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Governments deal increasingly with multidimensional problems involving high levels of complexity. These so-called wicked problems, such as climate change, demand coordinated and coherent government action, as well as multi-stakeholder approaches. Boundary Organisations (BO), working at the knowledge-interface of the science–policy–society nexus may contribute substantially to both ends. This paper considers the potential contribution of the recently created Competence Centre for Planning, Policy, and Foresight of the Public Administration (PlanAPP), a Portuguese BO at the centre of government, to evidence-informed policy. To this goal, we focus on two streams of literature, Policy Coordination and Coherence (PCC) and Knowledge Governance (KG). An analytical framework with two dimensions is proposed: the first dimension considers if and how PlanAPP engages in boundary work; the second dimension looks at the activities that PlanAPP implements and their potential for PCC and KG. Our results support the idea that PlanAPP is promoting work on the knowledge-interface for public policy, with the potential to become a main player in supporting governments to address policy issues, including wicked problems, whilst potentially triggering a shift to knowledge governance in Portugal's public administration. Nevertheless, PlanAPP could further intensify boundary activities, especially by increasing civil society participation and producing shared outputs that all actors involved recognise as legitimate, increasing trust in policy and institutions. This study's methodology may be replicated to improve understanding of BOs and their contribution to policymaking in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As global climate change becomes increasingly severe, energy technology innovation has become a key means of coping with the climate crisis and realizing green and low-carbon development. However, existing literature rarely examines the effects of carbon emission reduction policies based on the perspective of energy technology progress for both short-term economic fluctuations and long-term equilibrium. This paper introduces the fossil energy technology sector and the renewable energy technology sector into the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, and compares the effectiveness of the carbon emission cap policy, the fossil energy technology subsidy policy, and the renewable energy technology subsidy policy under the framework of China's carbon trading market in promoting macroeconomic growth and controlling pollutant emissions. We found that in long-term, the emission reduction effect of the carbon emission cap policy falls short of the other two policies, and subsidizing fossil fuel technologies is more cost-efficient comparatively. The government expenditure shock can all stimulate macroeconomic growth with crowding out of private investment and household consumption, whereas the energy technology research productivity shock leads to a decline in total output and an increase in renewable energy technology demand. In addition, pollutant emissions are pro-cyclical under the impact of total carbon policies and counter-cyclical under the impact of energy technology subsidy policies. This article constructs a multi-technology sectoral dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, expanding the research perspective and theoretical framework for evaluating carbon emission reduction policies. At the same time, it proves the importance of the government to implement the phased energy technology subsidy policy while implementing the carbon emission cap policy, which provides important enlightenment for the implementation and adjustment of carbon emission reduction policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education needs to be at the forefront of the efforts to mitigate and adapt to Climate Change (CC) effects. We have introduced the Climate Change Competence (C3) to provide a comprehensive route to include the topics of sustainability and CC into the curriculum. This paper analyses how different primary and secondary teachers can improve this competence using a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on the basic science of CC. While the improvement in knowledge is expected, we have observed important advances on abilities, and attitudes on CC which are also essential to teach about CC mitigation and adaptation. The present study used a pre-experimental design, with pre-and post-test measurements with a sample of 530 students. While the MOOC focuses on the Science of CC, the participants also advance in attitudes and abilities, revealing an important correlation between these three dimensions of competence. Also, the study reveals that the MOOC improves the C3 in all the participants, but it does in diverse ways for diverse groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists have proposed many "Beyond-GDP" indicators to replace the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in order to quantify genuine societal development. While GDP is regularly projected, research on future trajectories of Beyond-GDP indicators is lacking, failing to meet policymakers' needs. Focusing on the Human Development Index (HDI), this paper attempts to calculate one of the first global well-being projections for 161 countries by 2100 using the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), the socioeconomic inputs underlying global climate change scenarios. The results indicate a potential global well-being improvement from medium to very high level, depending on the SSPs, with most countries reaching high human development under SSPs 1&5. While serving as an initial step in well-being projection, the results highlight a crucial gap in existing climate change models which are used by the IPCC—they inadequately account for the feedback effects of climate change on well-being. This oversight results in counterintuitive or potentially misleading well-being projections. Therefore, we propose steps to improve this situation. By synthesizing climate change feedback effects on HDI determinants, this assessment delves into their implications for well-being and further underscores the necessity for interdisciplinary collaborations among well-being researchers, climate scientists and policy modelers to achieve sound integral well-being projections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists have proposed many "Beyond-GDP" indicators to replace the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in order to quantify genuine societal development. While GDP is regularly projected, research on future trajectories of Beyond-GDP indicators is lacking, failing to meet policymakers' needs. Focusing on the Human Development Index (HDI), this paper attempts to calculate one of the first global well-being