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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 issue of climate change required the development of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) by the IPCC. The complexity of the subject and the unique science-policy relation resulted in confusion and discussions appeared in popular media like The Economist. This paper reviews scenario literature and SRES, identifies the most vulnerable elements in the communication of SRES. In the communication of GHG emission scenarios through SRES, the weaknesses that have been identified by the authors of this paper are the normative character of climate change assessment, the plausibility of the scenarios, and the risk of simplification of complex messages. The causes of these communicative issues have been identified as the intrinsic difficulties of interdisciplinary science, the uniqueness of the science-policy relation, and the need for a high degree of transparency. This paper suggests improving future communication of complex messages from scientists to their audience by means of clear reasoning when communicating with non-scientists, explicitly normative emission scenarios, and increased stakeholder participation in scenario development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores optimal near-term technology R&D in the face of uncertain damages caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases. The paper puts particular emphasis on understanding how optimal near-term R&D expenditures might vary based on the technologies pursued in the R&D program. The exploration is conducted in the context of varying impacts from R&D on the global abatement cost function. The R&D planning problem is considered first within a theoretical framework and is then pursued in a stylized application using the DICE model. The paper provides intuition into the circumstances under which near-term technology R&D might increase or decrease under uncertainty, thereby serving as a hedge against climate uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Island communities are among the first and most adversely affected by the impacts of global climate change. Islands are vulnerable to climate change because of their isolated geography, large coastal areas, and low economic diversification. This paper presents a model-based evaluation of the macroeconomic impacts of climate change on the Blue Economy of southern European islands. We consider climate change impact chains on tourism, maritime transport, and electricity demand in a downscaled modeling framework for different climatic scenarios to the end of the century. Our findings show important economic losses in all climatic scenarios, yet economic damages under an RCP8.5 scenario more than doubled compared to a RCP2.6 pathway. Magnitudes of impacts vary across islands, depending on the level of economic diversification and geographic remoteness. The effects of climate change on the tourism sector are detrimental to the islandic economies, given the sector’s complex value chain and dominant position in value added. Similarly, increasing electricity demand for cooling and water desalination puts additional stress on the economy of the islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing energy provision and access in Sub-Saharan Africa is a key global challenge. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, this paper applies an energy justice framework in overviewing energy realities and policies in Malawi, where electricity access remains among the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa. The use of woodfuel remains high for meeting cooking, heating, and lighting needs leading to indoor air pollution, with serious health consequences, and widespread deforestation. Responses to these dual challenges, a lack of electricity access and ongoing woodfuel use, must be rooted in notions of equity, fairness, and justice. Application of energy justice theorising provides insights into how policy stakeholders are responding to complex and interconnected issues of energy generation and access in low-income settings. Overall, a just response to these energy challenges is possible, but only if it is built on local inclusive governance with fairer and effective systems of investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expected growth in the demand for passenger and freight services exacerbates the challenges of reducing transport GHG emissions, especially as commercial low-carbon alternatives to petroleum fuels are limited for shipping, air and long-distance road travel. Biofuels can offer a pathway to significantly reduce emissions from these sectors, as they can easily substitute for conventional liquid fuels in internal combustion engines. In this paper, we assess the potential of bioenergy to reduce transport GHG emissions through an analysis leveraging various integrated assessment models and scenarios, as part of the 33rd Energy Modeling Forum study (EMF-33). We find that bioenergy can contribute a significant, albeit not dominant, proportion of energy supply to the future transport sector: in scenarios aiming to keep the temperature increase below 2 °C by the end of the twenty-first century, models project that in 2100 bioenergy can provide on average 42 EJ/yr (ranging from 5 to 85 EJ/yr) for transport (compared to 3.7 EJ in 2018), mainly through lignocellulosic fuels. This makes up 9–62% of final transport energy use. Only a small amount of bioenergy is projected to be used in transport through electricity and hydrogen pathways, with a larger role for biofuels in road passenger transport than in freight. The association of carbon capture and storage (CCS) with bioenergy technologies (BECCS) is a key determinant in the role of biofuels in transport, because of the competition for biomass feedstock to provide other final energy carriers along with carbon removal. Among models that consider CCS in the biofuel conversion process the average market share of biofuels is 21% in 2100 (ranging from 2 to 44%), compared to 10% (0–30%) for models that do not. Cumulative direct emissions from the transport sector account for half of the emission budget (from 306 to 776 out of 1,000 GtCO2). However, the carbon intensity of transport decreases as much as other energy sectors in 2100 when accounting for process emissions, including carbon removal from BECCS. Lignocellulosic fuels become more attractive for transport decarbonization if BECCS is not feasible for any energy sectors. Since global transport service demand increases and biomass supply is limited, its allocation to and within the transport sector is uncertain and sensitive to assumptions about political as well as technological and socioeconomic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how climate change adaptation impacts on farm productivity and the ability of households to accumulate assets in the context of a developing economy. We apply an endogenous switching regression to data obtained from 1440 farmers in Ghana. Our model, which accounts for endogeneity and selection bias, allows us to simultaneously determine the factors that influence maize farmers’ decision to adapt to climate change and the productivity and household assets that result from both adaptation and otherwise. We estimate an inverse relationship between rainfall and the decision to adapt to climate change. As expected, we find that access to information has a positive effect on the decision to adapt. Farms that benefit from adaptation do not become less productive with increases in temperature or rainfall. Overall, we find that farmers who adapt to climate change are more productive and have more household assets than their counterfactual. Farmers who do not adapt obtain less yield and have less household assets than their counterfactual. These findings have important implications for policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries face risks from coastal hazards that are being amplified by climate change. The selection of effective adaptation interventions to manage these