitigation mechanisms. Responding to changes in the national and international political context, FEAM reframed climate change from mitigation into largely an adaptation issue that could lead to win-win solutions as to attain saliency and avoid insurmountable political obstacles for its approval. Based on this experience, the article argues that the performance of boundary objects and organizations in the science-policy interface not only requires an ability to bring ‘truth to power’ but to also the capacity to sense, anticipate and avoid political obstacles. For this reason even though boundary organizations provide a breeding ground for institutional learning it is an unsuitable location for scientific or political revolutions.     

Advancing urban ecosystem governance in Ljubljana

Extensive green areas generate a recognizable green identity of Ljubljana. Due to the challenges of climate change and urbanization the city's spatial policy highlights revitalization of degraded urban areas, preserving the quality and scope of the existing green network and the protection of multifunctional natural areas surrounding the city. Article describes the project of Rakova Jelša Park as a good example of these policies. With an NGO initiative a former degraded area with illegal dumping and non-indigenous vegetation was transformed into recreational park with increased biocultural diversity. Important lesson of the project is that opening up space for public use not only prevents degradation, but also improves the quality of urban ecosystems. One of the challenges for the city's future sustainable ecosystem development will be a more active cooperation with its citizens in the green infrastructure policy and later also a partial transfer of responsibility for green areas to them.     

Traditional Ecological Knowledge Trends in the Transition to a Market Economy: Empirical Study in the Doñana Natural Areas

Abstract: Researchers and conservation managers largely agree on the relevance of traditional ecological knowledge for natural resource management in indigenous communities, but its prevalence and role as societies modernize are contested. We analyzed the transmission of traditional knowledge among rural local people in communities linked to protected areas in Doñana, southwestern Spain. We studied changes in knowledge related to local practices in agriculture and livestock farming among 198 informants from three generations that cover the period in which the area transited from an economy strongly dependent on local ecosystem services to a market economy with intensified production systems. Our results suggest an abrupt loss of traditional agricultural knowledge related to rapid transformations and intensification of agricultural systems, but maintenance of knowledge of traditional livestock farming, an activity allowed in the protected areas that maintains strong links with local cultural identity. Our results demonstrate the potential of protected areas in protecting remaining bodies of traditional ecological knowledge in developed country settings. Nevertheless, we note that strict protection in cultural‐landscape‐dominated areas can disrupt transmission of traditional knowledge if local resource users and related practices are excluded from ecosystem management.     

Trade-offs between time, predation risk and life history, and their implications for biogeography: A systems modelling approach with a primate case study

Group sizes are often considered to be the result of a trade-off between predation risk and the costs of feeding competition. We develop a model to explore the interaction between different ecological constraints on group sizes, using a primate (baboons) case study. The model uses climatic correlates of time budgets to predict maximum ecologically tolerable group size, and climatic predictors of predation risk (reflected mainly in predator density and female body mass) to predict minimum tolerable group size for any given habitat. As well as defining the range of sustainable group sizes for a given habitat, the model also allows us to reliably predict our exemplar taxon's biogeographical distribution across Africa. We also explore the life history implications of the model to ask whether baboons form group sizes which maximise survival or fecundity in the classic trade off between these two key life history variables. Our results indicate that, within the range of study sites in our sample, baboons prefer to maximise fecundity. However, the data indicate that in higher predation risk habitats they would switch to maximising survival at the expense of fecundity. We argue that this is due to the fact that interbirth interval and developmental rates have a ceiling that cannot be breached. Thus, while females can shorten interbirth intervals to compensate for increased predation risk, there is a limit to how much these life history variables can be altered, and when this is reached the best strategy is to maximise survivorship.     

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.