projections for 161 countries by 2100 using the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), the socioeconomic inputs underlying global climate change scenarios. The results indicate a potential global well-being improvement from medium to very high level, depending on the SSPs, with most countries reaching high human development under SSPs 1&5. While serving as an initial step in well-being projection, the results highlight a crucial gap in existing climate change models which are used by the IPCC—they inadequately account for the feedback effects of climate change on well-being. This oversight results in counterintuitive or potentially misleading well-being projections. Therefore, we propose steps to improve this situation. By synthesizing climate change feedback effects on HDI determinants, this assessment delves into their implications for well-being and further underscores the necessity for interdisciplinary collaborations among well-being researchers, climate scientists and policy modelers to achieve sound integral well-being projections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Environmental non-migration' refers to the spatial continuity of an individual's residence at the same place despite environmental risk. Moreover, this is a largely under-researched topic, especially within the climate change adaptation discourse, but is increasingly coming to the attention of scientists and policymakers for sustainable adaptation planning. So far, there exists hardly any conceptual and methodical guidelines to study environmental non-migration. Considering this research gap, this paper explores environmental non-migration based on the notion that factors of livelihood resilience can partly explain the decision to non-migration. Here, livelihood resilience is seen as an outcome of the interactions between societal and environmental conditions of an individual household. These conditions inform the decisions (to stay or to migrate) taken in case of a hazard or creeping environmental change. Their influence generalises the spectrum of migration decision-making (to stay or to migrate), which is conceptualised by four broad outcomes categorised into voluntary and involuntary, and non-migrants and migrants. This analytical concept is operationalised through an empirical example in southwest coastal Bangladesh. The results suggest that the Livelihood Resilience Index (LRI) relates to the voluntary nature of migration decisions once they are made. Still, only a household's resilience cannot predict the decisions the household makes to stay or migrate. The paper concludes that the proposed analytical concept, with its exemplary factors, maybe an initial means to holistically explore migration decisions in the context of natural hazards and climate and environmental change. However, environmental non-migration remains complex and multi-faceted, and its assessment requires deeper examination at various scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural gas is frequently introduced as a "transitional fuel". Because burning natural gas emits less carbon dioxide emissions than burning either oil or coal. Additionally, the intermittent nature of low-carbon electricity generation creates imperative for using natural gas for power generation. The role of natural gas is currently under scrutiny as climate change transforms into a climate crisis. Meanwhile, share of natural gas in the primary energy consumption of Azerbaijan is 69%, while 94% of the country's electricity is currently being generated in natural gas-fired power plants. In this manner, this paper estimates income and price elasticities of natural gas demand for the Azerbaijan case. In this study, various sets of estimation techniques are utilized. By modeling natural gas demand with different estimation methods, including Autoregressive Distributed Lagged Structural Time Series Modeling, Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares Method, Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares, Canonical Cointegrating Regression, and General to Specific under Autometrics multi-path search machine learning algorithm, we try to find if there is room for the country to export more. All these utilized estimation methods confirmed the long-run income elasticity to be around 0.8, while the long-run price elasticity is around −0.1. Both estimations provide insights in terms of energy security and electricity security for policymakers during the implementation process of climate, energy, and environmental policy. Findings of this study classify natural as a necessity and normal good for the Azerbaijan case. The main policy implication of this study is that policymakers must enable and facilitate the availability of close renewable substitutes for residential and commercial customers. Estimated elasticities suggest that with rising national income, demand for natural gas will keep increasing, and efficient consumption will not be attainable with increasing prices. In the pursuit of export potential, findings suggest that it is more relevant to free up natural gas allocated from power generation by substituting it with renewable energy sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing ecotourism services is a suitable solution to help developing countries improve the status of sustainable development indicators and protect their environment. The primary purpose of this paper is to find out the effects of green governance variables and carbon dioxide emissions on ecotourism for 40 developing economies from 2010 to 2021. The results confirmed a uni-directional causal relationship between the green governance indicator and the inflation rate of the ecotourism indicator. In addition, with a 1% improvement in the green governance index of developing countries, the ecotourism of these countries will increase by 0.43%. In comparison, with a 1% increase in the globalization index of these countries, ecotourism will increase by 0.32%. Moreover, ecotourism in developing countries is more sensitive to macroeconomic variables changes than in developed economies. Geopolitical risk is an influential factor in the developing process of ecotourism. The practical policies recommended by this research are developing the green financing market, establishing virtual tourism, granting green loans to small and medium enterprises, and government incentives to motivate active businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has acknowledged that climate change is likely to expand the wealth gap, and climate policies may further increase inequality. Nevertheless, little research has focused on how climate policies affect inequality. To address this, we employ a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to quantify the inequality impacts of the Chinese carbon taxes. Our CGE model results show that tax impacts on inequality are influenced