risks requires a sufficiently accurate assessment of the coastal hazard at a given location. Yet challenges remain in terms of understanding local coastal risks given the coarseness of global wave models and the paucity of locally scaled data in most developing countries, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like Vanuatu. This paper aims to examine the differences in hazard assessment and adaptation option selections arising from analyses using globally versus locally scaled data on coastal processes. As a case study, we focused on an eroding cliff face in Port Resolution on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, which is of concern to the local community and government authorities. The coastal process modeling revealed that the global wave data generated unrealistically high predictions of wave height within Port Resolution Bay. Expensive engineering adaptations designed to provide coastal protection were therefore likely to fail in preventing ongoing cliff erosion. In this case, the best adaptation solution involves changing land use to revegetate and help stabilize the cliff top. Our case study highlights the importance of accurate hazard assessment, especially in data-poor regions where the extrapolation of global datasets and models in the absence of local data can result in poor adaptation decision-making. Furthermore, the multidisciplinary approach applied here can be applied in other data-poor regions to strengthen analyses exploring the benefits of local adaptation interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National greenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs) will play an increasingly important role in tracking country progress against United Nations (UN) Paris Agreement commitments. Yet uncertainty in land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) NGHGHI estimates may undermine international confidence in emission reduction claims, particularly for countries that expect forests and agriculture to contribute large near-term GHG reductions. In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for implementing the uncertainty provisions of the UN Paris Agreement Enhanced Transparency Framework, with a view to identifying the largest sources of LULUCF NGHGI uncertainty and prioritizing methodological improvements. Using the USA as a case study, we identify and attribute uncertainty across all US NGHGI LULUCF “uncertainty elements” (inputs, parameters, models, and instances of plot-based sampling) and provide GHG flux estimates for omitted inventory categories. The largest sources of uncertainty are distributed across LULUCF inventory categories, underlining the importance of sector-wide analysis: forestry (tree biomass sampling error; tree volume and specific gravity allometric parameters; soil carbon model), cropland and grassland (DayCent model structure and inputs), and settlement (urban tree gross to net carbon sequestration ratio) elements contribute over 90% of uncertainty. Net emissions of 123 MMT CO2e could be omitted from the US NGHGI, including Alaskan grassland and wetland soil carbon stock change (90.4 MMT CO2), urban mineral soil carbon stock change (34.7 MMT CO2), and federal cropland and grassland N2O (21.8 MMT CO2e). We explain how these findings and other ongoing research can support improved LULUCF monitoring and transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world's largest fossil fuels exporter, Russia is one of the key countries for addressing global climate change. However, it has never demonstrated any significant ambitions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper applies ideational research methodology to identify the structural differences in economic, political, and social normative contexts between industrialized fossil fuel importing economies and Russia that lead to the fundamental gap in motivations driving decarbonization efforts. Russia is unlikely to replicate the approach to the green transition and climate policy instruments of energy-importing countries. In order to launch decarbonization in Russia, interested stakeholders need to frame climate policies in Russia differently. Specifically, the framing must address the priority of diversification as a means to adapting the national economy to a new green landscape, the combination of diverse channels for decarbonization, the promotion of energy-efficiency, closer attention to climate-related forest projects, and linkage of climate change with other environmental problems. Moreover, considering Russia's emissions as a part of the global economic system and shifting from a simplistic national focus on GHG emissions reduction would help coordinate policies through dialogue between exporters and importers of fossil fuel energy-intensive goods, which is essential for the global movement towards a net-zero future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 120 years, major temporal variations in river flows, lake levels, flood occurrence, wildlife abundance, and vegetation communities, coupled with spatial heterogeneity, have provided fertile ground for narratives of change within the Peace-Athabasca Delta (PAD). In this paper, I show that simple cause-effect explanations and reliance on short-term datasets have misled through over-generalization and have failed to account for the ecosystem’s natural range of variation. Spring break-up discharge correctly predicts 71 to 90% of the binary outcomes (floods, no floods), but break-up discharge is weakly-related to flood magnitude. River regulation has not reduced Peace River spring flood frequency or magnitude. Contrary to popular belief, spring break-up discharge to the PAD from the Peace River’s point of regulation at Hudson Hope has increased, not decreased, since regulation. Conversely, suppression of early May to late August discharge is the most noteworthy effect of Peace River regulation, but its ecological impacts remain poorly documented. Flows of the Peace and Athabasca Rivers are strongly correlated and exhibit similar daily, annual, and decadal patterns. An 8-year highstand of Lake Athabasca occurred just prior to river regulation. Lake Athabasca levels prior to the 1960s and after reservoir-filling did not differ significantly but were 60–80 cm lower than during the 1960–1967 highstand. Climatic changes have been complex. The clearest trends are winter warming and a PDSI regime shift from wet and variable to drier and less variable conditions since 1980. Spring flooding is preceded by greater winter precipitation upstream of the PAD and colder winters at the PAD. Spring ice-run floods without ice jams can recharge portions of the PAD including perched basins. I describe two water management approaches that would recharge large areas. Ecosystem complexity and cognitive biases hamper greater understanding of the dynamics of this globally significant ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this case study, we examine a broad range of impacts on tourism and recreation based on projected changes to Indiana’s climate. The direct impacts of climate change on Indiana include increases in the number of hot and extremely hot days each summer, fewer mild days, more rain, and less snow. Each direct impact will affect tourism and recreation. Additionally, a range of indirect impacts are anticipated, including climate-related changes in health issues, new infrastructure needs, changes in forests and other recreational areas, and shifting consumer attitudes toward travel and recreation. Although direct impacts are predictable, indirect impacts on the complex tourism system are harder to anticipate, and the tourism and recreation industry must build resilience to respond to future change. The paper concludes with recommendations for future study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the practice of Community Based Adaptation (CBA) to climate change in countries like Nepal is growing, the literature has pointed out the need for more research in order to test the effectiveness of CBA in reaching the most vulnerable households and its wider