Search

This paper distinguishes between bridging and bonding social capital to assess their roles for individual farmers’ adaptation strategies taken through technology adoption. Based on primary data collected in Langcang River (LCR) basin area in southwestern China, the paper finds: (1) adaptation measures have been widely taken by surveyed households, but non-infrastructure-based measures are more prevalent than infrastructure-based measures and (2) surveyed households have strong social capital while having weak bridging social capital. Their bonding social capital has significantly positive relationship with their adaptation decisions, but bridging social capital does not have such statistically significant relationship. It recommends that the governments contemplate carefully how to help the poor to get a good combination of bonding and bridging social capital when designing policies to help the rural poor to improve their long-term adaptive capacity and achieve sustainable rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public discourse on climate change often refers to possible bias among climate scientists as a rationale for limited climate policy action by the United States. Part of this discussion is the association of scientists with environmental interest groups and whether such affiliations facilitate the perception that climate scientists lack objectivity. While surveys suggest that some climate scientists disapprove of affiliations with interest groups, recent research indicates that climate scientists are quite likely to be involved with environmental organizations. This paper compares the affiliations of scientists and the general public to discern whether scientists are uniquely likely to affiliate with interest groups or they simply share characteristics common to the public who also affiliate with these organizations. Our findings suggest that climate scientists are no more likely to donate money, but are less likely to sign a petition or attend a demonstration, when controlling for other factors. These results strengthen our understanding of the affiliations between scientists and interest groups and hold implications for the accuracy of popular perceptions of climate scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Platform for Regional Integrated Modeling and Analysis (PRIMA) is an innovative modeling system developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to simulate interactions among natural and human systems at scales relevant to regional decision making. PRIMA brings together state-of-the-art models of regional climate, hydrology, agriculture and land use, socioeconomics, and energy systems using a flexible coupling approach. Stakeholder decision support needs underpin the application of the platform to regional issues, and an uncertainty characterization process is used to identify robust decisions. The platform can be customized to inform a variety of complex questions, such as how a policy in one sector might affect the ability to meet climate mitigation targets or adaptation goals in another sector. Current numerical experiments focus on the eastern United States, but the framework is designed to be regionally flexible. This paper provides a high-level overview of PRIMA's functional capabilities and describes some key challenges and opportunities associated with integrated regional modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As sea level rises, coastal communities will face increased risks of flooding, storm surge, and inundation. In some areas, structural protective measures will be built, and for some properties, accommodation to sea level rise may be possible. For other areas, however, some form of retreat will be either preferred on economic or sociopolitical grounds or required given fiscal constraints. This paper considers how society can proactively manage shoreline retreat in those locations where it is deemed the preferable policy. A three-part strategy is proposed: (1) reduce new development in the highest-risk areas; (2) adopt policies that allow for expected and orderly removal or modification of development as inundation occurs; and (3) take advantage of disasters to implement managed retreat approaches. Specific policies are recommended and the challenges of institutional change discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar Radiation Management (SRM) has two characteristics that make it useful for managing climate risk: it is quick and it is cheap. SRM cannot, however, perfectly offset CO 2-driven climate change, and its use introduces novel climate and environmental risks. We introduce SRM in a simple economic model of climate change that is designed to explore the interaction between uncertainty in the climate’s response to CO 2 and the risks of SRM in the face of carbon-cycle inertia. The fact that SRM can be implemented quickly, reducing the effects of inertia, makes it a valuable tool to manage climate risks even if it is relatively ineffective at compensating for CO 2-driven climate change or if its costs are large compared to traditional abatement strategies. Uncertainty about SRM is high, and decision makers must decide whether or not to commit to research that might reduce this uncertainty. We find that even modest reductions in uncertainty about the side-effects of SRM can reduce the overall costs of climate change in the order of 10%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early policy work, climate engineering is often described as a global public good. This paper argues that the paradigm example of geoengineering—stratospheric sulfate injection (hereafter ‘SSI’)—does not fit the canonical technical definition of a global public good, and that more relaxed versions are unhelpful. More importantly, it claims that, regardless of the technicalities, the public good framing is seriously misleading, in part because it arbitrarily marginalizes ethical concerns. Both points suggest that more clarity is needed about the aims of geoengineering policy—and especially governance—and that this requires special attention to ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most deliberations on climate policy are based on a mitigation response that assumes a gradually increasing reduction over time. However, situations may occur where a more urgent response is needed. A key question for climate policy in general, but even more in the case a rapid response is needed, is: what are the characteristic response times of the response options, such as rapid mitigation or solar radiation