by distribution of climate damages, tax payments, and recycling of tax revenues. Specifically, a positive correlation between income and climate damage induces lower inequality, compared to a zero or negative correlation. Tax payments by high-income households induce lower inequality than tax payments proportional to or independent from income. Recycling tax revenues to low-income households only induces lower inequality than the other recycling schemes. The results imply that relative utility is determined by absolute income, whereas income inequality only has a slight impact on it. In other words, governments could reduce negative feelings about inequality under a climate policy by increasing national income, even if the climate policy may induce higher inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change impacts are being felt across sectors in all regions of the world, and adaptation projects are being implemented to reduce climate risks and existing vulnerabilities. Climate adaptation actions also have significant synergies and tradeoffs with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 5 on gender equality. Questions are increasingly being raised about the gendered and climate justice implications of different adaptation options. This paper investigates if reported climate change adaptation actions are contributing to advancing the goal of gender equality (SDG 5) or not. It focuses on linkages between individual targets of SDG 5 and climate change adaptation actions for nine major sectors where transformative climate actions are envisaged. The assessment is based on evidence of adaptation actions documented in 319 relevant research publications published during 2014–2020. Positive links to nine targets under SDG 5 are found in adaptation actions that are consciously designed to advance gender equality. However, in four sectors—ocean and coastal ecosystems; mountain ecosystems; poverty, livelihood, sustainable development; and industrial system transitions, we find more negative links than positive links. For adaptation actions to have positive impacts on gender equality, gender-focused targets must be intentionally brought in at the prioritisation, designing, planning, and implementation stages. An SDG 5+ approach, which takes into consideration intersectionality and gender aspects beyond women alone, can help adaptation actions move towards meeting gender equality and other climate justice goals. This reflexive approach is especially critical now, as we approach the mid-point in the timeline for achieving the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing popularity of Twitter as a medium for sharing and debating scientific information brings forth questions about the type of narratives emerging around environmental/climate change and global warming. This article maps the landscape of narratives of how Twitter is used to communicate about environmental issues in Turkey. It displays how these actors can play a crucial role in constructing and/or de-constructing such crisis. I show how Twitter users in Turkey, use such medium to strengthen their own and the public's awareness on global warming or to deny all together create a counter narrative and how certain frames that promote scepticism about environmental change are broadly disseminated by using certain emotional context. The analyses of the 1295 tweets collected using a random week sample displayed users who are sceptical about the Turkish government taking a more active stance toward climate change whereas the users supporting the government in general where more preoccupied with hoax arguments that in return may compromise trust in scientific authorities. The analysis combines thematic analysis of tweets and coding. I conclude the paper by conversing the significance of studying Twitter as a communicative platform that provides rich information displaying the existing dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse on environmental challenges has evolved significantly in recent years, with climate change emerging as a central global concern. This transformation has been heavily influenced by the last wave of youth-led social movements, notably the Fridays for Future movement, who have mobilized young people at a global scale contributing at a shift in public discourse on the topic of climate action. However, despite the impact of the newly emerged youth-led movements it is still rather unclear if and where has youth gained recognition as a group with special interests within environmental policy and governance. In this study we report on a research were we investigated the positioning of youth in contemporary environmental governance, and propose a theoretical perspective to understand how the subject category of "youth" is constructed in public discourse and its implications for political recognition. We study the progressive emergence of Greta Thunberg as a voice for a generation of youth climate activists and undertake a document analysis of selected material generated in relation to selected international political events. By addressing questions of recognition, discourse structure, and legitimacy, this research aims to shed light on the nuanced dynamics shaping the role of youth in environmental policy and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the traditional fishing sector of Ecuador, integrating a gender perspective enhances sustainability and addresses climate change by recognizing the vital roles and knowledge of women in fisheries management. The objective of this study was to validate the content, comprehension, and construction of the designed questionnaire. Additionally, it is intended to identify perceptions of sustainability and climate change amongst women and men in fisheries, and compare their views on the dimensions of sustainability and climate change. The research implemented a questionnaire with a metrically satisfactory scale, providing information on how men and women perceive sustainability and climate change in the artisanal fishing sector. The data were collected by designing an ad hoc questionnaire denominated "Gender perception as regards sustainability and climate change" following a process in which the validity of the content (experts > 0.5823; Content Validity Ratio (CVR) > 6.1; Content Validity Index (CVI) > 0.852), decompression (pilot study, N = 30) and construct (KMO = 0.71) were analyzed. The results of the internal consistency reliability analysis indicated that the Likert scale had a high index of reliability, as evidenced by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of 0.70. This analysis provided evidence of the structure and validity of the scale, resulting in a reliable, integral, and short tool with which to measure perceptions of sustainability and climate change. The questionnaire was administered to 1464 people employed in the traditional fishing industry (17.14% women) in 40 fishing community ports near the coastal profile of Ecuador (Esmeraldas and Manabí). Most of those surveyed stated that the current traditional fishing quotas are not very sustainable in the long term (47.10%, n = 690) and that climate change may significantly negatively impact catch rates (50.30%, n = 736). Finally, the Wilcoxon test of tests confirmed that women had significantly more positive attitudes than men towards sustainability (3.03 ± 0.69) and climate change (3.35 ± 0.64). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the crucial stage of the energy transition for combating extreme climate changes, it has been frequently discussed: Whether clean and fossil energies are substitutes or complements? To answer this question, we first analyze the correlations of some main clean and fossil energy markets in 2015–2022. After identifying and measuring the volatility spillovers in these energy markets, the original sequence is decomposed into three subsequences in each time-frequency to accurately capture the temporal relations in the short or long term. Furthermore, we select three periods when global climate change issues occurred frequently for the event analysis, then explore the linkages between the energy markets when experiencing climate uncertainties from different time dimensions. We find that the close interactions between clean energy markets are mainly presented in the long term. Meanwhile, even though the spillover effects between the oil market and others are not obvious in the original sequence, significant spillovers could be observed in the selected periods. Therefore, we can infer that the frequently-occurred climate change issues could be one of the reasons that trigger the volatility spillovers between the oil and other energy markets. As climate uncertainties increase, different reactions between the energy markets can be seen in the short term, while a synchronized trend is also easily observed in the long term. Hence, we conclude that these energies could be substitutes in the short term, while complements in the long run. The above analytic results could be helpful for policymakers and investors to cope with the market fluctuations that are brought by climate issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding divergent perceptions of ethnic groups to climate change in mountainous regions home to multi-ethnic cultures and the factors influencing these perceptions is crucial for policymakers to predict the trending impacts of climate change and make long-term decisions. Based on the case of Southwest China, 1216 households were interviewed by questionnaire surveys to gain insight into the perceptions of local people on the dynamic evolution characteristics of climate events in the uplands of Yunnan, China, which is an area home to rich ethnic diversity, and also to determine the factors that influence these perceptions. Results indicated that climate events have now become important events for farmers' livelihoods, ranking only after family diseases and livestock diseases. Drought, long-term drought, and erratic rainfall are the three kinds of climatic events with the most significant increase in frequency and severity in mountainous areas. Farmers' perceptions on whether drought, long-term drought, and erratic rainfall occurred 10 years ago as well as changes in frequency and severity are significantly influenced by characteristics of respondents, ethnic culture, geographical environment of farmer residences, farmland characteristics, and sources of livelihood. Ultimately, taking ethnic differences into consideration for long-term planning will be an important part of the local response to climate change in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of climate change on food security and public health has hindered poverty reduction efforts in developing nations, including Tanzania, resulting in the impoverishment of millions and compromising both health and food production. To unravel these complex interactions, rigorous scientific research is indispensable. Leveraging three waves of the Agriculture Sample Census (2002/03, 2007/08, 2019/20), this study meticulously examines the interplay between climate change, food security, and diarrhoea prevalence in Tanzania. Employing Instrumental Variable Probit and Control Function Approach models to address endogeneity and heterogeneity, temperature anomalies serve as instrumental variables. The findings reveal a substantial impact of climate change on both food security (−0.331142, p < 0.01) and diarrhoea incidence (0.214602, p < 0.01). These results signify that climate change places significant stress on food security, rendering households more susceptible to insecurities, and heightens health concerns through increased diarrhoea prevalence. This underscores the urgency of prioritizing public health and well-being through an agricultural lens in climate change mitigation. A comprehensive strategy is imperative, entailing a synergy of sustainable agricultural practices, robust public health interventions, and targeted policies to fortify the adaptive capacity of communities. Special emphasis should be placed on cultivating climate-resilient agricultural systems, ensuring food security, and implementing health programs tailored to address the unique challenges posed by climate-induced factors. Moreover, community engagement and awareness initiatives play a pivotal role in fostering a collective understanding and commitment to sustainable practices, contributing to the overall resilience of societies amidst the challenges of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weather, trade restrictions, rising oil prices, a lack of financial support for farmers, and other factors have contributed to the destabilization of South Asian food security. The purpose of this study is to determine the long-run and short-run relationships between climate change, agricultural credit, renewable energy, and food security for a sample of South Asian countries between 1990 and 2021. The Dynamic Common Correlated technique is utilized for empirical analysis since it directly addresses the issue of cross-sectional dependency while delivering accurate cointegration findings. The study's empirical findings show that climate change reduces food availability and increases the incidence of food insecurity in South Asia. In contrast, the use of renewable energy sources has a positive effect on food security in the short-run but not in the long-run, while the availability of credit to farmers has a positive effect on food security. Findings suggest that South Asian countries may reduce climate change's negative effect on food security by investing in climate services, climate-resilient infrastructure, growing drought-resistant crops, using supplemental reinforced agricultural practices, and improving