applicability. This paper reviews a Community Adaptation Plan (CAP) piloted and implemented in Nepal. The study involved interviews and interaction with a wide range of relevant stakeholders, in order to map their perceptions on the effectiveness of CAP. The findings show that the CAP process and implementation provided for recognition of the role of local communities in climate change adaptation, and ensured their participation and leadership in the planning process. However, due to issues related to the local structure and governance of community-based organizations, the benefits of climate change adaptation support were enjoyed mostly by elites and powerful individuals. The paper suggests that more inclusive approaches are needed, so as to ensure the planning and governance of local institutions is more accountable and responsive to vulnerable households. This could be achieved by devolving decision-making power to the vulnerable households and ensuring inclusive provisions in membership, representation and resource allocation that encourage more equitable sharing of benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementing an effective climate policy is one of the main challenges for the future. Curbing greenhouse gas emissions can prevent future irreversible impacts of climate change. Climate policy is therefore crucial for present and future generations. Nonetheless, one may wonder whether future economic and social development could be harmed by climate policy. This paper addresses this question by examining recent developments in international climate policy and considering different levels of cooperation that may arise in light of the outcomes of the Conference of the Parties held in Doha. The paper analyses how various climate policy scenarios would enhance sustainability and whether there is a trade-off between climate policy and economic development and social cohesion. This is done by using a new comprehensive indicator, the FEEM Sustainability Index (FEEM SI), which aggregates several economic, social, and environmental indicators. The FEEM SI is built into a recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the world economy, thus offering the possibility of projecting all indicators into the future and of delivering a perspective assessment of sustainability under different future climate policy scenarios. We find that the environmental component of sustainability improves at the regional and world level thanks to the implementation of climate policies. Overall sustainability increases in all scenarios since the economic and social components are affected negatively yet marginally. This analysis does not include explicitly climate change damages and this may lead to underestimating the benefits of policy actions. If the USA, Canada, Japan and Russia did not contribute to mitigating emissions, sustainability in these countries would decrease and the overall effectiveness of climate policy in enhancing global sustainability would be offset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response to the commentary on the article "No harvest was reaped: demographic and climatic factors in the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire" is presented. The authors note that the premise of their original paper and its purpose has been misread and misjudged. They also stresses that the larger point of their article has been missed out where the proxy records indicate a shift towards drier conditions.

This paper examines the dynamics of energy investments and clean energy Research and Development (R&D) using a scenario-based modeling approach. Starting from the global scenarios proposed in the RoSE model ensemble experiment, we analyze the dynamics of investments under different assumptions regarding economic and population growth as well as availability of fossil fuel resources, in the absence of a climate policy. Our analysis indicates that economic growth and the speed of income convergence across countries matters for improvements in energy efficiency, both via dedicated R&D investments but mostly through capital-energy substitution. In contrast, fossil fuel prices, by changing the relative competitiveness of energy sources, create an economic opportunity for radical innovation in the energy sector. Indeed, our results suggest that fossil fuel availability is the key driver of investments in low carbon energy innovation. However, this innovation, by itself, is not sufficient to induce emission reductions compatible with climate stabilization objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a non-cooperative meta-game approach to designing and assessing climate agreements among 28 European countries that will be compatible with the EU 2050 climate target. Our proposed game model is identified through statistical emulation of a large set of numerical simulations performed with the computable general equilibrium model GEMINI-E3. In this game, the players are the 28 European countries, the payoffs are related to welfare losses due to abatements and the strategies correspond to the supply of emission rights on the European carbon market. We show it is possible to design a fair burden-sharing rule that equalizes welfare losses between countries to approximately 1.2 % of their discounted household consumption. The associated European CO price in 2050 reaches $1100, a figure in line with previous studies. Lastly, the paper discusses various implementation issues of these types of negotiations and evaluates the cost of non-cooperation among EU countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution looks at those Small Island Developing States that are doomed to disappear due to anthropogenic climate change. The citizens of these states will not only lose their physical homeland but also their social structure and cultural community. The focus here is on cultural loss. While its subjective importance is easy to grasp, it is harder to see cultural loss as a matter of justice. This paper first presents an account of why cultural loss is often seen as merely unfortunate but not unjust. Against these worries, the paper argues that we have a right that no one threatens our social bases of self-respect and that societal cultures are one important base of self-respect. The discussion concludes that anthropogenic climate change affects peoples' rights with regard to the cultural dimension and that therefore adaptation efforts ought to protect the social bases of self-respect of those climate refugees whose physical, political, and cultural existence is threatened by our inability to keep emissions below safe levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses various papers published within the issue, including one on principles of distributive justice regarding the allocation of emission rights and mitigation costs, one on the emissions trading proposal issued by the German Advisory Council on Global Change, and another on legal and ethical issues implied by unilateral climate action.

The editorial presents a preface for the issue's special section on soil carbon sequestration.