management (SRM)? This paper explores this issue, which has not received a lot of attention yet, by looking into the role of both societal and physical response times. For mitigation, technological and economic inertia clearly limit reduction rates with considerable uncertainty corresponding to political inertia and societies’ ability to organize rapid mitigation action at what costs. The paper looks into a rapid emission reductions of 4–6 % annually. Reduction rates at the top end of this range (up to 6 %) could effectively reduce climate change, but only with a noticeable delay. Temperatures could be above those in the year of policy introduction for more than 70 years, with unknown consequences of overshoot. A strategy based on SRM is shown to have much shorter response times (up to decades), but introduces an important element of risk, such as ocean acidification and the risk of extreme temperature shifts in case action is halted. Above all, the paper highlights the role of response times in designing effective policy strategies implying that a better understanding of these crucial factors is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the potential role of “solar radiation management” or “sunlight reduction methods” (SRM) in limiting future climate change, focusing on the interplay between SRM deployment and mitigation in the context of uncertainty in climate response. We use a straightforward scenario analysis to show that the policy and physical context determine the potential need, amount, and timing of SRM. SRM techniques, along with a substantial emission reduction policy, would be needed to meet stated policy goals, such as limiting climate change to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, if the climate sensitivity is high. The SRM levels examined by current modeling studies are much higher than the levels required under an assumption of a consistent long-term policy. We introduce a degree-year metric, which quantifies the magnitude of SRM that would be needed to keep global temperatures under a given threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As has been widely documented, lavishly funded media campaigns by political and financial elites and corporations with vested interests against climate policy are a central instigator of the climate backlash and a threat to democratic processes. However, it would behoove the environmental coalition, including sympathizing academics, to reflect on how they help create conditions that enable and magnify the impact of the backlash campaigns and incidents such as Climategate. This editorial argues that prevalent idealized understandings of science increase public vulnerability to backlash campaigns, and that academic analysts reinforce these understandings when they avoid to perform critical analyses of the science and scientists promoting concern about climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communicating information about consistency in projections is crucial to the successful understanding, interpretation and appropriate application of information from climate models about future climate and its uncertainties. However, mapping the consistency of model projections in such a way that this information is communicated clearly remains a challenge that several recently published papers have sought to address in the run up to the IPCC AR5. We highlight that three remaining issues have not been fully addressed by the literature to date. Allen and Ingram () While additional information about regions where projected changes in rainfall are not 'statistically significant' can provide useful information for policy, the spatial scale at which changes are assessed has a substantial impact on the signal-to-noise ratio, and thus the detectability of changes. We demonstrate that by spatially smoothing the model projections we can provide more information about the nature of the signal for larger regions of the world. Christensen et al. () Combining information about magnitude, consistency and statistical significance of projected changes in a single map can cause reduced legibility. We demonstrate the difficulty in finding a 'universal' method suitable for a wide range of audiences DEFRA () We highlight that regions where projected changes in average rainfall are not statistically significant, changes in variability may still cause significant impacts. We stress the need to communicate this effectively in order to avoid mis-leading users. Finally, we comment on regions of the world where messages for users of climate information about ensemble consistency have changed since AR4, noting that these changes are due largely to changes in the methods of measuring consistency rather than any discernable differences between the CMIP3 and CMIP5 ensembles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMS) have helped us over the past decade to understand the interactions between the environment and the economy in the context of climate change. Although it has also long been recognized that adaptation is a powerful and necessary tool to combat the adverse effects of climate change, most IAMS have not explicitly included the option of adaptation in combating climate change. This paper adds to the IAM and climate change literature by explicitly including adaptation in an IAM, thereby making the trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation visible. Specifically, a theoretical framework is created and used to implement adaptation as a decision variable into the DICE model. We use our new AD-DICE model to derive the adaptation cost functions implicit in the DICE model. In our set-up, adaptation and mitigation decisions are separable and AD-DICE can mimic DICE when adaptation is optimal. We find that our specification of the adaptation costs is robust with respect to the mitigation policy scenarios and parameter values. Our numerical results show that adaptation is a powerful option to combat climate change, as it reduces most of the potential costs of climate change in earlier periods, while mitigation does so in later periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which examines the ability of biomass-carbon capture and storage technologies to substantially change role of biomass-based mitigation. It is said that Biomass-CCS may be capable of cost-effective indirect mitigation through emissions offsets of emission sources that are expensive to mitigate directly. The researchers recommended that Biomass-CCS and its unique attributes should be more deeply integrated in climate policy making.