their weather forecasting capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic literature on personal experiences of climate-induced wellbeing erosion (often conceptualised as 'non-economic losses and damages') is still limited. This represents a serious climate policy gap that hinders support for marginalised people across the world including Indigenous People. Lately, we have seen a rapid growth in empirical studies exploring linkages between climate change and mental health among Indigenous Inuit in Canada. However, its association with human (im)mobility remains unexplored. This review article brings together the empirical evidence of Inuit experiences and perceptions of climate-related wellbeing loss and (im)mobility while providing climate policy with guidance for appropriate action. The systematic review investigates how Inuit in Arctic Canada felt that climatic changes impacted their (im)mobility and mental health while putting these feelings into a wider context of colonial violence, forced child removal, the residential schools, and other systematic human rights abuses. Twelve electronic databases (four specific to Arctic research) were searched for English and French, peer reviewed, qualitative studies published between 2000 and 2021. Fifteen selected articles were analysed using NVivo and thematic narrative analysis from a climate-violence-health nexus systems approach. Three overarching climate-related wellbeing loss themes, all strongly intertwined with feelings of immobility, emerged from the literature namely 'identity and cultural loss', 'land connection as a source of healing', and 'changing environment triggering emotional distress'. The narratives circled around Inuit land connection and how climate-induced temporary (im)mobility interrupted this relationship. Climatic changes isolated Inuit away from the land and cut off their ability to partake in land activities. This strongly eroded Inuit wellbeing, expressed through distress, anxiety, depression, social tension, suicide ideation and deep feelings of cultural loss. The findings showed how Inuit mental health strongly depend on a sustained connection to the land. Further empirical research among other Indigenous People or nomadic groups on wellbeing loss and climate-induced involuntary immobility is urgently needed. Future research should particularly explore how such mental health impacts tie into past and present (post)colonial traumas and current suicide occurrences. This will help climate policy, research, and adaptation planning better prepare and propose more contextually and culturally appropriate health actions in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last several years, the United Kingdom has seen a wave of environmental movements demanding action on the climate crisis. While aligned in their goals, the groups undertaking this activism often diverge on the question of tactics. One such divergence occurred in January 2023, when Extinction Rebellion (XR) declared "We Quit", ending actions that were disruptive to the general public. Peer groups Just Stop Oil and Animal Rising continued disruptive actions, viewing them as the best way to gain media coverage for their causes. Despite the urgency of addressing climate change and the growing prominence of direct action in British life, little research has examined how the news media covers and reacts to different climate actions. News media plays a vital role in influencing the public's perception of the climate crisis and "appropriate" responses. We assembled a unique dataset of British news coverage of climate actions over a 7 month period, covering both before and after XR's "We Quit" statement. Our results reveal that conservative publications cover climate actions more unfavorably and more inaccurately than other publications. Legal actions are generally covered more favorably than illegal ones in both conservative and non-conservative outlets and receive more coverage. Actions that target industry attract more coverage than those that target other actors, while actions that target the public are covered more favorably than those that do not. These results contribute to the scholarly debates surrounding the interaction between social movements and news media, especially on how different strategies potentially influence the extent and affective nature of coverage. They have implications for strategies adopted by climate advocates, depending on whether their goal is merely to draw attention to an issue or if it is to generate positive coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined the influence of perceived child mortality risk on the fertility choices of married women in Bangladesh. Employing a cross-sectional survey conducted in four rural areas, categorized as either vulnerable or not vulnerable to extreme climate events, a total of 759 married women were surveyed through simple random sampling, while 25 women were selected for in-depth interviews through judgment sampling. The findings indicate that women in climate-vulnerable regions express a greater desire for additional children compared to those in non-vulnerable areas. Furthermore, women who perceive increased child mortality risk and have experienced past child loss show a stronger tendency towards wanting more offspring. The qualitative insights from the interviews shed light on the underlying motivations driving these preferences, emphasizing the significance of child replacement and seeking security against potential child loss. These empirical findings provide valuable insights into the complex dynamics between perceptions of child mortality and reproductive decision-making among women in Bangladesh. The implications of this study are crucial for policymakers and practitioners, as they can guide the development of targeted interventions and policies to address reproductive health challenges in climate-vulnerable areas. By acknowledging women's perspectives and considering contextual factors, these strategies can effectively address the reproductive implications of climate vulnerability, empowering women to make informed decisions about their fertility and promoting improved reproductive outcomes and overall well-being in vulnerable communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-carbon transition stands as a vital strategy for the global community to address the challenge of climate change, inevitably affecting residents' daily lives. However, there is a notable gap in the quantitative analysis of the low-carbon transition's impact on energy poverty in developing countries, limiting policymakers' understanding of the inherent mechanism and their ability to take informed actions. This study investigates the low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy, China's key low-carbon initiative, as a quasi-natural experiment, using the difference-in-differences (DID) method to examine its impact on residents' energy poverty conditions. Utilizing panel data from 4807 households in the CHARLS dataset, this study effectively integrated household-level and city-level data. Benchmark regression indicates that the LCCP policy exacerbates energy poverty among residents. Further analysis reveals the pivotal role of energy infrastructure and expenditure in bridging the nexus between the LCCP policy and energy poverty, providing crucial insights into the potential pathways through which this policy impacts energy poverty. Additionally, heterogeneity analysis indicates that the impacts of LCCP policy are more pronounced in eastern cities, non-resource cities, and high administrative-level cities, as well as in the communities suffering from subpar governance quality. By leveraging reliable survey data and robust quantitative methods, this study not only broadens the methodology of energy poverty studies but also offers valuable insights for developing countries to safeguard residents' energy welfare amid low-carbon transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines gender vulnerabilities and responsive strategies to climate change, comparing evidences from Kwara and Nassarawa States in Nigeria. Changes in climate parameters, gender-based perceptions of climate, as well as gender-based response and adaptation practices were assessed in accordance with specific research objectives. A total of 200 participants were surveyed through a mixed method approach using 41 years of climate data. Semi-structured questionnaires were administered equally in the two States and 52 in-depth interviews were conducted within male and female farmers that were 40 years and above age using a purposive sampling method. Results from Nassarawa State showed a downward trend in rainfall and an upward trend in both minimum and maximum temperatures. The farmers perceived climate change differently, with observed changes in climate variables: temperature and precipitation, resulting in extreme floods, drought, and rainfall onset and leading to varying adaptation practices. The study concluded that gender plays a significant role in the adoption of adaptation practices in the agricultural sector and that males often have more access to resources and decision-making power in farming as the heads of households. There is a need for better gender-sensitive approaches to adaptation planning and implementation to ensure that both men and women have equal opportunities to benefit from adaptation options in agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post-COVID-19 pandemic era, the world faces a choice between trade protection and cooperation. However, current literature provides very little information on the benefit or loss of trade friction or cooperation on global economy and climate mitigation. This study applied the Global Trade Analysis Project model to assess the impacts of trade friction on global economic recovery and climate change. The results indicated that international trade friction can both delay global economic recovery and affect CO2 emission reduction. The shocks of consumption reduction and production suspension have a higher marginal effect in developing and emerging economies, whereas trade friction has a higher effect on developed countries. Trade friction has more negative economic effects for developed countries, but developing countries cannot reduce CO2 emissions proportionally with the decrease in trade and related production. In the post-pandemic era, if the global trade barrier increases, the world may face a co-occurring economic decline and an increase in or low abatement of carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms are becoming an increasingly important venue for public debate. Twitch, in particular, is a popular streaming platform that targets young adults. Originally created for online video game players, the platform also includes other types of content, such as politics, leisure, and science. Here, we present a study that examines climate change discourse on this understudied platform. Unlike previous studies, this work does not only focus on users' reactions to streamer discourse but, using an ad-hoc methodology, also analyzes the content of the videos. Indeed, an added value of this research is the development of an objective evaluation based on automatic speech recognition (ASP) and natural language processing (NLP). We found that Twitch is an emergent locus for climate discussion with a thriving community of young users interested in the topic. Our findings challenge the understanding of social media discourse on climate change and suggest that platform architecture and intended commercial goals do not play a decisive role in shaping the topics circulating on them. In contrast, our findings support the idea that public discussion on climate change percolates through technology. In other words, the public debate finds its way across existing channels rather than being constrained by them. The research also contributes to the literature by expanding the empirical base for the study of online communication about climate change, especially among young audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities increasingly look for sustainable transportation options to alleviate congestion and solve the "first mile, last mile" problem, micro-transit has emerged as a promising solution. However, to ensure the long-term success of micro-transit programs, it's essential to establish sustainable funding strategies. This research aims to investigate what factors influence people's willingness to pay for micro-transit, with a particular focus on their perceptions of climate change and their commuting experiences. Additionally, the study explores the differences in experiences between current micro-transit users and non-users. Using the Downtowner service in downtown Tampa as a case study, we conducted online surveys in July 2020, gathering responses from 706 micro-transit users and 311 non-users. We then applied statistical analysis to understand the factors affecting willingness to pay. This study sheds light on the relatively underexplored topic of willingness to pay for micro-transit and its connection to climate change perceptions, contributing to existing research. Furthermore, recognizing differences in preferences between these groups provides valuable insights for tailoring strategies to encourage willingness to pay. As policymakers and transportation agencies aim to combat climate change and promote sustainable transportation, understanding these factors becomes increasingly important for developing effective and eco-friendly mobility solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying different regression estimators on balanced panel data, this article examines the impact of human capital and income inequality on climate change