Climate change policy has long been subject to influence by a wide variety of organizations. Despite their importance, the key role of public relations (PR) firms has long been overlooked in the climate political space. This paper provides an exploratory overview of the extent and nature of involvement of PR firms in climate political action by organizations in five sectors: Coal/Steel/Rail, Oil & Gas, Utilities, Renewable Energy, and the Environmental Movement. The analysis shows that the engagement of public relations firms by organizations in all of these sectors is widespread. In absolute terms, the Utility and Gas & Oil sectors engage the most PR firms, and the Environmental Movement engages the fewest. Organizations in the Utilities Sector show a statistically significant higher use of PR firms than the other sectors. Within each sector, engagement of PR firms is concentrated in a few firms, and the major oil companies and electrical-supply manufactures are the heaviest employers of such firms. PR firms generally specialize in representing specific sectors, and a few larger PR firms are widely engaged in climate and energy political activity. PR firms developed campaigns that frequently relied on third-party groups to engage with the public, criticize opponents, and serve as the face of an advertising campaign. Our analysis shows that PR firms are a key organizational actor in climate politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do probability distribution functions (PDFs) about future climate misrepresent uncertainty? How can we recognise when such misrepresentation occurs and thus avoid it in reasoning about or communicating our uncertainty? And when we should not use a PDF, what should we do instead? In this paper, we address these three questions. We start by providing a classification of types of uncertainty and using this classification to illustrate when PDFs misrepresent our uncertainty in a way that may adversely affect decisions. We then discuss when it is reasonable and appropriate to use a PDF to reason about or communicate uncertainty about climate. We consider two perspectives on this issue. On one, which we argue is preferable, available theory and evidence in climate science basically exclude using PDFs to represent our uncertainty. On the other, PDFs can legitimately be provided when resting on appropriate expert judgement and recognition of associated risks. Once we have specified the border between appropriate and inappropriate uses of PDFs, we explore alternatives to their use. We briefly describe two formal alternatives, namely imprecise probabilities and possibilistic distribution functions, as well as informal possibilistic alternatives. We suggest that the possibilistic alternatives are preferable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a dispute has arisen within detection and attribution science concerning the appropriate methodology for associating individual weather events with anthropogenic climate change. In recent contributions, it has been highlighted that this conflict is seemingly misconstrued even by those participating in it and actually concerns a mixture of first and second order so-called inductive risk considerations—in short, it is about values and the role values should have in science. In this paper, we analyze this methodological conflict and examine the inductive risk considerations and argue that there is also another dimension to consider with respect to values that have to do with what detection and attribution science is for. We suggest a framework for understanding this as a kind of problem-feeding situation and thus an issue of problem–solution coordination between different contexts, where the problem is solved versus where the solution is put to use. This has important implications, not least for whether we should understand this conflict as a genuine methodological one or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an assessment of Article 4.1 of the Paris Agreement on climate; the main goal of which is to provide guidance on how “to achieve the long-term temperature goal set out in Article 2”. Paraphrasing, Article 4.1 says that, to achieve this end, we should decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions so that net anthropogenic GHG emissions fall to zero in the second half of this century. To aggregate net GHG emissions, 100-year global warming potentials (GWP-100) are commonly used to convert non-CO2 emissions to equivalent CO2 emissions. The GWP-scaling method is tested using methane as an example. The temperature projections using GWP-100 scaling are shown to be seriously in error. This throws doubt on the use of GWP-100 scaling to estimate net GHG emissions. An alternative method to determine the net-zero point for GHG emissions based on radiative forcing is derived, where the net-zero point is identified with the maximum of GHG forcing. This shows that, to meet the Article 2 warming goal, the net-zero point for GHG emissions needs to be reached as early as 2036, much sooner than in the Article 4.1 window. Other scientific problems in Article 4.1 that further undermine its purpose to guide efforts to achieve the Article 2 temperature targets are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indices assessing country-level climate and disaster risk at the global scale have experienced a steep rise in popularity both in science and international climate policy. A number of widely cited products have been developed and published over the recent years, argued to contribute critical knowledge for prioritizing action and funding. However, it remains unclear how their results compare, and how consistent their findings are on country-level risk, exposure, vulnerability and lack of coping, as well as adaptive capacity. This paper analyses and compares the design, data, and results of four of the leading global climate and disaster risk indices: The World Risk Index, the INFORM Risk Index, ND-GAIN Index, and the Climate Risk Index. Our analysis clearly shows that there is considerable degree of cross-index variation regarding countries’ risk levels and comparative ranks. At the same time, there is above-average agreement for high-risk countries. In terms of risk sub-components, there is surprisingly little agreement in the results on hazard exposure, while strong inter-index correlations can be observed when ranking countries according to their socio-economic vulnerability and lack of coping as well as adaptive capacity. Vulnerability and capacity hotspots can hence be identified more robustly than risk and exposure hotspots. Our findings speak both to the potential as well as limitations of index-based approaches. They show that a solid understanding of index-based assessment tools, and their conceptual and methodological underpinnings, is necessary to navigate them properly and interpret as well as use their results in triangulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The treatment of uncertainty in climate-change science is dominated by the far-reaching influence of the 'frequentist' tradition in statistics, which interprets uncertainty in terms of sampling statistics and emphasizes p-values and statistical significance. This is the normative standard in the journals where most climate-change science is published. Yet a sampling distribution is not always meaningful (there is only one planet Earth). Moreover, scientific statements about climate change are hypotheses, and the frequentist tradition has no way of expressing the uncertainty of a hypothesis. As a result, in climate-change science, there is generally a disconnect between physical reasoning and statistical practice. This paper explores how the frequentist statistical methods used in climate-change science can be embedded within the more general framework of probability theory, which is based on very simple logical principles. In this way, the physical reasoning represented in scientific hypotheses, which underpins climate-change science, can be brought into statistical practice in a transparent and logically rigorous way. The principles are illustrated through three examples of controversial scientific topics: the alleged global warming hiatus, Arctic-midlatitude linkages, and extreme event attribution. These examples show how the principles can be applied, in order to develop better scientific practice. "La théorie des probabilités n'est que le bon sens reduit au calcul." (Pierre-Simon Laplace, Essai Philosophiques sur les Probabilités, 1819). "It is sometimes considered a paradox that the answer depends not only on the observations but on the question; it should be a platitude." (Harold Jeffreys, Theory of Probability, 1st edition, 1939). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the causal factors of livelihood challenges and associated vulnerabilities is essential for developing viable adaptation strategies. However, clarifying which livelihood challenges can be attributed to which causal factors remains a challenge. In this paper, we used a case study in Vanuatu to show how local populations attribute subsistence challenges to underlying causes. Particularly, we are interested in whether there is a tendency to view climate change as the primary cause, and if so, why. We followed a participatory approach involving local community members and experts at all stages of the study process. For this, we used complementary research methods such as resource mapping, participant observation, and in-depth interviews with local community members and local agriculture experts. The results show that local populations are indeed inclined to attribute problems to external causes, particularly climate change. However, the results also indicate that this external attribution is not definitive. Rather, we find that over the course of participatory reflection, attribution to climate change was supplemented and even replaced by internal causal factors, such as changes in garden practices. Our findings suggest that the initial emphasis on climate change may be related to prevailing narratives that may have influenced individual perceptions of the study participants and created social desirability. If such bias is not recognized, the narratives risk being reified, with potential new insights being overlooked. As a result, local attribution may overstate or understate specific causes, such as climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of increasing pressure to deliver climate action targets and the growing role of citizens in raising the importance of the issue, deliberative democratic processes (e.g. citizen juries and citizen assemblies) on climate change are increasingly being used to provide a voice to citizens in climate change decision-making. Through a comparative case study of two processes that ran in the UK in 2019 (the Leeds Climate Change Citizens’ Jury and the Oxford Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change), this paper investigates how far citizen assemblies and juries are increasing citizen engagement on climate change and creating more citizen-centred climate policymaking. Interviews were conducted with policymakers, councillors, professional facilitators and others involved in running these processes to assess motivations for conducting these, their structure and the impact and influence they had. The findings suggest the impact of these processes is not uniform: they have an indirect impact on policy making by creating momentum around climate action and supporting the introduction of pre-planned or pre-existing policies rather than a direct impact by truly being citizen-centred policy making processes or conducive to new climate policy. We conclude with reflections on how these processes give elected representatives a public mandate on climate change, that they help to identify more nuanced and in-depth public opinions in a fair and informed way, yet it can be challenging to embed citizen juries and assemblies in wider democratic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding of long-term climatic change prior to instrumental records necessitates reconstructions from documentary and palaeoclimate archives. In southern Africa, documentary-derived chronologies of nineteenth century rainfall variability and palaeoclimate records have permitted new insights into rainfall variability over past centuries. Rarely considered, however, is the climatic information within early colonial documentary records that emerge from the late fifteenth century onwards. This paper examines evidence for (multi-)seasonal dry and wet events within these earlier written records (c. 1550–1830 CE) from southeast Africa (Mozambique) and west-central Africa (Angola) in conjunction with palaeoclimate records from multiple proxies. Specifically, it aims to understand whether these sources agree in their signals of rainfall variability over a 280-year period covering the ‘main phase’ Little Ice Age (LIA) in southern Africa. The two source types generally, but do not always, show agreement within the two regions. This appears to reflect both the nature of rainfall variability and the context behind documentary recording. Both source types indicate that southeast and west-central Africa were distinct regions of rainfall variability over seasonal and longer timescales during the LIA, with southeast Africa being generally drier and west-central Africa generally wetter. However, the documentary records reveal considerable variability within these mean state climatic conditions, with multi-year droughts a recurrent feature in both regions. An analysis of long-term rainfall links with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in southeast Africa suggests a complex and possibly non-stationary relationship. Overall, early colonial records provide valuable information for constraining hydroclimate variability where palaeoclimate records remain sparse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the vulnerability of the agriculture sector and rural agriculture livelihoods in the Bicol River Basin (BRB) of the Philippines to projected changes in climate. The geographical characteristics of the BRB feature eight major sub-basins or watersheds consisting of Libmanan-Pulantuna, Ragay Hills, Thiris, Naga-Yabo, Pawili River, Waras-Lalo, Naporog, and Quinali. The study applied the combination of the participatory tools and the Climate Risk Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) framework to gather information on local climate vulnerabilities and contexts. Briefly, the CRVA employed geospatial modeling and utilized several indicators which are presumed to affect vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity which were aggregated to provide an index of vulnerability. This enabled us to identify areas of exposure and vulnerability and pointed areas of greatest need for strengthened adaptive capacity and risk management. Our findings revealed that vulnerability in the BRB was perceived to be relatively prevalent and that typhoons, flooding, and drought were identified to contribute significant impacts to rural livelihood. Furthermore, our findings in the CRVA suggested significant regional differences in vulnerability in the BRB. The majority of the towns in the central and northwestern portions of the BRB will largely experience increased vulnerability, particularly, in the Thiris sub-basin including some parts of Ragay Hills, Waras-Lalo, and the northwestern Libmanan-Pulantuna sub-basins. On the contrary, the entire Quinali region on the south is revealed to have the lowest vulnerability index. The clear policy implication of these accounts will be on how to mobilize developmental thrusts in both areas of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation at the sub-national level to reinforce local-based climate priority setting in adaptation interventions and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we assess the quality of state-of-the-art regional climate information intended to support climate adaptation decision-making. We use the UK Climate Projections 2018 as an example of such information. Their probabilistic, global, and regional land projections exemplify some of the key methodologies that are at the forefront of constructing regional climate information for decision support in adapting to a changing climate. We assess the quality of the evidence and the methodology used to support their statements about future regional climate along six quality dimensions: transparency; theory; independence, number, and comprehensiveness of evidence; and historical empirical adequacy. The assessment produced two major insights. First, a major issue that taints the quality of UKCP18 is the lack of transparency, which is particularly problematic since the information is directed towards non-expert users who would need to develop technical skills to evaluate the quality and epistemic reliability of this information. Second, the probabilistic projections are of lower quality than the global projections because the former lack both transparency and a theory underpinning the method used to produce quantified uncertainty estimates about future climate. The assessment also