Over the last few years, California has passed some of the strongest climate policies in the USA. These new policies have been motivated in part by increasing concerns over the risk of climate-related impacts and facilitated by the state's existing framework of energy and air quality policies. This paper presents an overview of the evolution of this increased awareness of climate change issues by policy makers brought about by the strong link between climate science and policy in the state. The State Legislature initiated this link in 1988 with the mandate to prepare an assessment of the potential consequences of climate change to California. Further interactions between science and policy has more recently resulted, in summer of 2006, in the passage of Assembly Bill 32, a law that limits future greenhouse gas emissions in California. This paper discusses the important role played by a series of state and regional climate assessments beginning in 1988 and, in particular, the lessons learned from a recently completed study known as the Scenarios Project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States and China are responsible for nearly 40 per cent of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. Global climatic stabilization cannot succeed without the participation of people and organizations in the PRC and the USA. Given the likelihood of continued political paralysis at the national level in both countries, it is important to assess the strengths, weaknesses, and potential of nongovernmental actors in bringing about durable reductions in GHG emissions. Consumption trajectories present one of the most intractable barriers to anthropogenic GHG-emissions reductions and to long-term climatic stabilization. Nordlund and Garvill's (2003) model is adapted and applied in assessing prospects for value change, specific problem awareness, and sustainable-consumption behavior in the PRC and USA. The contributions of nonstate actors are elucidated when issue bundling (specifically links with stress reduction and healthy futures) and principle bundling are incorporated into the explanatory framework. The involvement of transnationally competent activists in emissions mitigation projects, value change, and durable sustainable-consumption practices provides a beacon for future possibilities. Chinese transnationals are a key overlooked and underestimated piece in the current emissions-reduction puzzle because of their critical position at the intersection of values, behavior change, and nongovernmental institutions directly and indirectly involved in climatic-change mitigation. Given their special U.S./P.R.C. leverage, other actors concerned with building a sustainable-consumption movement and with climatic stabilization are likely to benefit from devoting increased attention and responsibilities to this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades Integrated Assessment (IA) has emerged as an approach to link knowledge and action in a way that is suitable to accommodate uncertainties, complexities and value diversities of global environmental risks. Responding to the complex nature of the climate problem and to the changing role of climate change in the international climate policy process, the scientific community has started to include stakeholder knowledge and perspectives in their assessments. Participatory Integrated Assessment (PIA) is in its early stage of development. Methodology varies strongly across PIA projects. This paper analyzes four recent IA projects of climate change that included knowledge or perspectives from stakeholders in one-way or another. Approaches and methods used turn out to differ in whether stakeholders are involved actively or passively, whether the approach is bottom-up or top-down, and whether the different functions in the IA process are open or closed to stakeholder input. Also, differences can be seen in the degree to which boundaries are pre-set that limit the roles and domains of competencies attributed to each scientific or non-scientific participant (so-called boundary work). The paper discusses pros and cons of the various approaches identified, and outlines heuristics and considerations to assist those who plan, design or fund new IA processes with stakeholder input on what approaches best to choose in view of the objectives for stakeholder involvement, in view of the role that the IA plays in the overall risk management process and in view of considerations regarding boundary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vulnerability is an emerging concept for climate science and policy. Over the past decade, efforts to assess vulnerability to climate change triggered a process of theory development and assessment practice, which is reflected in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This paper reviews the historical development of the conceptual ideas underpinning assessments of vulnerability to climate change. We distinguish climate impact assessment, first- and second-generation vulnerability assessment, and adaptation policy assessment. The different generations of assessments are described by means of a conceptual framework that defines key concepts of the assessment and their analytical relationships. The purpose of this conceptual framework is two-fold: first, to present a consistent visual glossary