in Asian countries during the period 2007–2020. Results by the GMM estimator confirm that increases in income inequality and investments in human capital exacerbate environmental degradation in Asian countries. However, among the three variables that represent human capital, only HC3 (Gross enrollment ratio for tertiary school) plays a role in reducing the impact of income inequality on emissions of carbon dioxide. In addition, the study also provides evidence on the impact of other factors on CO2 emissions such as renewable energy, economic growth, population, output in the agricultural and services sectors, trade openness, government expenditure and total investment in the economy. Besides, some important policy implications have been suggested to aim at securing sustained economic growth in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change influences the adaptation responses and mobility patterns of smallholder farmers across multiple scales. This study employed an inductive approach to observe smallholder farmers in An Giang Province in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta to compare the effects of various environmental and climate-related stressors on households with and without contributing migrant household members and on households of different income levels in two rural communes. We looked into the roles that adaptation responses and human mobility patterns play in the daily livelihoods of (translocal) households. We adopted a mixed-methods approach, which involved the administration of a livelihood survey among households in two rural communes (N = 106) and, subsequently, two focus group discussions, unstructured in-depth interviews, and secondary data analysis. We discovered that human mobility, adaptation responses, and climate change are interwoven in a web of complex relationships. No clear differences in effects and climate adaptation responses were discovered between emigrant and nonemigrant households. Hence, paradigms that either portray migration as a failure to adapt or as a form of adaptation in the context of climate change do not adequately explain the findings of this study. Differences between income groups were, however, observed. Relative to other income groups, middle-income farmers were disproportionally affected by climate-related disasters. Additionally, out-migration, aging, upstream hydropower development, and COVID-19 lockdowns posed significant challenges to the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The compound effects of these multiple stressors indicate that human mobility, climate change and adaptation patterns should be best approached as 'wicked' problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, using data from 2010 to 2021, and by utilizing the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) theory, and system generalized method of moments, the effect of green financing and deployment of renewable energy on carbon dioxide emissions in China and its provinces were analyzed. The results show that green financing reduces environmental pollution at the country level. Moreover, with a 1% increase in renewable energy consumption, carbon dioxide emission can be expected to decrease by 0.103%. It also demonstrates that green financing has a statistically significant coefficient only in provinces located in the eastern and western regions. Chinese policymakers should incentive policies for provinces in the eastern region of China in order to have a cleaner environment. The central region should be under supportive and pressure policies to move faster along the path to sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Updating one's beliefs about the causes and effects of climate change is crucial for altering attitudes and behaviours. Importantly, metacognitive abilities - insight into the (in)correctness of one's beliefs- play a key role in the formation of polarised beliefs. We here aimed at investigated the role of metacognition in changing beliefs about climate change. To that end, we focused on the role of domain-general and domain-specific metacognition in updating prior beliefs about climate change across the spectrum of climate change scepticism. We also considered the role of how climate science is communicated in the form of textual or visuo-textual presentations. We asked two large US samples to perform a perceptual decision-making task (to assess domain-general decision-making and metacognitive abilities. They next performed a belief-updating task, where they were exposed to good and bad news about climate change and we asked them about their beliefs and their updating. Lastly, they completed a series of questionnaires probing their attitudes to climate change. We show that climate change scepticism is associated with differences in domain-general as well as domain-specific metacognitive abilities. Moreover, domain-general metacognitive sensitivity influenced belief updating in an asymmetric way: lower domain-general metacognition decreased the updating of prior beliefs, especially in the face of negative evidence. Our findings highlight the role of metacognitive failures in revising erroneous beliefs about climate change and point to their adverse social effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms have become critical venues for a wide spectrum of influence campaigns, from activism to advertising. Sometimes these two ends overlap and it remains unknown how the latter might impact the former. Situated within contemporary scholarship on vegan activism, this work examines corporate involvement with the Veganuary 2019 campaign on Twitter, as well as the antagonistic backlash it received. We find that the activists and commercial entities engage mostly separate audiences, suggesting that commercial campaigns do little to drive interactions with Veganuary activism. We also discover strong threads of antagonism reflecting the "culture wars" surrounding discussions of veganism and climate-diet science. These findings inform our understanding of the challenges facing climate-diet discourses on social media and motivate further research into the role of commercial agents in online activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom envisioned a polycentric approach to mitigating climate change rather than a centralised solution. Debating about global efforts to solve climate-change problems has yet not led to an effective global treaty. Ostrom argued that instead of focusing only on global efforts, it is better to encourage polycentric efforts to reduce the risks associated with the emission of greenhouse gases. Many problems conceptualised as 'global problems' are the cumulative results of actions taken by individuals, families, small groups, private firms, and local, regional, and national governments. Ostrom and colleagues pointed to many examples of successfully managing a common