shows how different dimensions are satisfied depending on the evidence used, the methodology chosen to analyze the evidence, and the type of statements that are constructed in the different strands of UKCP18. This research highlights the importance of knowledge quality assessment of regional climate information that intends to support climate change adaptation decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing attention is being given to climate technologies on the international climate change agenda, not least in the agricultural sector and water sectors, and to technologies for adaptation. However investments in technology-based adaptation (seeds, dams, irrigation, etc.) are complicated by the fact that it remains difficult to predict future climate change impacts, especially on a local scale. In addition, evidence for the costs and benefits of implementing adaptation technologies is relatively limited. The analysis presented in this paper shows that there is a large potential for integrating adaptation technologies into the planning and implementation of on-going and future projects. Based on local-level data from a technology needs assessment project in Lebanon, this paper presents two examples of the economic feasibility of implementing adaptation technologies in the agricultural and water sectors. The results show that the technologies can be applied at low cost and with relatively little effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While international cooperation to facilitate the transfer and uptake of climate technologies in developing countries is an ongoing part of climate policy conversations, international collaborative R&D has received comparatively little attention. Collaborative R&D, however, could be a potentially important contributor to facilitating the transfer and uptake of climate technologies in developing countries. But the complexities of international collaborative R&D options and their distributional consequences have been given little attention to date. This paper develops a systematic approach to informing future empirical research and policy analysis on this topic. Building on insights from relevant literature and analysis of empirical data based on a sample of existing international climate technology R&D initiatives, three contributions are made. First, the paper analyses the coverage of existing collaborative R&D efforts in relation to climate technologies, highlighting some important concerns, such as a lack of coverage of lower-income countries or adaptation technologies. Second, it provides a starting point for further systematic research and policy thinking via the development of a taxonomic approach for analysing collaborative designs. Finally, it matches characteristics of R&D collaborations against developing countries' climate technology needs to provide policymakers with guidance on how to Configure R&D collaborations to meet these needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roughly 20 percent of current CO2 emissions will likely remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years (Solomon et al. ). Despite this, climate damages attributable to current emissions that occur beyond 150 years or so have almost no effect on the current optimal carbon tax in typical integrated assessment models. The source of this strong result is conventional economic discounting. The current paper builds on recent work by Gerlagh and Liski () and Iverson (J Environ Econ Manag 66:598-608, , ) to demonstrate this fact in a simple way and to show that it is not robust to plausible changes in the calibration approach for discounting parameters. Specifically, when time preference rates decline, a possibility supported by a wide variety of studies from psychology and economics, long run consumption impacts are potentially very important and so are long run features of the carbon cycle. The paper follows (Gerlagh and Liski ) in showing that this remains true even when the discounting parameters are calibrated to match historical interests rates, thus avoiding the main economic critique of the Stern Review (Stern ; Nordhaus ; Weitzman Rev Econ Stat 91:1-19 ). The effects are quantified using a formula for the optimal carbon tax from Iverson (J Environ Econ Manag 66:598-608, , ), which we use to decompose the current optimal tax into the cumulative contribution from consumption impacts at different horizons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results-based funding (RBF) is a governance concept that is rapidly becoming the mainstream paradigm for international collaborations in the environmental sector. While portrayed as a compromise solution between market-based mechanisms and unconditional donations, the implementation of RBF is revealing new conflicts and contradictions of its own. This paper explores the application of RBF for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) by describing the discursive conflicts between recipient (i.e., Brazil) and donor (i.e., Norway and Germany) countries of the Amazon Fund about what constitutes “results” or “performance.” Although all parties agree that the financial transfers to RBF should be based on past emission reductions in relation to a historical baseline, they hold clashing interpretations about temporal (i.e., past or future) and epistemological (i.e., how to measure) aspects of the results these payments are intended for. Firstly, while Brazil emphasizes that it deserves a reward of USD 21 billion for results achieved between 2006 and 2016, donor countries have indicated an interest in paying only for most recent results as a way to incentivize further reductions. Secondly, while all parties believe that Amazon Fund should support policies to reduce deforestation, donor countries have revealed concerns that the performance of the Amazon Fund projects in generating further reductions has not been measured in a rigorous manner. This suggests that donor countries may consider making changes to current RBF mechanisms or getting involved in new forms of finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift away from coal is at the heart of the global low-carbon transition. Can governments of coal-producing countries help facilitate this transition and benefit from it? This paper analyses the case for coal taxes as supply-side climate policy implemented by large coal exporting countries. Coal taxes can reduce global carbon dioxide emissions and benefit coal-rich countries through improved terms-of-trade and tax revenue. We employ a multi-period equilibrium model of the international steam coal market to study a tax on steam coal levied by Australia alone, by a coalition of major exporting countries, by all exporters, and by all producers. A unilateral export tax has little impact on global emissions and global coal prices as other countries compensate for reduced export volumes from the taxing country. By contrast, a tax jointly levied by a coalition of major coal exporters would significantly reduce global emissions from steam coal and leave them with a net sector level welfare gain, approximated by the sum of producer surplus, consumer surplus, and tax revenue. Production taxes consistently yield higher tax revenues and have greater effects on global coal consumption with smaller rates of carbon leakages. Questions remain whether coal taxes by major suppliers would be politically feasible, even if they could yield economic benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lobbying is considered to be an important factor in the success or failure of climate change legislation. This paper provides an estimate of lobbying expenditures related to climate change legislation in the U.S. Congress from 2000 to 2016. During this time period, over $2 billion was spent on this activity, constituting 3.9% of total lobbying expenditures. Major sectors involved in lobbying were fossil fuel and transportation corporations, utilities, and affiliated trade associations. Expenditures by these sectors dwarf those of environmental organizations and renewable energy corporations. Levels of