of the main concepts underlying the IPCC approach to vulnerability and its assessment; second, to show the evolution of vulnerability assessments. This evolution is characterized by the progressive inclusion of non-climatic determinants of vulnerability to climate change, including adaptive capacity, and the shift from estimating expected damages to attempting to reduce them. We hope that this paper improves the understanding of the main approaches to climate change vulnerability assessment and their evolution, not only within the climate change community but also among researchers from other scientific communities, who are sometimes puzzled by the unfamiliar use of technical terms in the context of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding what constitutes dangerous climate change is of critical importance for future concerted action (Schneider, 2001, 2002). To date separate scientific and policy discourses have proceeded with competing and somewhat arbitrary definitions of danger based on a variety of assumptions and assessments generally undertaken by `experts'. We argue that it is not possible to make progress on defining dangerous climate change, or in developing sustainable responses to this global problem, without recognising the central role played by social or individual perceptions of danger. There are therefore at least two contrasting perspectives on dangerous climate change, what we term `external' and `internal' definitions of risk. External definitions are usually based on scientific risk analysis, performed by experts, of system characteristics of the physical or social world. Internal definitions of danger recognise that to be real, danger has to be either experienced or perceived – it is the individual or collective experience or perception of insecurity or lack of safety that constitutes the danger. A robust policy response must appreciate both external and internal definitions of danger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Good assessment of environmental issues, such as climate change, requires effective communication of the degree of uncertainty associated with numerous possible outcomes. One strategy that accomplishes this, while responding to people's difficulty understanding numeric probability estimates, is the use of specific language to describe probability ranges. This is the strategy adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their Third Assessment Report. There is a problem with this strategy, however, in that it uses words differently from the way lay readers of the assessment typically do. An experiment conducted with undergraduate science students confirms this. The IPCC strategy could result in miscommunication, leading readers to under-estimate the probability of high-magnitude possible outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integrated assessment model (IAM) is applied to explore options for long-term climate policy by identifying permitted emission corridors. The options are determined under various assumptions about constraints related to acceptable impacts of climate change in terms of alterations induced in natural ecosystems in protected areas and about acceptable mitigation costs, burden sharing principles, and implementation flexibility. The results show that about 25% of the protected areas worldwide will witness ecosystem transformation in the next century even if the costs of emission reduction are allowed to reach 2% of per-capita consumption. An uncertainty analysis surveys the implications of modifying selected key model variables on the existence and shape of the emission corridors. Within plausible ranges of parameter variations, the emission corridor turns out to be rather sensitive to impact constraints, climatic constraints like the magnitude and rate of the global mean temperature increase, and to aerosol emission scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobilizing collective action to cope with climate change is difficult at any level, but the larger the `community' the more difficult the task. How to achieve cooperation in the common interest without imposing excessive governmental coercion is a fundamental political conundrum. Using the cultural typology suggested by Cultural Theory (CT), this paper explores diverse worldviews that inform individual and collective attitudes relevant to climate change. Responses from a sample of 441 individuals to statements drawn from the public discourse on environmental issues are used to classify respondents according to the cultural types posited by CT. Analysis indicates that most respondents mix elements of CT's egalitarianism, hierarchy, and individualism, though many individuals clearly lean toward one or another of the cultural types. There seems to be a melding of individualistic and hierarchic elements in opposition to egalitarian elements. Definitions of what is natural, fair and right – of equity – are fundamental issues between cultures, and non-coercive resolution of issues may be promoted by exploring cultural interstices, where cosmological boundaries are weakest. The cultural typology used in Cultural Theory, less spatially or temporally bound than some other typologies, promises to be a useful analytic tool in exploring cultural differences and overlaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]