good through interaction within a community. Energy-saving actions undertaken by individuals, families and actors at a small-scale pay off and, when multiplied, may reduce emissions globally. The incentive to achieve an individual net gain may trigger human investment decisions. Here we provide experimental support for Ostrom's basic ideas using methods of experimental economics. By subdividing experimental populations in subgroups that approach sub-goals of mitigating simulated dangerous climate change combined with incentives, the 'global' solution is achieved by combined subgroup contributions exceeding the 'global' threshold for averting simulated dangerous climate change. Incentives from refunded saved energy motivate reaching sub-goals, as Ostrom suggested. By contrast, coercing free-riding subgroups through sanctioning at a cost fails, because sanctioning also hits fair individuals who then reduce their contributions. However, the power of polycentricity with numerous successful units can help mitigate climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding media frames and the public resonance during disasters is essential for making inclusive climate change and adaptation policies in the context of increasingly extreme weather events. In this study, we use the extreme weather and flood event that occurred in July 2021 in Zhengzhou, China, as a case study to investigate how official media in China reported this event and how the public responded. Moreover, since one accountability investigation report regarding this disaster was released in January 2022, we also compared these posts between the emergency response period and the post-crisis learning period after the report's release. Topic modeling using the LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) method and emotion analysis were conducted to analyze the posts from Weibo, China's primary social media platform. The results demonstrated that the posts from official media and the public comments differed in both topics and emotions, with relatively little coherence. During the emergency response period, the media's posts focused more on the facts, such as the extreme weather event, the places where it occurred, the impacts, and the search and rescue efforts, while the public comments were more about help appeals from the neglected ones in the rural areas, and emotional expressions such as moral support, condolence or encouragement to the victims and their families. After the accountability investigation in January, the media's posts primarily covered the investigation process, the punishment, the attribution of disaster consequences, and the lessons learned, while the public's comments were relatively emotional, praised the good, condoled the victims, and condemned the villains. The dominant emotion from the media's posts was "like" in July 2021, but it became depression in January 2022. Anger was the prevalent emotion from the public during all the stages. This study provided valuable knowledge to the current understanding of the different patterns and dynamics of official media reports and the public's resonance in disaster management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategies for achieving carbon emissions goals presuppose changes in individual behaviour, which can be indirectly nudged by interventions or tailored information but ultimately depend upon individual attitudes. Specifically, the perception that climate change is low risk has been identified as a barrier to participation in climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. Therefore, understanding public attitudes towards climate change risk is an important element of reducing emissions. We applied k-means cluster analysis to explore attitudes to climate change risk in the UK population using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, a national survey running from 2009 to present. We identified three distinct attitude clusters: "Sceptical", "Concerned", and "Paradoxical" in both waves 4 (from 2012 to 2014) and 10 (from 2018 to 2020) of this survey. The Sceptical cluster tended to deny the seriousness of climate change and the urgency or even the necessity of dealing with it. The Concerned cluster displayed anxiety about climate change risks and supported action to reduce them. The Paradoxical cluster acknowledged the reality of climate change impacts but did not support actions to mitigate them. We further observed statistical associations between cluster membership and the social characteristics of the participants, including sex, age, income, education, and political affiliation. We also found a temporal stability of cluster structure between the two waves. However, the transition matrices indicated a general transition away from the Sceptical and Paradoxical clusters, and toward the Concerned cluster between wave 4 to wave 10. The findings suggest that more tailored public information campaigns regarding climate change risk may be necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's societal challenges, such as climate change and global pandemics, are increasingly complex and require collaboration across scientific disciplines to address. Scientific teams bring together individuals of varying backgrounds and expertise to work collaboratively on creating new knowledge to address these challenges. Within a scientific team, there is inherent diversity in disciplinary cultures and preferences for interpersonal collaboration. Such diversity contributes to the potential strength of the created knowledge but can also impede progress when teams struggle to collaborate productively. Facilitation is a professional practice-based form of interpersonal expertise that supports group members to do their best thinking. Although facilitation has been demonstrated to support group functioning in a wide range of contexts, its role in supporting scientific teams has been largely overlooked. This essay defines scientific facilitation as a form of interactional expertise and explains how facilitating scientific teams requires skills in managing interpersonal interactions as well as understanding how different types of disciplinary knowledge integrate in the creation of new knowledge. Next, it explains how this science facilitation expertise may be developed through metacognition. Finally, it provides examples of how scientific facilitation could be more widely incorporated into research by describing three pathways to expand the use of facilitation theory and techniques in collaborative scientific research: developing facilitation skills among scientists leading teams, using broadly trained facilitators, and using specialised science facilitators. The strengths and risks of each path are discussed, and criteria are suggested for selecting the right approach for a given team science project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]