expenditures on lobbying appear to be related to the introduction and probability of passage of significant climate legislation. Future research should focus on tying particular positions on climate legislation and lobbying expenditures at the corporate level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a model for the distribution of the Global Carbon Budget between the countries of the world is presented. The model is based on the criteria of equity while also taking into account the different historical responsibilities. The Global Carbon Budget corresponds to the quantity of carbon dioxide emissions that can still be released into the atmosphere while maintaining the increase in the average earth surface temperature below 2 °C, and it is therefore compatible with the long-term objective defined in the Paris Agreement. The results of applying the model are shown both for the 15 emitters that currently top the ranking for world emissions as well as for the other countries, which are grouped together in three main groups: Other African, Other Latin American and Caribbean, and the Rest of the World. Mitigation curves compatible with the carbon budget allocated to the different countries are presented. When comparing each emitter’s historical emissions for the period 1971-2010 with the proposed distribution for the period 2011-2050 obtained using the model, it can be seen that developed countries must face the future with a greatly reduced carbon budget, whereas developing countries can make use of a carbon budget that is higher than their cumulative historical emissions. Finally, there is a discussion about how a model with these characteristics could be useful when implementing the Paris Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of resilience of urban systems to weather and climate variability—termed type I adaptation—and also to climate change—type II adaptation—are both major challenges to the livability and sustainability of cities in the Global South. However, there is often competition and conflict in these cities between actions that address existing adaptation deficits (type I) and projected adaptation gaps (type II). Extending the concept of the environmental Kuznets curve, this paper argues that synergistic action on type I and type II adaptation is essential in order for these cities to maintain their livability and build resilience to climate variability and climate change in the face of growing urban populations. A proposed unifying framework has been demonstrated in Can Tho, Vietnam, where there are significant adaptation deficits due to rapid urbanization and adaptation gaps due to climate change and socioeconomic changes. The analysis in Can Tho reveals the lack of integration between type I and type II measures that could be overcome by closer integration between various stakeholders in terms of planning, prioritizing, and implementing adaptation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the growing demand for climate change information to guide national and local adaptation decision-making in the Philippines, the climate science and services community is producing an increasing volume of future climate data using a range of modelling approaches. However, there is a significant methodological challenge in how to best compare and combine information produced using different models and methods. In this paper, we present the landscape of climate model data available in the Philippines and show how multi-model, multi-method climate projections are being used and communicated to inform climate change policy and planning, focusing on the agriculture sector. We highlight the importance of examining and communicating methodological strengths and weaknesses as well as understanding the needs and capabilities of different user communities. We discuss the assessment of projections from different methods, including global and regional downscaled simulations, and discuss ways to summarise and communicate this information to stakeholders using co-production approaches. The paper concludes with perspectives on how to best use an “ensemble of opportunity” to construct defensible, plausible and usable climate projections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of research shows that extreme climatic events, e.g. heatwave, rainstorms and droughts, are becoming more frequent and intensified across various regions of the world. Australia is not isolated from these changes with marked increase in both rainfall and temperature extremes. Inherently, we understand that exposure to these extreme events could encourage decisions about population flow, and quantifying this linkage is challenging, especially for communities in small areas with an average of 10,000 people. Using spatio-temporal statistical techniques, this paper examines the possible environmental and socio-economic drivers associated with population flows of small communities as well as the possible predictive scenarios due to the effects introduced by climatic extremes. The analysis has been undertaken for a case-study region in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, where the economy is underpinned by agriculture and is sensitive to climate variability and extremes. The analysis reveals that in addition to the socio-economic factors, the environmental variables have a statistically significant association on shaping the distribution of the population flows in the study area. This statistical analysis can direct further data collection and causality analysis and be beneficial for policy makers, stakeholders and local communities to work together to adapt the Basin to climate extremes and changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a potential threat to achieving food security, particularly in the most food insecure regions. However, interpreting climate change projections to better understand the potential impacts of a changing climate on food security outcomes is challenging. This paper addresses this challenge through presenting a framework that enables rapid country-level assessment of vulnerability to food insecurity under a range of climate change and adaptation investment scenarios. The results show that vulnerability to food insecurity is projected to increase under all emissions scenarios, and the geographic distribution of vulnerability is similar to that of the present-day; parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are most severely affected. High levels of adaptation act to off-set these increases; however, only the scenario with the highest level of mitigation combined with high levels of adaptation shows improvements in vulnerability compared to the present-day. The results highlight the dual requirement for mitigation and adaptation to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and to make gains in tackling food insecurity. The approach is an update to the existing Hunger and Climate Vulnerability Index methodology to enable future projections, and the framework presented allows rapid updates to the results as and when new information becomes available, such as updated country-level yield data or climate model output. This approach provides a framework for assessing policy-relevant human food security outcomes for use in long-term climate change and food security planning; the results have been made available on an interactive website for policymakers (www.metoffice.gov.uk/food-insecurity-index). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mainstream discourses on global climate change have tended to focus on mitigation and have neglected the adaptive measures, particularly at the local level, even though the local/indigenous people have been considered to be more vulnerable to such change. However, climate change has a distinct local reality—since the way such change is perceived and addressed is linked with the local people and their practices. Although climate change largely affects the lives of the local poor, certain positive effects may also occur for those marginalized people. In other words, many of the indigenous peoples have an adaptive capacity to deal with climate change. Therefore, climate change adaptation has now increasingly gained prominence. In this context, this paper will investigate the impact of climate change at the local level and explain how an indigenous and vulnerable population, the Konda Reddis, respond to such change through cultural adaptation. The paper will focus on the cultural significance of the jeelugu (fishtail palm, Caryota urens) and Konda Reddis’ shift from the jeelugu to the tati (palmyra palm, Borassus flabellifera). I will argue that such a shift is an indication of an adaptation to climate change. I will also maintain that though climate change plays a dominant role in stimulating such adaptation, certain other factors also interact with climatic factors in the adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The USDA Forest Service has many national level policies related to multiple use management. However, translating national policy to stand level forest management can be difficult. As an example of how a national policy can be put into action, we examined three case studies in which a desired future condition is evaluated at the national, region, and local scale. We chose to use carbon sequestration as the desired future condition because climate change has become a major area of concern during the last decade. Several studies have determined that the 193 million acres of US national forest land currently sequester 11 to 15% of the total carbon emitted as a nation. This paper provides a framework by which national scale strategies for maintaining or enhancing forest carbon sequestration is translated through regional considerations and local constraints in adaptive management practices. Although this framework used the carbon sequestration as a case study, this framework could be used with other national level priorities such as the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) or the Endangered Species Act (ESA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The designation of climate change as crisis has the potential to direct global attentions to both the past and the future. Yet, dominant societal narratives most notably in mainstream media have primarily focused on potential futures that draw on a range of scientific modeling with little awareness of diverse colonial histories and other knowledges. The turn to global climate services and discussions about usable climate science exemplifies approaches built on scientific ideals of standardization, establishing shared baselines, and an orientation towards both tracking dangerous moves away from and mitigating for a more stable ecological future. This paper suggests that Indigenous climate change studies as proposed by Whyte (English Language Notes 55(1-2):153-162, 2017) offer a differentiated approach and critique to thinking about context, climate events utility, and ecological relations. This has already become particularly salient in considerations of events like major wildfires, for example. Climate change is increasingly being understood in public arenas as legible through these kinds of events that signal crisis. How the future is imagined, what kinds of journalism emerge as heralds of crisis, and who is deemed useful are related to both scientific findings and colonial ordering of societies and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper translates Ostrom’s “diagnostic approach” for social-ecological systems to identify the collective action problems and core governance barriers for sea-level rise adaptation in the San Francisco Bay Area. The diagnostic approach considers variables related to the resource system, the resource units, the users, and the governance system. Coupled ecological-infrastructure models identify two core collective action problems: vulnerability interdependency and adaptation interdependency. Qualitative social science case study methods identify the key structural governance and behavioral barriers to cooperation and ongoing activities to address them. The diagnostic approach is potentially applicable to any coastal regions that are vulnerable to sea-level rise and also other climate adaptation issues where vulnerability and adaptation interdependencies require overcoming governance challenges to collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in temperature, precipitation, sea level, and coastal storms will likely increase the vulnerability of infrastructure across the USA. Using models that analyze vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation, this paper estimates impacts to railroad, roads, and coastal properties under three infrastructure management response scenarios: No Adaptation; Reactive Adaptation, and Proactive Adaptation. Comparing damages under each of these potential responses provides strong support for facilitating effective adaptation in these three sectors. Under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario and without adaptation, overall costs are projected to range in the $100s of billions annually by the end of this century. The first (reactive) tier of adaptation action, however, reduces costs by a factor of 10, and the second (proactive) tier reduces total costs across all three sectors to the low $10s of billions annually. For the rail and road sectors, estimated costs for Reactive and Proactive Adaptation scenarios capture a broader share of potential impacts, including selected indirect costs to rail and road users, and so are consistently about a factor of 2 higher than prior estimates. The results highlight the importance of considering climate risks in infrastructure planning and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Correction to this paper has been published: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning as an afterthought in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, adaptation as an agenda has come a long way since 1992. With no ambitious mitigation, recent years have witnessed an increasing frequency of extreme climate events, including cross-border or borderless climate risks. Accordingly, the Paris Agreement frames adaptation as a global goal and global responsibility. However, financing for adaptation continues to remain extremely poor, relative to the estimated needs, even though the regime has obligatory provisions for support by developed countries. Why is this so? Why should the majority of the countries, with an insignificant contribution to causing the problem, suffer from increasing climate impacts? How can adaptation finance be enhanced at scale? As a response to these queries, the paper substantiates three claims: (1) that poor funding can be attributed to the territorial framing under the regime that conceptualizes adaptation largely as a local or national public good and, hence, the inefficacy of market mechanisms, (2) that it makes conceptual and political sense to consider adaptation as a global public good, and (3) that such a reframing should make a difference in boosting adaptation finance. In a multi-polar world with different views on adaptation finance, multilateral agencies should lead in promoting the proposed framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers may wish to take into account public opinion on climate change as they craft legislation, but if public opinion changes substantially in response to seemingly trivial changes in survey questionnaire design, perhaps such reliance would be unwise. This paper examines 110 experiments implemented in surveys of truly random samples of American adults between 2012 and 2018 (N=4414), exploring the extent to which answers to questions were influenced by order and wording manipulations. Of 144 tests, 31 (22%) yielded statistically significant effects. Adjustments for multiple hypothesis tests reduced this percentage to between 7 and 9%. The effect sizes are routinely small. These results are consistent with the conclusion that survey results on climate change issues are relatively robust, so policymakers can take them seriously if they wish to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]